"The Red Pony" by John Steinbeck Quiz

Answer: Gabilan

Jody thought about all the beautiful and noble things he knew before choosing a name for the pony. He considered naming it Gabilan Mountains, the beautiful mountain range in California where the story takes place. Billy Buck suggested that he shorten the name to Gabilan. The word Gabilan comes from the Spanish word "gavilán", which means hawk.

Answer: At Thanksgiving

Gabilan was not an easy pony to train, which was a good thing, because, as Jody himself said, a horse that does not resist training is nothing but a miserable horse. Jody and Billy Buck took excellent care of him, and he grew faster than they anyone expected. His father believed he would be able to ride him by Thanksgiving, which was just three weeks away.

Answer: Billy Buck

Jody prayed that it wouldn't rain during Thanksgiving, but the rain had persisted steadily in the days leading up to the holiday. He made sure to keep Gabilan in the dry stable so he wouldn't get wet and rarely took him outside. One day, when the sun finally came out, Billy Buck, a horse expert who worked on Carl Tiflin's ranch, suggested letting the pony enjoy the sunshine, explaining that animals don't like to be cooped up all the time. Billy promised that it wouldn't rain, and even if it did, it wouldn't be a big deal because horses are strong animals. Unfortunately, it did rain, and poor Gabilan caught a cold. Billy, filled with remorse for his mistake, tried for days to help the pony recover, but it was to no avail.

Steinbeck provides the reader with many hints, signs, and images that foreshadow Gabilan's death. For example, at the beginning of the chapter, Jody sees "two big black buzzards" whose shadows "slipped smoothly and quickly ahead of them," and later Gabilan's eyes are described as having "big sparks of red fire in them like oakwood embers."

Answer: Hitting a buzzard with a stone

Jody went to sleep in the stable to look after the pony. In the morning, when Jody woke up, the barn door was open and the pony was gone. He ran outside to look for Gabilan. When he climbed one of the ridges to catch his breath, he saw a sight that shocked him: the red pony was lying on the ground, surrounded by buzzards waiting for the inevitable moment of death.

When he saw one of them peck out the pony's eye, his emotions took over and he began striking the bird again and again with a sharp white quartz stone, until Carl and Billy Buck, who had found him, had to pull him away. Carl Tiflin reminded his son that it was not the bird that had killed the pony, which angered Billy Buck, who replied bitterly, "Course he knows it... man, can't you see how he'd feel about it?"

Answer: False

The stranger's name is Gitano. Carl allowed him to stay the night, eat dinner and sleep in the small room in the workers house, but in the morning after breakfast he must go on his way. Carl's reasoning was that, as a small farm owner, he did not have the money or medicine to care for an old man. Another mouth to feed was too much for him.

However, on several occasions he treated Gitano cruelly; for example, when speaking about his old horse Easter, he said that "old things ought to be put out of their misery," clearly intending for Gitano to hear his words.

Answer: Sword

Jody was fascinated by the stranger. He saw him as mysterious as the mountains: "There were ranges back as far as you could see, but behind the last range, piled up against the sky, there was a great unknown country." He was a man of few words, and it was impossible to know what lay within him.

Jody's curiosity got the better of him, and he walked toward the workers' house to peek inside. He saw Gitano sitting in an armchair, holding a gleaming rapier with a golden hilt. Gitano told him that he had received the sword from his father, but he could not say where his father had gotten it. Jody intuitively understood that he should not tell anyone about it, as doing so might destroy a "fragile structure of truth" whose exposure could shatter it.

In the last part of the chapter, careful readers will notice hints that Gitano goes into the mountains to end his horse's life and his own. Birth and death are recurring themes in the story.

Answer: $5

$5 was a significant amount back then, and Jody was expected to work for it all summer. Once the colt is born, he will have to learn how to raise it by himself. This chapter echoes one of the story's central themes: responsibility and independence. Carl takes his son's education and training seriously and grants him a measure of autonomy. Rather than threatening to revoke the gift, he requires Jody to earn his share of the horse through hard work; in return, Jody will gain ownership of the new foal.

Answer: She died after a cesarean section, but her foal was successfully delivered.

Billy Buck had lost much of his self-confidence following the death of the pony Gabilan. This time he was not unequivocal and did not assure Jody that nothing could go wrong. He tried to reassure him instead by noting that Nellie was a good mare who had foaled successfully in the past: "She ought to this time."

On the day of the birth, to Billy's dismay, he discovered that the foal was completely upside down. Panicked, he performed a C-section on the mare, crying out for Jody to look away. Billy's face was flushed with tension, and his body trembled as he held the little black foal in his arms. Jody tried to feel joy over the newborn foal, but the image of Billy Buck's bloodied face and "haunted, tired eyes" remained etched in his memory.

Billy's inability to save the animal highlights another central theme in Steinbeck's stories: the helplessness of human beings in the face of the harsh natural world and the inevitable cycle of life and death, regardless of skill, effort, or good intentions.

Answer: Mouse hunting

The mice hid in the old haystack and began to fatten up. Jody was impatient to drive them toward the dogs so that they would devour them. He even invited his grandfather to take part in the "entertaining" activity. At first, his grandfather agreed, but later, as his mood darkened, he politely declined. Jody, who proves to be a sensitive and empathetic child, felt saddened to see his grandfather sitting alone on the porch and decided to postpone the hunt in favor of sitting with him.

Answer: He constantly talked about his past leading a wagon train across the plains

The journey to the American West, as Jody's mother described it, was the highlight of Grandpa's life - a role he had been born to play. She asked Carl to be sensitive and patient with him. Later, however, in a sad and painful moment, Grandpa overhears Carl complaining about the repeated stories of the West. Carl apologizes, but his father-in-law responds with quiet hurt: "An old man doesn't see things sometimes. Maybe you're right. The crossing is finished. Maybe it should be forgotten..."

Grandpa feels deep sorrow that only little boys still care to hear about the past, and, more painfully, that the dream of the West is dying in the eyes of the people. He remembers the group who once gathered together and "carried life out here," and that he been their leader.

It is also interesting to place Carl's character in a historical context, as a man who belongs to a generation shaped by the idea expressed by historian Frederick Jackson Turner that "at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history."