Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Black Beauty, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Horse Care, Abuse, and Neglect
Class, Transportation, and Victorian England
Good, Evil, and Power
Dignity and Religion
Summary
Analysis
Black Beauty doesn’t know how long he’s sick. The horse doctor visits daily and even bleeds Black Beauty once—Black Beauty feels ready to die after that. He has a fever and is sensitive to noise, so John moves Ginger and Merrylegs out of the stable. One night, Tom helps John give Black Beauty medicine. Then they sit in another stall, and Black Beauty hears Tom ask John to please say something nice to Joe: Joe feels terrible and knows this was his fault, but he’s not a bad boy. John says he knows Joe is alright, but Black Beauty is a favorite—and it’s awful to think he might die like this.
With John back home and in charge, Black Beauty gets the care he needs as his illness worsens. The extent that John goes to get Black Beauty care shows how much he cares for Black Beauty as a fellow being—but it also highlights that Black Beauty is a valuable horse and mode of transportation. John also isn’t ready to forgive Joe yet, but it’s not entirely clear why. For his part, Joe’s guilt suggests that he’ll learn from this experience and apply himself going forward so he never makes the same mistake again.
Themes
Tom is relieved and says he’s glad John realizes Joe’s mistake was “only ignorance.” Enraged, John says ignorance is the worst thing in the world after wickedness. This is why a woman who dosed her baby with soothing syrups and killed it was tried for manslaughter. He notes that just a few weeks ago, some ladies left Tom’s greenhouse door open and killed many of his young plants. Tom says he's still angry, and he doesn’t know where to get more plants now that he has to start over. John says that he’s sure the ladies didn’t mean to cause harm; it was “only ignorance.” Black Beauty falls asleep at this point, but later in his life, he thinks often of John’s words.
Intentions, John suggests, don’t matter when somebody or something gets hurt as a result of one’s actions. Just as Joe didn’t mean to jeopardize Black Beauty’s life, the woman he mentions didn’t mean to kill her baby—and yet, harm was done, and both Joe and the woman will suffer consequences. But the only way this gets through to Tom is when John brings up the ladies killing his plants. It seems as though Tom hasn’t thought of it this way, or about how it feels when he’s the person wronged.
Themes
