The major characters of Chapter I are John Grady Cole, his best friend Rawlins, his parents, and his grandfather. But the sidekick Blevins, the landscape (as noted by others), and the horses are also major players in the story. McCarthy's descriptions of the land, vegetation, and wildlife impart to the novel a tone and texture that frames the events and the characters.
The theme of nature is strong. The sense of place imbues the characters, especially John Grady, with a masculinity that makes them larger than life and certainly more significant than labels like "cowboy" or "macho." John Grady is talented and skilled — lucky enough to be doing what he was born to do. When John Grady rides, he is one with the horse. This ease is seen clearly when he takes one foot out of its stirrup, leans over on the other side, and picks up Blevins' hat, never slowing his horse and always maintaining the gait.
John Grady loves the land, and the first great tragedy of the story is the fact that his family's ranch will be sold after his grandfather's death. In analyzing the causes of the sale of the ranch, we see a changing world where a horse culture is dying. World War II is one of the villains of the story, because it has left John Grady's father unable to take charge not only of his own life and marriage, but also of the ranch.
John Grady's mother is an actress playing at a theater in San Antonio in a play that disappoints John Grady because it tells him nothing about the way the world "was or was becoming." His mother is determined to get rid of the ranch, and she refuses to let John Grady lease it or become any part of it. All of the Mexican workers at the ranch will have to leave as well.
