46 pages • 1 hour read
Cities of the Plain
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Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Summary: Pages 156-164
John Grady goes to the café in Juarez. When he asks about Magdalena, no one remembers seeing her. He visits other establishments—anywhere that is open that is not the White Lake—and asks about her. No one can tell him anything. Eventually, he goes to the morgue and finds her dead body. Her throat has been slit. As the attendant calls for him to identify the body, John Grady leaves the morgue.
John Grady rides alone over the plain. He declines an offer to eat dinner, choosing instead to visit the small house where he had planned to live with Magdalena. After sitting alone in the house for a while, he rides back to the ranch in the dark. He changes his clothes, takes his money and a knife from his locker, unreins his horse, and lets it vanish into the night. John Grady hitches a ride to Juarez with an old rancher who reveals that he is driving out to help an injured mare.
Billy walks into Juarez. He searches through the city’s bars and eventually arrives at the White Lake. The old one-eyed maid answers a side door and allows him inside after trying to close the door on him. Billy says that he wants to see Eduardo. He fights Tiburcio, knocking the subordinate out and spilling his knife to the floor. As the one-eyed maid cries out, Billy grabs her and demands to know the whereabouts of John Grady or Magdalena. The woman refuses to answer. The dazed Tiburcio tells Billy to look in Eduardo’s office. Billy kicks the office door down and finds Eduardo at his desk. Eduardo smokes a cigar, dismisses the injured Tiburcio, and tells Billy that “the girl is dead” (163). The police are searching for John Grady, as they believe that he killed her. Eduardo blames John Grady for Magdalena’s death and Billy for not stopping his friend. Billy leaves, damning Eduardo on his way out.
Summary: Pages 164-174
Billy goes to the police to ask about John Grady and Magdalena. He tells the police that his friend did not kill the girl. The police captain confirms that they have already talked to Eduardo; Billy believes that Eduardo has bribed the police, but the captain insists that he is his own man. He tells Billy that John Grady visited the morgue and saw the body. Billy shares his theory about the murder, about how Eduardo fell in love with Magdalena and could not allow another man to marry her. Billy leaves the police station and phones Mac, warning him to keep hold of John Grady if he arrives at the ranch.
John Grady drinks a whiskey and then takes a taxi to the White Lake. They arrive amid a light rainfall. John Grady finds Eduardo’s car. He kicks in a window, presses the horn, and waits beside the car with his knife. Eduardo steps out of the White Lake. The two men fight with knives. As they cut at each other, Eduardo laments the American farm boys who venture south from their “leprous paradise seeking a thing now extinct among them” (169) and who find only sex workers with whom they fall in love. Eduardo cuts John Grady many times. John Grady drops his knife, bleeding heavily from his stomach and thigh. Eduardo offers to sell the knife back to him in exchange for a knife or an ear. Eduardo cuts John Grady across his stomach again and then allows him to pick up the knife. They circle one another. Eduardo cuts a letter E into John Grady’s thigh. As Eduardo slashes and brags, John Grady desperately drives his knife up into Eduardo’s head. Eduardo staggers back in shock and then sits down beside a wall. He dies. John Grady cuts a bandage from Eduardo’s shirt to stop his heavy bleeding. He stumbles lightheaded through the city and eventually sits down. He wakes with a boy growing through the pockets. He pays the boy money to assist him. He lays in a parking lot and prays for help.
Summary: Pages 174-177
Billy finds John Grady’s horse in the barn. He rides out to the little cabin and finds that it is empty. After a restless night, he hears the phone ring.
John Grady wakes up in agony and hears Billy’s voice. He is still lying in the parking lot and asks Billy not to move him. Though John Grady does not believe he can make it back across the border, Billy insists that they try. They talk about what happened to Magdalena and Eduardo. John Grady admits that he knew his “life was over” (176) as soon as he saw Magdalena’s body. He tells Billy to take his money, fetch his grandfather’s gun from the pawnshop, and return Mac’s ring. Billy offers to get his friend a glass of water. By the time he returns to John Grady, his friend is dead. Billy gathers up John Grady’s body, tears streaming from his face, and he calls out to God. He carries the body through the streets, past a crowd of schoolchildren.
Chapter 4 Analysis
Chapter 4 is the culmination of the numerous strands of the tragic narrative. With Magdalena dead, John Grady sees no other option than to seek revenge. He never doubts himself; from the moment he sees Magdalena’s body, he sets in motion a plan which will bring him face-to-face with her killer. He collects his knife and money then goes to search for Eduardo. Previously, John Grady had begun to look optimistically to the future and dreamed of a life with Magdalena. Now that she is dead, he abandons his plans and his optimism. His hope is left behind in the cabin on the ranch, and he knows that he will not return. In this sense, John Grady gives himself entirely over to fate. He embraces the tragic reality of his narrative and sets himself on vengeance.
Billy quickly realizes what will happen. As soon as he notices that John Grady is gone, he desperately searches for his friend, hoping to prevent the seemingly inevitable tragedy. However, just as he could not talk John Grady out of trying to marry Magdalena, he knows that he will not be able to prevent John Grady’s need for revenge. Billy’s visit to the White Lake foreshadows John Grady’s fight with Eduardo. After knocking down Tiburcio, Billy confronts Eduardo and realizes he has no recourse. Billy understands that the situation between Eduardo, John Grady, and Magdalena takes place beyond the boundaries of laws. They are no longer beholden to morals or social expectations. Billy realizes the tragic depth of the situation and leaves, knowing that he cannot affect the outcome. Eduardo explains the situation similarly to John Grady, but John Grady embraces the lawlessness of their predicament. Whereas Billy sees the truth and turns back from violence, John Grady sees the truth and believes that there is no other option than violence.
Billy bursts into the brothel and dispatches Tiburcio. In actual fact, he knocks out the man who killed Magdalena, but neither Billy nor John Grady cares that Tiburcio is the murderer. They know that Eduardo ordered the murder, so they blame him. In this respect, John Grady and Billy treat Tiburcio as though he were one of the animals on the ranch. They see him as a mindless brute who was simply following orders, allotting him as much agency as they do the wild dogs who kill cattle. Tiburcio, they imply, was only acting out his violent nature. On the other hand, Eduardo was responsible for the murder because he made the decision and issued the order. Eduardo is capable of higher-level human thinking and, as such, he is responsible. Tiburcio is merely a weapon or a tool, a beast of burden used by the real killer.
The fight between John Grady and Eduardo is desperate and brutal. In this sense, it functions as the embodiment of the men’s shared ethos. Though Eduardo believes himself to be different from the American, both men operate on the fringes of society. Neither one feels at home in the changing world. As they slice each other open with their knives, they reveal the bond between them and the fundamental similarity in their existences. Both men bleed, and both know that their futures are hopeless and bleak. They are the same, only they grew up in different situations on different sides of the same border. For all of Eduardo’s posturing about ideology and justification, both men suffer the same fate. They bleed to death on the street, finally freed from the society to which they never truly belonged.
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