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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
I was fairly sure that I'd read this when I was much younger, but in my quest to read the BBC Big Read books, I thought I'd better be sure. Black Beauty was always overshadowed in my mind by The Black Stallion, which had desert islands and horseracing to hold up against a story about animal cruelty.
Small wonder that, as a child, I preferred the more exciting one, no matter what apocalyptic turns the Black Stallion series took in later books.
But I think I still prefer it now. Black Beauty is fine, and the message Anna Sewell wanted to send is pretty clear, but, although this might have made it difficult to sell as a children's book, it does suffer from telling rather than showing. Black Beauty himself suffers a few times, but only in isolated incidents, and generally always has kind masters. The horses who truly suffer, their stories are told to Black Beauty, at that remove.
This sense of distance may cushion the story, but it also makes it less immediate. Ginger was interesting, but I cared less if she was abused in her distant past, or eventual future, than I would have if it had happened to the character I cared about.
It's a good book, but it's not exciting. It never really caught my imagination.
Small wonder that, as a child, I preferred the more exciting one, no matter what apocalyptic turns the Black Stallion series took in later books.
But I think I still prefer it now. Black Beauty is fine, and the message Anna Sewell wanted to send is pretty clear, but, although this might have made it difficult to sell as a children's book, it does suffer from telling rather than showing. Black Beauty himself suffers a few times, but only in isolated incidents, and generally always has kind masters. The horses who truly suffer, their stories are told to Black Beauty, at that remove.
This sense of distance may cushion the story, but it also makes it less immediate. Ginger was interesting, but I cared less if she was abused in her distant past, or eventual future, than I would have if it had happened to the character I cared about.
It's a good book, but it's not exciting. It never really caught my imagination.
Oh my god, I grew up carrying this book everywhere, even though it's not even one of my favourites.
https://readwithme2018.com/2019/04/11/throwback-thursday-april-11th-2019/
3.5 stars - it's a simple story with a simple, straightforward narrator and it brings me back to my childhood! :)
Having just reviewed [b:War Horse|792161|War Horse (War Horse, #1)|Michael Morpurgo|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1360677423s/792161.jpg|1575365], I thought I'd reflect on this. It was Anna Sewell's only book. She was devoutly religious and an invalid; she dictated some of the book to her mother, and wrote some laboriously in bed over her final years. The book is marked by an extraordinarily piercing, almost obsessive, anthropomorphic empathy for suffering. I've noticed many Goodreads reviewers commenting on what a fraught, harrowing experience it was to read it as a child, but it wasn't meant for children – it was intended as an animal-rights tract to encourage people to treat horses more kindly.
I'm not sure how much the author also intended the book as an anti-slavery commentary, because what stood out strongly for me was the contrasting attitude of the various horse characters to the involuntary servitude in which they find themselves. Beauty and his friends are completely dependent on the whims and kindnesses of humans, and they react very differently. Beauty is a stoic type who only rebels when severely provoked or mistreated, but his sensitive, proud friend Ginger rebels against "ill use" every step of the way, and ends up paying for her stubbornness with her life. Other horses, like Merrylegs the pony, are good-humoured about being playthings, and others identify strongly with their masters and are crushed to be sold or discarded.
Another striking thing about Black Beauty is how powerfully Sewell imagines what it might be like to be embodied as a horse. As a late-20th-century city kid, it was really eye-opening to hear about how a horse's mouth could be 'hardened' by constantly wearing a bit, or how cruel was the 'bearing rein' that pulled a horse's head up stylishly but restricted its movements. It was also hard for me to get my head around how easy it was to kill a horse by riding it too hard or for too long. They weren't machines, even if they were treated as such! I also found the gory descriptions of carriage crashes quite disturbing, because I guess I thought carriages never went fast enough to cause the kind of carnage that motor vehicles too.
Beauty has a terrifying account of a caste system based on physical condition, from proud aristocratic mounts or carriage horses to the "jaded" cab and cart horses he meets. It was the first time I'd ever encountered the word 'jaded', and for me it's no coincidence that a 'jade' is both a worn-out horse and a disreputable woman. For me Black Beauty parallels many tales written at the same time of women's degradation as they're forced into prostitution and end up dying in workhouses.
I'm not sure how much the author also intended the book as an anti-slavery commentary, because what stood out strongly for me was the contrasting attitude of the various horse characters to the involuntary servitude in which they find themselves. Beauty and his friends are completely dependent on the whims and kindnesses of humans, and they react very differently. Beauty is a stoic type who only rebels when severely provoked or mistreated, but his sensitive, proud friend Ginger rebels against "ill use" every step of the way, and ends up paying for her stubbornness with her life. Other horses, like Merrylegs the pony, are good-humoured about being playthings, and others identify strongly with their masters and are crushed to be sold or discarded.
Another striking thing about Black Beauty is how powerfully Sewell imagines what it might be like to be embodied as a horse. As a late-20th-century city kid, it was really eye-opening to hear about how a horse's mouth could be 'hardened' by constantly wearing a bit, or how cruel was the 'bearing rein' that pulled a horse's head up stylishly but restricted its movements. It was also hard for me to get my head around how easy it was to kill a horse by riding it too hard or for too long. They weren't machines, even if they were treated as such! I also found the gory descriptions of carriage crashes quite disturbing, because I guess I thought carriages never went fast enough to cause the kind of carnage that motor vehicles too.
Beauty has a terrifying account of a caste system based on physical condition, from proud aristocratic mounts or carriage horses to the "jaded" cab and cart horses he meets. It was the first time I'd ever encountered the word 'jaded', and for me it's no coincidence that a 'jade' is both a worn-out horse and a disreputable woman. For me Black Beauty parallels many tales written at the same time of women's degradation as they're forced into prostitution and end up dying in workhouses.
ah good memories of bawling my eyes out when [redacted] died and some guy who had come to inspect the roof or something being like 'uhhh you okay there kid'
also i was a horse girl apparently huh (thinking... thinking)
also i was a horse girl apparently huh (thinking... thinking)
Hanya karena seekor hewan mampu berlari atau memiliki bobot lebih dari manusia, bukan berarti hewan dapat diperlakukan secara sembarangan seperti sebuah mesin. Sama seperti manusia, hewan pun dapat kelelahan, hewan pun memiliki batas kekuatannya. Tidak terkecuali seekor kuda. Baca ringkasan mengenai catatan harian seekor kuda di sini