When John Grady was a child, an oil painting of horses hung above the sideboard in the formal dining room of the ranch house. Six wild-eyed horses were breaking through a pole corral with manes flying. The horses had Andalusian and Barb features, and as John Grady grew, he analyzed them and saw that they had good cutting horse hindquarters. But something seemed askew because the heads, bodies, and legs of the horses did not fit as he'd seen them in real horses. He finally asked his grandfather what kind of horses these were. His grandfather tells him they are "picturebook horses." But we learn when John Grady is breeding wild mares with Rocha's chestnut stallion from Kentucky that these are the kind of horses Rocha and the young American cowboy now dreamed of producing.
So the horses are also the link between art and real life. First, an artist imagined these horses, quickly dismissed between bites of food by the grandfather, but remembered by John Grady. They impress John Grady's mind's eye and give him an idea that he later actually starts to carry out. A connection exists between idea, art, and even the forms of the domesticated horses.
A major energy the horses bring to the novel is to connect human beings to nature. The horses are part of the fabulous landscape scenes described here, in the desert southwest as well as the varied vegetation of Mexico, and often with magnificent mountains as a backdrop. But the horses do more than take the characters into the wilderness, into areas of great earthly beauty. They also help them leave, or escape, areas of harshness and danger.
It is to the nature of the horses themselves that many of the characters are drawn. After centuries of training and domestication of horses by men, we still cannot truly understand them and are often surprised by their behavior. John Grady reminds Rawlins, when he is sacking out the first wild Mexican mustang, that he does not know how a horse thinks. But John Grady is praised by Don Hector for understanding horses and, indeed, he does have the skills and instincts to work wonders with the horses. This is because John Grady has a spiritual connection to the horses, and he totally accepts them in all their power. To be in a pasture with a great stallion and several bands of mares and be accepted in their circle is an awesome experience. There is no explanation for why horses, even penned, accept some people and not others. And the horses do accept John Grady. This spiritual connection may be why John Grady can ride that wild chestnut stallion in the breeding season, a feat few would attempt. John Grady is a real cowboy who is capable of amazing feats with horses. This can be contrasted to the current rodeo, which some defend as the last place where people can exhibit their prowess with horses, cattle, and ropes. It is unfortunate that a needed skill has now developed into a sport only. Larry McMurtry has criticized this in Rodeo, "the West. . . . My grip about rodeo, as publicly promoted, is that it wants both the lie and the truth: to be both the Wild West, and yet steeped in family values." He, like McCarthy, uses social protest in his novels.
