, until its head was red pulp. He was still beating the dead bird . . ." (37). Before, death was something he didn't care about, something that didn't interest him, just something that happened to things he didn't know. This personal experience with death makes him realize that death can happen around him too. Thus, his final realization is that death can happen unnaturally and suddenly to anyone, even a vitality-filled, youthful, red pony.
             Although Jody experiences death in book one, he knows of it only as an accident and that it only happens when people make mistakes. Book two in The Red Pony reveals the inevitability of death and the dying of old ways to Jody which makes his loss of innocence suffered in book one far greater.
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