The Red Pony
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
Right away, Jody feels a sadness come over him and realizes that Grandfather's past is really finished. He is not yet matured enough to really understand the stories, he just likes to hear stories because they have action. Carl and Billy feel sorry for Jody's loss of the red pony and thus come up with the idea to let Jody care for a colt. In the beginning of the first book, he sees black buzzards flying about the area because of newly dead animals, and he acknowledges it with no emotion or personal reaction. Jody comes to the horrific realization that Billy is fallible. Though Carl refuses to come out and tell him this, he dislikes Grandfather because he lives in the past and only tells stories about his glorious adventures and the good old days. His voice was gone; he spoke in a throaty whisper. All of this shows that his experiences in the previous three books have made him grow significantly as he handles this final loss of innocence like a mature adult. the bloody face, and the haunted, tired eyes of Billy Buck hung in the air ahead of him" (79). " (99) Grandfather tells him that it wasn't the glorious Indian battles or the adventure that mattered, but the actual feeling of westering. Before when the red pony died, all Jody could think of was Billy's mistake.
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Acceptance Essays
