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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Horses of the Night, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Dreams vs. Reality
Madness and Society
Loss of Innocence
Summary
Analysis
It’s late August and six-year-old Vanessa learns that her cousin, Chris, is coming to live with her Grandmother and Grandfather Connor in their “Brick House” in Manawaka. He is coming from Shallow Creek, a town up north, that Vanessa imagines is inhabited only by polar bears, seals, and indigenous Canadians. Chris is 15 and Vanessa expects that he’ll dislike her because she is so much younger than he is. She wishes she could be older and worries she won’t know how to talk to him. She asks her mother, Beth, what will happen if she doesn’t like him, and her mother tells her she needs to mind her manners either way.
Before she even meets Chris, Vanessa imagines that his hometown, Shallow Creek, is an unknown and almost mythical place, a belief that she will continue to hold throughout her childhood. At the same time she is afraid that he’ll reject her because she is so much younger. Because she wants to connect with Chris, she longs to be old enough to understand him, which will also emerge as a pattern over the course of her relationship with him.
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Vanessa is angry that Chris has to come, and her mother, Beth, explains that he is coming to attend high school, as there is none in Shallow Creek. She notes that it’s very good of Grandfather Connor to let Chris stay in the “Brick House.” Inside her grandparents’ house the kitchen is sweltering with the heat of the woodstove, and Grandmother Connor, a modest woman wary of giving way to vanity, is preparing a special dinner for Chris’s arrival. It’s 5:30 and Chris’s train is due at 6, but Grandfather Connor left over an hour ago, a fact which Beth scoffs is typical of him.
That there is no high school in Shallow Creek is the first hint that Chris comes from a place that lacks resources, and that he needs to escape the harsh realities and limitations of rural poverty. Beth’s comment about Grandfather Connor’s benevolence reveals that, even in his absence, he is the ultimate authority in the family to whom everyone else defers. At the same time, Beth ridicules him for always leaving too early, which reveals the undercurrent of contempt the family holds for his unwavering authority. Meanwhile, Grandmother Connor’s special dinner demonstrates the care, love, and labor she brings to her family.
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Finally, Grandfather Connor arrives with Chris, who is tall, lanky, and blonde with slanted grey eyes and an angular face. He is wearing a white shirt, tie, and grey pants that Beth pityingly comments must have belonged to his father who died a few years back. Vanessa wants to defend Chris when her mother says this. Chris greets Vanessa by name, and she is surprised that he knows who she is. He explains to her kindly how he knew her, rather than speak to her condescendingly as she predicted he would. Beth greets Chris shyly but Grandmother Connor embraces him with kisses on both cheeks.
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While Beth shows Chris to his room, Grandfather Connor, who had been standing stone-faced and silent at a distance, complains that the train was 40 minutes late. The train wasn’t late, he just had the times wrong, and though both Grandmother Connor and Vanessa know this, they don’t contradict him. He criticizes Grandmother for using the stove on such a hot night, suggesting that a potato salad would have been just fine. Vanessa secretly agrees with him on this point, but would never side with her grandfather out loud, instead always defaulting to her grandmother’s side because she loves her.
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Beth and Chris return to the living room adjoining the kitchen, and they overhear Grandfather Connor insist that Chris would have been lucky to have potato salad and that the special dinner of mock duck Grandmother chose to make is excessive, given that Chris’s family has no money and Grandfather is paying for Chris’s keep. Vanessa moves to close the kitchen door to protect Chris from Grandfather’s unkind remarks, but Grandmother stops her. This bewilders Vanessa at first because Grandmother usually protected them from Grandfather, but later she thinks that Grandmother wanted Chris to understand what the reality of living in the Brick House will be.
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Vanessa goes into the living room because she wants to see how Chris will react to Grandfather’s comments. She wonders if he’ll be embarrassed or, as she hopes, be angry and speak out against him. Grandfather belittles Chris’s dead father Wilf for trying to homestead unsuitable land in Shallow Creek, and says Chris’s prospects are dim if he takes after his dad. Vanessa is enraged and helpless against her Grandfather’s meanness, but Chris appears unmoved and instead starts talking to Vanessa.
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Chris appears to be entirely absent and withdrawn when Grandfather goes on his tirades, and this will be his defense mechanism throughout his stay at the Brick House. Vanessa only vaguely understands this at the time because what stands out most is that he talks to her as if she was his age. He was a “respecter of persons” rather than dismissive of her, as she expected he would be due to her being so much younger.
Vanessa bonds easily with Chris. She cherishes the rare occasions when her parents go out and leave her with him. He has a skill for crafting miniature items that delight her, like little pipe-cleaner people, a puppet theater, and, Vanessa’s favorite, a hand-sewn leather saddle the size of a matchbox and branded with what Chris says is the name of his ranch. One day Vanessa asks if she can visit his home in Shallow Creek, and he says they can go over a summer holiday sometime. Chris is the only boy in a family of sisters, although only one, who is about Vanessa’s age, still lives at home. Vanessa is jealous at any mention of his sisters and doesn’t want to acknowledge their existence.
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In her mind, Shallow Creek is no longer a frozen and wintery place, but an extraordinary and beckoning country. She asks Chris to describe it to her for the thousandth time. He indulges her and explains that his house is made of trees, and Vanessa’s imagination conjures up an image of a house made of still-growing trees coaxed into towers and nests, with a view for hundreds of miles. He describes a lake that is more like a sea that stretches on for what seems like eternity and was once full of sea monsters and dinosaurs. He says dinosaur bones and footprints were found in the lake, and Vanessa is both fascinated and frightened that a creature could still live in the waters.
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Vanessa asks Chris to tell her about his two riding horses, Duchess and Firefly, who he raised and says he could train into racers. Vanessa is selfishly satisfied that he appears to miss the horses more than he misses his family. She asks again when they can go to Shallow Creek, and Chris is unsure because he says that after he graduates, he won’t be returning home much because he’ll be in college studying civil engineering. He describes his fascination with bridges like the Golden Gate, seemingly impossible, but made possible by engineers. The bridge is beyond Vanessa’s imagination.
Vanessa doesn’t want to think of Chris leaving, but he is confident that he’ll go to college in Winnipeg. However, Vanessa notes that the Depression wasn’t getting any better as people had predicted, but, along with the drought, was only getting worse. Manawaka was never dustbowl country, and its inhabitants were proud of this fact, as if it indicated virtue or special status, but what they experienced in Manawaka was still difficult. Vanessa only understood this later. At six years old, the drought and the Depression are abstract and malevolent gods that she knows threatened them without understanding why or how. At this age, she can only see what went on in her family.
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Vanessa sits in the living room with her mother and father, Ewen. Beth says that Chris has done well despite everything, but Ewen says good isn’t good enough. They know that Chris wants to go to college and have discussed it many times before. Ewen reiterates that it is financially impossible for Chris to go to college, even with a scholarship, unless Grandfather Connor helps. Beth insists that she can’t ask her father because she knows he’ll refuse. Ewen agrees that it’s a foregone conclusion because Grandfather Connor feels he’s already done more than enough by begrudgingly supporting Chris for the past 3 years.
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Vanessa is pretending to color while sitting and listening quietly so her parents won’t dismiss her, but the thought of Chris leaving is overpowering and she speaks up to ask if he’s going away. Beth whisks Vanessa up to bed while assuring her that it’s not certain yet whether he’ll be leaving. Vanessa believes that a miracle will prevent Chris from leaving. She wants him to stay because she desperately wants to be able to reply to his talk of space and bridges and his other expansive interests with knowledge that would astound him. She’s desperate to be older because her youth prevents this connection.
Vanessa is nine, and Chris leaves Manawaka. The day before he leaves she knocks on the door to his room. She wants to say goodbye, but isn’t ready yet. She helps him fold his socks while suppressing the urge to bring up the subject of college—her mother has warned her not to, since Chris appears to be taking the disappointment well. Instead she asks if he’ll be happy to see his horses tomorrow back in Shallow Creek. He says yes, but Vanessa wants him to say that he’d rather stay with her in Manawaka.
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Vanessa sits on top of Chris’s suitcase so he can shut it. He asks her if she ever wonders what it would be like to be a traveller. He imagines taking an elephant across the Alps and swimming in the Taj Mahal’s pool in the moonlight. Vanessa agrees that she wants to be a traveller one day because Chris imagines it as the best possible life. She’s relieved that he doesn’t say that girls can’t be travellers. Instead he says that she’ll accomplish it if she really wants to. He explains that he has a theory that anyone can do anything they want, that if one can just hold something in their mind, then it becomes real.
Chris doesn’t write after he leaves, and Vanessa doesn’t hear anything about him until his mother, Aunt Tess, writes explaining that Chris never returned to Shallow Creek. Instead, he sold his train ticket and hitched a ride to Winnipeg. He wrote his mother but didn’t provide an address and she hasn’t heard from him since. Beth reads this to Ewen out loud, too upset to worry about Vanessa hearing the news. Beth is worried that something might happen to him, but Ewen says there’s nothing to do because he’s 18 and free to make his own choices. Instead, he worries about how they’ll break the news to Grandfather Connor.
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Vanessa leaves the house without her parents noticing. She walks to the hill at the edge of town, down into the valley of scrub oak and poplar, almost to the banks of the Wachakwa river. She finds the oak where she and some friends had gone the previous summer to smoke homemade cigarettes. She sits on the lowest branch of the tree not consciously thinking about Chris. Instead, she thinks about nothing until bursting into tears. Overcome with a sense of relief, she’s ready to return home.
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Vanessa eventually forgets Chris because of the new events that begin to crop up in her life. Her Aunt Edna returns to Manawaka after being laid off and unable to find another job. Vanessa is thrilled by her aunt’s return and can’t understand why her mother isn’t, even though she is equally fond of Edna. Next, Vanessa’s brother Roderick is born in the same year that Grandmother Connor dies. These events are strange and unbelievable to her and consume her completely.
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Two years later Vanessa is 11 and Chris returns out of the blue. She comes home from school to find him sitting in the living room, and upon seeing him again she immediately feels guilty, like she had betrayed him by not thinking about him more while he was away and unaccounted for. He’s wearing a blue suit that Vanessa is now old enough to notice is cheap and heavily worn. Physically he looks like she remembered, with the same smile, bony face, and restless eyes.
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Vanessa asks him where he’s been, and Chris responds, “I’m a traveller…Remember?” Far from his romantic vision of travel, he’s become a travelling salesman. He brought his line of vacuum cleaners to show the family, so he gives his sales pitch and demos the vacuum. Beth laughs and says they can’t afford it, and Chris insists he’s not trying to sell them one. Instead, he launches into a talk about what a good gig the job is, and that he expects it could pay for his college education. Ewen tries to politely temper his expectations, explaining that they aren’t the only family that can’t afford a vacuum. Vanessa wants to support Chris’s passionate conviction that he’ll accomplish his goal, so tells him she bets he’ll sell 1000. However, she’s now old enough to know that she really doesn’t believe what she’s saying.
The next time Chris comes back to Manawaka he’s selling magazines. He’s worked out how to make $100 dollars a month with this gig. He leaves Manawaka after less than a month, and the family never learns how he managed with the magazines. When he comes back next, it’s winter. Aunt Edna calls Vanessa’s house and implores Beth to come down to the Brick House quick because Grandfather Connor is upset about Chris’s return. Beth and Vanessa hurry through the snow to get to the house.
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By the time they arrive, however, Grandfather Connor has retreated to the basement. He’s loudly criticizing Chris, which upsets Vanessa and Beth, but Chris seems oblivious to his grandfather’s criticisms as always. He’s preoccupied with demonstrating his latest gadget, this time a knitting machine. He shows them some socks he’s knitted with it. Impressed, Vanessa asks if she can try it out. Beth asks where he got the machine, and he explains that he rented it.
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Once again Chris believes he’s found a “gold mine” with this opportunity. Edna asks who he’ll sell them to, and he insists that men who work outside always need heavy socks, so they’re certain to buy the machine. Beth changes the subject and asks how his family is getting by. In a restrained voice he tells her that they aren’t short of hands because his sisters’ husbands are there to work. He quickly brushes off the question and presents the socks he’s made for Vanessa and Roderick. He stays for dinner until disappearing again.
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Later, Ewen dies, and with his death Vanessa’s life plunges into uncertainty and disorder. She retreats into herself for months, so much so that when her mother tells her that Chris has returned to Shallow Creek because there are no jobs it hardly phases her at all. That summer Beth suggests that Vanessa visit Chris in Shallow Creek. Vanessa understands that her mother hopes the visit will get her mind off her father’s death, and Vanessa wonders if anything will help her mother do the same.
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This suggestion reignites the romantic image of Shallow Creek she’d held when Chris first described it to her when she was 6. She remembers the house made of live trees, the lake full of sea monsters, and Chris’s beloved horses. She agrees to go on the trip. Chris picks her up from the train station and she notices he’s changed. He’s thinner and his skin is tanned from working in the sun. He’s in denim and farm pants, and Vanessa likes the way he looks. She wonders if it’s Chris who’s changed, or if it’s her. Now that she’s 13, she notices Chris’s masculinity in a way she couldn’t before.
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Chris takes her home in a horse-drawn wagon, and while this is what Vanessa expected, she hadn’t expected that the wagon and horses would be in such bad shape. He introduces her to the badly matched horses, Floss and Trooper, but doesn’t mention the horses Duchess and Firefly that he’d enchanted Vanessa with when she was 6. Vanessa doesn’t mention them either, as she realizes that she’d known for a while now that they “only ever existed in some other dimension.”
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As they ride to Chris’s home, Vanessa observes that Shallow Creek is hardly a town at all. There’s an elementary school, but the nearest grocery was in the next town over. When they reach Chris’s farm, riding through a crowd of cows and wolf-like dogs, Vanessa is uncomfortable with her surroundings. While it’s true the house is made of trees, it’s far from the magical tree house she’d imagined. It’s a small and run-down shack made of poplar poles and stuck together with mud.
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Upstairs there are three bedrooms, one of which Vanessa will share with Chris’s sister Jeannie who is slightly younger than her. Jeannie is quiet and Vanessa finds herself wanting to push her away while feeling ashamed of these unacceptable feelings. Chris’s mother, Aunt Tess, is both severe and kind, but her kind gestures are ignored by her daughters and their husbands. The house is full of the daughters’ chaotic children who spend the day running in and out of the house. Chris’s sisters and their children live in their own houses on the property.
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Chris is detached from the chaos. He speaks mostly to the children and lets them follow him around, never shooing them away. Vanessa admires Chris for this while also wanting him to argue back with his sisters, or even yell at one of the children; however, he never does. He closes himself off from everything just like he’d tuned out Grandfather Connor’s hurtful words.
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The chaos of the house continues to bother Vanessa. There are no screens on the doors and windows, so at dinner flies crawl all over the food. Vanessa’s squeamishness goes unnoticed by everyone except for Chris, who she wanted to hide it from most. He shows her how to fan away the flies. Vanessa realizes that for the first time since she’s known Chris, they are unable to look each other in the eye. The children are whining and misbehaving at the table, until one of Chris’s sisters implores them to shut up. Seemingly oblivious to this chaos and conflict, Chris casually asks Vanessa about Manawaka.
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It’s time for the family to begin haying, and Chris wants to camp out on the bluff by the hayfields to avoid the long drive in the wagon in the morning. However, Vanessa doesn’t believe this is the real reason he wants to sleep at the bluff. She asks if she can join him because the thought of being at the house alone terrifies her. He agrees and they ride out together on the hayrack. They ride down a small dirt road through a beautiful landscape of rose, blueberry, wolf willow and poplars. They arrive at the hayfields beside the lake and Vanessa takes in her first view of the water where she had once imagined sea monsters and dinosaurs.
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Vanessa can’t find words to describe the lake. Words like lonely and untamed come into her mind, but they feel too human to describe something so ancient and unfeeling. The lake seems to exist outside of the human realm, in a world where humans are not yet born. She feels threatened by its vast greyness. The lake reminds her of her newfound understanding of God as distant, destructive, and indifferent, a view she developed after her father’s death.
Chris jumps off the hayrack to let the horses drink from the lake. Vanessa’s worried they are going to camp next to the lake, and Chris assures her they aren’t, she won’t get wet, but to toughen up a little bit. Chris works for hours in the sun while Vanessa lays on a stack of hay looking up at the sky taking in the trembling blue and scents of grass, dust, and mint. As night approaches Chris and Vanessa move to the edge of the bluff to set up camp. He makes a fire, coffee, and stew before they head off to sleep.
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Curled up in a scratchy blanket, Vanessa is overwhelmed with a feeling of unfamiliarity. She feels self-conscious in front of Chris in a way she wouldn’t have even a year earlier. She doesn’t think he feels this same sexual strangeness between them. She knows he doesn’t want her to be a child, not because he wants her to be a woman, but rather something else entirely. Chris asks if she’s asleep, and when she’s not, he asks if she knows that he felt sorry about her dad dying even though he never said anything. She says she knows, and Chris remembers how Ewen always listened to him even if he didn’t fully understand him.
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They’re silent for a while until Chris points up at the stars and notices how bright they are, far from houses and light pollution. Chris asks Vanessa what the stars make her think about. Before she can respond he answers his own question. He supposes that most people don’t think about the stars, or simply think they’re pretty, but to him they’re bigger. He explains that stars and planets are gigantic, some of them burn, and others are dead and icy. He believes that others must be home to living things and he wonders what they look like, what they feel. He knows he won’t ever get to see these life forms, but truly believes other humans will someday.
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He asks Vanessa if she ever thinks about the universe in this way. At this question Vanessa feels the gulf between his 21 years and her 13. She always wanted to be older so she could talk to him like this, but realizes she’s still too young and unready. She tells him she sometimes thinks about these things, but her “sometimes” sounds more like “never.” Chris continues, saying that people tend to believe there is a God because they have no other way to explain how the universe exists, but Chris thinks this is ridiculous. He believes the universe has existed forever and for no reason at all.
Chris can’t believe in a God who is so brutal as to have created the world as it is. He thinks it would in fact be an insult to believe He’d be capable of such a thing. He tells Vanessa that it looks like the world is on the brink of war, and how could anyone believe in a God that would plan such a terrible trick? On the other hand, he says some people would view the war as a godsend because it’s a job and one that lets you travel the world. He says that most people are embarrassed to talk and think about this kind of thing, but he isn’t, and in fact he doesn’t even need anyone to talk about this with, he’s happy to think on his own.
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Chris pauses as if he’s waiting for Vanessa to say something, and when she doesn’t he keeps talking. He remembers that Ewen, though he rarely spoke of it, told him about the last war and his experience in it. He recalled a vivid image of horses who were stuck sinking into mud, and the terrified look in their eyes as they realized they weren’t going to escape. Ewen told Chris that they focused on the horses because it was too painful to think about what was happening to the men, himself included.
Chris asks Vanessa if she ever watches the news. She tries to answer but can’t form a comprehensible reply. She’s overcome with the feeling that she has failed herself. For so long she longed to be older so she could talk to Chris on his level. She’s frustrated because she can’t express even the things she does confidently know. She resents that Chris’s questions confront her with all that she doesn’t know, too. Unable to reply, she pretends to be asleep until Chris finally stops talking.
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Chris leaves Shallow Creek to join the army a few months after the war begins. He is sent to England after basic training, and it’s a full year before anyone hears from him. He writes a letter to Vanessa. The letter leaves her unsettled enough that Beth asks her what’s wrong. She denies that anything is wrong, but her mother insists she’s lying. Vanessa refuses to reveal the contents of the letter and knows her mother would never force her to, so Beth never brings it up again.
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Six months later Aunt Tess lets Beth know that Chris was discharged from the army because he suffered a mental breakdown. He was in the provincial mental hospital and no one knew how long he would have to stay. The doctors told Tess he’d been violent but was calm and passive now. Vanessa can’t believe that Chris could ever be violent. It’s painful for her to imagine the extent of the anguish that turned him violent. But worse than the image of him as violent is the image of him calm and sedated in a grey hospital gown, sitting still, his face unanimated and unsmiling.
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Although Beth cares about Chris, she immediately expresses her regret for allowing Vanessa to visit him in Shallow Creek. She worries about what could have happened on their camping trip. Vanessa is also thinking about what could have happened, but not in the same way as her mother. For the first time she is getting a glimpse of his need for talking that night. Although he knew it was impossible for a 13-year-old to understand him, he needed to talk and had no one else. Vanessa sees that his life and his choices had grown narrow, he was forced to return home where he didn’t want to be, and only escaped by subjecting himself to a war he found horrific. Vanessa only understands his words now, and, though she knows it wouldn’t change anything, wishes it weren’t too late to let him know.
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Years later Vanessa, home from college on holiday, is helping Beth clean out the attic. As they sort through boxes of old junk she finds the miniature leather saddle that Chris made for her when she was 6 and he lived with them in Manawaka. The saddle prompts her to ask her mother if she’s heard anything about Chris, and she immediately feels guilty that she hadn’t asked sooner. Beth tells her he’s the same as he’s been since the breakdown and that they don’t expect much improvement.
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Beth turns away and tells Vanessa that she can’t understand what happened to Chris because he was always so hopeful, even when there wasn’t anything to be hopeful about. Vanessa tells her that maybe it wasn’t hope that Chris had. As she tries to think of the words to explain this idea to her mother, Vanessa thinks back on all the schemes Chris had for making money. She sees the unreality and fantasy he clung to as a shield he carried against his own and the world’s depression.
Vanessa tells her mother she thinks that things were more difficult for Chris than he let on, and asks her if she remembers the letter he sent her from England. She reveals that in the letter he said they could force his body to march and kill, but that the joke was on them because he didn’t live inside of his body anymore. Beth feels sorry for Vanessa, realizing she must’ve understood right then what was happening to Chris. Vanessa can’t explain how she saw the letter as a final, heart-breaking extension of the way he’d always distanced and disconnected himself from any battle or conflict.
Vanessa cradles the saddle in her hand, and points out the brand that shows the name of Chris’s ranch, the Criss-Cross. Confused, Beth asks her what ranch she’s talking about, and Vanessa tells her it’s Chris’s ranch where he kept his horses Duchess and Firefly. Just then she remembers a line from a poem: “Slowly, slowly, horses of the night.” She knows the poem is about a lover who didn’t want morning to come, but to her it means something different. She thinks that the nights and days must move slowly like this for Chris in the hospital. She wonders if the world he inhabits now is full of the monster-kings of the lake, or if he’d finally found a way to make his dreams perpetually real. She puts the saddle “gently and ruthlessly” into the box.
