Horse. That one word says it all for John Grady Cole. That one word serves as a representation for everything he believes, everything he seeks, and everything that is sacred. (Extra points for the first person that can name the devices used in the previous sentence.) In chapter two, horses become John Grady's existence:
He'd ride sometimes clear up to the upper end of the laguna before the horse would even stop trembling and he spoke constantly to it in spanish in phrases almost biblical repeating again and again the strictures of a yet untabled law. Soy commandante de las yeguas, he would say, yo y yo solo. Sin la caridad de estas manos no tengas nada. Ni comida ni aqua ni hijos. Soy you que traigo las yeguas de las montanas, las yeguas jovenes, las yeguas salvajes y ardientes. While inside the vaulting of the ribs between his knees the darkly meated heart pumped of who's will and the blood pulsed and the bowels shifted in their massive blue convolutions of who's will and the stout thighbones and knee and cannon and the tendons like flaxen hawsers that drew and flexed and drew and flexed at their articulations and of who's will all sheathed and muffled in the flesh and the hooves that stove wells in the morning groundmist and the head turning side to side and the great slavering keyboard of his teeth and the hot globes of his eyes where the world burned (128).
Needless to say, this passage is a powerful expression of John Grady Cole as a character. Yet, this passage is more than characterization; it is a key passage to identify and analyze emerging themes. Reread the passage and respond to it. What does this passage reveal? What does this passage encompass? What is buried within the language of one short paragraph on page 128?
Happy Analyzing! :-)
He'd ride sometimes clear up to the upper end of the laguna before the horse would even stop trembling and he spoke constantly to it in spanish in phrases almost biblical repeating again and again the strictures of a yet untabled law. Soy commandante de las yeguas, he would say, yo y yo solo. Sin la caridad de estas manos no tengas nada. Ni comida ni aqua ni hijos. Soy you que traigo las yeguas de las montanas, las yeguas jovenes, las yeguas salvajes y ardientes. While inside the vaulting of the ribs between his knees the darkly meated heart pumped of who's will and the blood pulsed and the bowels shifted in their massive blue convolutions of who's will and the stout thighbones and knee and cannon and the tendons like flaxen hawsers that drew and flexed and drew and flexed at their articulations and of who's will all sheathed and muffled in the flesh and the hooves that stove wells in the morning groundmist and the head turning side to side and the great slavering keyboard of his teeth and the hot globes of his eyes where the world burned (128).
Needless to say, this passage is a powerful expression of John Grady Cole as a character. Yet, this passage is more than characterization; it is a key passage to identify and analyze emerging themes. Reread the passage and respond to it. What does this passage reveal? What does this passage encompass? What is buried within the language of one short paragraph on page 128?
Happy Analyzing! :-)