All the Pretty Horses Narrator:

Third Person (Objective)

The narrator in All the Pretty Horses would like you to think he's some sort of mysterious dude who sits on the sidelines at a party, rarely speaking but occasionally offering up some weird insight or statement that shuts everyone else up for a little bit. (Although the narrator's gender is not identified, there are certain hints—an occasional preoccupation with manliness, the use of "men" as an inclusive term—that could suggest a male narrator, so we'll just refer to the narrator as a "he" here for the sake of simplicity.)

Most of the time the narrator is just preoccupied with what's going on, and doesn't bother to fill much in by way of explanation. Though there are lengthy descriptions of landscape, there are also a lot of sharp jumps in time that are barely acknowledged, a ton of unattributed dialogue, and bare descriptions of actions (you will see a lot of paragraphs that begin with the words "they rode," and even more that begin with someone sitting or moving somewhere or performing some kind of visible action).

But the narrator does take an occasional step out beyond both the characters' actions and even their thoughts. For example, when John hitches a ride out of Saltillo, he happens upon a group of strangers in the same truck who ask if he is off to see his girlfriend. When John confirms that is so, the narrator goes well beyond describing the immediate scene unfolding, reaching into the future and even possibly making rare editorial comments in the process:

Ah, they said. Qué bueno. And after and for a long time to come he'd have reason to evoke the recollection of those smiles and to reflect upon the good will which provoked them for it had power to protect and to confer honor and to strengthen resolve and it had power to heal men and to bring them to safety long after all other resources were exhausted. (3281)

Such moments are all the more powerful precisely because of how much the narrator normally holds back.