Previous
Symbols
The black horse symbolizes nature’s power. When it first appears, the young man has just realized that after 12 years away from the rural area where he grew up, the natural environment that brought him comfort and joy in childhood now makes him feel weak, foolish, and out of place. As he’s gazing out at a view he remembered, the horse suddenly appears and gallops past him over the crest of the hill. Like the bleak landscape, the animal seems both familiar to the man (he immediately recognizes it as a horse) and strangely hostile, running along “on its toes like a cat” and looking like a “nightmarish leopard.” And when the horse later charges at the man, he tries to find rational explanations for the animal’s aggression toward him. But none of the theories he comes up with—that the horse is upset because of the rain or has an abscess on its brain—seem to accurately explain its motivations. In this way, the horse represents the idea that people are fundamentally unable to comprehend nature’s mystery and immense power—a reality that makes the man feel increasingly alienated and afraid.
As the story progresses and the horse repeatedly follows and charges at the man, the animal comes to represent the idea that nature is more powerful than people, and that people can only hope to survive in nature if they play by its rules rather than trying to ignore or outsmart it. The horse embodies nature’s unbridled, violent power in that it’s aggressive, unpredictable, and unfazed by the rainstorm or the man. And the man quickly realizes that he can’t avoid playing by the horse’s rules: whenever he thinks he has outsmarted the animal, it suddenly appears in an unexpected spot or charges at him from an unanticipated angle. In fact, the man is only able to subdue the horse when he treats it with the same savagery that the horse has directed at him, pelting the animal with stones until it finally leaves him alone. The horse thus represents the mysteriousness and raw power of the natural world, qualities that force people to rely on their instincts and physical strength (rather than intellect or logic) to survive.
The Black Horse Quotes in The Rain Horse
The The Rain Horse quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Black Horse. 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:
).
The Rain Horse
Quotes
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.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
For several seconds he stared at the skyline, stunned by the unpleasantly strange impression the horse had made on him. Then the plastering beat of icy rain on his bare skull brought him to himself. The distance had vanished in a wall of grey.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
This was absurd. He took control of himself and turned back deliberately, determined not to give the horse one more thought. If it wanted to share the woods with him, let it. If it wanted to stare at him, let it. He was nestling firmly into these resolutions when the ground shook and he heard the crash of a heavy body coming down the wood.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Gasping for breath now and cursing mechanically, without a thought for his suit he sat down on the ground to rest his shaking legs, letting the rain plaster the hair down over his forehead and watching the dense flashing lines disappear abruptly into the soil all around him as if he were watching through thick plate glass. He took deep breaths in the effort to steady his heart and regain control of himself. His right trouser turn-up was ripped at the seam and his suit jacket was splashed with the yellow mud of the top field.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
The encounter had set the blood beating in his head and given him a savage energy. He could have killed the horse at that moment. That this brute should pick on him and play with him in this malevolent fashion was more than he could bear. Whoever owned it, he thought, deserved to have his neck broken for letting the dangerous thing loose.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
The ankle-deep clay dragged at him. Every stride was a separate, deliberate effort, forcing him up and out of the sucking earth, burdened as he was by his sogged clothes and load of stones and limbs that seemed themselves to be turning into mud.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Rain Horse LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Black Horse Symbol Timeline in The Rain Horse
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Black Horse appears in The Rain Horse. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Rain Horse
...but he’s suddenly startled by something in the corner of his eye. A “thin black horse” runs across the farmland and up to a wooded hill across from where the man...
(full context)
However, the memory of the strange horse interrupts the man’s reverie. He tries to rationalize what he saw, reasoning that horses often...
(full context)
...body goes cold. He considers his options, but neither leaving the woods nor driving the horse away seem feasible. The man is becoming increasingly unsettled by the horse watching him, but...
(full context)
...gets up and continues to run. Once he’s put some distance between himself and the horse, he spins around and sees that the animal has disappeared again. Brushing dirt and leaves...
(full context)
Thinking the horse has gone farther into the woods, the man decides to leave in the opposite direction,...
(full context)
Rain soaks through the man’s suit as he walks, and he feels as though the horse is watching him through the hedge above. At the side of the woods, he climbs...
(full context)
...mud. This last attack has, at least, offered him clarity: now he knows that the horse is “definitely after him.” So, he arms himself with two large stones that he can...
(full context)
...through which the man attempts to push himself. He stops only when he sees the horse in the field below him. Fortunately it hasn’t yet noticed him, and he now thinks...
(full context)
While the horse retreats, the man collects more stones. He feels a murderous rage toward the horse thinks...
(full context)
However, when the man pauses to stretch his sore shoulder, the horse charges. He snatches up two more stones from the ground and hits it with both...
(full context)
...rain and feels as though the farm is miles away. Too exhausted to fear the horse any longer, he grabs more stones and struggles through the fields amid thick mud and...
(full context)
...man remembers dead foxes hanging from one of the shed’s beams. His encounters with the horse already seem surreal and distant, a vague mixture of “fright and shame.” He notices that...
(full context)
