Symbolism in "The Ox".

One of the prominent features of Modern English literature is the use of symbolism. Modern writers in their short stories use symbols to build the theme or atmosphere of the story. Symbolism implies a deeper sense, underneath a plain vivid external account. It serves to bear out an undertone of the literary materials treated and thereby add to profundity of the sense or actual meaning.


            H. E. Bates in his short story, "The Ox" uses plain and straightforward manner to express his theme which is all about the hard, painful and selfless life of a poor woman, Mrs. Thurlow. In this story, Mrs. Thurlow is the ox. Actually, the ox symbolises the beast of burden who is born to toil hard and get cruel treatment which he must bear without any protest or tear. Similarly, Mrs. Thurlow, with a strong and laborious constitution, and apparently unfeeling and insensitive mind, is destined to be tormented and tortured endlessly.


               "The Ox" is a tragic story about Mrs. Thurlow's deep tragedy. She had to work hard from early morning to the late night. "At half past seven every morning Mrs. Thurlow pushed......pushed it back." But her bicycle was "a vehicle of necessity", not an element of luxury to her as "her relationship to it was that of a beast to a cart." Here, the symbolic use of "cart" is very much appropriate.


             Again, physically, Mrs. Thurlow had a similarity to the beast of burden, the ox. She had a bulky rather robust body, with her flat heavy feet that "pounded painfully along under her mud-stained skirts."


             Mrs. Thurlow had two specific human features --- (1) she used to read old newspapers in every Sunday afternoon and (2)she saved money for the future of her two sons as "she saw them realising......even as butlers." "But emotionally", when she read newspapers, "her face showed no impression. It remained ox-like in its impassivity."


             The very site of Mrs. Thurlow's house exposed to the rough wind and isolated from the surrounding landscape has a symbolic reference to her hard life, exposed to roughness and pain, as also to her utter isolationin her drudgery and struggle, with her carefree, callous husband, Mr. Thurlow and cold, unsympathetic sons.


            Again Mrs. Thurlow's "scrubbing and washing money" symbolised the future of her two sons: "It symbolised the future, another life, two lives. It was the future itself." The loss of that saving was the desolation of her future she tried to rebuild in vain even after her husband's death.


             Finally the repeated punctures in tyres of the cycle are symbolic of the cruel beatings it's owner has received in life and the last leaking of air from irreparable tyre definitely suggests the ebbing away of all her ox-like energy: ".....she heard a faint hissing from the back tyre....she pushed forward. A little later it seemed to her that the hissing got worse.....It was softer now, almost flat."


             Here the symbolism reaches an impressive point of complete identification of the human with the inanimate. The symbolic turns of the story are, however, simple and there is little of the psychological complexity of Katherine Mansfield or James Joyce in Bates. This human theme of silent service and sufferings, and cold, cruel selfishness are well-exposed by the symbolic tone of the story.