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Setting
Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Part 1
Explanation and Analysis—Blevins the Serf:
In Part 1, the narrator uses imagery and a simile to describe Blevins’s sorry condition after he’s lost his clothes and some Mexican men try to buy him as a slave:
The boy’s bony legs were pale in the firelight and coated with road dust and bits of chaff that had stuck to the lard. The drawers he wore were baggy and dirty and he did indeed look like some sad and ill used serf or worse.
The image of Blevins's raggedy clothes and "bony legs [...] pale in the firelight," as well as the simile of looking “like some sad and ill used serf or worse” drive home how forlorn and pathetic Blevins looks. He is so downtrodden that he looks like a "serf," a medieval laborer who is bound to serve a landowner. This description is especially fitting since, disturbingly, some Mexican men that Blevins, John Grady, and Rawlins encountered just offered to purchase Blevins as a slave (a proposition that John Grady refused to entertain). Blevins's destitute state and vulnerability speak to the difficult physical conditions of a rider’s life out West, especially for someone as young and defenseless as Blevins. Comparing Blevins to a serf, someone who lacks freedom, is an especially ironic simile, since the boys have viewed Mexico as symbolic of total freedom, a place where they can cast off their problems and pursue another life.
The description of Blevins in this passage shatters any romanticized impressions of border country or life as a runaway. Adventures in Mexico seem to be plagued by the very same problems as those in the United States, and vulnerable people are still vulnerable. Blevins is no different in Mexico than he is in the United States: he is still a young boy from a difficult home, in need of someone to protect him.
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Part 2
Explanation and Analysis—Patient as a Dog:
When John Grady sees Alejandra on the hacienda in Part 2, the novel uses a simile to express Alejandra's emotional effect on John Grady:
[H]e had seen her riding in the parkland above the marshes and once he came upon her leading the horse through the shallows of the lakeshore among the tules with her skirts caught up above her knees while redwing blackbirds circled and cried, pausing and bending and gathering white waterlilies with the black horse standing in the lake behind her patient as a dog.
After relaying the vivid image of Alejandra on the lakeshore, the passage finishes by concluding that Alejandra's black Arabian stood "behind her patient as a dog," which is a simile. The black Arabian is a magnificent horse that John Grady has great respect for, and like him, it is in awe of Alejandra and submits to her. In this sense, the novel seems to be symbolically linking John Grady and the black Arabian: both are wild, free, and answer to no one. These qualities make it all the more impressive that Alejandra can captivate both the horse and John Grady so effortlessly
The impact that Alejandra has on John Grady and the black Arabian seems to stem primarily from her beauty, and also from John Grady's romanticization of her. The image of her "gathering white waterlilies" along the lakeshore is dreamlike and almost mythical, which speaks to how John Grady has elevated her in his mind. From these descriptions, it is difficult to get a sense of Alejandra's personality as a whole, and this may suggest that other characters have a shallow perception of her despite their wholehearted admiration. The romanticization of her appearance may interfere with actually apprehending reality.
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Part 4
Explanation and Analysis—Alejandra's Departure:
Alejandra's final departure is one of the most somber, tense, and emotional scenes in the entire novel. As she boards the train in Part 4, narrator uses a simile to highlight the difference between John Grady’s mental state and reality:
He watched her go as if he himself were in some dream.
In the rest of the book up to this point, John Grady has dreamt of hopeful, peaceful things. Dreams have been a solace for him despite his circumstances. Now, with the loss of Alejandra, he seems to lose hope for the future and thus can no longer escape to a world of dreams and imagination. Reality has become too painful and all-encompassing to flee. Importantly, the loss of Alejandra is so painful that John Grady feels himself to be dreamlike—as if his very personhood is a mirage.
The dream world and the real world are thoroughly blended as John Grady becomes more disillusioned with romance. Despite the innocence of John Grady and Alejandra's relationship, it seems to have brought both of them nothing but pain. This realization makes John Grady and the reader question the protagonist's choices and worldview through the book up to this point: was the death and violence that John Grady experiences worth it if the relationship doesn't work out? John Grady is, in this moment, forced to give up his innocent, romantic view of the world. This new, pragmatic way of thinking is so foreign to him that it evidently seems like a dream.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Solitary Bull:
The very end of All the Pretty Horses contains visual imagery and simile. The vivid description of a lone bull parallels John Grady's prior suffering in the novel:
There were few cattle in that country because it was barren country indeed yet he came at evening upon a solitary bull rolling in the dust against the bloodred sunset like an animal in sacrificial torment. The bloodred dust blew down out of the sun. He touched the horse with his heels and rode on.
The simile comparing the bull to "an animal in sacrificial torment” likens the creature to John Grady. The bull is tortured and lonely, much like John Grady has been, both by his own choices and the cruelty of others. Furthermore, the images of the "bloodred sunset" and "bloodred dust" convey dryness, desolation, and even violence, as the desert landscape is explicitly linked to blood. The desolate and rather unsettling setting is fitting, considering that John Grady is alone and unmoored following Abuela's death.
Despite the somber and disturbing image of the bull, the novel ends with a feeling of hope: John Grady rides on past the bull, implying that he will be able to move on from the violence and loss he endured in Mexico. All the Pretty Horses is a coming-of-age novel in which John Grady learns to witness suffering, experience it, and grow. At the conclusion of the novel, he can finally face the bull in its anguish without pretending it is a dream and choose to keep moving forward.
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