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Chapter 12
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Black Beauty, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Horse Care, Abuse, and Neglect
Class, Transportation, and Victorian England
Good, Evil, and Power
Dignity and Religion
Summary
Analysis
One day, John is riding Black Beauty, and they come upon a boy trying to make a pony jump a gate that’s too high for it. The pony keeps refusing—and when he does, the boy whips the pony. The boy gets off and whips the pony’s head. When the boy gets back on, the pony bucks him into a thorny hedge and runs away. Crying, the boy asks for help. John, though, says the boy is where he belongs after mistreating his pony. John urges Black Beauty on. Talking to himself, John suggests they stop in at the farmer Bushby’s to tell him of the boy’s behavior.
Black Beauty’s narration makes it so that readers see from the outset that the boy is trying to make the pony do something it can’t do—and then is cruelly punishing the pony for this supposed crime. When John says the boy got what he deserved when the pony bucks the boy into the thorny hedge, he takes the pony’s side. He implies that just as he and Squire Gordon should’ve trusted Black Beauty about the bridge in the previous chapter, the boy must trust the pony to assess what it can and can’t do.
Themes
At the farm, Mr. and Mrs. Bushby ask if John has seen their boy, since the pony came back without a rider. John tells them what happened, and Mrs. Bushby exclaims that they must go help their son. But Mr. Bushby says the boy needs to learn a lesson, since this isn’t the first time he’s mistreated the pony. He thanks John, so John and Black Beauty continue on their way.
Mrs. Bushby doesn’t seem to see an issue with her son’s behavior. Mr. Bushby, on the other hand, suggests that the boy has a track record of being cruel to the pony—and needs to learn. This offers hope that cruel people like the boy can change their behavior, if they have mentors like Mr. Bushby to help them. However, there’s also the implication that people like Mrs. Bushby can sometimes hinder this effort by comforting people who, the novel suggests, don’t deserve comfort at all.
Themes
At home, John tells James about their afternoon. James laughs—he went to school with the boy, and the boy always thought he was superior because his father is a farmer. James says he and the older boys regularly put the boy in his place for being mean to laborers’ sons. But once, James caught the boy pulling wings off of flies and got so angry he shouted at the boy and boxed his ears. The schoolmaster was just as angry as James and lectured all the boys about cruelty. The schoolmaster, James says, insisted that “cruelty was the devil’s own trade mark,” and he said that anyone who enjoys being cruel belongs to the devil. And on the other hand, “God is Love,” so kindness is “God’s mark.” John agrees and says that religion isn’t any good without love.
James adds more backstory to the boy’s behavior and insists he has a history of being cruel, not just to the pony, but to even more helpless creatures like flies. Even annoying pests like flies, the novel suggests, don’t deserve to experience pain and suffering—and what makes a person good is being willing to stand up for animals and people with little or no power (as James does in this recollection by defending the flies and young laborers’ sons). Then, the novel connects this subject back to religion. It insists that a person simply isn’t religious or virtuous if they’re cruel—and on the other hand, that a person who is generous, kind, and loving is virtuous.
Themes
