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Situational Irony
Part 4
Explanation and Analysis:
The style of All the Pretty Horses is largely plain and uncomplicated, without much figurative language (aside from the occasional rich description of the natural landscape). The author, Cormac McCarthy, rarely provides abstract analysis on the events of the plot or directly appeals to the reader's emotions.
Notably, though, some of the more climactic moments in the book have a stream-of-consciousness feeling to them, like the description of John Grady's dream in Part 4:
In his sleep he dreamt of horses and the horses in his dream moved gravely among the tilted stones like horses come upon an antique site where some ordering of the world had failed and if anything had been written on the stone the weathers had taken it away again and the horses were wary and moved with great circumspection carrying in their blood as they did the recollection of this and other places where horses once had been and would be again.
Much of the novel is also written through dialogue, which is fast, snappy, and often devoid of tags that indicate who is speaking. Readers are left to understand who is saying what based on context, though this is skillfully written by McCarthy so the identification is seldom difficult. This gives the story an impressionistic feeling, as if the reader is present for these moments themselves rather than having the events relayed to them by a narrator. That sense of closeness magnifies the reader's emotional response to the more dramatic events of the book.
