Tanya Is Amazing

The short story “Horses of the Night” by Margaret Laurence tells of a boy, Chris, who has to move from his home in Shallow Creek to live in Manawaka to live with distant relatives so he can attend high school  for the next three years. Chris is tall, and lanky with an angular face, the bones showing through his brown skin, his grey eyes slightly slanted, and his hair appeared to be bleached a light yellow. Vanessa, his six-year-old distant cousin, seldomly thought that he looked handsome. He walked into the Brick House where he would be staying for the next three years with Grandmother and Grandfather Connor. Chris is a dynamic character who has many changes throughout the story, going from a sweet, ambitious, imaginative boy from up North, to a once violent young man in the army who is eventually sent home for being what the doctors describe as “passive.”

Chris first walks into the Brick House as a friendly, outgoing person. He greets Vanessa, not by introducing himself and a formal handshake, but by simply saying “Hi Vanessa,” and immediately shows warmth and kindness towards the 6-year-old. Chris comes from a poor family, but stays calm when Grandfather Conner speaks of his father, without a word of kind thought and pride towards him. Chris is what Vanessa describes as a respecter of persons. Chris is an entertainer and incredible with kids, such as Vanessa. He makes many little crafts, with detail and often quite fascinating. He is creative, and almost a little kid himself. He tells Vanessa stories of his home in Shallow Creek; He would tell her of his home made of trees that grew by the lake, and his horses, Duchess and Firefly, who were apparently sleek and could be racers one day. Chris is a dreamer. He is ambitious and determined when he claims that when he is done high school he will become an engineer. He doesn’t say that he wants to be an engineer, but he says, “What I am going to be is an engineer…” with confidence that he will. Vanessa absolutely adores him because of his stories and imagination. Before Chris leaves to go home, Vanessa went into the Brick House and explained that she would want to be a traveler someday too. She feared that he would say that girls could not be travelers, but he didn’t. Instead he said, “…anybody can do anything at all, anything if they set their minds to it…”. When Chris’ mother wrote a month later, it was discovered that he didn’t make it home, but got of the train early, cashed in his ticket, and thumbed a lift to Winnipeg. 

Chris is a traveler. He came back to Manawaka after two years of not seeing him. He is selling vacuums, and trying to save up enough money to eventually go to college. The next time he comes to visit he is now selling socks made from a mechanism that appears to be similar to an old fashioned sewing machine attached to a ball of wool which is made into a pair of socks. Vanessa has been impacted by Chris and his imagination and decides to stay at Shallow Creek for a week or so. She finally sees the place in comparison to her imagination of the place. Not as beautiful as it appeared in her head, but none the less, it was Shallow Creek. But some months after the war begins, Chris leaves Shallow Creek and joins the army. Chris had become violent. Violent was never a word that Vanessa could ever associate with Chris. He was in the army. He had gone to war, but violence never suited Chris. Vanessa receives a letter. She refuses to tell her mother of the contents, though she finds out six months later that he had been put into the provincial mental hospital because of a mental breakdown and he had refused to be violent any longer.

Chris has changed so much during the story “Horses of the Night.” Whether he is a teenage boy telling stories to six-year-old Vanessa, almost like a child himself, or a passive aggressive young man gone to war and eventually put in a hospital due to a mental breakdown, he has been a strong, prominent character that you can’t help but feel for.