Alice Walker’s story “Strong Horse Tea” is about an impoverished and illiterate African American Woman who lost her helpless son, Snooks, to the debilitating sickness called pneumonia. The story was told from a third-person perspective in which the center of consciousness was mainly around the protagonist, Rannie Mae Toomer. The main events of the story occurred on a pasture, on a rainy day during the cold winter season. Other characters like “Aunt Sarah” and the “mailman,” were used to explore the different thematic contours of the story.
Rannie Mae Toomer is a poor, unmarried, and unattractive single mother that lives alone with her son, Snooks, in the middle of a pasture, in a dilapidated building that is “surrounded by… fat white folks’ cows…an old gray horse and a mule” (479). She possesses traits that are identical to that of a complex character. Rannie Mae never had much education, she could barely understand written English, much less speak the language in its standard form. Her use of poor English…show more content… Rannie Mae, left with little or no options to cure her son from “double pneumonia and whooping cough” (476), reluctantly asked for Sarah’s help to treat Snooks with her unconventional home remedies. Just as in the beginning of the story where Sarah wanted to help cure Snooks, she still remained faithful to the end. Sarah tried to show her unwavering support, she told Rannie that the only way to cure her son was for her to drink some strong horse tea, which is mare’s urine. Unfortunately, it was already too late for Sarah to do any miraculous work on Snooks with her home remedies. While Rannie was outside in the rain and thunderstorm, chasing after the mare and trying to get closer to collect warm horse tea, Snooks eventually