The man at the center of “The Rain Horse” has returned to the countryside where he grew up after 12 years away, and he’s walked miles from the village to revisit a vista he remembers affectionately from his youth. The walk, however, has been too long, too wet, and too muddy; and when he arrives at the long-sought view, he finds it disappointing. He feels antagonized rather than comforted by nature, alienated and even mocked by a landscape that doesn’t match his nostalgic memory. And as the story progresses, the rain and the repeated attacks of a strange black horse reinforce his disconcerted feeling that he no longer belongs here. Even as he retreats into childlike behavior and begins to reconnect with nature, it’s clear that his desire to return to the nostalgic, romanticized version of his memories isn’t possible—he’s perhaps remembering a world that never truly existed. Through the bizarre and alarming violence of the man’s ordeal with the horse and his deteriorating mental state, the story suggests that nostalgia is a destructive and self-defeating fantasy.
The man recognizes the details of the land, but without the emotional response he expects, he feels estranged. The walk along “pleasantly remembered” lanes has, without conscious planning, brought him to the crest of this nostalgically remembered hill, which has represented the place in his memory since he left. This makes it clear that the purpose of his walk has been to recreate an old, idealized memory. When he was a child, the hill was alive and tantalizing with the promise of rabbits to hunt; now it is “sunken […] utterly deserted, shallow, bare […] black, and sodden.” As a boy, he felt at home among these hedges and fields. Now, however, he cannot conjure up any feeling other than “the dullness of feeling nothing.” And when a “nightmarish” black horse runs past him in the rain, he feels unsettled and unwelcome, making it even clearer that he has become a stranger in his homeland.
As the man continues to indulge his nostalgia, trying to “nudge the right feelings alive,” he stubbornly resists engaging with the landscape in ways that would require him to accept a less romanticized version of reality. He initially avoids nearby farms because he fears being remembered as much as he fears being run off as a trespasser. Recognition would force him to engage with the reality of the place as it is now rather than his memories; not being recognized would confirm his feeling that he no longer belongs here. As the rainstorm increases, he takes shelter in a scrubby oak wood, sinking into a trance that allows him to recapture some of his childlike feelings. Among the branches, he imagines himself to be “hidden and safe” and “warm” even though “the rain beat[s] steadily on his exposed shoulders.” He plays amusing little games and entertains himself by looking for the images of “dwarfs and continents and animals” on the tree bark. Just as earlier he tried to force himself into rekindling his youthful feelings, the man must put effort into interacting with the landscape in a way that he finds emotionally satisfying. But this nostalgic longing cannot insulate him from the violence of the storm and the roughness of his shelter, as when he suddenly realizes how cold he still is, because his insufficient shelter isn’t truly protecting him.
Indeed, the man cannot maintain his suspension between the past and the present, and his terrifying encounter with the horse forces him to reject his immature and nostalgic worldview. His efforts to retreat into the past leave him vulnerable to the aggressive horse; the animal sneaks up and begins to watch him while he’s immersed in his childish reverie. In this way, the story implies that the man’s nostalgia is self-destructive, since it blinds him to the truth of his surroundings in the present moment. Although he recognizes landmarks from his childhood (such as the river on the edge of the woods that leading back to the road), the horse’s repeated attacks force him to accept that he no longer belongs here. The horse is the ultimate symbol of how the safe, comforting natural world the man remembers no longer exists—and perhaps never existed. Now, nature is revealed as something mysterious, uncomfortable, and threatening, and the horse’s efforts to drive the man away represent this dramatically. The need to escape the horse pushes the man toward a utilitarian view of the landscape, as when he decides to head for the river because its deep hollows and shoals of pebbles offer “perfect places to defend himself.” He eventually defeats the horse by using the place to his advantage and throwing rocks at the animal. Only by literally digging into the mud—immersing himself in the unpleasant messiness of his surroundings rather than trying to retreat into the comfort and safety that he remembers—does he manage to subdue the horse.
Thus, when the unnamed man confronts his memories at the end of the story, they are no longer sentimental. Reaching a nearby farm with relief, rather than dread, he recognizes equipment and the decidedly non-romantic smells of “paraffin, creosote, fertilizer, dust.” He is overcome by the sensation of having lost an important part of his brain—which perhaps means that he has lost his desire to experience this place through the lens of nostalgia. But he has also lost the fear and embarrassment that held him back from accepting the reality of this scenery and his place in it. Spent from his encounter, he can face the mundane details of his memory, which are less poetic than his nostalgic version, but also less destructive than his efforts to recapture or recreate that vision.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Nostalgia ThemeTracker
Nostalgia Quotes in The Rain Horse
He had come too far. What had set out as a walk along pleasantly-remembered tarmac lanes had turned dreamily by gate and path and hedge-gap into a cross-ploughland trek, his shoes ruined, the dark mud of the lower fields inching up the trouser legs of his grey suit where they rubbed against each other. And now, there was a raw, flapping wetness in the air that would be downpour again at any minute. He shivered, holding himself tense against the cold.
Twelve years had changed him. This land no longer recognized him, and he looked back at it coldly, as at a finally visited home-country, known only through the stories of a grandfather; he felt nothing but the dullness of feeling nothing. Then, suddenly, impatience, with a whole exasperated swarm of little anxieties about his shoes, and the spitting rain and his new suit and that sky and the two-mile trudge through the mud to the road.
He felt hidden and safe. The sound of the rain as it rushed and lulled in the woods seemed to seal him in. Soon the chilly sheet lead of his suit became a tight, warm mould, and gradually he sank into a state of comfort that was all but trance, though the rain beat steadily on his exposed shoulders and trickled down the oak trunk on to his neck.
Under the long shed where the tractors, plough, binders and the rest were drawn up, waiting for their seasons, he sat on a sack thrown over a petrol drum, trembling, his lungs heaving. The mingled smell of paraffin, creosote, fertilizer, dust—all was exactly as he had left it twelve years ago.
Piece by piece he began to take off his clothes, wringing the grey water out of them, but soon he stopped that and just sat staring at the ground, as if some important part had been cut out of his brain.
