The Red Pony 1023Gabilan’s care, but even the expert cannot save the
colt. Jody is heartbroken.
The consequences of this and the rest of the
instances that Steinbeck puts Jody through is that he
must come to an understanding of life and death,
and accept both. Jody’s idol loses the shine of a great
hero. No one in Jody’s family steps in to explain or
to comfort the little boy, and he is forced to come to
terms with an awful thing all by himself. His father,
Carl, shows little knowledge of his son. Carl is the
rancher who must be in charge and in control. He
has no time for sentimentality and has precious little
compassion under any circumstances. Jody’s mother
is a very pragmatic woman. She may want to cuddle
and soothe her boy, but she does not in the belief
that this experience will contribute to Jody’s matu-
rity and acceptance of real life.
In the third section, Jody again is given the
responsibility for a horse, Nellie. He sees to her
breeding and her care during a long pregnancy.
He grows to love Nellie, but he is terrified that the
new pony (promised to him by his father) will not
survive. The unthinkable happens, but this time to
Nellie. In order to save the pony, Bill Buck must
kill Nellie and physically remove the colt from her
womb. There is no time to protect Jody’s feelings,
even though Billy tries. Jody sees everything, and
in the end the colt is placed at his feet. He is torn
between grief and wonder. He now has learned that
from something terrible a good thing can come.
Jody learns that the social role of the strong,
silent, and practical man (an archetype specific to
the American West) should be his model for how to
live and the format of his character. He must learn
to steel himself against emotional outpourings and
fanciful dreaming. The role model is his father, Carl.
Carl has too many responsibilities on his ranch and
is very cautious and almost bitter about his own lot
in life. Yet he knows that Jody must learn to stand
against adversity of all kinds. What Carl does not
know is that Jody has a seed of compassion instilled
within by his mother, and the steel in his spine
will be complemented by that. This is shown most
clearly in the last section. Jody’s maternal grandfa-
ther comes for a visit, about which Carl is unhappy.
Jody’s grandfather came west leading a wagon train
after the Civil War. He is very proud of that accom-
plishment and tells stories about the trip and his
role. Carl thinks him a bore; in contrast, Jody loves
those stories. When Carl has insulted the grandfa-
ther quite bitterly, the old man tells himself that it
is not the stories as such that he wants to pass on to
others. Jody understands this and makes the gesture
of making lemonade for his grandfather in order to
soothe the man’s hurt feelings. Jody knows that a
person’s dreams and accomplishments matter and
that people need to hear them, even as they face a
pragmatic existence on the ranch.
Jody begins to see that his father and Billy Buck
are just men. Men like Billy and Carl do not have
time to express softer feelings, but they still have
them. Jody loves these two men, but he knows that
Carl and Billy are not perfect. Life is not a grand
adventure; it is just everyday life, with school, chores,
and moving forward after a large disappointment.
Jody has no choice but to accept this, and by doing
so he accepts that he must emulate the self-control
that his adult world requires. Jody may never be
totally comfortable with his father’s archetype, but
he will be the better for it. It is the pattern of living
that he will need to carry himself throughout his life.
Elizabeth MaliaFamILy in The Red Pony
John Steinbeck wrote many of his best works about
families in conflict with life, the classic example
being the Joads from The graPeS of Wrath. In
The Red Pony, a very different kind of family is
introduced, one that is solid, closely linked to the
land, and curiously representative of the American
dream. This family is small, especially for a ranch
family in the early 20th century.
The Tiflins—Carl; his wife, and Jody, their
son—have a ranch in the Salinas Valley, California.
In the bunk house is Billy Buck, the hired hand
and pseudo-uncle to Jody. They raise hogs, fodder,
and a few horses. They are not wealthy but work
very hard and hold their own in uncertain economic
times. The focus of this book is the raising of Jody
to be the kind of man his parents want him to be.
At the start of the book, Jody is very young, just
beginning school. He makes up stories in his head
of knights and great adventurers. He fills his lunch-
boxes with horny toads and small snakes, and then