After finishing The Red Pony, I have no idea how to start talking about. There are so many ideas in it and complicated symbols that I can't begin to cover it all. I guess I'll start with my initial reactions.

The death of Jody's pony, Gabilan, at the end of the first of four chapters came as no real shock. It wasn't particularly foreshadowed, but the moment we learned that it was let out in the rain, I knew it wouldn't make it. Steinbeck isn't exactly the type of author that tells a warm-your-heart story about a pony that gets sick then all better and lives happily ever after. The child's reaction to the death was disturbing though. Killing a scavenger bird and ripping its head off seems so violent and dangerous and yet so natural. So, this being the ending of the first of four parts, I take it that the first step to Jody maturing is feeling so much grief and anger that his body and mind can't take it. I've felt that. I wonder if that was when I stopped being a little girl....

The part of the chapter that I can't say I understood was why Gabilan kept on running out of the barn in the middle of the night the second Jody fell asleep. If Gabilan represents his dreams and naivete, then the fact that it runs away multiple times until the final time when it drops dead, could make some sense symbolically... The only way I can understand it is by thinking it means that Jody's innocence and hopes are leaving him every time he closes his eyes. When the horse leaves and never comes back, Jody has his fit of despair, and that must be the moment that he loses his hope for a long period of time. Still, I don't feel like I totally understood that episode.

Then the next chapter is about the old Mexican guy who comes to their farm because the place he was born was just over the next mountain. In this chapter Jody mentions the nice mountains to one side of his house and then the evil sinister ones to the other side which he desperately wants to explore. This reminded me immediately of East of Eden, since the whole first chapter talks about those two contrasting mountain range. Steinbeck can't get enough of the contrasting east and west of Salinas Valley, could he? Symbollic of heaven and hell, good and evil, light and darkness, and he does love exploring those two extremes... In The Red Pony, however, I didn't feel like he was saying that those dangerous and empty mountains were hell, just death. The old Mexican ends up taking an old horse, himself, and a gun to those mountain ranges and never coming back. The reader is left to guess what happens up there (duh). So the combination of Jody's curiosity as to what is in those mountains, and the old man's journey there out of his own doing seems to mean that death is not frightening. It is a peaceful ending to a long story with its own mysterious allure. This contrasts with the violent and sad death at the end of the first chapter, but somehow starts making sense of the book as a whole. It's a narrative about death in every way, and what it means to the growing mind. I love it.

The third chapter is about the second horse that Jody gets, only Jody has to wait out a whole year patiently for the colt to be born from Nelly, the mare. The poor little kid does everything he can to help Nelly, but when the birth actually comes, something goes terribly wrong. The ranch help, Billy Buck, tells Jody to look the other way as he takes a hammer to Nelly's head and then cuts open her belly to bring the tiny black colt into the world. Jody can't move or think. He stands there shocked, and the chapter closes. Wow... Death again, as usual is the ending to the chapter, and this time it's sacrafice. The older horse has to die so that the young one can be born and Billy Buck feels he has to give Jody the colt because he was mostly responsible for Gabilan's death. Jody can't seem to justify the killing of Nelly in his own mind no matter how much he wanted another horse, and whether or not Jody does come to terms with this exchange is never mentioned again. I guess it can be assumed that he did, because as an adult you probably have to learn that things have to be destroyed to create new things. There can't be any happiness in the world without an equal amount of sadness. That's not the greatest thing to think of when you happen to be happy, but I'm a firm believer of that fact. If you have the ability to feel totally and completely happy, then you also have the unfortunate skill of completely losing all joy. Whoops, I've kind of strayed from the story there....

That's all I'd like to say about the book. I guess the last chapter didn't have a huge impact on me. It was pretty self-explanitory. It was a good read though. I still love Steinbeck.

I read an article from the New York Times on the Emmy's which can be found at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/arts/television/22emmys.html?_r=1&ref=television&oref=slogin

It was a pretty interesting recap of the evening which I watched last night as well. I guess my interest in these awards was primarily due to my infatuation with the AMC show, "Mad Men". Something about that show just makes you love it... 

I've been bombarded with many other headlines while accessing my Yahoo e-mail which makes it obvious that the five hosts, the nominees for the category of Best Reality Host, were seen as a flop by everyone. In the New York Times article it even says: 

"If anything, the performance of the five reality-show hosts who together played masters of ceremony on the awards show might inspire the executives not to abandon scripted television."

I found that pretty funny being a huge fan of well-written cable shows (like Mad Men, Dexter, Weeds, The Sopranos, etc) and a proud abstainer from "reality" shows that are said to be so popular in my social category. I can't believe that girls my age actually watch The Hills and that one new show where Paris Hilton is trying to find a best friend...

The article spends a lot of time talking about the sweeps of both HBO (who came out with 10 emmys) and 30 Rock which got best comedy, best actor in a comedy, best actress in a comedy, and best writing in a comedy. I've never seen 30 Rock, but somehow I don't believe it deserved all of that. Honestly, I've never found anything that Tina Fey has done to be remotely funny... Why do people keep insisting that she's so very talented when SNL hasn't been funny since Will Ferrel and she was the writer behind all of those lame skits? I say it's 100% propaganda. People will say that Ms. Fey is hilarious without being able to name a single funny thing that she's ever done...

As usual, the Times give almost no opinions on any of the topics they report on. It's a remarkable newspaper, but whenever I catch not a single whiff of propaganda, I get nervous about how much there must be under the detectable layer. Of course this applies more to their political articles as I'm not too worried about them warping my opinions about award ceremonies...

I finally started reading The Red Pony by John Steinbeck today. I'd gotten it out of the library this summer along with some of his other novellas and didn't get around to it due to my lack of appreciation for Tortilla Flat. It was just a bit too John Steinbeck-ish for me. That of course means without very much in the line of a plot, but containing ample amounts of nostalgic accounts of ridiculous and unimportant adventures there just for the sake of telling them. Cannery Row had the same feel to it, but somehow I felt that I got more out of that book.

Anyhow, the exposition of The Red Pony brought up several thoughts in me. Basically, all that is written is a brief and complete account of how a family on a small California ranch spends their day. There's the helper, Billy Buck, the mother, the father and the protagonist, Jody, a ten-year-old boy. The list of events that transpire is tedious and monotonous, but I got a sense of rhythm out of it eventually. You kind of have to slow down your mind and understand the graceful gait for the writing. Once you capture that, you understand Steinbeck's tone in my eyes. And within this uneventful telling of  a regular late summer day, there can be little nuggets of writing that I find totally perfect in their own way. First, is this one-sentenced description of Jody:

"He was only a little boy, ten years old, with hair like dusty yellow grass and with shy polite gray eyes, and with a mouth that worked when he thought."

The whole thing about having Jody's mouth move when he thinks made so much sense out of the character. It's amazing how with that one description of one of his traits, we can already gain such and understanding of him. I've come to the conclusion that Jody is a quiet child, not smart, but thinks hard to come to his simple decisions. I wonder what is going to happen to Jody in the next 80 pages....

My other favorite quote from the passage I covered reads:

"He felt an uncertainty in the air, a feeling of change and of loss and of the gain of new and unfamiliar things."

I love how Steinbeck inserts this little gem amongst descriptions of buzzards and Jody crushing a muskmellon for no apparent reason. I gather from it that shy little Jody is going to grow up. I hope it's not too painful a coming of age, because I've already taking quite a liking to him.