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Chapter 15
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
Later that evening, another ostler brings in another horse. A young man with a pipe, presumably the ostler’s friend, hangs around to chat, but the ostler asks him to put his pipe down and toss hay down from the hayloft. Soon after, James makes one last check on Black Beauty and Ginger. Hours later, Black Beauty wakes up. He’s uncomfortable and can hear Ginger coughing—the barn is filling with smoke, and it's coming from the door to the hayloft. Presently, the second ostler enters the stable, unties the horses, and tries to drag them out of their stalls. Black Beauty refuses to follow; he knows now he was foolish, but at the time, it seems too unsafe to move.
The pipe is merely concerning at first—fire around a flammable stable seems like a bad idea. But later, when it appears as though the pipe resulted in a full-blown fire, the novel shows the full consequence of this man’s carelessness. Black Beauty can look back at this event later and say it was silly to not get out immediately. But at the time, he was apparently too scared to move, though his life was indeed in danger, as were the other horses’ lives.
Themes
Literary Devices
The ostler leaves the barn doors open when he leaves, which makes it easier to breathe—but it makes the crackling sound in the hayloft louder. Soon after, people start shouting “Fire!” and James appears. He’s his usual cheery self as he puts Black Beauty’s bridle on, ties a scarf over Black Beauty’s eyes, and leads him out of the barn. He throws Black Beauty’s lead at a man and runs back into the stable for Ginger. Black Beauty whinnies—and later, Ginger tells him that his whinny is what convinced her to leave her stall.
The open barn door seems to give the fire a new oxygen source, which causes it to burn hotter and spread faster. James, unlike the strange ostler, is someone Black Beauty trusts. So Black Beauty isn’t bothered by the scarf over his eyes, and he knows that wherever James is taking him, it's probably safe. This highlights the positive effects a good, trusting relationship with a horse can have: just as Black Beauty saved Squire Gordon and James at the broken bridge, James can now save Black Beauty and Ginger.
Themes
The stable yard is in chaos as people evacuate horses from various stables and pull carriages out of sheds, just in case the fire spreads. Black Beauty watches the stable door for Ginger as Squire Gordon enters the fray, shouting for James. As a crash comes from the stable, James emerges from the smoke with Ginger. James is coughing and can’t speak. Squire Gordon ushers James and the horses to the street and across the square to another hotel as the fire engine arrives. Just as Black Beauty and Ginger enter their new stalls, they hear the horses stuck in the burning stable shrieking as they die.
James seems to get Ginger out of the stable in just the nick of time, as the barn begins to collapse. Again, he’s able to get her out because she, like Black Beauty, trusts him (and she trusts Black Beauty and follows his whinny, as she noted in the previous passage). And while there’s no way to know exactly why the other horses are left in the stable to die (perhaps they wouldn’t follow their owners out, or their owners ran out of time to rescue them), the fact remains that they die preventable deaths because of the man with the pipe’s carelessness.
Themes
In the morning, Black Beauty observes that James looks very proud of himself—Squire Gordon seems proud of him, too. During the day, James returns to the first hotel. When he gets back to the horses, he tells the ostler there that the fire started because a man left his pipe in the hay. He says John’s rule of not allowing pipes in stables should be the rule everywhere. The barn, James shares, was demolished, and two horses died.
Black Beauty witnessed the man leave his pipe in the hay, but the people in question are just now finding out about it—highlighting again that horses understand things in different ways than people do in some cases. This experience shows James exactly why John’s rule banning pipes in stables is a good one: it prevents preventable pain, suffering, and property damage—and it ensures that horses who can’t let themselves out of a burning stable won’t be harmed.
Themes
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