Chapter two “The Great Mountain” and Chapter 4 “The Leader of the People” are different from each other. Although, there are some similar events in these two chapters with two different characters being represented. Gitano is a paisano or a Spanish peasant while Carl’s father in law is an old man who lives in Monterey that is just visiting Jody. Gitano’s visit has a purpose; this will uplift Jody’s spirit in his desire to explore the mountain.
Carl Tiflin hates these two people that have great influence in his son’s life. This can be considered as one of the similarities of the two chapters. Carl Tiflin is placed in an adversarial position as the enemy of what he sees as impracticality and softness aspiration, adventure, and history n short, the finer human spirit that soars above the mundane life of everyday grubbing for existence ( 1992). Carl complains of his father-in-law’s endless talking about his past involvement with Indians and pioneers who settled in America. While on Chapter two, from the moment Gitano arrives, his spirit uplifted toward the mountains, he seems one with God, or at least something higher than the natural, physical world of the ranch. His nemesis is Carl Tiflin, the practical man who places value on animals and people according to their ability to work and help make the ranch successful. Carl belittles as “soft” everything that the old man represents. He is angered by Gitano’s quiet insistence that he will stay at the ranch and do small jobs, angered by the sympathy that others in the family show toward the old man, sensing full well the parallels between old Easter and Gitano.
The initiating incident in the story -that which sets the rest of the action in motion-is the appearance of the old man Gitano. He is mystical rather than materialistic in sentiment; his actions are guided not by reason and the five senses, but by deep and ancient feelings (2006). He appears mysteriously from out of nowhere and as mysteriously disappears. He inexplicably announces that he has come back to the place where he was born and repeatedly insists that he will stay until he dies, even though there is no explanation for why he must do this and no hope that he can actually stay. Gitano carries a deerskin and a rapier like magical totems, cherished religious and traditional relics. Jody recognizes that the old man and his relics are part of some kind of spiritual truth to which he is drawn.
Gitano’s identification with the spiritual rather than the material, practical world is also found in his connection with the Great Mountains. Like them, he is deep, unknowable, and mysterious. Unlike most people, he has actually visited the mountains and, at the end, disappears heading toward them ( 1997). Jody recognizes something sympathetic between the two, realizing that he is attracted to the old man just as he is pulled toward the mountains. Gitano is also identified with old Easter, the horse who has outlived his usefulness on this earth, as Gitano has himself. Jody, on the other hand, has been touched by Gitano’s presence, almost as if the old man had been sent precisely to him to give him some sense of the greatness of the mountains, sent as an answer to Jody’s early curiosity, his hunger for some experience with mystery. Gitano somehow verifies human qualities greater than those his father displays or tolerates in others. After Gitano has gone, Jody again gazes at the mountains and simultaneously thinks of the old man. The life of great poetic meaning, exemplified by Gitano, seems to be one with tradition and the past. Joining Gitano on his journey into the mountains, where the body will surely die, is the old horse, Easter, whose name denotes a spiritual resurrection in the future.
The grandfather stands for everything Carl Tiflin hates. And the grandfather is the one who embodies greatness and the hope for passing along to subsequent generations the adventuresome spirit that led to his and his generation’s courageous trek toward the West (1992). Grandfather was the leader of these brave people, facing hostile Indians and famine on a wagon train in their quest for the unknown. Jody thinks of his grandfather and the other pioneers as heroes, “a race of giants”.
The tragedy is that this great pioneering way of life has died out. Something small and petty has taken its place. Even before his grandfather tells him that “westering has died out of the people”, Jody realizes this that perhaps only Billy Buck has something of the necessary greatness in him ( 1992). Those in control in the present generation, unlike the pioneers, are smaller men, interested in diminishing life, killing the spirit, and belittling the importance of the tradition and the past. The common element in the four stories that comprise The Red Pony is the affirmation of the human heart, great in imagination, sensitivity, aspiration, and spiritual meaning. This is real “life.” It must always battle and seek to rise above an opposite death force found in devouring, dog-eat-dog nature and in the deadening smallness of men whose vision is limited to the mundane practicalities of natural survival.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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