Landscape Writing And Western Complex In All The Pretty Horses

Cormac McCarthy is a famous contemporary American novelist.All the Pretty Horses is the first volume of the Border Trilogy.This novel made Cormac McCarthy famous as soon as it was published and it also won National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992.This novel pays tribute to the nature and vitality of the American West.At the same time,it witnesses the change of the western lifestyle and laments the continuous destruction of the American West.Cultural geography advocates that the landscape in literature be regarded as an expression of subjective experience.Firstly,this paper introduces the agricultural landscape.The ancient roads were gradually replaced by highway and railways.The funeral of Grady's grandfather also marked the end of the cowboy story of the American West.The traditional lifestyle of agriculture and livestock husbandry in the American West has been uprooted by the tide of modern industrialization.The Western Complex of the protagonist is also lost in the flood of history with the vicissitude of the ancient road,the pain of the funeral and the decline of the pasture.Grady was inescapable in the materialistic American West.He can only choose to run away from the American and flee to Mexico to fight against the alienated American West.Secondly,the paper introduces the border landscape.The rolling hills,rugged wastelands and dotted grasslands in the novel have all become the unique geographical indicators of the American West.This novel helped to construct the cultural and natural landscape of the American West in the 20 th century.The deep construction and detailed description of this wild and primitive paradise show the reconstruction of the protagonist's Western Complex.Finally,the paper introduces the industrial landscape.This novel describes the towns of Mexico in the 1950 s.Prison violence and bloodshed are the antidote to the forces of social fairness and justice.The emotional fission,chaos and vacuum reflected in the town landscape shattered the New West.The brutal struggle for survival led him back to his homeland of Texas.By this time,the hometown has been immersed in the flood of industrialization.However,his recognition of the American West has been deeply engraved in his life.With this passionate emotion,Grady set foot on the road to search for the West.This is a sublimation to the Western Complex.This novel uses natural landscape and cultural landscape to illustrate Grady's Western Complex has gone through a process of decline,reconstruction andsublimation.All the Pretty Horses embodies the deep concern for the social change in the American West and its strong desire for the return of human nature.Based on the Western Complex,this novel seeks for the local culture that human existence depends on and the human nature that it breeds.