The Red Pony by John Steinbeck

First published: 1937; expanded, 1945

Type of plot: Story cycle

Time of work: About 1910

Locale: Salinas Valley, California

Principal Characters:

• Jody Tiflin, a boy about eleven years old
• Carl Tiflin, his father, a rancher
• Billy Buck, a middle-aged ranch hand working for the Tiflins
• Mrs. Tiflin, Jody’s mother
• Grandfather, Mrs. Tiflin’s father and a former wagon-train leader
• Gitano, an elderly Chicano laborer

The Novel

These stories present a young boy’s entrance into maturity through his encounters with life’s harsh realities. Death, disappointment, and the world’s stubborn refusal to conform to human ideals break down Jody’s childlike certitudes. Yet, though Jody at times is callous or bitter because of these experiences, he ultimately realizes that life holds both disappointment and promise and that acceptance of life with endurance and sympathy is the way of maturity.

In the first story, “The Gift,” Mr. Tiflin presents Jody with a red pony which Jody names after the Gabilan Mountains near his home. The pony quickly becomes his chief joy and responsibility, and under Billy Buck’s guidance, he prepares Gabilan to be ridden. As the horse is nearing the completion of his training, however, he is caught out in the rain on a day Billy had promised Jody it would not rain. Gabilan catches cold and, despite Billy Buck’s constant attention, dies. As Jody watches buzzards descend on Gabilan’s body, he kills one of them out of frustration.

Jody’s next encounter with the harsh realities of nature occurs in “The Great Mountains,” when an old Chicano named Gitano walks onto the Tiflin ranch on his way to the western mountains where he was born and asks to stay at the Tiflins’ until it is time for him to die. Mr. Tiflin refuses to grant his request, and Gitano rides off the next morning on an old horse called Easter, but not before Jody sees that Gitano is carrying an old and beautiful rapier, passed down in his family for generations.

“The Promise” and “The Leader of the People” repeat the patterns of the first and second stories, respectively. In “The Promise,” Jody receives another colt but only after the colt’s mother, Nellie, is killed by Billy when she is having trouble delivering him. Jody’s pleasure in his horse is soured by Billy’s killing of Nellie. Another old man, Jody’s grandfather, visits the Tiflin ranch in “The Leader of the People.” Though Jody is eager to hear his grandfather’s repetitive stories of his experiences as a wagon-train leader, the old man tells Jody that the value of his work lay not in being leader but in being a part of “westering” the general movement of people into new lands and experiences. He also confides to the boy his belief that the new generation represented by Mr. Tiflin has lost the westering spirit. As The Red Pony closes, Jody makes a lemonade for his grandfather to console him, indicating that he has matured enough to care for others.

The Red Pony’s plot belongs to the Bildungsroman tradition, in which a young person, in this case Jody Tiflin, is initiated into the mysteries of life. Each of the individual stories is part of his education. The loss of Gabilan in “The Gift” reveals to Jody nature’s cruelty and man’s inability to predict nature accurately. In “The Great Mountains,” Jody sees in Gitano both a symbol of human decay and the enduring power of human ideals, since he carries the ancient sword passed down through the generations. In “The Promise,” Jody observes the wonder and pain of the reproductive cycle when he sees Nellie and a stud horse copulate violently and assists at the birth of Nellie’s colt. Finally, Jody’s grandfather teaches him man’s special destiny of westering, and Jody’s act of kindness shows that he has some perception of this spirit.

The Characters

Jody Tiflin is the main character of the story, and because its main theme is his education, he is largely a passive figure observing events rather than directing them. In the first stories, Jody is described as a “little boy” who is slightly punier than his playmates. His life is regulated almost entirely by his stern father and doting mother, and he readily acquiesces in this, since he cannot imagine anything different. The pony Gabilan is his first real responsibility and a sign that he is leaving childhood, but the pony’s death embitters him. This loss of innocence is a fallen state in which he kills or annoys helpless animals, fears but no longer respects adult authority, and regards maturity as the ability to swear.

Yet Jody’s disappointments also cause him to speculate on the world outside his own meager experience. When he sees Gitano’s sword, he realizes that he must tell no one about it, because to do so would destroy the sword’s peculiar truth; thus, Jody makes an important moral decision. In his grandfather, Jody sees that one whom he has idolized has also been disappointed by life and learns the value of sympathy. In his last action, making a lemonade, he becomes a mature and active character, who sees life without glorifying illusions.

Jody’s grandfather and Gitano have a similar function in The Red Pony: as representations of human frailty and transcendence. Both are very old men, yet they maintain strength and dignity because they carry on a tradition: Gitano, with his ancestral sword; Grandfather, with stories of his wagon-train days. These traditions exemplify man’s destiny to move into unknown areas of existence. They are embodiments of westering, whether it is the movement of the conquistadors or the American pioneers. Steinbeck also grounds these figures in physical detail, so that each is a vivid and individual character in his own right. The treatment of both men indicates that the westering spirit has died down in later generations. Jody’s parents regard them with mingled pity and scorn. Neither man can fully express himself to them. The taciturn Gitano speaks only in simple, repetitious terms, while Grandfather constantly retells the same stories. Only to Jody do they reveal their true nature, and in his respect for them lies the hope that their spirit will live on.

The Tiflins might be seen as evidence of Grandfather’s claim that the younger generation has lost its spirit, but Steinbeck more sensitively portrays them as conventional people who, within their narrow range, function well. Carl Tiflin is an authoritarian father who nevertheless wishes to see his son become a man by giving him the responsibilities of owning a horse. Mrs. Tiflin is a kind and intelligent parent who recognizes that her son is maturing. Yet neither can fully understand the larger world outside their ranch. Carl dislikes both Gitano and Grandfather, while Mrs. Tiflin is sympathetic but does not see their real merits. The Tiflins are good people who do not possess the imagination to respond fully to the natural world.

Billy Buck, however, does have this imagination, and he voices the book’s central lesson—that no one knows what the future will bring. The son of a mule packer, Billy is a horse expert, but even he is fallible, as in the episode with Gabilan. Thus, knowing his weaknesses, he can be sympathetic to Jody and respectful to Gitano and Grandfather in a way that Mr. Tiflin, who despises weakness, cannot. Because of this, Billy functions as Jody’s friend and teacher, instructing him not only in horsemanship but also in the ways of nature. Billy is Steinbeck’s example of a mature human being in The Red Pony.

Critical Context

The Red Pony is regarded by critics as one of Steinbeck’s finest fictions. With a sure hand he integrates realistic detail of life in Monterey County, which he knew so well, with mystical speculations. The theme of the interconnected quality of all life is developed in greater depth and scope in The Grapes of Wrath (1939), but in The Red Pony the reader has an excellent introduction to Steinbeck’s distinctive combination of naturalism and transcendentalism. The education of Jody Tiflin in this book has been compared with Ernest Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories.

Bibliography

French, Warren. John Steinbeck’s Fiction Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1994. Thoroughly revises French’s two other books in this Twayne series. Chapters on Steinbeck’s becoming a novelist, his relationship to modernism, his short fiction, his wartime fiction, and his final fiction. Includes chronology, notes, and annotated bibliography.

Hughes, R. S. John Steinbeck: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1989. Divided into three sections: Steinbeck’s short stories, the author’s letters exploring his craft, and four critical commentaries. A good study of some of his lesser known works which includes a chronology, a lengthy bibliography, and an index.

Lisca, Peter. The Wide World of John Steinbeck. New York: Gordian Press, 1958. An indispensable guide to Steinbeck’s work, published in 1958 and then updated with an “Afterword” examining the writer’s last novel The Winter of Our Discontent (1961). Admired and imitated, Lisca’s work set the standard for future Steinbeck studies.

McCarthy, Paul. John Steinbeck. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1980. A short biographical approach to Steinbeck’s work that examines each novel against the forces that shaped his life. Includes a useful chronology, notes, a bibliography, and an index.