Summary of The Rain horse by Ted Hughes

The short story “The Rain Horse” by Ted Hughes is a story that leaves the reader questioning whether or not these events happened to “The Dude”. After twelve years he returns to the land where he grew up. But twelve years is a long time and no doubt the land has changed as well as him. Because he didn’t want to be viewed as a trespasser by the farmer he traveled the main road. As he’s walking through the mud and rain he spots a black horse. The horse runs strangely over the ridge and disappears. The Dude stares blankly at the barren ridge for awhile then decides to seek some kind of shelter from the rain for awhile. He found a nice spot under some small trees and as he sat there he couldn’t get the picture of the horse out of his head. Then The Dude glances over to the ridge where the horse had disappeared and sure enough it was standing there, staring him down, watching him. He noted that a normal horse would have its head down and eyes drooped. Then the horse charged him and immediately The Dude jumped up and ran as fast as he could. He dove over some brush and tripped, but the horse had disappeared again. Now he had a clear path to the farm, which was just over the hill.

Awhile later he spotted the horse again, so he crouched down. Apparently the horse had not seen him so he moved along carefully. Then the rain picked up and continued to throughly soak him. But he could not keep the horse off of his mind, and because he didn’t want to walk into open field he moved close to a tree and looked back. But just as he peered out the ground shook and he tumbled wildly down the hill and through some old treesm, finally stopping in the mud. Upon reaching the mud he realized that he was alone and the horse had been waiting for him to come out of the woods. This was proof that it was after him, so he picked up two stones and strode off towards the woods carelessly. The Dude then begins to run, only to be followed by the horse, so he whorls around and throws the stones. Defenseless the horse runs away, now the Dude needs more stones. He reaches the river bed which contains many stones, and sure enough he sees the horse about twenty yards out. So he yells and launches stones at it. After a few minutes he tires and stops (Not hitting the horse at all). As if it waited for him to tire the horse charges and methodically the Dude grabs two more stones and throws them. Both of them connect and the horse wanders off dazed. So he gathers a few stones and tells the horse to stay where it is and it won’t get hurt (surprisingly it did just that). So he trudges onward until he reaches the farm. Leaving the stones behind he gazes at the skyline one last time before entering the shed (the horse was gone). When he enters he notices that everything was the same as it was when he left twelve years ago, and looks down to the floor and wonders if the horse incident really happened.