The Red Pony

“The Red Pony” is the book I read, and it is pretty much about a family who lives on a ranch. In the story, a young boy is with his father and his ranch hand (assistant) at their family ranch, and everyday they have to work on something. When the boy’s father and the ranch hand happened to have a free day with little work to do, they decided to surprise the young boy by getting a gift that he had always wanted, a horse. The story goes on and on but I wanted to get to my point, which is where and why I chose my favorite part of this book. My favorite part of this book is when the horse (pony) became sick and (after fighting for its’ life for a long time) finally died. Now when I say that, I don’t mean that I enjoyed how the horse died in the
story; that would be sick. Instead what I enjoyed about that specific point in the book was how the author wrote that section of the story. In this specific section of the book, the author (John Steinbeck) wrote it in a way that could give the reader false hope in the horse’s recovery. By stating that the horse was very sick and how that after each time the ranch hand cured it, the fix was only temporarily maintained, Steinbeck gave the reader the feeling of hope. Hope that was diminished and revived and, once again, diminished and revived until finally he “stopped the act” and silenced the horse forever. I feel that John Steinbeck did an excellent job in toying with his readers’ emotions in this petite fragment of the story “The Red Pony.” While others’ opinions may differ with this statement, I for one would love to see and read more types of literature that resemble this story and its’ writing style.