Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Rain Horse, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Civilization and Nature
Fear and Alienation
Nostalgia
Summary
Analysis
Rain begins to fall as an unnamed young man crests a hill, having wandered along “pleasantly-remembered” country lanes and trekked through muddy farmland. Shivering and sensing an impending storm, the man looks down at the valley below—this view is the one he’s been searching for after 12 years away. But he finds the view “utterly deserted” and “shallow.” Although he is not sure what he had hoped to feel, he had expected “some meaningful sensation.”
The unnamed protagonist’s relationship to this landscape is contradictory. He is familiar with the area because he grew up here, and he recognizes many of the landmarks. Yet he has come from the village, which is separated from the wildness of the hills by several miles, and he doesn’t feel any “meaningful sensation” even though he fondly remembers this view from years ago. In this way, the landscape makes him feel alienated rather than comforted or welcomed, which is reflected in the fact that the view looks desolate and devoid of life to him. Furthermore, he is under-dressed and under-prepared for the natural elements (the rain and mud). The village represents civilization, and he has wandered so far away from it that he won’t be able to get back without getting soaked by the rain. Nature imposes itself on the man, and his lack of proper preparation makes it clear that the man underestimates the natural world.
Themes
The man tries to stir up old feelings by taking in the details of his surroundings: a curved hedge, a stone gate pillar, an iron gate hook, and the long rabbit warren he’s standing on. Twenty years ago, he’d looked at this view from a distance in a nearby village and had noticed the rabbits. But after 12 years, he neither recognizes this land nor feels recognized by it, and he feels bored and empty. His connection to this “home-country” might as well be through his grandfather’s stories.
This place no longer feels like the man’s “home-country”; he feels unsentimental and emotionally distant from the land, which suggests that the man isn’t as connected to nature as he once was. Although the view initially disappointed the man, he perseveres in trying to awaken the nostalgic feelings he longs for, even if this means he’ll get caught in the approaching storm.
Themes
The man grows suddenly anxious as he considers walking two miles back to the road, as this will dirty the new suit he’s wearing even more. Although it would be faster to walk past a nearby farm in the valley and get back on the road from there, he does not want the farmer to recognize him or run him off as a trespasser. He grows increasingly angry at this muddy land for making him feel alienated, old, and foolish.
The man’s underlying anxiety and discomfort have come to a head with the realization that he is a stranger in this place. Although he can’t truly escape his alienation, he wants to avoid situations that would make him confront it, like running into an old acquaintance. In avoiding this uncomfortable truth, he projects his anxieties and frustrations onto the state of his suit. The suit, which symbolizes civilization throughout the story, has already started to succumb to the elements—it is insufficient to protect the man from the harsh weather and mud. Already, nature seems to have the upper hand, although the man isn’t ready to accept that.
Themes
The man desperately wants to get out of the rain, but he’s suddenly startled by something in the corner of his eye. A “thin black horse” runs across the farmland and up to a wooded hill across from where the man is standing. The animal seems uncanny and “nightmarish,” making an “unpleasantly strange impression” on him. As the horse disappears over the hill, it begins to rain harder, and the man decides to run up the muddy hill and toward the village.
While the man plans a route back to the village that will allow him to avoid his sense of alienation, he renders himself vulnerable to the power of nature, represented here by the rain that soaks him as it moves across the countryside. The man continues to project his feelings, this time onto the strange horse: rather than having to acknowledge his own sense of alienation, he can focus on how alien and out of place the horse seems. However, his fearful reaction foreshadows the true balance of power: although he tries to dismiss the unpleasant feeling the horse arouses in him, by changing his route back to avoid it, he nevertheless allows the animal to dictate his actions.
Themes
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When the rain becomes “blinding,” the man stumbles into some woods to seek shelter. Here, he feels “hidden and safe.” The rain subsides into a soothing sound that seems to shroud him, and he feels comfortable and warm as he leans against a tree trunk. He studies the raindrops, the shapes on the bark of a twig, and the silhouette of the town beyond the trees. The man wants to stay in this pleasant state where he is “suspended from life and time.” However, the rain is still “beat[ing] steadily on his exposed shoulders and trickl[ing] down […] onto his neck.”
For a few moments, the man experiences a kind of peacefulness that has thus far eluded him. He gives up, at least temporarily, on returning to civilization (the village) and accepts the scanty protection the natural world offers him. To do this, however, he must huddle on the ground under a tree, which means he is further muddying his suit. In the woods, the man manages to reach some version of his childhood connection with nature, which is why he feels as though he’s “suspended from life and time.” But the story suggests that this suspension cannot be maintained: the rain continues to fall onto him, and he is not as warm and safe as he wants to believe.
Themes
However, the memory of the strange horse interrupts the man’s reverie. He tries to rationalize what he saw, reasoning that horses often wander the countryside—but the image of the horse still haunts him. As he peers through the trees to distract himself, he sees the black horse standing nearby against the grey light, watching him. Contrary to the behavior of most horses in the rain—to go into a stupor—this horse is alert and intent.
The pleasant interlude in the woods hasn’t changed the man’s status: he is still an unwelcome stranger in his childhood country. His attempts to rationalize the horse’s behavior are attempts to impose reason—a function of civilization—on nature. But his efforts are futile because the horse’s behavior doesn’t conform to the man’s expectations. The man would like to believe that this shows the unnaturalness of the horse, but it really seems to imply that his knowledge of nature is insufficient. Nature has far more control over him than he has over it.
Themes
The man’s body goes cold. He considers his options, but neither leaving the woods nor driving the horse away seem feasible. The man is becoming increasingly unsettled by the horse watching him, but he attempts to shake off his fear and put the horse out of his mind. But then, the animal suddenly crashes through the woods toward him. As the man leaps up, the horse’s “long yellow teeth” and bloodshot eyes fill his view. He runs up the slope in a panic but slips falls, worrying again about dirtying his suit before he hits the ground.
In its second appearance, the horse comes to symbolize the inescapable brutality of nature. Its motives are mysterious and therefore terrifying—since he cannot understand why it behaves in this way, the man cannot predict its actions or control it. So, he now tries to put it out of his mind—just like his earlier impulse was to ignore and run away from his feelings of alienation. He clings to what he thinks he knows about how horses behave, even though this knowledge doesn’t help in this case. By appearing repeatedly, the horse shows that it will not allow the man to escape confronting his own primal nature under his civilized appearance. Although he still clings to civilization, both by trying to rationalize the horse’s behavior and by worrying about the state of his suit, his survival instinct only separates him further from civilization, as represented by his muddied suit. He hasn’t yet rediscovered his primal nature, but he is on that path.
Themes
The man gets up and continues to run. Once he’s put some distance between himself and the horse, he spins around and sees that the animal has disappeared again. Brushing dirt and leaves off his suit, the man looks around for a makeshift weapon. He wonders if the horse has something wrong with its brain, or if the rain is affecting the animal’s behavior. Whatever the case, the man decides to leave the woods as quickly as he can and head for the nearest farm.
The man’s fearful responses increasingly dictate his behavior, causing him to become less logical or reasonable. He is so overwhelmed by panic that he doesn’t even realize when the horse stops following him. Running and falling have further soiled the suit, once again emphasizing how out of place the man is in nature, and how the elements are slowly but surely eroding his control over his own behavior. The horse is preparing him to confront his feelings of alienation by directing his path and slowly moving him closer and closer to the farm he’s been avoiding. He becomes so anxious to escape that he seems to have forgotten his desire to avoid potential interaction with the locals.
Themes
Thinking the horse has gone farther into the woods, the man decides to leave in the opposite direction, over the hill. As he walks, he tries to convince himself that the horse hadn’t intended to attack him and was just being playful. However, as he reaches the hill’s crest, he sees the statuesque and “ghostly” horse standing in the middle of the field, watching the woods. He immediately “slither[s] down the bank” to hide. He cannot stop reacting as if the horse is intentionally antagonizing him, even has he tries to calm himself down by thinking that anyone rational would just walk away and ignore the horse. He resolves to go back the way he came, below the hill crest.
At this point, the man is still trying to outsmart the horse and clinging to the idea that his civilized rationality is more powerful than nature. But on some level, he also knows that he is vulnerable to the horse, so he tries to get an advantage by sneaking away. Once again, this man has failed to understand of acknowledge the reality of the situation: no matter how many times he tells himself that the horse can’t possibly be after him, the evidence points in that direction. His refusal to accept this is a sign of his unwillingness to accept other uncomfortable truths—that he is afraid of the horse, that he doesn’t belong in this landscape anymore, and that civilized people are still subject to the power of nature. His willingness to cling to his deluded sense of dominance prolongs the encounter with the horse and interferes with his return to the village.
Themes
Rain soaks through the man’s suit as he walks, and he feels as though the horse is watching him through the hedge above. At the side of the woods, he climbs back up the hill and peeks his head through the hedge, and he’s reassured to see that the field is empty. But just as he is hoping that the horse has forgotten him and wandered off, he feels the thunder of its hooves as it charges. The horse comes so close that he imagines the “spattering whack of its hooves” is “inside his head,” although he escapes unharmed back into the woods.
All the while, the man becomes becoming more and more miserable as the rain soaks through the insufficient protection offered by his suit and shoes. The suit represents his connection to civilization, which is not proving capable of protecting him from nature’s attacks—each time he notices the suit, it has become more disheveled. The rain soaks through his clothes, blurring the boundary between him and the world around him. This mirrors the way that his fear makes it hard for him to distinguish between what’s happening in his mind and what’s happening in reality. When his strategy to avoid the horse fails, he experiences the next attack so viscerally that he feels like horse has actually entered his head. And, given the way the horse’s attacks continually remind him that his fears are real, the horse has, in a way, gotten into his head.
Themes
The man no longer cares about the rain or his suit, and he sits in the mud as he takes deep breaths to calm himself. His pants are torn, and his jacket is plastered with mud. This last attack has, at least, offered him clarity: now he knows that the horse is “definitely after him.” So, he arms himself with two large stones that he can use to defend himself. The man knows that there’s a river bordering the farmland beyond the woods, and that he can follow this river back to the road. The riverbank is studded with “deep hollows” covered in pebbles, in which he can take shelter if the horse charges at him again.
By sitting down in the mud without concern for the state of his suit or his dignity, the man has begun to relinquish his grip on civilization and to accept that he cannot outsmart nature. He is subject to its rules, and the only way to best the horse is to resort to a primal, violent response. Likewise, he has relinquished any remaining nostalgic memories of the setting and transitioned to a utilitarian assessment of familiar landmarks, like the river.
Themes
At the edge of the woods, the trees are so close together that they form a nearly “impassable barrier” through which the man attempts to push himself. He stops only when he sees the horse in the field below him. Fortunately it hasn’t yet noticed him, and he now thinks he can escape by his original route, over the hill to the farm. He notices that the sky has darkened, and as he begins to run through the thickening rain, the horse yet again charges at him. He spins around and throws one of his stones at the horse, which shies away. The second stone hits its flank, driving it farther off.
Two barriers stand in the way of the man’s escape: the interwoven limbs of the trees and the horse standing like a sentinel in the field. Although he has prepared to defend himself with violence if necessary, the man makes one final attempt to slink away without confronting the horse, his sense of alienation, or his fear. Yet, as if by magic, the horse seems to have anticipated this move, and it meets him once again on the hill where the encounter began. Although—or perhaps because—his other strategies have failed, when the man finally resorts to throwing his stones, he doesn’t seem to hold much faith in their ability to protect him, and he is surprised when the horse shies away. His attempts to approach the situation rationally have failed so miserably that he initially struggles to accept the ease with which his violence seems to stop the horse’s violence.
Themes
While the horse retreats, the man collects more stones. He feels a murderous rage toward the horse thinks that its owner also deserves to die for letting the wild beast run loose. He selects another two stones and comes back into the field “in open battle,” but this time he finds that the horse is “watching him calmly” from a short distance. He works himself into a state of despair while throwing the stones and shouting at the horse to leave him alone; it watches this performance impassively.
The man’s earlier behavior rendered him impotent in the face of nature’s—and the horse’s—fury. But now, meeting violence with violence, he feels empowered. He is playing by nature’s rules, having abandoned civilization’s rules, to the point that he would—in the moment—be happy to murder the horse’s owner. Anger wells up to displace his fear, and he no longer hides from the horse and takes an offensive strategy instead. It seems that the horse, in contrast to the man, has nothing to prove. The man’s temporary empowerment arises from desperation, rather than from an acceptance of his place in the world.
Themes
However, when the man pauses to stretch his sore shoulder, the horse charges. He snatches up two more stones from the ground and hits it with both in rapid succession. The horse retreats in the face of this assault, then slowly walks back up the field toward the man, shaking its head and dropping its gaze. The man feels a strange pang of pity for the animal, but he tells it to “keep [its] distance” so it will “not get hurt.” The horse stops walking, “almost obediently,” and watches him climb to the top of the hill.
If the man has won the encounter, he has done so by accepting nature’s rules. But he has merely traded the control of one external force (civilization) for another: nature. His suit aligned him with civilization, and now violently hurling the rocks aligns him with nature. But he doesn’t feel victorious, because he hasn’t yet resolved the tension of his nostalgic yearnings, his alienation from the landscape, and his desire to both belong in the country and to return to civilization. His pity for the animal indicates his unwillingness to actually harm it, despite his earlier anger, and perhaps indicates an awareness of his own pitiful state after the encounter.
Themes
The man is soaked through from the rain and feels as though the farm is miles away. Too exhausted to fear the horse any longer, he grabs more stones and struggles through the fields amid thick mud and heavy rain. At the last field before the farm, he looks back and sees that the horse is still watching him but has not moved from where he left it. When the man reaches the farm gate, he drops his stones and has the sudden urge to lay down and surrender himself to the rain and the mud. But he hoists himself over the gate, and as he looks back, he finds that the rain has become so thick that he can no longer discern the horse on the hill. The landscape looks dead and barren, the sky and land blurring together.
Anger and violence, although powerful primal forces in this story, are also costly. The man’s exhaustion makes his final exit from the field painfully slow, and his tiredness arises equally from his initial attempts to escape nature and his later surrender to it. The farm represents a buffer zone between the natural world he’s trying to escape and the civilization he’s trying to return to in the village, in that it’s more rural than the village but safer and tamer than the wilderness. The man’s desire to strip his clothes off and bathe in the rain seems to indicate his final urge to try to recapture his childhood relationship with nature. But given the harrowing experience in nature he’s just had, the world he remembers is likely only a nostalgic recreation and never truly existed. The way that the thick rain completely obscures the landscape only reinforces his sense of isolation and suggests that what he is trying to recapture is imaginary, or inaccessible, because he’s clearly not the country boy he once was. Even if his idealized world did exist, he would no longer belong there.
Themes
The man takes shelter under a shed, surrounded by farm machinery, and catches his breath. The farm smells exactly like it did 12 years ago, and there are still swallows’ nests in the rafters. The man remembers dead foxes hanging from one of the shed’s beams. His encounters with the horse already seem surreal and distant, a vague mixture of “fright and shame.” He notices that his chest hurts and wonders if the ordeal strained his heart. The man strips off his soggy, soiled suit and begins to wring the water out of it. But then he suddenly stops and stares at the ground, as though he’s missing an important part of his brain.
On the farm, the man confronts a version of his nostalgic memories that isn’t romanticized. The farm smells and looks like a place where hard, dirty work happens, and the memory of the dead foxes reinforces the lesson that violence is inextricably woven into a life lived close to nature. The strange encounter with the horse has taken an emotional and physical toll on the man, and it hasn’t resolved his feelings of alienation. He has left the fields, but he also strips off his once-civilized clothing and stands exposed to the elements. The sensation that he is missing an important part of his brain is ambiguous and could apply to any one of the many facets of his adventure. It could reflect the fact that has given into primal violence, relinquishing his hold—even if temporarily—on civilization’s rational order. It might also represent the alarming and chilling realization that he no longer belongs in his “home-country,” which has deprived him of a sense of connection and belonging. Finally, it could suggest that nature’s violence has forced him to trade his fuzzy, romanticized memories for an acknowledgement of its harsh reality. In any case, the story ends with the man feeling empty and broken rather than triumphant or content, suggesting that nature is a brutal and sobering force rather than a comforting one, and that clinging to nostalgic memories can be self-destructive.
Themes
