Cities of the Plain

For other uses, see Cities of the Plain (disambiguation).

Cities of the Plain
1st edition
Author(s)	Cormac McCarthy
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Border trilogy
Genre(s)	Western novel
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date	May 12, 1998
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	304 pp
ISBN	0-679-42390-7
OCLC Number	38550262
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 21
LC Classification	PS3563.C337 C58 1998
Preceded by	The Crossing

Cities of the Plain is the final volume of American novelist Cormac McCarthy's "Border Trilogy", published in 1998. A film adaptation to be directed by Andrew Dominik has been announced for release in 2012. The title is a reference to Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:29).

Plot introduction

This finale of McCarthy's Western trilogy – preceded by All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing – takes place, like the first two novels, on both sides of the United States-Mexico border. The novel unites John Grady Cole, the protagonist of the first book of the trilogy, with Billy Parham, another young cowboy, who is the protagonist in the "The Crossing". Billy, who lost his younger brother, Boyd, in Mexico, is nine years older than John Grady, now 19, and Parham and Cole have formed a brotherly friendship as the novel opens.

Plot summary

The story begins in 1952 with John Grady and Billy working together on a cattle ranch just south of Alamogordo, New Mexico, not far from the border cities of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. We learn of their life and work on the ranch. The owners are kind, but cattle ranches in this area, recently tormented by a devastating drought, are not thriving and under threat of resumption by the Department of Defense as prospective military areas. Although the cowboys barely make a living, it is clear that John Grady and Billy love their life—living close to the land, their horses, even the wild creatures of the rangeland. But during a visit to a brothel in Juárez, John Grady meets and falls in love with a fragile young prostitute, Magdalena, whom he eventually asks to marry and live with him in the U.S. Billy understands the impossibility of the situation and attempts to dissuade John Grady, but feels obligated by his friendship to try to help the couple. But the brothel is run by Eduardo, a formidable adversary, in that he is an experienced Cuchillero, and the opposite of John Grady in most ways, except for each man's desire to have Magdalena. Their rivalry leads inevitably to a duel, a knife fight, that recapitulates the earlier prison fight in the first volume of the trilogy. Eduardo had his sidekick, Tiburcio, murder Magdalena by cutting her throat after she stole away from the brothel and waited for Grady at a river crossing into the US. Grady knowingly suffers the slow ritual of being systematically and slowly slashed at by his antagonist, until the occasion presents itself to thrust his own knife, as he himself is stabbed in the stomach, into the jaws of Eduardo, and up into his brain. He survives long enough, lingering in a hovel, for his friend Billy to be contacted and hurry down to comfort him in his death throes.

As in many of McCarthy’s novels, there is a sorrowful end for the characters, the animals, even the place; however, in the epilogue, there is left a glimmer of mercy, at least for one man.

External links

• http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/works/citiesoftheplain.htm