“The Power of Horses” Story by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn Essay

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The Power of Horses is one of fifteen stories contained in the book The Power of Horses and Other Stories by a famous American short stories writer, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn. The author depicts the culture and the life of people in South Dakota, where she was born. The power of horses describes the story of an Indian girl, Marlene, whose family has many horses, but they have to sell them. Its central themes are challenges, which the Dakota people were facing, and complex relationships between the main characters.

The events take place on a farm in South Dakota. One day, an Indian girl, Marlene, one of the protagonists of the story, cooks beets with her mother. The readers can notice a conflict between them as the girl does this hot and uncomfortable job reluctantly. Then, she sees her father talking to an unknown white man. When they have run horses into a corral, Marlene asks her mother why her father was going to sell them, but the woman does not want to answer at first. After a while, she tells her daughter a story about her childhood, when her family had many horses, there was a mystic one, which could talk to people. However, white men came to their farm and took their animals when her “grandfather died because, they said, they were going to breed game birds there” (Cook-Lynn 72). The girl’s mother supposes that these people killed the horses.

Another protagonist of The Power of Horses is the girl’s father. He realizes that he does not want to sell the horses. That is why he wakes up his daughter the next morning after that white man’s arrival. He asks Marlene to ride with him to take the horses to the north pasture before the horse buyer returns. When they reached the ridge, “the girl and her father stopped and let the horses go their way, wildly” (Cook-Lynn 77). Even though the grass is short and it will be challenging to provide food for the horses, her father decided to keep them. It is unclear whether the horses will survive the drought conditions on their own, and the family will be impoverished by their loss.

In the story The Power of Horses, the author addresses the issue of the relationships between generations. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn highlights the significant influence of both parents on this young girl. They teach their daughter to respect their traditional familial values. More than that, another important idea of the story is that people should never give up despite the circumstances. The girl’s father represents an example of such a strong character. He, out of respect for the mythic power of his horses, decides to free them rather than sell them to an insensitive horse buyer.

The Power of Horses is a thought-provoking story whose events lead to an inescapable conclusion. By releasing the horses, Marlene’s father has reclaimed his dignity and autonomy and reestablished continuity between his family’s experience and its tribal heritage. Furthermore, each member of the family has contributed to this outcome – her mother in invoking mythic history, and Marlene in grasping and extending it. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn managed to plunge readers into the atmosphere of this severe period of American history and show the difficulties Dakota people had to encounter.

Work Cited

Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth. The Power of Horses and Other Stories. University of Arizona Press, 2006.

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