Stories in which ponies and/or babies die should come with a warning label

Recently, I've overheard too many for my liking negative opinions concerning John Steinbeck and his works.

Just like most everyone, I read Of Mice and Men in high school (two times actually...thanks moving) and felt fine about it. But then, after college I read East of Eden and fell in love. Next, I picked up The Moon is Down and was equally entranced.

After these three, I just really didn't get how people could be like: Steinbeck...blech. It seemed impossible.

And so I decided to pick up a few quick Steinbeck reads to investigate further.

First up: The Red Pony - a novella in four parts. *SPOILER ALERT...The pony dies in the first part. In no way did I see that coming. I mean, the boy left the pony outside for one day (one day!) and it gets sick and dies. Steinbeck was all, you like ponies? This boy likes ponies? Let's kill the pony and show that life isn't always fair.

You know what else isn't fair? That I was on the bus when I got to the dead pony part. I can only imagine my face as I read on in horror. Reading about a little boy's pony dying before 9 a.m. just isn't right.

It was kind of downhill after the pony death. The boy goes through a dark punishing everything around him to punish himself phase, but then ends up getting another pony, but only after the mom horse is killed to save the baby...tough lessons.

Next: The Pearl. Another novella, this time concerning Native American pearl divers (fishers?).

In the first chapter (first chapter!) the only baby of a happy couple gets bitten by a scorpion and the doctor won't see them because they don't have money and aren't white. The baby gets better (thanks to the quick thinking sucking out of venom on the mom's part), and the dad goes diving and finds a gigantic pearl.

I imagined it as the hope diamond of pearls.

*SPOILER ALERT...The pearl (metaphor for greed) is pretty much evil and everyone is now out to get the man. Including priests. Including neighbors. Including the doctor who I'm pretty sure poisoned the baby to show that he could cure the baby.

And they have to run away after someone dies (or is maybe murdered by the husband) in a tussle. And the wife wants to throw the pearl into the ocean, but the husband has envisioned a bright future for his child and can't abandon it now. So they run.

And you know who dies?

THE BABY.

In the end, they return (broken) to the village and throw the pearl into the ocean: "and the music of the pearl drifted to a whisper and disappeared."

In conclusion: sad.

East of Eden was sad as well, but it was also grandiose and epic and tragically beautiful. And each of these stories had beautiful, hopeful moments, but then they just really bummed me out. A lot.

Steinbeck is still an amazing writer. I still look to him to blow my mind with elegant and glorious and true statements on life. It's just that I finally closed the door on an awful month (November 10; Claire 0). And right here, right now, in this moment I want no part of heartbreaking excellence.

"And, as with all retold tales that are in people's hearts, there are only good and bad things and black and white things and good and evil things and no in-between. If this story is a parable, perhaps everyone takes his own meaning from it and reads his own life into it."
John Steinbeck