The Red Pony

John Steinbeck

Fiction | Novella | YA | Published in 1933

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Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Story 1

Story 2

Story 3

Story 4

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Connection Between People and Their Environment

As in many of his other works, John Steinbeck investigates the relationship between humans and the world in which they live in the Tiflin ranch stories. He includes specific details about the Salinas Valley region, including plant and animal life. Many of his descriptions of nature include colors: “In the grey quiet mornings when the land and the brush and the houses and the trees were silver-gray and black like a photograph negative” (146). This time of day is also described as the “cool blue morning” (210). The early morning is an important element in another novel by Steinbeck called Cannery Row, which is set in Monterey. The Tiflin ranch is farther from the ocean than Monterey, in the “huge green Salinas Valley” (203). In the evenings, the valley becomes a “purpling ranch-cup” (205). Steinbeck highlights various colors in the environment to give the reader a sense of place.

In “The Leader of the People,” Grandfather represents a group of people who have been defeated by their environment. They traveled west for a long time: “It was westering and westering” (213). However, they eventually reached a point where there was no more land to the west. There’s “a line of old men along the shore hating the ocean because it stopped them” (213). They became residents in coastal regions when they could no longer journey west. Overall, Grandfather and his cohort were interested in movement above all else.

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The character who seems to be the most in tune with the natural world is Billy. Several stories begin with him interacting with his environment, highlighting their thematic importance. For instance, the opening sentence of “The Gift” states, “At daybreak Billy Buck emerged from the bunkhouse and stood for a moment on the porch looking up at the sky” (137). Billy’s first act of the day is to look around at his environment. “The Leader of the People” also begins with Billy interacting with his environment: “On Saturday afternoon Billy Buck, the ranch-hand, raked together the last of the old year’s haystack and pitched small forkfuls over the wire fence to a few mildly interested cattle” (198). Here, Billy is physically changing his environment, including caring for animals. He makes positive changes to the environment, which can be contrasted with Jody’s destructive actions.

Relationships Between Men and Boys

The Tiflin ranch stories all examine the interpersonal dynamics between Jody and the men in his life. His father, Carl, is more powerful than the other male characters. He controls the actions of Billy, his employee, and Jody, his son. However, Carl treats Jody differently than Billy. Carl speaks to Jody “in the stern tone he reserved for children and animals” (182). While Carl will have discussions and debates with Billy over farm matters, Carl dictates what Jody should do in absolute terms.

Carl treats children and the elderly in a similar fashion. For instance, he “was probing for a place to hurt in Gitano. [Jody] had been probed often. His father knew every place in the boy where a word would fester” (174). Carl intentionally seeks out words that will hurt the feelings of people he considers useless. For instance, he hurts his grandfather-in-law’s feelings by complaining about Grandfather’s frequent retellings of stories about westward expansion. However, the act of hurting people is a double standard for Carl. He lashes out when his “feelings were badly hurt” (162). He cannot tolerate being treated in the manner that he treats others.

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The relationship that changes the most in the Tiflin ranch stories is the one between Billy and Jody. At first, Jody, like his grandfather, sees Billy as a heroic figure. This opinion changes in “The Gift” when Billy makes a mistake. He “wasn’t wrong about many things. He couldn’t be. But he was wrong about the weather that day” (153). Billy tells Jody that it is safe to leave Gabilan outside during the school day because it isn’t supposed to rain. Billy assures Jody that even if it did rain, “a little rain never hurt anything” (154). When the rain causes the red pony to catch a cold, Jody loses faith in Billy. Once his trust is compromised, Jody is “too dispirited to tell Billy how the barn door had blown open and let the pony out” (162). Jody hiding the fact that he let the pony get out allows him to blame Billy completely for the pony’s worsening illness and death. Carl does not approve of this. He tells Jody, “Don’t you go blaming that on him” (195). Carl has faith that if the horse died, it was beyond saving, because Billy is an expert on horses. However, Jody is unwilling to take any responsibility for his actions, so he ignores Carl.

Jody’s Coming of Age

Jody’s loss of faith in Billy and the death of the red pony are aspects of Jody’s coming of age. He is initially elevated in status by the gift of the pony. When they learn about the pony, six boys from Jody’s school “knew instinctively that a man on a horse is spiritually as well as physically bigger than a man on foot” (145). They believe Jody is superior to them because of his pony. However, he is unwilling to take responsibility for the pony—to watch over it while it is sick. Jody instead “put his hands down on his head and slept” (163). The pony getting out of the barn, twice, because of Jody’s negligence leads to the pony dying. Jody doesn’t learn about responsibility in “The Gift” because he is able to hide his irresponsible actions from people who are busy running a ranch.

Jody continues to avoid responsibility in the next installments of the Tiflin ranch stories. When Gitano arrives on the ranch, Jody “could not take all this responsibility” (169) and runs to get a parent. As with his mistreatment of the pony, Jody hides his abuse of animals on the ranch. The narrator says Jody is “not moved by an impulse of cruelty; he was bored” (165). Jody acts out violently instead of taking on responsibility. In other words, he stalls his own coming of age by resisting change. His deception about the events leading up to the death of the pony causes Billy to act violently toward the mare of Jody’s next colt in “The Promise.” Generally, if a mare has trouble with a birth, such as a breech birth, the colt is sacrificed. The mare’s life is prioritized because she can, hopefully, bear more colts. However, Billy kills Nellie to get Jody his colt, saying, “There’s your colt. I promised” (197). Instead of Jody learning a lesson about responsibility, Billy unwittingly takes responsibility for the new colt’s life, and Jody runs away.

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Jody demonstrates some maturity and empathy in the final story, “The Leader of the People.” He enjoys his grandfather’s stories about traveling west. Grandfather says, “It was a job for men, but boys want to hear about it” (208). This shows that Jody is still immature. However, after Carl is needlessly cruel to Grandfather about his stories, Jody offers him lemonade. This demonstrates that Jody understands what it is like to be hurt by Carl, and he wants to console someone else who gets on Carl’s bad side. Further, because this story is actually the earliest, though it comes last, it offers a possible path to growth for Jody, as he has shown that he is a caring person who understands pain other than his own.