The Price of Imagination in Horses of the Night Anonymous 12th Grade

Margaret Laurence's story ‘Horses of the Night’ centers around the meeting and interaction between Vanessa -a girl looking back on her childhood- and Chris -her cousin who lived up north. Throughout the text the character Chris utilizes his imagination to fabricate false opportunities to overshadow his destiny. Chris becomes increasingly desperate as his opportunities to escape Shallow Creek dissipate, and because of this Chris consciously decides to take opportunities that won’t lead anywhere, or ones that don’t exist. Through the character -Chris- Margaret Laurence develops the idea that a sensitive individual may utilize imagination to combat a hopeless reality.

Initially Chris utilizes his imagination to drive him forward to what he believes to be a better life. On the outside Chris leads the audience to believe that he is hopeful of the future as he strives to become a civil engineer, however, the audience soon comes to see the impossibility of such a task, and with the line “quite good isn’t good enough” Chris’s fate is seemingly sealed. Chris time and time again uses his imagination as a substitute for optimism and ignores anything that may suggest his failure; “When the bludgeoning words came, which was often, Chris...