Red Pony
...nd that help animate and enliven the story~{!/~}s events, while allowing you to better understand the type of lives the characters in the story hold. Jody Tiflin is young boy who changes dramatically during the course of the story. As the story progresses, Jody becomes more mature and responsible. After the death of his pony Gabilan who died of straggles, Jody~{!/~}s father permits him to have another horse if he was willing to work for it over the summer. Motivated by his love for horses, Jody starts to go about his work with unprecedented seriousness. Instead of dumping ~{!0~}the can of grain to the chickens so that they had to leap over each other and struggle to get it~{!-~}, he spread the wheat so far and so carefully that the hens couldn~{!/~}t find some of it at all.~{!1~} (61) As an attempt to please his mother, Jody also vows to break his habit of filling his lunch pail with slimy, suffocated reptiles and bugs. Even his shoulders ~{!0~}swayed a little with maturity and importance.~{!1~} (60) In this coming-of-age story, Jody matures and grows, learning about life and the ways of nature along the way. The characters in the story seem quite real and believable. Jody is a young boy ~{!0~}with hair like dusty yellow grass and shy polite gray eyes~{!1~} (2), used to the way of horses and well-schooled in the hard work and demands of a ranchers~{!/~} life. His father is a disciplinarian, expecting for Jody to obey him in everything without question. Billy Buck, the hired hand is a ~{!0~}broad, bandy-legged little man~{!1~} (1) and the finest hand with horses, who later aids J...