Obsession In Tess Gallagher's The Lover Of Horses

Often barriers withhold us from pursuing what we truly love, however, our ambition allows us to overcome these barriers and achieve a sense freedom. This precise course of action occurs in Tess Gallagher’s short story “The Lover of Horses”. “The Lover of Horses" concerns a woman, the narrator, who responds to her mother 's request to help bring her father home; he is drinking and gambling beyond reason. Instead of stopping him, she assists and encourages him. His obsessive nature is compared with the history of mental obsession in their family, particularly her great-grandfather, who obsessed over horses and abandoned their family to follow a circus act. At the end of the story, the narrator imitates her father 's behavior, using his approaches of escape to lament his imminent death. She realizes that she shares the obsessions of her family 's …show more content…
All of the maternal figures present in this tory had their husbands stolen away so it is clear to see that the mother wants to hold on to the only thing she has left: her daughter. The mother tries her best to deter the narrator from the lifestyle her paternal figures partake in as “most of the information [she has] about [her] great-grandfather came from [her] mother, who got it from her mother” (93) Both the mother and grandmother try their hardest to worsen the idea of the actions of the father and grandfather. Regardless of this fact the narrator refuses to believe that this is simply drunken tomfoolery and instead attributes it to a powerful force, a force not of obsession, but of ambition: “...a powerful force must have held sway over him, something more profound than the miseries of drink or the harsh imaginings of his abandoned wife” (67). The mother fails to protect all she has left as the daughter decides to practice gypsy necessity. The daughter is lost, as she desires to