Term Paper on "Red Pony by Steinbeck"

Term Paper 10 pages (3733 words) Sources: 7 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Red Pony by John Steinbeck is considered one of the author's finest works. Actually the Red Pony is four short stories put together as one novel. The four stories are "The Gift," "The Great Mountains," "The Promise," and "The Leader of the People."

CHARACTERS:

The main characters are very interesting and their behaviors and attitudes are very realistic based on the era this novel was written (1949). Jody Tiflin is the protagonist; he is the only child of Carl Tiflin. He starts out as a ten-year-old and with each preceding story he grows into an older, wiser, and more mature young boy. He is disciplined pretty severely by his dad, and is expected to do his chores and follow instructions or be punished. He can be a mean little boy at first, as all little boys can be, and he has dreams like any little boy though not all of the things he wishes for and dreams about could ever come true.

Carl Tiflin has a right-hand man named Billy Buck. He is the trusted hired hand on the farm, and is very knowledgeable about caring for horses. Billy likes Jody and does everything he can to help the young boy get along in life. Carl Tiflin is very hard working and well organized; he knows what he is doing on his farm. And while he is basically a good man and a fair father, he can be kind of rough and rigid when it comes to Jody. Mrs. Tiflin does all the cooking for the men who work on the farm; she does cleaning and housework as any housewife would do. Like her husband, she can be kind of tough on Jody, but she really loves him and enjoys watching him grow up.

Mrs. Tiflin's father, Jody's Grandfather, does not live on the farm but he visits on occasion. He has stories to tell, like when he was a boy and he led a wagon train across the western plains all the way to California. He tells this story over and over, as though it was the most important thing that ever happened to him, which maybe it was. Gitano is an interesting Latino character that was born in the Salinas Valley in a little adobe house that was built where the Tiflin farm now stands. Gabilan is Jody's red pony.

SUMMARY of the PLOT:

Jody is the protagonist and he is the most important character by far in this story. The themes and characters and plots all revolve around Jody and his maturation process. His character is also developed in terms of his encounters with the natural world. In each of the four separate stories, Jody grows up a little bit and learns an important lesson about morality. In the first story ("The Gift") Jody learns that even a wonderful gift like a horse can bring sadness and tragedy. There are several horses on the farm, along with pigs and cows. Jody's gift is a red pony, and it gets the name Gabilan. Jody does a real good job taking care of the pony, by brushing it every morning and working with it when he comes home from school in the afternoon. But Jody never gets to learn to ride Gabilan because the pony becomes ill after catching a cold in the rain. Billy the hired hand had to administer some drastic measures to try and save the pony, like cutting open a sac of puss and also cutting a hole in the horse's throat so he can breathe.

Sadly, Gabilan runs away and Jody finds him dead with vultures picking on the corpse, a grizzly scene for anyone especially for a little boy. In "The Great Mountains" Jody has a longing to explore the mountains. When the old Mexican man appears in the story, Gitano, he explains that he was born on this land, and wants to stay for the rest of his life. Carl Tiflin says he can stay for the night, but that's all. Jody talks to him about the mountains while the old man is polishing his sword. The next day the old man is gone, apparently seen riding off into the mountains.

In "The Promise" Billy and Jody's dad get together and agree that Jody should have another horse, but this time he should raise that horse from the time it is born as a colt. But he'll have to work extra hard to earn the colt. Jody is very willing to work hard. But nothing comes easy on this farm, and the birth of the colt is just another case in point. The mare Nellie is sick and Billy Buck has to take his pocketknife and cut the new colt out of the mare's stomach. In "The Leader of the People" Jody's grandfather comes to stay at the farm. it's Jody's mom's father, and Jody's dad is not very happy about having the old man around. But the grandfather's stories unfold about crossing the great plains and it occurs to Jody that his grandfather was a good leader, and that maybe someday Jody, too, will be a leader of people.

SCHOLARLY CRITIQUES of the RED PONY

Author Chuck Etheridge has written an essay titled "Raising Cain: Steinbeck's the Red Pony and the Reversal of Biblical Myth." Etheridge contends that Steinbeck wrote the Red Pony using some themes from the Old Testament story of Cain and Abel. The Cain and Abel "myth" is "central" to Steinbeck's entire literary career, Etheridge claims. In his essay, Etheridge explains that there are three key parts to the Cain and Able story, and a reader can easily see how the Red Pony was influenced by this Biblical story. In the first part of Cain and Able, Cain is the son who is hurt by the "withheld approval of a distant parent" (in this case, Jody is hurt by his father's reluctance to show affection towards him); in the second part, Cain is said by Etheridge to have a "divided consciousness" (one part of Joey want to do what he is expected to do; the other part of him wants to rebel against his father); in the third part of Cain and Able God shows a preference for those who raise animals over those who "till the land" (Jody loves animals in this case).

The Cain and Able "myth" - as it relates to Jody - is that Cain and Abel both brought gifts to give to God; Cain's consisted from crops ("fruit of the ground") and Abel's was "the firstlings of his flock" (animals from the farm). In the Biblical myth, God "had no respect" for Cain's gift but he did respect and accept Abel's gift of an animal. Cain is very angry at God for the rejection, and later Cain murders his brother. When Steinbeck embraces this Biblical story as a theme to be used in his own stories, he is writing "...from the heart of the myth," according to Etheridge's use of critic Ricardo Quinones' quotes. In fact Quinones makes the point that being rejected when one is offering a gift to another is "...to have one's self denied, rendered worthless, obliterated."

The biography of Steinbeck presents the fact that the author was treated coldly by his own father. At an early age his father "withdrew emotionally from his son," Etheridge quotes from Steinbeck's biographer (Jay Parini). The rejection by his father was "a quiet act of sabotage that left Steinbeck emotionally stunted, unable to connect in later life to his own sons" and very shy with everyone except those who are closest to him. Steinbeck never was able to resolve his "complex, unhappy feelings about his father," and those emotions have found their way into the Red Pony, it seems. Clearly, Jody's father is not a warm person.

On page 4 in the opening story Steinbeck describes Mr. Tiflin as a "tall stern father"; on page 5 readers learn that Jody's father was "a disciplinarian" and that Jody obeyed him in everything without question of any kind." It is interesting to learn that Steinbeck wrote the Red Pony while caring for his mother, who was quite feeble resulting from a stroke. His father was also ill at that time, suffering from a heart attack. But it seems clear from Steinbeck's biography that as a younger man Steinbeck got very little nurturing and a tiny amount of love and support. Indeed, Jody had parents who were not cruel but hardly loving to him - similar to Steinbeck's situation growing up.

And as to the gift itself, the red pony, it is given to Jody but not with joy or celebration at all; it is given with a tension that is typical of the relationship between father and son on this farm. "...If I ever hear of you not feeding him or leaving his stall dirty, I'll sell him off in a minute," his father warns. This crossly phrased statement creates "a kind of doom in… READ MORE

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