46 pages • 1 hour read
Cormac McCarthyCities of the Plain
Cormac McCarthyFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Summary: Pages 58-73
John Grady waits for Magdalena in a hotel, but she does not come. Eventually, he leaves the hotel. In the lobby, he passes the one-eyed maid. Neither recognizes the other. John Grady exits the hotel, and the old maid goes upstairs to knock on the door of the now-empty room.
John Grady returns to the ranch and lays on his bunk. Billy returns from a dance, slightly drunk, and they talk about horses and women. John Grady reveals to his friend that he has a girl, though admits that the situation is “kind of a mess” (59).
The following week, John Grady returns to the White Lake but does not have enough money to solicit Magdalena. As he is about to leave, a waiter passes a message from Magdalena, telling John Grady not to forget her. The next night, John Grady meets the blind piano player. They sit together, drink, and listen to music.
Billy, John Grady, and the other cowboys sit around a fire beside a rock bluff, high up on the plain. They have taken the dogs to hunt a mountain lion. They listen to the dogs chase the lion through the night and discuss their experiences in Mexico and around the border. When the last dog returns, she is badly wounded from a fight with the lion. The men pack up and return to the ranch.
Billy watches John Grady play chess with Mac. After the game, John Grady denies Billy’s accusation that he allowed Mac to win.
In need of money, John Grady pawns his grandfather’s gun in Juarez. A shoe shiner boy stops him on the street outside, and he allows the boy to clean his boots. They talk about cowboys, outlaws, and families.
The one-eyed maid brushes Magdalena’s hair as another woman named Josefina watches approvingly. Though Magdalena seems depressed, the maid assures her that she will “marry a great rich man and live in a fine house and have beautiful children” (70). Magdalena sits in the bar while Tiburcio watches from the shadows. John Grady buys a drink at the bar and approaches Magdalena; she warns him that he is in danger, but he insists that he had to see her. When John Grady pushes Magdalena to meet with him, she says that she is afraid that Eduardo will kill her.
That night, John Grady dreams about Magdalena. He wakes up to the sound of Mr Johnson shuffling around the yard. John Grady tells Billy to go back to bed, that he will help the confused old man. Leading Mr Johnson into the kitchen, John Grady fetches the old man’s clothes and sits with him a while as the other men begin to wake up. Although Mr Johnson has lived through a period of rapid, unthinkable modernization, John Grady knows it’s the impact of his daughter’s death that has left the old man confused and desperate.
Summary: Pages 73-94
John Grady accompanies Mac and Oren to a horse auction. Mac depends on John Grady’s preternatural affinity for horses, purchasing many in a rivalry with Wolfenbarger, the man who brought the lame horse for John Grady to train.
At the ranch, Mac listens to the quiet of the countryside. He thinks about the drought ravaging the area and forcing him out of the cattle business. He thinks about his dead wife Margaret, Mr Johnson’s daughter.
John Grady joins the cowboys at a bar. While the other men play the games at the bar, Billy and John Grady watch while sipping beer. John Grady leads Billy into the back for a private conversation. He tells Billy about the situation with Magdalena; he wants Billy to save Magdalena from Eduardo and bring her back across the border. John Grady says that he cannot save Magdalena himself because Eduardo will recognize and stop him. He admits that he is “in love with her” (82). John Grady can see no other option than for Billy to offer Eduardo $2,000 for Magdalena; he wants to marry her. Billy blames himself for the absurdity of the situation. He walks out of the bar without a word.
That night, John Grady hears Mr Johnson walking around the house. He joins the old man on the porch and asks about his past and marriage. Mr Johnson admits that Margaret was his brother’s daughter, whom he raised after her parents died during the Spanish Flu epidemic. He shares stories about his past, riding around the plains as a cowboy. John Grady listens and then returns to his bunk.
Billy goes to the White Lake in Juarez. He asks the barman to fetch Eduardo because he has a “business deal” (89). The barman asks for $20; Billy pays the man, who then brings Tiburcio. Billy tells the subordinate that he has a business deal that may interest Eduardo, and Tiburcio eventually relents. He shows Billy into Eduardo’s office. In the office, Billy offers Eduardo $2,000 to allow Magdalena to go across the border with him. Eduardo insists that his girls are not for sale. Furthermore, Eduardo says that Magdalena has epilepsy and is not the kind of girl Billy believes her to be. He insists that she is a “whore to the bone” (93). Billy admits that he does not know why his friend is so interested in Magdalena. Magdalena is in debt to Eduardo as she still owes him money for her clothes and jewelry. Billy leaves, admitting to Eduardo that he is unsure what to tell John Grady. Eduardo smiles and agrees with the suggestion that John Grady is “in trouble” (94).
Summary: Pages 94-106
Billy returns to the ranch and tells John Grady about his meeting with Eduardo. Though Eduardo said no, John Grady still believes that he can bring Magdalena back to America to marry him. Billy tries to change John Grady’s mind about Magdalena, but he cannot.
John Grady waits in a grove of willows and watches the passing cars. Magdalena arrives in a taxi, and when they embrace, they declare their love for one another. She tells him about her life: At 13, she was sold to settle a gambling debt, so she ran away to a convent for protection. When the man who had bought her appeared at the convent, the nuns sold her again. The man beat her, and when she ran away, she was raped by three police officers, who then sexually exploited her for other officers and prisoners to rape. Then, they sold her back to the man who claimed to own her. The man beat her and forced her into sex work. After listening to the story, John Grady asks Magdalena to marry him. She agrees.
John Grady works on the ranch. He plans to sell his horse, but he needs to sell it for the right price. After breakfast, he talks with Mac and explains that he wants “to get married” (98) to a Mexican woman he will have to bring across the border. He asks Mac whether he can fix up an old cabin on the ranch as a place to live should he manage to bring Magdalena back to the United States. Mac admits that he cannot do much to help but promises to do what he can.
John Grady and Billy drive the cattle across the plain. John Grady takes the opportunity to visit the ramshackle cabin that he plans to restore as a place to live with Magdalena.
Mac helps John Grady get a good price for his horse. Later that night, he sits with the other men and talks about the nature of horses.
Chapter 2 Analysis
The second chapter of Cities of the Plain portrays the financial reality of John Grady’s life. He is not a cowboy because the job is well-paid; he is a cowboy because he loves animals, the environment, and the way of life. John Grady does not care for money; it is a disagreeable part of modern existence that he must accept. As such, he is forced to reckon with the ugly truth of money, namely that he does not have much of it. Though he is becoming increasingly obsessed with Magdalena, their relationship is initially based on money. He must pay a large sum just to spend time with her. Increasingly, he is spending more money than he earns just to be in the same room with the woman he loves. The harsh truth of Magdalena’s situation is that John Grady cannot afford to love her in this manner. He is forced to pawn his grandfather’s gun and considers selling his horse to fund his relationship. He wants to use his money to pay for Magdalena’s freedom, showing that he does not truly understand how money operates. He does not realize that she is more profitable to Eduardo as a sex worker at the White Lake, nor does he know that Eduardo is in love with Magdalena. His attempts to buy Magdalena’s freedom and his struggles with money exemplify how John Grady is not suited for modern life and show his struggles to understand people and the world he inhabits.
The doomed culture of the cowboys is embodied in Mr Johnson. The old man lives on Mac’s ranch; his daughter, now deceased, was married to Mac, and her death has had a profound impact on Mr Johnson’s life and mental state. His memories fade as he slips into dementia. However, he knows no other way of life. He lives on the ranch because he does not know where else to go. He has spent his life as a cowboy, wandering around the plain, and he is ill-suited to anything else. He stumbles around the ranch in a confused daze, trying to piece together his memories of the past. On a symbolic level, his fate awaits all the men on the ranch since their culture and their profession will be ravaged by the steady march of time. Like Mr Johnson, they will be left to wander around a ranch, eulogizing the dead and the culture they once knew. All they will have left will be their memories, which will also begin to fade. Mr Johnson’s twilight years function as a metaphor for the twilight years of the cowboy lifestyle.
When John Grady finally spends time alone with Magdalena, she shares her tragic story with him. Her life is a series of betrayals and tragedies, and she has been hurt by everyone she has ever trusted. Her family and her society have sold, exploited, and abused her. Loving John Grady is difficult because she has been hurt by everyone she ever loved. Magdalena will never truly escape the brutality of her life and the tragedy of her past. Instead, the brief moments in which she shares her pain with John Grady provide isolated reprieves from the hurt she has suffered. For a teenager wrought with suffering, love is not a physical force. Instead, love is the sharing of a painful burden. She has sex with John Grady, but she only loves him when he empathizes with her pain. Magdalena is an abused, brutalized woman who has been failed or betrayed by every person or institution she has ever trusted. As such, she can only be close to John Grady when he agrees to share her pain in a way that no one else has ever done.
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