Chris's major flaw in Horses of the Night
Imagination limits reality. In “Horses of the Night”, Margaret Laurence suggests that attempts to live unconstrained by an uncontrollable circumstance using imagination as an escape can prove insufficient and detrimental. Chris, the protagonist, is born into the Great Depression, has a dream that cannot come true. Chris attempts to escape this circumstance to realize his dreams. These attempts at escape leave Chris in a broken psychological state. Chris has a dream of becoming an engineer but his environment prohibits him. He is a hopeful young man who moves into Manawaka to attend high school. The relationship between Chris and Vanessa offers insight into Chris’s inner most thoughts and motivations. He says, “What I am going to be is an engineer, civil engineer.(287)” This statement is juxtaposed with “The Depression did not get better, as everyone had been saying it would. It got worse, and so did the drought.(288)” This contrast is used to establish the central conflict of the story, Chris’s unachievable dream. The Depression is Chris’s inescapable circumstance that he has no way of overcoming. Although he is innovative and hardworking there is nothing he can do about his environment. Throughout the exposition, of the story Grandfather Connor acts as a reminder of Chris’s reality. He references Chris’s deceased father by mocking Chris for chasing his dreams. “Wilf wasn’t much good, even as a young man… If the boy takes after his father, it’s a poor lookout for him. (285)” This quote not only foreshadows the inevitability of Chris’ failure, but also reminds him of his hopeless reality. The Depression is described by Vanessa as an uncontrollable force brought upon the people by a malevolent God. An allusion to the Bible is made when Vanessa describes the depression’s effect on Manawaka as “Children of Israel being afflicted by Jehovah but never in real danger of annihilation(288)” this again reaffirms the circumstance of Chris’s environment are