SOURCE: "'And Then the Child Becomes a Man': Three Initiation Stories of John Steinbeck," in John Steinbeck: A Study of the Short Fiction, edited by R. S. Hughes, Twayne, 1989, pp. 181-8.

In the following essay, Satyanarayana examines the theme of initiation in "The Raid," The Red Pony, and "Flight."

In his introduction to John Steinbeck (1965) Joseph Fontenrose observes: "Myth has been a more consistent factor, profoundly affecting the form and content of all his (Steinbeck's) novels since 1929. In most of them we see a palimpsest upon which Steinbeck has inscribed a realistic tale of contemporary men." Yet, in his actual interpretation of the works, Fontenrose makes no reference to the use of myth in three stories from The Long Valley: "The Raid," The Red Pony cycle and "Flight." He considers only The Red Pony as a story of initiation in which the hero passes from "naive childhood to...