"All the pretty horses" is an excellent piece of writing by Comic McCarthy. The main theme of the novel is the desire for freedom. The term freedom is used almost sarcastically as the author explores the essence of the freedom man desires only to find that it is actually a paradoxical term. On the one hand, we want freedom, which would allow us to do anything as we like but on the other, the author discovers that there is no real freedom without laws. The freedom we dream of is free from the shackles of law but the freedom that man can truly cherish and enjoy prospers within the confines of law.
             The young protagonist of the novel, Grady, is a representative of average American youth. He is a man who dreams of boundless freedom and since he can no longer enjoy that kind of freedom on the ranch his family had in America, he decides to run away to Mexico. For a brief time in this country, it looks as if Grady has found everything that he had ever wanted. He starts working on a splendid ranch with a large number of pretty horses and also falls in love with the beautiful daughter of his employer, a girl called Alejandra.
             These dreams are however very short-lived and Grady soon realizes that accountability and responsibility that he so despised in the US were actually the ingredients real freedom is made of. Grady comes of age and discovers that lawlessness doesn't breed freedom; it curtails free will and generates evil. In Mexico, he is forced to do thing against his will- things that he would have never been asked to do in the US like leaving Alejandra and killing someone in prison in self-defense. He along with his friend is thrown into prison for no real reason and that infuriates him even further. In this coming of age story, Grady learns the meaning of true freedom.
             He also learns much to his chagrin that without laws and rules, life is a rudderless boat that allows no exercise of free will. It lacks a
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