I know this is a classic and all, and it really was well written... but I've never been able to get the imagery out of my head, of this buzzard plucking this pony's eye out. While I know that's the sign of a good writer, the detail and being able to visualize it... It strikes me as being almost too much, it shoves this sadness into a reader's face and makes it unbearable.

John Steinbeck's "The Red Pony" is a concise read about the life lessons of a young boy growing up in the rural life in northern California. At first, the book came across as a dull story of juvenile dreams and innocence within a still, pastoral backdrop, like the literary version of a Thomas Kinkade painting. But as the story progressed, the characters no longer felt boring and flat. Situations on the ranch rile up within these characters some emotional depth, which makes them more interesting. Overall, this is a book of cute stories about dreams and its requiems. These stories contain an underestimated moral resonance than what is shown by the writing style and the humble experiences of the boy. Within Steinbeck's unassuming writing are some memorable passages. Also, as a guy acquainted in urban living, one can appreciate this book as a glimpse of rugged, rural life. It is this context that shapes the boy's ways of speaking, living, thinking, and dreaming. And though such expressions are estranged to my common way of life, they are diverse expressions of universal, human aspirations that most of us can easily connect with.

2.5⭐️

I read this short novel of linked events when I was in the fifth grade. At the time, I didn't like it much. I can see why I disliked it more clearly in reading it now as an adult, even though I think the stories are a good introduction to literary writing for older elementary children. However, I can't imagine a child understanding the book's depths unless given age-appropriate guidance from an adult. Even with that guidance, the book could seem dated or too distant from their present lives without any value from a child's viewpoint. But I imagine for many teachers the novella is a good opportunity for excellent learning moments to bring up discussions of those points of nature which forever endure - human and animal, particularly relationships. I imagine it is also useful in prodding kids to tell about any real family histories about farming or ranch life.

A child, Jody Tiflin, is growing up on a 19th century ranch near Salinas, California. Not only is the little ten-year-old boy being raised in the severe manner common to the era and this class of people, but his structured responsibilities to farm animals and his parents precludes much disobedience. Money is dear, but respect for work and working hard is the true coin of this realm. Jody is permitted free time only once his chores and school hours are done, but even with this strict hierarchy of job duties life is mostly an interesting one of new adventures. As he has a huge area of half-tamed land to roam in, as well as the fact a lot of his work involves dealing with killing pests such as rats in hay stacks, or helping with the slaughtering of pigs or taking care of horses, lambs and cows, he is no stranger to the realities of life and death, childishly limited as his understanding may be. Everyone around him, including adults, live and work exactly the same way with the same responsibilities as he has been tasked, differing only in quantity of effort, time and knowledge, with the exception of his mother. She stays and works - hard - inside the farmhouse.

The opening chapters of Jody's life show us a kid who still has daydreams without much basis in reality or emotional awareness. Even though he is a curious child eager to learn, he must give his father absolute obedience and deference. This seems to be something Carl imposes perfectly only on his son. In one of the episodic events of Jody's life told in the book, when Jody's grandfather comes to visit his daughter, Jody's mother, Carl has very little patience for the old man, but he tolerates his visit. On other days, a hired man, Billy Buck, expresses his irritation openly with Carl in a number of incidents, and Mrs. Teflin feels free to reprimand Carl for his disrespect to her father. Despite Carl's lightweight tyranny, I saw enough similarities between Carl's stunted emotional life and his demands for the controlling vote in the family which resembled my much harsher childhood with my farm-born father. The mild dictatorship of Carl was enough for me to dislike him a lot.

Jody is given a pony by his father, which makes Jody incredibly happy. However, an unfortunate illness kills the horse early in the book.  The horse becomes a major vehicle for life lessons that go much deeper than anything Jody has already learned. For the first time, he begins to see that not only are there life events beyond anyone's ability to control, but people, even people he childishly thought without blemishes, can make mistakes or fail to live up to the infallible image of them Jody had previously held. He discovers that he is developing feelings that put him in a position that contradicts his father's. His misbehaviors bring on a new awareness that he is acting shamefully. He suddenly realizes he has rarely thought much about what is beyond his home. Jody's worldview is expanding, and by the end of the final chapter, he is now aware that it's not all about him.

This is a very quiet book about the ordinary first steps in self-realization all kids take to grow up a bit, even if the details are 19th century features. I wonder if many parents can even be bothered to stop running enough through their own fascinating hours of urban adulthood to help a kid process a book this nuanced...

There is violence in the story common to farm and ranch life, with two particularly graphic scenes, which despite their brevity, upset adults, not to mention some children, although I suspect elementary-school boys generally think those two scenes are the best parts.

It had been too long since reading John Steinbeck and I really missed his simplistic style, real and touching stories about ordinary people living in the America of the past. The Red Pony was surprising in the scarcity of characters and events and at some points it felt a bit too simple. But when thinking of the story after turning the last page I started to understand the beauty it has. Then I was once again amazed by Steinbeck´s brilliance. I love how his books always leave me analyzing the stories even long after finishing them and The Red Pony really gave me food for thought.

halfway into my morning hike there's a small trailer off the side of the trail and the guy who lives there leaves out a bucket of fresh water for passing dogs. it's my favorite part of the walk because jack doesn't lap at the water but dunks his entire snout in there and kinda gulps it down. he then pulls his face from the bucket and for the next thirty yards or so leaves two thin trails of water dripping down from either jowl.

from the red pony:

"At last he walked snorting to the water-trough and buried his nose in the water up to the nostrils. Jody was proud then, for he knew that was the way to judge a horse. Poor horses only touched their lips to the water, but a fine spirited beast put his whole nose and mouth under, and only left room to breathe."

jack is a 'fine spirited beast', yes sir. but of course the worst dog is better than the best human. of course, a mangy face-eating pit bull son-of-a-bitch is a better friend than any biped. a bug-eyed rat-tailed three-legged furniture-pissing chihuahua is more honest than abe lincoln. the meanest most rotten-tempered bastard of a ridgeback is more a gentleman than cary grant. that's just the way it is.

توصیفات اشتاین بک تو داستانهاش هرچند قشنگ ولی بعضی وقت ها خیلی خسته کننده است. کتاب اسب سرخ یه محموعه داستانه که به نظرم نصفه نیمه اومد، یعنی محور داستان حول و حوش جودی پسر بچه خانواده ، شکل زندگیش، خانواده اش و از همه مهم تر اسبیه که قراره داشته باشه ولی عملا این داستان نصفه میمونه ، بیشتر شبیه یه اتود بود که نصفه کاره مونده و رمان نشده

Not As I Remembered It 66 Years Ago.

I read this as a child, and I cried. It may have been the first real novel that I had ever read, as I was actually6 into reading comic books at that age.

My brother was reading The Grapes of Wrath at that same time and was asking our mother if it were true about the dust bowl and depression and what the people went through. It was, she said.

My father had given my older brother a collection of John Steinbeck books, so the reason we chose him to read. I grew to love Steinbeck, but I am not so sure about this book now. It was just too sad for me as a child of ten or so.

I remember as a child I would lose all my dogs to death, and the baby lamb that my step dad brought home. I sat there with the lamb in my lap as it was dying, and I asked God, Why? I got no answer. A few years later I began to feel that every animal I ever loved died. And, well, they still do.

This book was not what I remember4ed, but I really had no idea what I remembered as it was too long ago. I also didn’t remember that this book was four stories. It was about Jody’s growing up years. I was glad for this, as I liked two of the other stories better. Only they were all too short. I was also glad that I did not cry this time.

I really loved the story about the old pisano, Gitano, who showed up on the ranch saying that he was born there and desired to die there.

Jody asked him questions about the mountains to the west of the farm that was situated near Salina, CA. Jody only knew that they lead to the ocean. Gitano had only adventured there once but only remembered that it was quiet.

Jody wanted to hike the mountains, and that is what I would have done since I spent my youth hiking the hills in our small town of Paso Robles, CA and going to the river with my dogs, whichever one I had at the time. Jody didn’t venture out, and I wonder if that was because he had a strict father, a father I was glad to not have had. Yet, my own father was mean, but my mom divorced when I was 8. I had free range of the town, the hills, and the river after that.

Then Jody’s grandfather came to visit, and I would have loved that story to go on as well as the one about the pisano. It was not to be. As soon as his grandfather arrived, problems broke out in the family, well, only with Jody’s dad, and it was not going to be a nice visit, except that Jody wanted to learn from him. He wanted to know about his trip out to California by wagon train, as he had been the wagaon train master.

All in all, it seemed like everything was dying around Jody, mostly by his own hands, such as horn toads, snakes, mice, etc. It left me with a feeling that I didn’t wish to hear anymore. Kids can be so cruel at times, and it made me to remember how my boyfriend (first husband) and I put a mouse in a flashlight, but when we took it out he was almost dead. I think he survived. I hate memories like that, or when we shot frogs at the river with a b-b gun. How cruel. I wonder what my mom would have said if she had known. I know if I had had kids, I would hope that I would have taught them to not harm animals.

I would not have liked farm life, unless we were just raising food crops. And it seems like the older I get the less I like harming anything unless it is poisonous snake or spider or anything that is about to harm me. But real life isn’t so easy on a person, and it certainly wasn’t easy on Jody.
Notes: I loved this when I was young, so I am keeping the 4 or 5 stars. I would only give it three stars today.
RerRead June 26, 2019

Τελευταία φορά που διάβασα βιβλίο του Τζον Στάινμπεκ, ήταν τον Αύγουστο του 2014. Και πραγματικά αναρωτιέμαι γιατί τόσο καιρό δεν είχα πιάσει κάποιο βιβλίο του στα χέρια μου, από τη στιγμή που μου αρέσει σαν συγγραφέας. Το βιβλιαράκι αυτό μπορεί να μην ανήκει στα αριστουργήματα του συγγραφέα και ίσως να μην είναι το πλέον αντιπροσωπευτικό του έργο, όμως είναι αρκούντως καλογραμμένο και γεμάτο εικόνες και νοήματα. Υποτίθεται ότι σαν βιβλίο απευθύνεται περισσότερο σε νεανικό κοινό, μιας και ο πρωταγωνιστής είναι ένας δεκάχρονος που ζει με την οικογένειά του σε ένα ράντσο στην Καλιφόρνια και την όλη ιστορία την παρακολουθούμε από τη δική του οπτική, όμως δεν είναι ένα παραμυθάκι για να περάσει η ώρα. Υπάρχουν κάποιες πολύ όμορφες εικόνες και περιγραφές της φύσης και της καθημερινής ζωής στο ράντσο, όμως υπάρχουν και κάποιες σκληρές και στενάχωρες σκηνές, με το τέλος να είναι αρκετά έντονο και γεμάτο συμβολισμούς. Συμπερασματικά: Ένα ωραίο βιβλίο μιας άλλης εποχής, που δεν έχει χάσει τη δύναμή του. Προτείνεται άνετα για ανάγνωση, αλλά ίσως όχι για πρώτη επαφή με το έργο του συγγραφέα.

This is extremely well written and I'm sure the fictional events are true to life, but it doesn't mean I have to like them.

Animals aren't well treated in these stories and the little boy Jody Tiflin is cruel to all types of creature during these connected excerpts from his adolescence, though perhaps he does mature to a certain extent by the end of the book as he decides not to slaughter a haystack's worth of mice just for the sake of it.

There is a sense of a constant cycle of birth and death with the frontier spirit meaning there's no room for sentiment or for preceived weakness or sympathy for the old and frail.

Steinbeck’s Got a Hold in Me
(A Book Review of John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony)

It all started on a lazy Sunday afternoon, a day I presume to be just like any other. However, what made it a little bit interesting and special, at best unforgettable, can be attributed to one simple man who goes by the name of John Steinbeck, whose unassuming, not over a hundred pages, little book tilted The Red Pony is the ticket all I ever need to beckon me back to that country called the classics, to which I, as of late, has become a foreign to; the wine that stirred in me awe and inspiration, that afterwards hurl me into a deep drunken appreciation; the soft whisper that remind of the delights ad travails of being human.

The Red Pony tells the story of “the boy Jody,” seemingly a partly autobiographical character who is seen through different phases of life at his father’s ranch. This early masterpiece from Steinbeck comprises of four novelettes: In The Gift Jody Tiflin learns about human fallibility, destroying his innocence forever. In The Great Mountain Jody’s perspective has been widened once again: old age, like youth, has its tragic aspect. In The Promise, he gets what he wants in the end, but it comes with it a huge sacrifice and another crucial decision: old age must give way to youth. Lastly, in The Leader of the People, Jody is initiated in the mysteries of the past and it relation and relevance to the present.

In each story Steinbeck shows us unique ways in which young Jody undergoes certain experiences as he confronts the harsh realities of life, and as a result comes closer to a realization of true manhood — facts adults must live with: sickness, age, death, procreation, birth. Jody is gradually coming to grips to a violent world where danger lurks everywhere, pain and death are imminent, and the best laid plans of mice and boys often go astray. Delicately and affectionately, Steinbeck reveals the very soul of the boy, his love for animals, his appreciation of generosity, his faith in his elders, his great need to do some vicious thing when tragedy has shattered his hopes and dreams. Steinbeck traces the emotional development of the boy from the narrow self-concern typical of children to a more compassionate view of the world in which each tale are intended to teach readers the need for stoic endurance in order to survive an imperfect, cruel world.

Steinbeck composed The Red Pony as an integrated whole; all four stories in the book take place in Salinas Valley, where Steinbeck himself grew up as a boy. The effectiveness of the work is due in large measure to the fact that he obviously knows intimately the region of which he wrote — each tale is filled with realistic and lyric descriptions of the valley’s flora and fauna. The reader cannot fail to sense the tang of sage in the dusty air, nor to see the nodding bunches of wild oats on the hills and his apparent familiarity with the horse’s behavior. The harshness of the world is always ready to make itself felt, but in times when misfortune pervade we again find the glow that seems to play over Steinbeck’s work in his depiction of daily ranch life which he remarkably illustrates in minimalistic strokes, a style with a rhythm and tone that brings with it an idyllic and pastoral feel. There is for example this passage when Jody rises early in the morning and goes out to see his new pony in the barn:

“In the grey quiet mornings when the land and the brush and the house and the trees were silver-grey and black like a photograph negative, he stole toward the barn, past the sleeping stone and the sleeping cypress tree. The turkeys, roosting in the tree out of the coyote’s reach, clicked drowsily. The fields glow with a grey frost-like light in the dew the track of rabbits and of field mice stood out sharply. The good dogs came stiffly out of their little houses hackles up and growls deep in their throat. Then they caught Jody’s smell and their stiff tails rose up and waved a greeting…”

In this day and age where old manual farming was replaced mostly by industrial methods and fathers give their sons the latest sports car as gift once they reached their age of maturity, I wonder where The Red Pony falls in the scheme of things, it relevance to these modern times we are living in. Quite frankly I’ll ask you, how many of us do own a horse these days, much less how many of us even know how to ride one? Sure thing, this small work is now a staple required reading in school curriculums, but it seems to me that sarcastic kids would snidely put it as a story about a boy who never got the chance to ride his pony. Like the westering described in the fourth tale, where the great trek has come to an end, has this book too lost its function which once had a reality only in relation during the era when it was published? I don’t know about you, but I can only speak for myself in that it seems to me that history, the meaning of the past, is one of the most significant themes that the book brings up. The call for heroism is heard today as it was yesterday as it is was not so much as a physical manifestation but as an attitude of mind and a spirit that needs reviving in our time.

The Red Pony is wonderfully simple in its affect, and the reader is occasionally conscious that there is a “moral lesson” behind each of the stories. Jody’s gradual maturation is traced with affection, reserve, clarity and compassion. Steinbeck knows what he intends to do and does it in the simplest and most effective fashion. He knows life at both ends. He grips your heart and satisfies your mid. He takes hold of you — like he did to me on a fine Sunday afternoon.

_________________________
Book Details:
Book #3 for 2011
Published by Bantam Books
(Mass Market Paperback, August 1988 Edition)
120 pages
Read in January 6, 2011

Don't read this if you're hoping for a story about a boy and his pony. That's actually what I thought this was. For reals!

Oh, my heart.

I was originally thinking of reading this to my sensitive 11-year-old son, and I'm SO glad that I decided to have a look myself, first. I pray to the gods that one day my son falls in love with John Steinbeck's work, as I did, but age 11 is not the time for him to learn how brutal life is, how gory birth and death are, and how revered, trusted adults can often fail us despite their best efforts. Nah. I'd like to let him enjoy his protected childhood for a just little bit longer.

That stuff is for ME, though, but even so, I was choked up at the end of each of the four chapters. It was as though my innocence was snatched away from me anew, each time. John Steinbeck broke my heart as I re-learned through his eyes and his spare, wise words that life is wild and uncertain at each moment. Each gift, each promise, each life, can be taken back, without warning and without mercy. Each beautiful second before that is a miracle.

It seems ridiculous to rate a work like this. There's no "rating" for uncrushable art - it's absurd that we slap stars on literature, isn't it? But here I am... 4 stars, because it wasn't a story about a boy and his pony (just kidding).