All the Pretty Horses written by Cormac McCarthy is a novel that revolves around a boy named John Grady, a sixteen-year-old who has suffered through the death of his grandfathers. The ranch that John loved was left to his mother, however, his mother is going to sell it to peruse her dream of becoming an actress. Selling the house crushes John’s dream of having a future in the ranch, initiating his desire to go on a journey with his best friend Rawlins to Mexico to reach his dream of fitting in and becoming a cowboy. Throughout his journey he experiences the real struggles of life that include love, pain, and loss, building who he becomes at the end of his journey. According to Joseph Campbell in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he believes that all quests follow a universal pattern of classical hero through the three stages that are departure, initiation, and return which articulate a story line-structure for hero-myths known as a monomyth. John Grady Cole’s journey is seen as a monomyth because of the trails he goes through in Mexico that help shape his character not completely like a super hero but more of a normal heroic persona. The departure is the first step in the monomyth were John receives his call to adventure. This call begins with the death of his grandfather, the only living person that actually played a role in Grady’s life. The ranch was the only thing he had left to live his dream of being a cowboy after his grandpa’s death but his mother wants to sell it for her personal benefit. However, to avoid his call to adventure he attempt to save the ranch by trying to convince Mr. Franklin not to sell it. Mr. Franklin replies negatively, “Son, not everybody thinks that life on a cattle ranch in west Texas is the second best thing to dyin and goin to heaven. . . . If it was a payin proposition that’d be one thing but it aint” (McCarthy 17). That is what really pushes John to start his quest to a new life