Themes
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.
Themes
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.
Themes
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.
Chris’s outfit, and Beth’s reaction to it, is the next clue that he comes from poverty. Immediately, Vanessa feels strongly drawn to Chris and wants to protect him from her mother’s pity. In contrast to what she’d expected, Chris treats Vanessa as an equal, seemingly unbothered by the age difference. Grandmother Connor is the emotional glue of the family who embraces and accepts Chris into the household enthusiastically and genuinely.
Themes
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.
Grandfather Connor’s authority over the household is made clear when both Grandmother Connor and Vanessa don’t dare contradict him. Instead, they accommodate him and his version of reality. Grandfather Connor’s criticism of the special dinner reveal both his meanness and stinginess. Vanessa refuses to agree with her grandfather as a matter of principle because she resents how he treats the family, showing her loyal nature. Although she is young, Vanessa already understands and works within the power dynamic that defines the adult world of the “Brick House.”
Themes
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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.
Grandfather Connor’s criticisms and resentment confirm that Chris’s family struggles financially. It’s clear he doesn’t want to spend any more money on Chris than he absolutely must. Again, Vanessa is moved to protect Chris, and is shocked when Grandmother Connor, the one who protects the family from Grandfather Connor, wants to expose Chris to the reality of life in the “Brick House.” Her realization about Grandmother Connor’s actions shows that Vanessa is perceptive beyond her years.
Themes
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.
Grandfather Connor resents Chris’s father for making a bad financial investment that has left him in the position of having to support Chris through high school. Grandfather Connor’s unkind comments provoke familiar feelings of helplessness and rage in Vanessa. She wants someone in the family to do what she can’t: challenge Grandfather Connor’s authority. She hopes that Chris will be the one to finally do so.
Themes
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 discovers that Chris doesn’t need her protection. His ability to withdraw into himself blocks out the harsh reality that surrounds him, foreshadowing later events in the story. Vanessa is still too young to understand this about Chris, but at the same time he makes her feel older because he talks to her as if she is. He respects her, unlike her grandfather who respects no one.
Themes
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.
Vanessa loves Chris because he invites her into his vast imagination and inner world. He enchants her with playthings and stories. She falls in love with the leather saddle and the version of Shallow Creek that Chris tells her it belongs to. In turn, Vanessa’s love for Chris makes her possessive of him, and she hates imagining that he could belong to anyone else, even his sisters.
Themes
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.
Vanessa’s initial image of Shallow Creek shifts from what she first imagined when she found out Chris was moving in, but the emerging image remains just as mythical and mysterious. She joins Chris in the Shallow Creek of his imagination, and though she is precocious in other ways, she is still young enough to believe that this world of treehouses and monsters exists.
Themes
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 longs to experience the magic of Shallow Creek, where instead of the miniature leather saddle, she’ll get to sit in a real saddle and ride Chris’s majestic horses. Vanessa correctly intuits that Chris misses Duchess and Firefly more than he misses his family, which appeases her jealousy and possessiveness. Vanessa is equally enchanted with his dreams of becoming an engineer, even though she is too young to truly understand this dream. Again, Chris speaks to her as if she is old enough to understand what he’s talking about, making her feel respected and included even when she doesn’t understand.
Themes
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.
Vanessa supports Chris’s dream even though it would take him away from her. She’s vaguely aware of the social and political realities of the world she lives in, but is too young to fully understand them, let alone see how they exist entirely at odds with Chris’s dreams of college and a stable, financially lucrative job. Believably for a child, what Vanessa knows is what goes on in her family. Thus, her grandfather’s stinginess is more real to her than the economic realities of the Great Depression.
Themes
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.
Ewen is the voice of reason from whom Vanessa learns that reality stands in the way of Chris’s dreams. In keeping with the family dynamic in deference to Grandfather Connor, Beth is too afraid to ask him to fund Chris’s college education. On a societal scale the Great Depression impedes Chris’s goals for college, but Vanessa is too young to understand this. Within the world of the “Brick House,” Grandfather Connor is the financial obstacle that Vanessa can understand.
Themes
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 knows she is listening in on a conversation that’s meant to be for adults only, and this suspicion is confirmed when her mom whisks her off to bed. Vanessa doesn’t want to lose Chris even though she also wants him to live out his dreams. She is young and innocent enough to believe in a miracle that will keep him in Manawaka. Again, she feels the limitations of her own youthful innocence and longs to leave them behind.
Themes
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.
Rather than confront Chris with the reality that he can’t go to college, Vanessa brings up Shallow Creek, anticipating that he’ll be excited to return to this dream-like, seemingly magical home. When Chris tells her he is excited to go back, she feels a pang of jealousy and disappointment. She’s become deeply attached to Chris, and it seems that Chris is far less attached to her.
Themes
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 enchants Vanessa with another story of a world more magical than the one they know in Manawaka. Vanessa doesn’t fully understand Chris’s dream of becoming a “traveller,” but agrees that she would like to do the same, simply because she’ll believe in anything he says. Chris truly believes that both of them can achieve this goal. Chris believes that he can make his dreams reality simply by believing in and wanting them hard enough. He believes in the power to create his own reality and either refuses to see or is unable to see any obstacles that stand in the way—a point worth noting as the story develops.
Themes
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.
Vanessa had grown so attached to Chris, but he doesn’t even write her after he leaves, another sign that she meant less to him than he meant to her. Again, Vanessa witnesses a conversation she wasn’t meant to hear and that exposes her to another reality of the adult world at odds with the world of childhood innocence. Chris refuses to return to Shallow Creek, which is really his refusal of reality. Ewen’s primary worry isn’t for Chris’s safety, but how Grandfather Connor will react. Again, the family defers to and is fearful of his unforgiving authority.
Themes
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.
Confronted with this reality that her parents failed to shield her from, Vanessa retreats to a place in the woods where she and her friends had previously smoked cigarettes, a rebellion that likewise represents a departure from childhood innocence. With her tears she mourns both losing Chris, as she’d long feared, and the continued loss of her innocence, until she is ready to accept these realities and return home. It’s noteworthy that instead of ignoring these losses, she acknowledges and grieves them head-on, allowing her to move on and mature—something Chris evidently struggles to do.
Themes
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.
As Vanessa gets older, her attachment to Chris begins to fade. She begins to forget him like he forgot her once he left Manawaka. She is confronted with a series of events that chip away at her childhood innocence, though she’s still young enough that these events leave her confused. The Great Depression has a tangible impact on her family with her aunt’s return to Manawaka. However, Vanessa is still too young to understand the gravity of the situation, which is why she’s confused by her mother’s lack of excitement. She witnesses one life enter the world as another departs, which to a child can be a strange and overwhelming reality to internalize.
Themes
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.
Chris returns and Vanessa is old enough to notice that his clothes are shabby, whereas when he first arrived, she wanted to defend Chris against her mother’s similar observation. In his presence, she feels guilty for forgetting someone who once meant so much to her, before she was distracted by all the realities of her life. This guilt actually suggests that Vanessa has simply been growing up and having a wider range of experiences.
Themes
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.
Chris says he’s achieved his goal of being a “traveller,” but Vanessa is old enough to understand that the reality of being a travelling salesman is nothing like the dreamy stories he told her of riding elephants and swimming at the Taj Mahal. Beth explains that the family can’t afford a vacuum, just like most families who are struggling financially because of the Great Depression. Chris refuses to acknowledge this reality, and instead is steadfast in his belief that this job is the ticket to making his dream of attending college come true. Vanessa wants to support Chris’s dreams, as she always has, but she’s no longer completely innocent to the realities of the world, and so she can’t believe in this dream the way she would have automatically done in the past. The contrast in Vanessa’s and Chris’s attitudes is striking and suggests that Vanessa has matured more than Chris has over the past few years.
Themes
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.
Chris continues to believe in schemes that will inevitably fail, suggesting that he refuses to learn from his failures. When he reappears for the third time, he comes into conflict with Grandfather Connor, who represents a harsh reality at odds with a dreamer like Chris.
Themes
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.
Grandfather Connor’s meanness towards Chris upsets Vanessa as much as it did when he first arrived at the Brick House all those years ago. As always, Chris is unbothered by the criticisms, instead fully immersed in his fantasy that the knitting machine will make him the money he needs for college, despite the fact that his career as a travelling salesman has already failed him twice. Even worse, this time he’s wasted money he doesn’t have on his impossible dream by renting the machine.
Themes
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.
Edna tries to confront Chris with a reality that he still won’t acknowledge. Chris is uncomfortable when Beth asks about his family back in Shallow Creek, another reality that he would rather ignore. Instead he presents Vanessa with a pair of socks, another little gift from his dream-world, like the saddle he gifted her when she was younger.
Themes
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.
Ewen’s death is the event that dramatically shatters what’s left of Vanessa’s childhood innocence. She departs from the world of childhood, where harsh realities are vague and abstract concepts beyond comprehension, and where dreams feel more real than reality. She’s no longer shieled from the reality that the world is unpredictable and often cruel. Her mother implicitly still wants to preserve what’s left of her childhood innocence, and hopes that a visit to Shallow Creek can achieve this. At the same time, Vanessa wonders if the same is possible for her mother, intuiting that escaping reality is impossible for adults.
Themes
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.
Even still, Vanessa clings to the hope that she can escape this terrible grown-up reality by finally visiting Shallow Creek, which still exists in her mind as the magical place she imagined when she was six. When she arrives, she sees Chris as a man, rather than just her cousin, another indication that her childhood innocence is fading.
Themes
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.”
The romantic image of Shallow Creek begins to crack right away when Vanessa arrives to find broken-down and unimpressive Floss and Trooper in place of majestic Duchess and Firefly. As Vanessa realizes that Chris’s reality is far off from his dreams and imagined worlds, Chris does not acknowledge this disparity. Vanessa realizes that she’d long ago shed the childhood innocence that had allowed her to believe in Duchess and Firefly and the magical world of Shallow Creek Chris painted for her.
Themes
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.
Again the reality of Shallow Creek and Chris’s family home are not what Chris had once described. The rural poverty and lack of resources that define Shallow Creek, and Chris’s life there, are now evident to Vanessa.
Themes
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.
Vanessa is uncomfortable around Chris’s family and the chaos of their lives that she did not expect, so much so that she wants to push Jeannie away even though she simultaneously is ashamed of these feelings. Her desire to push Jeannie away is also a sign of the residual jealousy she felt when Chris talked about his family, because she still wants Chris all to herself.
Themes
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.
As always, Chris is able to detach himself from the difficult realities around him, this time the chaos and poverty of his family. Just as she’d wanted Chris to speak out against Grandfather Connor, Vanessa wishes he’d lash out at his family while simultaneously admiring how he can block out the chaos and struggle that surrounds him. This suggests that on some level, Vanessa is worried about Chris’s detachment and the stagnation it represents and wishes he’d stand up for himself instead of passively ignoring things. Chris continues to ignore the discrepancy between his descriptions of Shallow Creek and the reality of his home there.
Themes
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.
Vanessa is ashamed of her reaction to the reality of the family’s poverty. She wants to hide her discomfort from Chris, reigniting her old desire to protect him, but this time from herself. Vanessa can’t look him in the eye for feel of revealing her shame. That Chris can’t look into Vanessa’s eyes indicates that he knows his lies about Shallow Creek have been found out and that he’s embarrassed or ashamed. This is only a temporary crack in the shell that protects him from his surroundings, and soon he becomes oblivious to his family’s chaos once again and launches into a casual conversation with Vanessa as if nothing is wrong. Unlike Chris, though, Vanessa can’t ignore the reality of her surroundings.
Themes
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.
Vanessa recognizes that Chris wants to sleep at the bluff because he wants to escape his family. Now that she is older, Vanessa is better at intuiting the reasons behind Chris’s actions. As they ride out to the bluff Vanessa appreciates the natural beauty of Shallow Creek, flickers of the fantasy world that Chris would rather inhabit.
Themes
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.
The lake is the one part of Shallow Creek that does live up to Vanessa’s imagination of it. Of course, she’s no longer young and innocent enough to believe a sea monster might still live beneath its surface, but the lake is so vast that she feels it exists outside the human realm. Rather than magical or enchanting as she’d once imagined it, however, with her more mature outlook on the world shaped by her father’s devastating death, the lake simply reminds Vanessa of how the world and nature are unpredictable places, at best indifferent and at worst destructive to humans.
Themes
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.
When Chris tells Vanessa to toughen up, he implies that she’s acting like a baby, and this is the first and only time he appears to notice or acknowledge their age difference. He’s also suggesting that she needs to toughen up to deal with the reality of Shallow Creek, the way he uses his shell of oblivion and indifference to tune out reality. On the bluff Vanessa enjoys a happy, peaceful moment in the beautiful natural surroundings that Shallow Creek does have to offer.
Themes
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.
Vanessa again feels that her relationship to Chris has changed now that she’s older, but not in the way she’d always wanted. Without the protection of childhood innocence, Vanessa notices Chris’s masculinity, and in turn her own femininity, and suddenly feels uncomfortable and self-conscious sleeping next to her cousin. However, she knows that this doesn’t bother Chris. He doesn’t want her to be a woman or a child, he wants her to be someone who understands him, because throughout his whole life, no one has been able to. Chris feels guilty that he wasn’t there for Vanessa when her father died, instead consumed by chasing his wild dreams as a travelling salesman. Chris remembers Ewen as someone who didn’t crush his dreams, even though he knew they were impossible.
Themes
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.
Chris sees himself as apart from other people after years of failing to be understood. He’s a dreamer with his head up in the clouds and stars, while living among practical, grounded people. At the same time, he has an outsized sense of self, believing that the universe means more to him and that he is one of only a few humans that has ever contemplated the vastness of the universe and potential for alien life forms. This isn’t too likely, since many people have asked such questions, and it further suggests that Chris is disconnected from others.
Themes
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.
Even though Vanessa is older and has shed so much of her childhood innocence, she is still too young to find the words to answer Chris’s big questions. She hasn’t thought about the universe the way Chris has, and can’t give him the understanding and connection that he so desperately wants. While Chris believes in unrealistic dreams, he somewhat surprisingly rejects belief in God. Given the time period and geographical context of the story, his doubt about God’s existence separates him from the society around him, leaving him wanting for someone who understands his worldview.
Themes
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.
Chris can’t believe in a God who would create a world so harsh, which has forced Chris to run from reality for his entire life. Chris’s unbelief hints that there are painful questions lurking underneath his dreams and fantasies. He is frustrated by people who believe in God while the world is on the brink of a war that is at odds with everything God is supposed to represent. And even more so, he dislikes people who view the war as a godsend because it provides them with their own selfish benefits. For Chris, other people’s belief in God is entirely at odds with reality, while for his entire life others have viewed his dreams as impossible in the face of reality. Chris criticizes others who he sees as unwilling to talk about such taboo and existential ideas, and insists that he doesn’t need anyone else to talk to these things about. However, this is clearly untrue, as he’s used Vanessa as a sounding board for his dreams and big ideas since he first met her. He says he is happy to think about these things on his own, but he is thirsty for understanding and connection with like-minded individuals.
Themes
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.
The horses in Ewen’s story represent the most brutal realities of life. These horses exist in stark contrast to Chris’s imagined Duchess and Firefly. This conversation with Vanessa, both about God and Ewen’s war story, reveals how deeply Chris thinks and feels about the difficult and existential questions of life, even though his methods for coping with reality—by building imagined fantasy worlds—are questionable.
Themes
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.
While Vanessa has lost much of her childhood innocence, she is still too young to keep up with Chris’s deeply philosophical ideas. She struggles to express herself, much in the same way as she struggles to express her thoughts and feelings. Chris presents her with ideas that she’s too young to understand, while at the same time, exposure to these existential ideas chip away at her innocence further.
Themes
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.
Chris is so desperate to escape the reality of his life in Shallow Creek that he joins the army. This is despite the fact that war disturbs him and is one of the most brutal realities of life, as he knew from Ewen’s story. Again, Chris disappears only to reappear suddenly and without notice. Chris writes Vanessa specifically, and whatever the letter contains seriously disturbs her. This is yet another example of how Chris confronts a too-young Vanessa with realities that chip away at her innocence. Vanessa protects the contents of the letter in the same way she always felt compelled to protect Chris.
Themes
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.
The war is the final reality that breaks Chris down. Chris spent his entire life in conflict with his society and its realties until that society, so intent on crushing his hopes and dreams, turned him mad. News of Chris’s hospitalization is another significant event in Vanessa’s life that exposes her to some of life’s most challenging realties. Like Ewen’s death, it eats away at her innocence. She’s haunted by the image of Chris in the hospital where she imagines he is just a shell of his former hopeful and determined self.
Themes
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.
Vanessa suddenly understands that the existential ideas Chris shared with her that night on the bluff were an indication that Chris was seriously struggling mentally. She understands that he needed to talk because he needed to connect with someone who could understand what he was going through. He had no one else to open up to but Vanessa, who so badly wanted to be there for him even though they both knew she was too young to give him what he needed. She now understands how trapped Chris felt and why he’d always needed to remove himself from the world around him. Now that she finally understands him and what he needs, it’s too late and Chris is too far gone.
Themes
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.
Vanessa is now a young adult, completely shed of the childhood innocence that prevented her from providing Chris with the connection and understanding he needed. Ironically, now that she understands better, Chris seems to be beyond her reach. When the saddle reminds her of Chris, she feels guilty for letting him fade from her memory—the same way she felt years earlier when she’d forgotten him amid the chaos and changes of her life. Chris was always fading in and out of her life and memory. Now, Chris’s fate seems final, and it’s implied that he’ll be confined to the psychiatric institution for life.
Themes
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.
Beth understands Chris’s impossible optimism in the face of reality as a positive character trait. Vanessa, however, sees the darkness inherent in this conflict that defined Chris’s life, but struggles to find the words to express this to her mother. She realizes that Chris’s elaborate fantasies were his way of coping with the world around him that could never give him what he needed. From her adult perspective, Vanessa understands that Chris was depressed all along and that the limitations of his life contributed to that depression. His initial dream of going to college was not so far-fetched, but as he came up against the limits of society, and failed time and again to reach that goal, he coped by spiraling further into impossible schemes and fantasies.
Themes
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 finally finds the words she needs to express her thoughts to her mother, something that she wanted desperately to be able to do with Chris. That she can finally express herself the way she wants to signifies her full transition into adulthood. She reveals the contents of the letter, and Beth feels sorry that she’d been burdened with such a hard truth when she was still so young. Vanessa realizes that the war was a reality so brutal that Chris had to retreat entirely to his mind where his fantasies live.
Themes
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.
As she initially feared when he first told her he wanted to go to college, Vanessa has lost Chris to his dreams, but this time in a final and devastating way. Vanessa revives that initial fantasy world of Shallow Creek when she shares it with Beth. When she remembers the poem (from the ancient Roman poet Ovid), she hopes the “horses” that move slowly through Chris’s days and nights spent in the hospital are not Trooper and Floss, or even worse the horses from Ewen’s memories, but Duchess and Firefly. She hopes that at the very least, Chris has finally escaped reality, and in the hospital and within his broken mind has finally found a way to make his dreams real. Vanessa puts the saddle back into the box “gently” because she still feels a certain love, tenderness, and desire to protect Chris whose vulnerabilities she always recognized. At the same time she puts it away “ruthlessly” because having compassion for Chris is too painful, and the saddle is only a reminder of that pain. Putting the saddle back into the box is her way of leaving her own childhood and its fantasies behind in a way Chris can never do.
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