![]() ![]() McCarthy's descriptions of the otherworldly beauty of horses imbue the text with a numinous quality that hints at some wholly transcendent and absolute source of divinity, much like the concept of the "Alien" god in Gnostic theology. This terrible truth is composed of the Gnostic idea that evil saturates the manifest cosmos and a Buddhist awareness that suffering lies at the very core of existence.ĭespite these dark revelations, All the Pretty Horses does not read like an exercise in despair. The novel's division into four books traces John Grady's painful initiation, via a direct experience of evil and suffering, into an understanding of the nature of existence, or what the narrative voice constantly refers to as the "terrible truth" of the world. Despite the introduction of some rather uncharacteristic elements-namely the wholly sympathetic protagonist, the quixotic quest, and the passionate love story-All the Pretty Horses not only continues in the darkly Gnostic trend established by the earlier works, but takes the doctrine to deeper, more profound levels. ![]() Cormac McCarthy's first volume of the Border Trilogy, All the Pretty Horses, may at first seem like a deviation from the brutally grim preoccupations of the writer's earlier works, most notably Blood Meridian. ![]()
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