All the Pretty Horses Vs. the Searchers

All the Pretty Horses/The Searchers

The ideal American West or in other words Hollywood’s West is described as being a life of adventure, one with beautiful scenery, and a world made up of brave, rough, intuitive, fearless cowboys. Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses challenges and at times romanticizes the description of the ideal American West, whereas, John Ford’s film “The Searchers” romanticizes the description of the ideal American West. This is shown through their description of family values and the idea of a western family , intuition, how they handle cultures, and the values embodied by the hero.

In the ideal American West family the parents each have distinctive roles in their household, and your family is valued above many things. In the Searcher’s Ethan’s brother protects and provides the needs for the family and his wife raises the children and does all the household chores such as cleaning and cooking. These specific roles given to Martha and Aaron Edwards in “The Searchers” help romanticize our idea of the average, stereotypical western family. When Ethan’s family gets murdered by Native Americans, Ethan is persistent on taking revenge and getting Debbie back. He spends years searching for her and tracking down the Comanche Indians. He shows loyalty to his family even after their deaths for many years to come. Whereas, Cormac challenges this idea of a gender-oriented family and a close, loyal family. In All the Pretty Horses, John Grady is not very close to his mother or his father. His mother is a thirty-six year old woman who wants to be a movie star. She is never home and John Grady is raised by Luisa and Abuela. Her relationship with her son is a very weak one, she wasn‘t there for most of the time as he was growing up “She was gone…Her and Abuela.” (pg. 25) John Grady’s father it also seems wasn’t there for a large part of his life and he’s divorced with his wife. John Grady himself does not consider his family as something to keep him from going on his adventure, the only reason he had stayed that long was because of his grandfather’s ranch. These thing show how different John Grady’s family was to your ideal, and stereotypical western family. Both Ford and McCarthy mention family values quite often each showing family loyalty and an image of a close western family in different perspectives.

In the average American West story a cowboy relies on intuition whether to learn the truth or in making a decision. Both Ford’s film “The Searchers” and Cormac’s All the Pretty Horses similarly rely on intuition to get their character to understand something or make a decision. In “The Searchers” Ethan and Martin rely on intuition when they get ambushed by Futterman’s gang for the reward money. Had Ethan not hidden and waited for them to attack they might have not survived, showing how heavily cowboys depended on intuition. In All the Pretty Horses John Cole relies on intuition to find out his father was dead. “…and he thought about his father who was dead rain and wept.” (pg. 286) Later on in a conversation with Rawlins this feeling is confirmed, “ You knew you daddy died. Yeah. I guess I knew that.” (pg. 299) John Grady and Rawlins use intuition in the book to describe how they felt when they met Blevins. “You aint ridin…thowed in the jailhouse”. John Grady Cole himself says, “We aint…skinny ass.” (pg. 41) Eventually, they do see Blevins again and he does help get the thrown in jail. Cormac McCarthy’s andJohn Ford’s characters both rely heavily on intuition, as does your ideal cowboy.

The ideal everyday cowboy, tends to think very highly of themselves, and think that their race is better than others. John Wayne’s character in “The Searchers” Ethan. He treats Martin poorly only for the soul reason that he is one-eighth Indian. Racist to the point that he shoots at the graves of dead Comanche’s out of spite, and is bent on killing his niece Debbie when he finds out she married a chief from an Indian tribe Ethan romanticizes the way your average cowboy would regard other cultures. Whereas, Cormac challenges that notion in All the Pretty Horses the hero John Grady doesn’t seem to be racist at all, he falls in love with a Hispanic girl, he’s raised by Hispanics, and speaks Spanish very well. As for Native Americans, he seemed to marvel at their freedom. At one point as he’s dreaming of horses he imagines