5. All the Pretty Horses
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dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against
the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing. (All the Pretty Horses 31)
This chapter explores what I consider to be a debate on the
nature of wilderness spaces in this sixth novel by Cormac McCarthy.
Wild nature as first depicted by the text is invested with decidedly
positive signifiers and these have much to do with the utopian side of
writing American spaces, especially the Turner thesis. However, the
second part of the novel explores the darker side to these self-same
environments. Barbarity, lawlessness, cruelty and nature as an actively
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beginning. Thus, wilderness spaces, at first depicted positively,
suddenl\µIOLS¶WRVKRZDKHOOLVKGRZQVLGH All the Pretty Horses then
engages both sides of the debate on space, overwhelmingly positive
followed by overwhelmingly negative. The environments of the novel
are textual affairs in that they are bound up in utopian and dystopian
traditions in the writing of American spaces (as explored in chapter
two of this book). There are hints, however, at a new contract with the
land and a more nuanced view of environment emerges by the end of
the text.
The chapter is organized in the following way. I will first give
a brief plot summary of All the Pretty Horses; then I will sketch out
how Blood Meridian¶V ZRUOG RI WKH nineteenth century sets the stage
for the southwest U.S. and Mexico of the twentieth century. Next I
will show how descriptions of the environment south of the border
(the ersatz frontier) in the first part of All the Pretty Horses flow from
the Edenic tradition. After that, I describe how the environment of the
second half of the novel is very much in line with demonic traditions.
Finally, I demonstrate that, though the text allows two points of view
on wilderness spaces to play out, there are indications of a new way
forward. This is best understood within the context of a new definition
