John Steinbeck - The Red Pony

I was not prepared to like The Red Pony, or be moved by it, or to cry. But I did. How could I resist? It's a story about boyish innocence lost to machismo. More importantly, it has horses! And one pony.

The Red Pony follows the "little boy" Jody as he goes through his first hopes and disappointments in life. There are 4 stories in the Jodyverse: The Gift (Jody gets a red pony, but it falls ill and dies), The Great Mountains (Jody meets an old Mexican), The Promise (Jody cares for a pregnant horse and is promised her foal), and The Leader of the People (Jody's grandpa visits).

Older men feature in all of them, even the ones with the horses. With the two horse stories, Jody learns that his father and his worker Billy Buck are fallible. They failed to protect Galiban (the pony) from a thunderstorm and they were wrong about Galiban's ability to survive after falling sick. 

Later, they could not stop pregnant Nellie from dying in childbirth either. Well actually, Billy Buck made a choice to kill her and save the foal, because had promised Jody the foal and felt guilty about failing him with Galiban. The point is, you can't bargain with or control nature, no matter how much macho posturing you adopt about being "raised on mare's milk".

The two "old man" stories continue this critique of American masculinity. Jody's father tries to chase both the old Mexican and Jody's grandfather from the ranch. They do not fit his world of manly men of action.

The old Mexican had come to the ranch because he was born on that land, well before white people settled on it. And then Jody's grandpa told the tale from the white man's perspective - the pioneers' push along the Oregon Trail. So what you get is this tension between who has the right to live here. From Jody's grandfather's generation, the land was hard-won by their struggle. But what about their descendants who have never fought for the land?

Jody was the only one in the household interested in both the old Mexican's and grandfather's stories from the past. Too young to feel the threat to his masculinity and sense of entitlement, I guess.