Lecture 7.2.4 - Indian Horse: Chapters 13 and 14
Lecture Overview
In this lecture, we will begin with revisiting Chapter 12 before we continue to read Chapter 13 and 14.
Review: Chapter 12
Children endure grotesque, sadistic punishments that seem designed to hurt them and instill fear in them rather than to educate them. Saul begins to take comfort in reading because it helps him transcend his miserable environment. His love for reading is also perhaps an early indication of his own penchant for storytelling, an important tradition in his own culture.
Saul is now the Archetypal Hero who has crossed into the OTHER WORD
Read: Chapter 13
Even though life at St. Jerome’s is terrible, the children find small ways of being happy. Yet even little adventures, like running to the creek, remind Saul and his friends of their tragic situation: torn away from their families and thrown into such a foreign and hostile environment, they are “suffocating” like fish out of water. It is SYMBOLISM because Saul is from the Fish Clan. Saul has nothing but contempt for the priests and nuns at the school. He ridicules them for their foolishness at thinking he and the other children are really praying. At best, Saul suggests, the teachers are fools; but at worst, they’re sadists.
Read: Chapter 14
Although Saul is surrounded by misery, he makes a promise to himself to remain proud and strong, perhaps sensing that, on some level, the school is intended to break him down and make him weak, servile, and without a sense of identity.