Premium Essay

All The Pretty Horses Literary Analysis

Submitted By
Words 543
Pages 3
Death is a pretty significant and important symbol in the novel All The Pretty Horses. Each death has a huge impact on John Grady. After each death John Grady is able to start anew. When John Grady's grandfather died in the beginning of the book, John Grady was able to move on from his dream of owning the family ranch, and he was able to go on his adventure to find that dream elsewhere. With each death that John goes through there is a possibility of a new beginning.The deaths in the novel surround the plot of the story and suggest a type of fate that John Grady will receive, changing throughout the story, but always connected with the one death that started him on this journey in the first place, the death of his grandpa. The deaths drive the plot as John Grady encounters dead ends to what he loves in this life. He move to new territory and continues on with new adventures …show more content…
This is apparent because almost all of these character have one of these traits if not all of them displayed through the way they act and their personalities. Most times, these qualities are good for the boys, yet at times their extreme loyalty or determination is the main thing that gets them hurt or in trouble, like John Grady with Alejandra, or Blevins with his gun, or Rawlins with how he always sticking by his best friend no matter what. John Grady is so in touch with his morals and loyalty and he is completely devout to his friends. John Grady and his best friend Rawlins are just boys when they leave Texas. Either it is the time period or it is the characters' personalities, but they strive to be independent and free of whatever burden or troubles they are carrying. Rawlins and John Grady are loyal to each other and have supported each other because they are all that they

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

All The Pretty Horses Literary Analysis

...blood, and solitary heroic cowboys vanquishing ultimately cowardly villains--in an attempt to recover the true history of the American West, to remove the romantic and heroic veneer from a past of violence and prejudice, of dreams shattered as much as hopes fulfilled. Cormac McCarthy's novel All the Pretty Horses concerns itself with the meeting place between realism and romanticism. All the Pretty Horses is set in 1949 and 1950. The opening of the novel shows John Grady Cole, a sixteen-year-old Texan who wants badly to be a cowboy, at the funeral of his grandfather. The driving economic force in Texas, it becomes clear to John Grady, is oil rather than cattle: after the funeral, John Grady's mother will sell the ranch the grandfather owned, and on which John Grady was raised. It is a ranch built by John Grady's great-grandfather in the formative years of the cowboy culture, the years immediately after the Civil War, and its passing out of the family is a symbol of the passing of the old West, the...

Words: 717 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

All The Pretty Horses Literary Analysis

...can be used to change the world. In the novels, All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and The Counselor, Cormac McCarthy plots adventures that his characters mature from their experience and knowledge to support themselves and change their lives. In the book All The Pretty Horses, John Grady Cole starts out in the novel burying his grandfather. He lost everything. John’s mother is selling the ranch he grew up in and he is stuck with the choice of moving...

Words: 1900 - Pages: 8

Premium Essay

The Concept of Nature

...The Concept of Nature in the Poetry of William Wordsworth and Robert Frost : A Comparative Study Chapter One Introduction 1. Background Poets have long been inspired to tune their lyrics to the variations in landscape, the changes in season, and the natural phenomena around them. The Greek poet Theocritus began writing idylls in the third century B.C.E. to glorify and honor the simplicity of rural life--creating such well known characters as Lycidas, who has inspired dozens of poems as the archetypal shepherd, including the famous poem "Lycidas" by John Milton. An idyll was originally a short, peaceful pastoral lyric, but has come to include poems of epic adventure set in an idealized past, including Lord Alfred Tennyson's take on Arthurian legend, The Idylls of the King. The Biblical Song of Songs is also considered an idyll, as it tells its story of love and passion by continuously evoking imagery from the natural world. The more familiar form of surviving pastoral poetry that has retained its integrity is the eclogue, a poem attuned to the natural world and seasons, placed in a pleasant, serene, and rural place, and in which shepherds often converse. The first eclogue was written by Virgil in 37 B.C.E. The eclogue also flourished in the Italian Renaissance, its most notable authors being Dante and Petrarch. It became something of a requirement for young poets, a form they had to master before embarking upon great original work. Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Edmund Spenser’s...

Words: 6645 - Pages: 27

Free Essay

Figurative Language

...INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the Study Figurative language has been widely examined by linguist in the study of literature in recent years. It is because figurative language has the essence of style and beauty. Figurative language often provides a more effective means of saying what we mean than direct statement. In the specific sense, figurative language may take the form of figures of speech. Figurative language is used in any form of communication, such as in daily conversation, articles in newspaper, advertisements, novels, poems, etc. The effectiveness of figurative language in four main reasons, Perrine (1982) First, figurative language affords readers imaginative pleasure of literary works. Second, it is a way of bringing additional imagery into verse, making the abstract concrete, making literary works more sensuous. The third, figurative is a way of adding emotional intensity to otherwise merely informative statements and conveying attitudes along with information. And the last, it is a way of saying much in brief compass. She divides figurative language into seven types, namely metaphor, simile, personification, metonymy, paradox, overstatement, understatement, irony and illusion. 2 Keraf (1998: 129) divided majas (figures of speech) into two classifications, namely majas retoris (rhetoric) and majas kiasan (analogy). The first classification covers illiteracy, assonances, anastrophe, apophasis, apostrophe, asyndeton, polycyndenton, chiasmus, ellipsis, euphemism, litotes...

Words: 15127 - Pages: 61

Premium Essay

The River

... This poem takes the form of a letter from a lonely wife who has not seen her husband in five months. She begins by reminiscing about meeting him during childhood. She was pulling flowers at the front gate and he came by on stilts, playing horse. The next two lines, "And we went on living in the village of Chokan/Two small people, without dislike or suspicion," imply that the pair did not grow close right away following that encounter; they continued to grow up separately. In the next stanza, the wife describes marrying her husband at age fourteen. After that, she was continuously shy, either out of respect, sub-ordinance, or just because of her introverted personality. According to the next stanza, she became more comfortable with the marriage by age fifteen and "stopped scowling." A year later, her husband (a merchant) departed for another village, which is where he has been for the past five months. The monkeys' sorrowful noise mirrors her loneliness. She writes that her husband "dragged [his] feet" when he left - indicating that he did not want to leave her. She ends her letter by writing that if he comes back along the river, he should send word ahead, and she will come out to meet him. The poem is signed "by Rihaku." Analysis: Pound was not the creator of this poem; he translated it from the original Chinese version by Li Po. The Chinese original likely had a specific form and identifiable meter, but Pound did not know enough about Chinese poetry to preserve it...

Words: 3595 - Pages: 15

Premium Essay

Figyrative Language Shaped by Imagination in K. Mansfield's Short Stories

...year student Paşcaneanu Mariana Group 404 Scientific adviser: Tataru Nina Senior Lecturer Chişinău 2012 Contents INTRODUCTION 2 CHAPTER I: SHORT STORY AS A FORM OF FICTION 5 I.1.Common Characteristics of a Short Story as a Form of Fiction. Its Plot and Structure. 5 I.2. Figurative Language. Definition. Function. 9 I.3. Imagery – Language that Appeals to the Senses 11 I.3.1. Simile, Metaphor and Personification. 13 1.3.2. Symbol and Symbolism. 26 I.3.3 Allegory. 30 CHAPTER II: LANGUAGE SHAPED BY IMAGINATION IN K. MANSFIELD’S SHORT STORIES 36 II.1. Figurative Language, Symbolism and Theme in "Her First Ball": 37 II.2. Katherine Mansfield – Techniques and Effects in A Cup of Tea. 41 II.3. Literary Colloquial Style in “Miss Brill” by K. Mansfield. 49 II.3.1. Lexical features—Vague Words and Expressions 49 II.3.2 Syntactical and Morphological Features 52 II.3.3 Phonological Schemes of the Figures of Speech 55 II.4. Simplifying Figurative Language in K.Mansfield’s Short Stories 60 CONCLUSION 64 BIBLIOGRAPHY 66 APPENDIX 70 INTRODUCTION Figurative Language is the use of words that go beyond their ordinary meaning. It requires you to use your imagination to figure out the author's meaning. For example, if someone tells you that it is raining cats and dogs, you know that there are not actually cats and dogs falling from the sky. You know it really means that it is raining very hard. Figurative...

Words: 23312 - Pages: 94

Free Essay

Sexuality in Ulysses, Lolita and the World's Wife

...which has power to threaten the pure and romantic values of marriage and intimate relationships as well as established gender roles. Despite the alleviation of religious and moral restrictions, sex embodies the warped animal reflection of the exclusively human concept of love, exposing primal desires and ensuring its continued belonging to the realms of the shocking and distasteful, while inadvertently strengthening its power. It is this power that lies at the heart of much modernist literature. The illicit imagery serves as a physical subversion of the dated foundations the writings oppose. Prominent in early modernist work was the theoretical influence of Sigmund Freud, most notably in the case of contemporary writer James Joyce whose literary techniques, such as the stream of consciousness writing in Ulysses, have come to epitomize modernist fiction. Ulysses not only challenges the censors’ attitude to sex, but also what were considered the sexual norms for men and women in pre-war Catholic society. Similarly, Vladimir Nabokov uses sexual deviancy to protest the theoretical ideas implicit in modernist literature through characteristics derived from post-World War II civilisation. The absence of structure or control left by the war undermined contemporary opinion of western stability, presented in Lolita through American culture. This subversion is mirrored in the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy through use of explicit language rather than sexual perversion, confronting the inequality...

Words: 4061 - Pages: 17

Free Essay

Henrik Ibsen

...enrik An Introduction on Henrik Ibsen Henrik Ibsen is one of the world's greatest dramatists. He was the leading figure of an artistic renaissance that took place in Norway around the end of the nineteenth century. Ibsen lived from 1828 ,in the little Norwegian village of Skien, to 1906. He grew up in poverty, studied medicine for a while, and then abandoned that to write plays. He had early attempts at dramatic composition. His spare hours were spent in preparation for entrance to Christiania University. About 1851 Ibsen was given the position of "theater poet" at the newly built National Theater in Bergen, a post which he held for six years. In 1857 he became director of the Norwegian Theater in Christiania; In 1858, he published his first play, The Vikings at Helgeland, Brand and Peer Gynt which were long, historical verse plays. And in 1862, with Love's Comedy, became known in his own country as a playwright of promise. Seven years later, in the starting of 1869, he began to write prose plays, giving up the verse form. Some critics characterize this switch as an abandonment of poetry in favor of realism. In the same year, discouraged with the reception given to his work and out of sympathy with the social and intellectual ideals of his country, he left Norway, not to return for a period of nearly thirty years. He established himself first at Rome, later in Munich. In 1877, Ibsen began what would become a series of five plays in which he examines the moral faults of modern...

Words: 3021 - Pages: 13

Premium Essay

Scientific Prose

...more else. |Greece it was practiced in oral form | |found in techn. Texts where they |can be included in N.S. we mean |Addressing documents and official |which was named P. in accordance with| |are indespensible means of |publicist essays, feature |letters, signing them, expressing the|the name of its corresponding genre. | |expressing ideas. They directly |articles, scient. Reviews are not |reasons and considerations leading to|PS is famouse for its explicit | |refer to the o-t they mean. They |N.S. to attract the readers |the subject of the doc-t – all this |pragmatic function of persuasion | |are emotionally neutral. They are: |attention special means are used |is strictly regulated both lexically |directed at influencing the reader & | |1- monosemantic; 2-m-ng doesn’t |by british & am. Papers ex: |& syntact. All emotiveness and subj. |shaping his views in accordance with | |depend on the context;3-it remains |specific headlines, space |modality are completely...

Words: 12865 - Pages: 52

Premium Essay

Kuharenko

...…………………………………………... 2 PRELIMINARY REMARKS.....................................................………………………………………….. 3 CHAPTER I. PHONO-GRAPHICAL LEVEL. MORPHOLOGICAL LEVEL…............................... 13 Sound Instrumenting. Craphon. Graphical Means…………………………………………………………...6 Morphemic Repetition. Extension of Morphemic Valency………………………………………………….11 CHAPTER II. LEXICAL LEVEL..............................................……………………………………….…14 Word and its Semantic Structure…………………………………………………………………………….14 Connotational Meanings of a Word………………………………………………………………………….14 The Role of the Context in the Actualization of Meaning…………………………………………………….14 Stylistic Differentiation of the Vocabulary…………………………………………………………………..16 Literary Stratum of Words. Colloquial Words…..…………………………………………………………..16 Lexical Stylistic Devices…………………………………………………………………………………….23 Metaphor. Metonymy. Synecdoche. Play on Words. Irony. Epithet…………………………………………23 Hyperbole. Understatement. Oxymoron. ……………………………………………………………………23 CHAPTER III. SYNTACTICAL LEVEL..................................…………………………………………38 Main Characteristics of the Sentence. Syntactical SDs. Sentence Length…………………………………..38 One-Word Sentences. Sentence Structure. Punctuation. Arrangement of Sentence Members. Rhetorical Question. Types of Repetition. Parallel Constructions. Chiasmus. Inversion. Suspense, Detachment. Completeness of Sentence Structure. Ellipsis. One-Member Sentences. Apokoinu Constructions...

Words: 57354 - Pages: 230

Premium Essay

A Book of Practice in Stylistics

...…………………………………………... 2 PRELIMINARY REMARKS.....................................................………………………………………….. 3 CHAPTER I. PHONO-GRAPHICAL LEVEL. MORPHOLOGICAL LEVEL…............................... 13 Sound Instrumenting. Graphon. Graphical Means…………………………………………………………...6 Morphemic Repetition. Extension of Morphemic Valency………………………………………………….11 CHAPTER II. LEXICAL LEVEL..............................................……………………………………….…14 Word and its Semantic Structure…………………………………………………………………………….14 Connotational Meanings of a Word………………………………………………………………………….14 The Role of the Context in the Actualization of Meaning…………………………………………………….14 Stylistic Differentiation of the Vocabulary…………………………………………………………………..16 Literary Stratum of Words. Colloquial Words…..…………………………………………………………..16 Lexical Stylistic Devices…………………………………………………………………………………….23 Metaphor. Metonymy. Synecdoche. Play on Words. Irony. Epithet…………………………………………23 Hyperbole. Understatement. Oxymoron. ……………………………………………………………………23 CHAPTER III. SYNTACTICAL LEVEL..................................…………………………………………38 Main Characteristics of the Sentence. Syntactical SDs. Sentence Length…………………………………..38 One-Word Sentences. Sentence Structure. Punctuation. Arrangement of Sentence Members. Rhetorical Question. Types of Repetition. Parallel Constructions. Chiasmus. Inversion. Suspense, Detachment. Completeness of Sentence Structure. Ellipsis. One-Member Sentences. Apokoinu Constructions...

Words: 56594 - Pages: 227

Free Essay

Miaws

...A TEACHER’S GUIDE TO THE SIGNET CLASSICS EDITION OF G EORG E B E R N A R D S HAW ’S PYGMALION By LAURA REIS MAYER BUNCOMBE COUNTY SCHOOLS, ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA S E R I E S E D I T O R S JEANNE M. MCGLINN, Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Asheville and W. GEIGER ELLIS, Ed.D., University of Georgia, Professor Emeritus 2 A Teacher’s Guide to the Signet Classics Edition of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion TABLE OF CONTENTS An Introduction .......................................................................................3 Synopsis of the Play .................................................................................3 Prereading Activities .................................................................................6 During Reading Activities ......................................................................13 After Reading Activities .........................................................................21 About the Author of this Guide .............................................................29 About the Editors of this Guide .............................................................29 Full List of Free Teacher's Guides...........................................................30 Click on a Classic ..................................................................................31 Copyright © 2007 by Penguin Group (USA) For additional teacher’s manuals, catalogs, or descriptive brochures, please email academic@penguin.com or write...

Words: 11837 - Pages: 48

Premium Essay

Summary

... | | |"HIGHER SCHOOL" | | |1977 | TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Предисловие к первому изданию……………………………………………………..6 Предисловие к второму изданию……………………………………………………..7 Part I. Introduction 1. General Notes on Style and Stylistics…………………………………………9 2. Expressive Means (EM) and Stylistic Devices (SD)………………………...25 3. General Notes on Functional Styles of Language……………………………32 4. Varieties of Language………………………………………………………..35 5. A Brief Outline of the Development of the English Literary Standard Language……………………………………………………………………..41 6. Meaning from a Stylistic Point of View…………………………..…………57 Part II. Stylistic Classification of the English Vocabulary 1. General Considerations………………………………………………………70 2. Neutral, Common Literary and Common Colloquial Vocabulary…………..72 3. Special Literary...

Words: 151690 - Pages: 607

Premium Essay

Stilistic

...PART I INTRODUCTION 6 I. GENERAL NOTES ON STYLE AND Stylistics 6 2. EXPRESSIVE MEANS (EM) AND STYLISTIC DEVICES (SD) 21 3. GENERAL NOTES ON FUNCTIONAL STYLES OF LANGUAGE 28 4. VARIETIES OF LANGUAGE 30 5. A BRIEF OUTLINE OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LITERARY (STANDARD) LANGUAGE 36 6. MEANING FROM A STYLISTIC POINT OF VIEW 51 PART II STYLISTIC CLASSIFICATION OF THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY 63 I. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 63 2. NEUTRAL, COMMON LITERARY AND COMMON COLLOQUIAL VOCABULARY 64 3. SPECIAL LITERARY VOCABULARY 68 a) Terms 68 b) Poetic and Highly Literary Words 71 c) Archaic, Obsolescent and Obsolete Words 74 d) Barbarisms and Foreignisms 78 e) Literary Coinages (Including Nonce-Words) 83 4. SPECIAL COLLOQUIAL VOCABULARY 95 a) Slang 95 b) Jargonisms 100 c) Professionalisms 103 d) Dialectal words 106 e) Vulgar words or vulgarisms 108 f) Colloquial coinages (words and meanings) 109 PART Ш PHONETIC EXPRESSIVE MEANS AND STYLISTIC DEVICES 112 GENERAL NOTES 112 Onomatopoeia 113 Alliteration 114 Rhyme 116 Rhythm 117 PART IV LEXICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS AND STYLISTIC DEVICES 123 A. INTENTIONAL MIXING OF THE STYLISTIC ASPECT OF WORDS 123 B. INTERACTION OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF LEXICAL MEANING 125 1. INTERACTION OF PRIMARY DICTIONARY AND CONTEXTUALLY IMPOSED MEANINGS 126 Metaphor 126 Metonymy 131 Irony 133 3. INTERACTION OF LOGICAL AND EMOTIVE...

Words: 73462 - Pages: 294

Premium Essay

Film Essay

...THE RULES OF THE GAME: NOUVELLE EDITION FRANCAISE/THE KOBAL COLLECTION DEEP FOCUS CANON FODDER As the sun finally sets on the century of cinema, by what criteria do we determine its masterworks? BY PAU L SC H RA D E R Top guns (and dogs): the #1 The Rules of the Game September-October 2006 FILM COMMENT 33 Sunrise PREFACE THE BOOK I DIDN’T WRITE I n march 2003 i was having dinner in london with Faber and Faber’s editor of film books, Walter Donohue, and several others when the conversation turned to the current state of film criticism and lack of knowledge of film history in general. I remarked on a former assistant who, when told to look up Montgomery Clift, returned some minutes later asking, “Where is that?” I replied that I thought it was in the Hollywood Hills, and he returned to his search engine. Yes, we agreed, there are too many films, too much history, for today’s student to master. “Someone should write a film version of Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon,” a writer from The Independent suggested, and “the person who should write it,” he said, looking at me, “is you.” I looked to Walter, who replied, “If you write it, I’ll publish it.” And the die was cast. Faber offered a contract, and I set to work. Following the Bloom model I decided it should be an elitist canon, not populist, raising the bar so high that only a handful of films would pass over. I proceeded to compile a list of essential films, attempting, as best I could, to...

Words: 11026 - Pages: 45