“A Knowing Deep in the Bone”: Cowboy Stoicism and Tragic Heroism in All the Pretty Horses

Abstract

The fourth and fifth chapters of the study are dedicated to The Border Trilogy, and principally to the evolution of John Grady Cole’s character in the trilogy’s first and third installments, All the Pretty Horses and Cities of the Plain. A close reading of The Border Trilogy supports the thesis that John Grady is McCarthy’s idea of desirable moral exemplarity. An appreciation of the bildungsroman All the Pretty Horses is contingent upon an interpretation of its central protagonist John Grady. Dianne Luce finds that John Grady possesses a “childish’ vision of himself as a romantic hero,” and Charles Bailey styles John Grady as an “anti-hero, futilely acting in a degraded world.” Hillier suggests that John Grady’s heroism is neither immature nor futile, but beneficial, and that his actions provide the best available moral response to the corruption and injustice presented in McCarthy’s fiction. That moral response resembles Aurelian Stoicism, the mode of Stoic practice advanced by the second-century ad Roman Emperor-philosopher Marcus Aurelius. John Grady’s philosophy of life is reaffirmed and refined through his experience of the world’s harsh realities and the evil that men do. By the end of The Border Trilogy’s first installment this anachronistic cowboy emerges with two significant insights. First, John Grady’s Stoic attitude to life is validated and, second, he becomes willing to play the part of a tragic hero, both in accepting that the tragic nature of existence includes beauty and loss, and in demonstrating a preparedness to stand within his own moral center.