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.