Pros: This is the REAL story of a horse's life, told with emotion and empathy.
Cons: If you can be touched at all, you'll probably be moved to tears.
The Bottom Line: For teens and adults, Black Beauty should be required reading. This is especially true if you love horses, or if you love animals, or if you don't love animals.
There are several reasons I chose to talk about Anna Sewell's classic story, Black Beauty, in its unabridged version, and only one of those reasons is happy.
Although you haven't seen any reviews of mine on horses (where are my categories, Epinions?), and I love dogs--I love horses even more, and this is a remarkably told story about a horse and its equine friends. That's the happy reason.
Now,pull the Kleenex close. I have to warn you, my other reasons are grim and unappetizing, as is the book itself in some spots.
Yesterday, or the day before--it's so hectic right now I'm not sure--I read an essay by CyndiA detailing what became of the cute little kitten someone dumped in a "nice" residential area. (Sorry, I haven't gotten links down yet, but check out her profile page for a heart-breaking, but necessary warning.)
Late last night, I saw a chow hit by a car. There was nothing I could do, but I sat up late at night, mourning the owner's indifference and cruelty.
Then, sometime around 4:30 this morning, I saw a homeless man feeding stray cats.
How do all those tie into Sewell's work of art? If you've read either of the condensed versions, or seen the video, you have some idea of the happiness and the torture that the main character, Black Beauty, suffered at human hands.
The black colt with a handsome white star--a thoroughbred, although Sewell doesn't say so--is born into a comfortable rural life. He plays with the other colts and leads an idyllic existence--until a fox hunt thunders through his meadow, upsetting his life forever.
A horse--Beauty's brother, as it happens--is put to death after he falls at a fence and breaks a leg. The horse's rider, a young member of the landed gentry, also dies. That incident foreshadows the tragedy that domestic animals sometimes suffer at human hands.
The story is lengthy--250 pages--and I won't recount the whole story. But there are chilling examples of how horses (and other animals, for that matter) were treated in England (and by extension, everywhere else) in the 1800s.
Horse lovers will cringe at the use of a "bearingrein." This is a second set of reins, with a second bit stuck in the horse's mouth, with a strap that ran down the neck, to force a horse's head up into an unnatural but "stylish" position. Beauty's mild temperament helps him bear the torture of being harnessed with such gear, but the temperamental Ginger, with her hotter temper, rebels. The consequences of the accident effectively seal Ginger's doom.
Beauty's journey takes him from rural England to London, and he passes from one set of owners to another. Beauty narrates the entire story, and from him we learn of Ginger's sad death, and of how he, too, eventually wishes he and other of London's cab horses could meet her end and be free of their pain and abuse.
Although the book is sad, there are light and happy chapters of Beauty's life as well. When he first is taken from his home, he goes to the home of Squire Gordon. The Gordons treat him well, and Beauty loves the head groom, John. Beauty's heroics include saving the Squire's wife, and helping lead other horses from a blazing barn. But each time Beauty finds happiness, he is sold again, and suffers, or watches as other animal friends suffer.
The beauty of this story--besides the author's detailed description of life in her era, and of the equine characters, is that Black Beauty never loses his ability to forgive and accept humans as his master. That inevitability is true to life and noble, all at once.
When I mentioned my reasons for writing this review, I touched on the incidents involving a helpless kitten and a neglected dog. Most of us no longer would beat a horse to death when it couldn't work, or kill a cat that didn't catch mice. Most of us (I pray) would not drown little terrier pups that we just didn't want.
Still, animals are left unattended to die in the streets. There are terrible incidents of animal abuse, to this day. Revisiting Black Beauty, in its uncut form, allows us to hear animals appeal to us for humane treatment, if nothing else.
Black Beauty is considered a child's classic, but in its original, long form, I recommend it for teens and adults. The English customs and characters would be difficult for most pre-teen readers, as would the length.
But for teens and adults, Black Beauty is a fascinating story, with dark undertones about how human behavior affects the world's inhabitants--human and non-human alike.
The bittersweet saga of the handsome colt that is wrenched from a happy country home and almost worked to death as a London cab horse is adapted for e...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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