To Mero, horses are representative of sexual, animalistic passion, and their wild, untamable nature evokes fantasies of escape and conquest. When Mero remembers his father’s girlfriend, he often describes her as horse-like, and her stories prompt his dreams of horse breeding and sexual violence. Additionally, in his youth, Mero studied cliff paintings with an anthropologist, and remembers how he originally believed a painting of female genitalia looked like a horseshoe. Horses are illustrative of Mero’s formative desire for his own partner; Mero’s sexuality, often expressed with equine imagery, is a driving force that prompts him to leave home at a young age. Though Mero believes that multiple factors prompted him to leave the ranch, such as the tedium of ranching and the nonexistence of compelling career options, he also admits that one of the main motives behind his departure was a lack of romantic opportunity. Moreover, Mero’s repeated references to horses also speak to how natural imagery pervades all aspects of his life, despite his desire to escape the natural world.
Horses Quotes in The Half-Skinned Steer
The old man’s hair was falling out, Mero was twenty-three and Rollo twenty and she played them all like a deck of cards. If you admired horses you’d go for her with her arched neck and horsy buttocks, so high and haunchy you’d want to clap her on the rear. The wind bellowed around the house, driving crystals of snow through the cracks of the warped log door and all of them in the kitchen seemed charged with some intensity of purpose.
Mero had thrashed all that ancient night, dreamed of horse breeding or hoarse breathing, whether the act of sex or bloody, cut-throat gasps he didn’t know. The next morning he woke up drenched in stinking sweat, looked at the ceiling and said aloud, it could go on like this for some time. He meant cows and weather as much as anything, and what might be his chances two or three states over in any direction. In Woolfoot, riding the Exercycle, he thought the truth was somewhat different: he’d wanted a woman of his own without scrounging the old man’s leftovers.
Horses Symbol Timeline in The Half-Skinned Steer
