Reading Steinbeck in Two Years #3: The Red Pony

Goodreads blurb

Young Jody Tiflin lives on his father’s California ranch. He is thrilled when his father gives him a red pony, and later promises him the colt of a bay mare. Both these gifts bring joy to Jody’s life–but tragedy soon follows. As Jody begins to learn the harsh lessons of life and death, he starts to understand what growing up and becoming an adult really means.

My thoughts

I don’t like it. It’s beautifully written… but I don’t LIKE it.

The Red Pony is basically a collection of 4 short stories about a young boy named Jody. The stories have very little cohesion beyond their central characters, and the red pony of the title only appears in one. All of that is fine. Steinbeck was still getting a feel for what his fiction-writing was going to be, and this work is fine for what it is.

But maaaaan, the casual cruelty.

Word to the wise – never get attached to animals in a work by Steinbeck. (Except maybe Charley in Travels with Charley, but I didn’t trust it until after I’d read the final page and closed the book, let me tell you.) There’s a scene where Jody does something truly diabolical to a small creature, and his reaction afterwards is, “He didn’t care about the [animal], or its life, but he knew what older people would say if they had seen him kill it; he was ashamed because of their potential opinion.” Lovely. And I’m supposed to care about this child for several dozen more pages?

Don’t even get me started on the story about the old man and the old horse. Oof.

There’s very little here of the empathy that comes to characterize Steinbeck’s later works, so I just don’t have much to say about this one. I’m glad his writing didn’t stay this way.

The Red Pony is available to purchase on Bookshop.org (in US and UK) and on Booksellers.ca (in Canada). Please note: These are affiliate links, and I might earn a small commission from any purchase made through them, at no extra expense to you. Bookshop.org and Booksellers.ca support independent bookstores while offering the convenience of shopping online.