The Horse Dealer's Daughter

Two more pertinent points are made by the author, in regards to the grandmother, follow in quick succession; both allude to further yet-to-be seen gloom within the story. O’Connor writes of the grandmother “[s]he didn’t intend for the cat to be left alone in the house for three days because he would miss her too much and she was afraid he might brush against one of the gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself” (1043) and of the way she is dressed “[i]n case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (1043). These two observations are innocent enough on the surface but provide true intent on the foreshadowing that O’Connor uses throughout the story. It is these two devices, irony and foreshadowing, that I feel are prominent and important aspects of the story and are evidenced in my quest to decipher this story.

But Jack cannot change the past. Rather, he must reflect on it as it really happened, allowing those reflections to guide his future conduct and to enrich his relationships with those whom he has helped or hurt. By the end of the story, instead of running from his past, Jack has begun to make restoration for its mistakes by finally marrying his beloved Anne and opening his home to Elliot Burden, the man he long believed to be his father. Jack’s contemplation of the past leads him not to despair, but to a deeper understanding of and compassion for the human race.

Although Jack admits that Susie has left, he shifts his attention to another desire, the desire to bring her death to justice through an unlawful path. “‘We’ve just built a tent,” Mr.Harvey said. ‘The neighbors saw us. We’re friends now’ ‘You know something,” my father said. (57). Jack, like everyone else has flaws and his stubbornness leads him to doing something he would not normally do. His unextinguishable passion to find Susie’s murderer leads him to coincidently believe that Mr.Harvey is Susie’s killer. However Mr.Harvey is the murderer of Susie, the evidence shown to Jack and the police show no evidence that Mr.Harvey committed the murder, which further proves that Jack is chasing a blank slate. Jack needs a scapegoat for his grief and chooses to find revenge in unproven subjects. “‘A father’s suspicion’ she began. ‘Is as powerful as a mother’s intuition” (87) says Jack. Once again Jack is trying to find a reason to make his illogical suspicion logical. Jack refuses to believe that Susie’s death occurred without a killer. He puts himself in denial and by doing so he will grieve forever. Jack’s perpetual grief will go on as long he finds things to place guilt on. Furthermore Sebold shows that rage and denial can be used to deal with the death of a loved one.

He has difficulties recognizing when to express emotions, causing his family members to continually feel like he is not emotionally present. His constant guilt for not being able to save his daughter causes him to withdraw from his family. Although he keeps himself busy, Jack still becomes overcome with grief at times, leading him to break the bottled ships that he and Susie worked on. He also attempts to replace the emptiness by developing a relationship with Lindsey. Jack tries to make up for the absence of Lindsey’s mother by helping her learn to shave, although the subject is quickly changed to Susie. Jack’s determination to catch the killer clouds his sense of parental judgment as he encourages Lindsey to break into Mr. Harvey’s house. This instance shows how lost and out of touch with reality he has become. His grief also prevents him from developing a strong relationship with his son, Buckley, who constantly feels overshadowed by his older sister’s death. His severe reactions greatly affect the relationships he still has, driving his wife away and forcing Lindsey to grow up prematurely. By holding so tightly to his memories with Susie, he fails to create new, happy memories with his two children.

In a superficial society, one may be labeled by how they appear, but what lies inside them could be completely different. This is demonstrated in “Girl Who Loved her Horses,” by Drew Hayden Taylor. A young girl, Danielle, surprises the other children with a spectacular piece of art. Danielle, although seemingly shy and invisible, possesses a determination for drawing her horse, and inside, is full of strength and energy. Danielle is shy and introverted to the point that the other children hardly realize she exists.

When Penny started leading the farm, she had absolutely no idea what she was doing. She had to look for professional help to teach her the basics of caring for horses. The farm was very tight on

John Grady Cole, the last in a long line of west Texas ranchers, is, at sixteen, poised on the sorrowful, painful edge of manhood. When he realizes the only life he has ever known is disappearing into the past and that cowboys are as doomed as the Comanche who came before them, he leaves on a dangerous and harrowing journey into the beautiful and utterly foreign world that is Mexico. In the guise of a classic Western, All the Pretty Horses is at its heart a lyrical and elegiac coming-of-age story about love, friendship, and loyalty that will leave John Grady, and the reader, changed forever. When his mother decides to sell the cattle ranch he has grown up working, John Grady Cole and his friend Lacey Rawlins

This quote explains that her Uncle doesn’t really care about any of her family because her sister died in his care, brought her mother to a “crazy folk” facility, and is selling her family’s farm for a choice he made.

King also uses violent auditory imagery to establish Jack's failure at his role as protector. Jack leaves the action in Danny's room, and "he heard the coloring book slap twice, and then his wife screamed in pain... He went through Ullman's office into the kitchen, slamming the heavy part of his thigh into the corner of Ullman's oak desk...he slapped on the kitchen overheads and crossed to the sink... A dish fell to the floor and exploded" (King 192). Jack is slapping, slamming into, and exploding various objects, not one of which were the wasps. This reinforces Jack's inability to protect his family. Jack attempts to be masculine through acts of violence, and fails, only succeeding in abusing more feminine domestic items, such as a desk, a light switch, and a dish, suggesting that Jack is not a protector but wishes he was. King uses passive diction to suggest that Jack is not as masculine as he pretends to be. When Jack returns to Danny's room after Wendy and Danny battled the wasps, "Jack crossed to the bunk setup, and as he glanced at the table beside it, his skin crawled into goose

This is the first time jacks true feelings come out and he turns into psycho jack which is connected with the theme. This Scene we get with jack shows the importance of this topic and how it has a deeper meaning.

This causes Jack to be driven off the edge in hatred, which also causes his family to be in danger of abuse yet again.

After riding along a little further, the family is involved in a car accident. The main reason that the family is involved in the car accident is due to the grandmother. The grandmother remembers a mansion that she visits as a young girl. She is eager to go, because she wants the children to see how she grew up. This further states how the grandmother social class, because she lived in a mansion. During the time of the grandmother’s life, only plantation owners and their family lived in mansions. This also stressed the social class of the grandmother, because you can tell from this that the

The Horse Dealer’s Daughter is about a daughter that is left behind after her father has suddenly passed. Her brother’s already have their options about what they are going to do now. Sitting around the table waiting to hear what their sister is going to do the doctor shows up. Supposedly this doctor is a family friend. He ask’s Mabel what she is going to do now that her father has passed and has left them in nothing. I think at this point the doctor hasn’t really realized he even has feelings towards Mabel. The doctor only see’s her as a friend.

Early in their lives, two young sisters, Ruth and Lucille, experience loss and abandonment from the men in the family. Their grandfather had died in a train derailment into Lake Fingerbone before they were born, and their father leaves them while they are very young. Then their mother commits suicide, but not before dropping the girls off on their grandmother’s porch. Moreover, then, “she sailed in Bernice’s Ford from the top of a cliff named Whiskey Rock into the blackest depth of the lake (23), again into Lake Fingerbone. After only a few months their grandmother dies leaving the girls to the remainder of the family, a collection of eccentric females. The girls deal with all of this by relying on each other. Soon, their great Aunt’s,

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal (WILL ADD SOURCE NAME HERE)." To many, the famous opening lines of the Declaration of Independence were intertwined heavily with the underlying infrastructure of a nation of “equality and freedom." Yet, if such words were to be “self-evident," where is the mention of women? It is simply absent. During the Age of Enlightenment, patriarchal society deemed women to be “less” than men. To quote from Barbara Cutter’s work, Gender Oppression During the Age of Enlightenment, “The idea of enlightened reason excluded women because of what was seen by many as their innate feminine characteristics, which were viewed as inferior, weak and childlike” (Cutter). While the era brought around revolutionary ideas that changed both the American and European forefront, women were entirely excluded from societal progress because their “innate feminine characteristics [...] were inferior, weak and childlike” (Cutter). As a consequence, there were societal norms constructed for women that were highly destructive. However, while the ideas of feminine oppression were prevalent throughout the 1700’s, authors incorporate a distinctive theme of oppression towards women into their literature during the era. Specifically, in the well-acclaimed short story,”The Horse Dealer’s Daughter," author D. H. Lawrence crafts a narrative about a