The Red Pony essays

The Red Pony essays The Red Pony by John Steinbeck is a book filled with archetypes and lessons. They can help readers identify hidden truths in books and sometimes even end up teaching them lessons. John Steinbeck uses archetypes skillfully to parallel the everyday lives of people. The Red Pony is filled with complex archetypes and symbolic events which are experienced by Jody, the main character of the book. He is a ten year old boy living on a ranch with his parents and a farmhand named Billy Buck. The archetypal patterns that his life goes through range from the number 2 to the life cycle to the loss of innocence. The Red Pony itself is divided into four very different books, each of which are surprisingly independent of each other. The character of Jody, in The Red Pony, experiences a separate event in each books that results in a loss of innocence, and in turn gains knowledge and matures over time. Jody experiences two losses of innocence in the first book of the Red Pony when he learns of human imperfection and when he is personally affected by death for the first time. At the beginning, Jody receives a red pony from his father, Carl, and cares for it all summer with the help of Billy Buck. He reveres Billy because of his knowledge of caring for and training the pony and is ready to do whatever he says so that one day he may have his own horse to ride. Billy . . . told Jody a great many things about horses (14). For example, He explained that they were terribly afraid for their feet, so that one must make a practice of lifting the legs and patting the hoofs and ankles to remove their terror (14). This shows that Billy knows a lot about horses and therefore Jody is very willing to trust Billy, even with his ponys life. One day, deep in autumn, Jody has misgivings about possible rain and tells his feelings to Billy, who reassures him that it wont rain. Because of this reassurance, Jody leaves th...