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The Miniature Leather Saddle
Horses represent the conflict between fantasy and reality that plagues Chris throughout his life. This conflict is especially visible in the juxtaposition between Duchess and Firefly, the horses that exist in Chris’s fantasy version of Shallow Creek, and the actual horses on his family’s farm, Floss and Trooper. As imaginary horses, Duchess and Firefly stand for Chris’s inability to accept reality. In Chris’s made-up version of Shallow Creek, his family lives in a treehouse, the lake holds dinosaur footprints, and beautiful Duchess and Firefly run freely through the meadows of Criss-Cross Ranch. When Vanessa finally visits Chris in Shallow Creek, however, this fantasy is shattered. In reality, there is no ranch, only a failing hay farm. Chris’s house is a shabby log cabin, and his actual horses, Floss and Trooper, are hardly fit to pull a wagon. When Vanessa is grown up and thinks of Chris alone and confined to a psychiatric hospital, a line from an old poem comes to mind: “Slowly, slowly, horses of the night—” She imagines that the days and nights must move excruciatingly slowly for Chris, and wonders if he’s stuck living in the reality he tried so hard to escape (symbolized by Floss and Trooper), or if he’s finally found a way to live forever in his dream world with Duchess and Firefly.
Horses Quotes in Horses of the Night
The Horses of the Night quotes below all refer to the symbol of Horses. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Horses of the Night
Quotes
He missed the horses, I thought with selfish satisfaction, more than he missed his family. I could visualize the pair, one sorrel and one black, swifting through all the meadows of summer.
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He hardly ever talked about it, but this once he told me about seeing the horses in the mud, actually going under, you know? And the way their eyes looked when they realised they weren’t going to get out. Ever seen horses’ eyes when they’re afraid, I mean really berserk with fear, like in a bush-fire? Ewen said a guy tended to concentrate on the horses because he didn’t dare think what was happening to the men.
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Slowly, slowly, horses of the night – The night must move like this for him, slowly, all through the days and nights. I could not know whether the land he journeyed through was inhabited by terrors, the old monster-kings of the lake, or whether he had discovered at last a way for himself to make the necessary dream perpetual.
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Horses Symbol Timeline in Horses of the Night
The timeline below shows where the symbol Horses appears in Horses of the Night. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Horses of the Night
Vanessa asks Chris to tell her about his two riding horses, Duchess and Firefly, who he raised and says he could train into racers. Vanessa is...
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...be taking the disappointment well. Instead she asks if he’ll be happy to see his horses tomorrow back in Shallow Creek. He says yes, but Vanessa wants him to say that...
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...wagon, and while this is what Vanessa expected, she hadn’t expected that the wagon and horses would be in such bad shape. He introduces her to the badly matched horses, Floss...
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...about the last war and his experience in it. He recalled a vivid image of horses who were stuck sinking into mud, and the terrified look in their eyes as they...
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...ranch she’s talking about, and Vanessa tells her it’s Chris’s ranch where he kept his horses Duchess and Firefly. Just then she remembers a line from a poem: “Slowly, slowly, horses...
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