Erwartungshorizont Klausurenvorschlag zu Half Broke Horses
I.
Analysis
The quote is taken from the last chapter of HBH when Lily has met Rex Walls who had been dating
Rosemary for quite a while. Although she likes his company because he is funny and has grand plans,
she is convinced he will not be a reliable and trustworthy husband, because he reminds her of her first
crumb-bum husband.
Ted Conover, whom she had married in Chicago, was charming and had a happy nature which made
attracted Lily to him, particularly after her friend Minnie’s death. Although his job of talking people into
buying vacuum cleaners in their houses did not exactly suggest trustworthiness, Lily could not help
liking him, and enjoyed his company. Ted often took Lily out for dinner and the movies and they had a
lot of fun together, something Lily had not been used to. He talked and joked a lot, and one of the things
Lily liked about Ted was that dreams and ambitions were important for him. Ted encouraged Lily to
work hard towards her dreams of getting a college education and learn to fly a plane. Sadly, Ted turned
out to be a superficial windbag, phoney, and completely unreliable. He had bought her a fake ring, had
a wife and three children and had squandered the money Lily and he had saved for their future.
This experience makes Lily suspicious of Rex. When Rosemary first tells her about him, Lily is
convinced he is either “a born leader or a con artist”. He is able to ingratiate himself with Rosemary with
his wild and adventurous way of life, he pays her compliments on her drawings and seems to be
interested in whatever she does. He is charming and makes her laugh, so life with him will most
certainly always be interesting. Rosemary has fallen for him, and when Lily warns her that he will not be
an anchor she retorts that she is neither looking for an anchor nor a rock. So in a way, Rosemary and
Lily are actually quite similar, except that Lily had learned her lesson from her first marriage and had
decided quite rationally that she would never fall into the same trap. Marrying Jim had therefore been a
well thought-out decision, she had weighed all the pros and cons, had proposed to him, and made
crystal-clear what her expectations were.
II.
Composition
Dear Jeannette,
How nice to hear that you’ve finally made up your mind to write that book about your grandma Lily, although
you won’t remember much about her since you were only seven when she died. You might remember
though that we didn’t always have the best relationship, to put it mildly. Your grandma was a very
determined and opinionated person. She had her good sides too, but you must understand that life was
certainly not a piece of cake in those early years out west and she might not have met those challenges so
successfully without these character traits.
Nevertheless, for me, her views on life and especially on how to raise children were not acceptable. She
always tried to teach people, not only children, a lesson. Let me explain. Well, there were several
occasions, when she thought I would learn what she wanted me to learn by making me feel the
consequences the hard way. One example is when one day my brother had been unconscious and she
wanted to take him to the hospital. At first of course, she had to ferry all the school kids home because she
couldn’t leave them unsupervised. Well, on the way Buster came to, and when I didn’t want to go back to
school and pretended I was not feeling well, she made me stay at the hospital overnight. I was scared out
of my wits without anyone around, believe me! And I never tried playing hooky again.
Then later, I was a teenager and had fallen for an Indian boy on the reservation, we wanted to go swimming
at night. I didn’t have a bathing suit and mum was adamant I couldn’t go. But I went anyway, in my
underwear! Unfortunately, one of those ladies from the Department of Education, who had come to inspect
the Indians, saw me and told mum. She went berserk and whipped me with her belt. I guess she was
particularly furious because I had made her look a fool in front of these ladies. However, I didn’t learn what
she wanted me to learn. I swore that I would never hit my own kids. No way she could break my will, I just
went on doing what I thought was right for me.
I’ll stop here, but don’t hesitate to write if anything comes up you want me to help you with.
Take care,
Mum