Initiation Caught-In-Between

This thesis focuses on All the Pretty Horses written by the American novelist Cormac Mc Carthy and studies the initiation theme in this novel by using concepts of the American Bildungsroman as a frame of reference.The individualistic quest of the protagonist,which urges him to turn his back on the civilized society and to search for a pastoral life,collides with the fatalistic inclination in Mc Carthy’s fictional world,thus resulting in the unfulfilled initiation.Unlike former studies,this thesis argues that such a path of initiation cannot be defined by the traditional teleological writing in Bildungsroman,but should be studied in the distinct American context.The introduction part of the thesis reviews existing studies,explores the differences between traditional Bildungsroman and its American variant,and argues that more attention should be paid to the process of unfulfilled initiation.Chapter 1studies the novel’s circular structure and narrative modes which alternate between“reality narrative” and “dream narrative.” The latter one will be examined with close attention to show its disintegrating counterforce to the protagonist’s ascension toward maturity.Chapter 2 uses the two common tropes—innocence and experience—as a starting point to shed light on the protagonist’s path of initiation.He chooses to cling to his innocence after moving through different forms of experience.This “back to innocence” route is one of the defining characteristics of American Bildungsroman.Chapter 3 studies the underlying conflict beneath the hero’s unfulfilled initiation.John Grady’s horse-breaking actually shows his aspiration to create order and to control his own fate.But in the Mc Carthian world,such a self-determining direction toward maturity is challenged and negated by the fatalistic trend of the universal principle instantiated in Alfonsa’s puppet metaphor.Through the detailed analysis of the initiation theme in this novel,this thesis concludes that Cormac Mc Carthy has carried the possibility of Bildungsroman to an extreme,where the conflict between the self and the world unavoidably leads to the initiation “caught-in-between.”...