Notes on Horses of the Night

Chris the boy in the ML short story–faced adversity, the no money for school -depression years that Just got worse… This combined with the love of learning and ambition to be an engineer… Drove him to study and work… First when he was away at HAS. … Then when somehow he couldn’t afford? To go to Univac In Winnipeg… It drove him to rebel against going home to the farm(north of Waken)… He cashed in his ticket and ran away to Winnipeg. James Eriksson: He tried to work to make money to go to College to succeed In his dream. He got sales Jobs… So he wasn’t paid money he worked on commission… Only
If he got someone to buy what he was selling did he make money… Let was the depression and the depression got worse. You studied this Is Social…. Keynes people even If they did have money did not buy things…. The psychology of uncertainty kept them from spending money because they needed what little they had Just In case things got worse and some emergency came up… The war came… Soldiers got paid a salary… Chris enlisted (joined the army). He could afford to go to school to be an engineer if he saved the money from being a soldier. Sometime in the horror of war Chris gave up ‘hope’ of ever succeeding in being an engineer.
As a result of ‘losing hope’ Chris lost his ‘mental health’.. To put it another way… As long as Chris had something to ‘live for'(dream to be an engineer… Unrealistic or not) he could cope and deal with any adversity that came his way. Once he lost hope he became mentally paralyses: “He is so passive”. IMO as long as Chris had hope… He had something to work for… He had meaning in life. Without hope he had no meaning… Nothing to live for… Without anything to live for Chris had a nervous breakdown and ended up spending the lest of his life in the mental hospital.