All the Pretty Horses Literary Devices

Definition of Metaphor

A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition

A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition

A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition

Key Examples in All the Pretty Horses

Explanation and Analysis—Breaking Horses:

The novel uses a string of metaphors to describe the feeling on the hacienda as John Grady breaks the horses in Part 2:

By midmorning eight of the horses stood tied and the other eight were wilder than deer, scattering along the fence and bunching and running in a rising sea of dust as the day warmed, coming to reckon slowly with the remorselessness of this rendering of their fluid and collective selves into that condition of separate and helpless paralysis which seemed to be among them like a creeping plague.

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Explanation and Analysis—The Spaniard's Heart:

In Alfonsa’s final speech to John Grady in Part 4, she uses a metaphor to insist that Spaniards (and, by extension, Mexicans) mediate reality by cruelty:

In the Spaniard’s heart is a great yearning for freedom, but only his own. A great love of truth and honor in all its forms, but not in its substance. And a deep conviction that nothing can be proven except that it be made to bleed. Virgins, bulls, men. Ultimately God himself.

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All the Pretty Horses: Metaphors 2 key examples

Definition of Metaphor

Key Examples in All the Pretty Horses