抄録
This paper argues that All the Pretty Horses (1992) rearticulates the cowboy myth as a form of strategic masculinity in response to late twentieth-century anxieties surrounding male identity. Rather than dismantling hegemonic gender norms, Cormac McCarthy reconfigures them through the figure of John Grady Cole, who embodies both traditional cowboy virtues and emotional vulnerability. Drawing on theory of masculinity by Hamilton Carroll, the paper examines how the novel reframes masculine authority through affective suffering and ethical introspection. Grady’s marginal status, romantic failure, and moral struggle do not undermine his masculinity, instead, they enable its cultural reinvestment. This softened heroic model preserves the ideological function of the cowboy while adapting it to contemporary narratives of male crisis and resilience. Ultimately, the novel functions as a cultural mechanism through which masculinity survives not by rupture, but through affective reinvention.
