The Godmother of All the Pretty Horses In analysis of the character, Duena Alfonsa, in the novel All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, facets of her character are clearly revealed. From her physical deformity to her feelings of her father keeping her exiled in her own country, seventy-two year old Alfonsa is filled with a lifetime of complex situations. Her character was consistent and motivational in wisdom and provided greatness in her role in the novel. She is a grandaunt and godmother of Alejandra, a young teenager still in school. The Duena, one could say, is the "Godfather" of the novel. She literally "goes to the mattresses" in protecting her grandniece from a man.After seventy-two years of life, Alfonsa speaks of her life's experiences at an elevated level of knowledge. She is formal, polite, and full of assuredness. McCarthy describes Alfonsa's appearance as an "elegance chilling" (McCarthy 227). Her knowledge came from reading books. McCarthy writes of Alfonsa, "By the time I was sixteen I had read many books and I had become a freethinker" (McCarthy 232). Alfonsa's complexity included her physical deformity. She describes the loss of her last two fingers of her left hand in a shooting accident when she was seventeen years old where the barrel of the gun exploded while she was shooting for live pigeons. This placed her with several perspectives. Two of her perspectives in becoming deformed were, first, it lead her to the feelings of scars having a strange power reminding people of their real past. Second, it made her feel conscience of her hand as she "learned to affect a handkerchief in her life in such a way as to cover her deformity". Alfonsa's deformity even affected her to the point of her "awaiting age and death" (McCarthy 234).Alfonsa had strong convictions toward women being suppressed as she was growing up in a time before and after the Mexican revolutionary war. Her father sending her to Europe h...
