![]() ![]() Traveling faster than humans can on foot, they cover more ground and can see more than one person can in a lifetime. For hundreds of years, horses have been mounted by men to go off to war, following the orders of far-away kings, dictators, and generals. But horses also symbolize the complex, constantly shifting relationships and connections between individuals and society. Horses are thus similar in some ways to men: as John Grady is told at one point, their souls are more similar to men’s souls than many think. John Grady feels a special kinship to horses, which in this way come to stand in for the kind of companionship he finds more fleetingly in friends, lovers, and in certain physical places. ![]() But horses are more than the characters’ friends or elements of Western life in the book: they are the connective tissue of the novel, drawing lines among characters, from characters to culture and society, and between the present and the past. ![]() They can also be humans’ friends: Redbo recognizes John Grady by whinnying when he comes to retrieve the horse in Encantada, for instance. Each has its own character-John Grady’s is powerful and loyal, while Blevins’ is jumpier and more finicky. Three horses in All the Pretty Horses are significant enough that they can almost be thought of as characters themselves: John Grady’s horse Redbo, Rawlins’ horse Junior, and Blevins’ nameless big bay horse. ![]()
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