The Crowd Cheered As Gloom Galloped Away Analysis

In the world of Matthea Harvey’s “The Crowd Cheered as Gloom Galloped Away,” sadness is represented in a physical form as pharmaceutical tiny ponies to show how people deal with solving depression through antidepressants. Emotions are an abstract concept, and despite their universal nature, people struggle to deal with them. The characterization of depression as ponies comments on how people deal with emotions as a whole. The poem elaborates saying that the people could overcome their depression, but they cannot simply do so on their own, they need a tangible representation in order to do so.
In the world that the poem takes place in, sadness seems to have been solved through pills. People struggled with this because they didn’t understand

They are quickly abandoned and “were left to break their legs on the gardens’ gravel paths or drown in the gutters” (Harvey 8-9). Some of the ponies suffered a worse fate though, “On the first day of the month, rats gathered on doorsteps & spat out only the bitter manes” (Harvey 9-10), and the people did nothing to help. As long as people don’t have to directly deal with things they are fine. People even take pride in the suffering of the ponies and “It became a matter of pride if one of your ponies proved unusually sturdy. People would smile & say, “This would have been an awful month for me” (Harvey 14-15). That person’s pony took on an exceptionally awful time for that person, and yet the person just smiles and lets the pony suffer and waste away. As long as the people do not have to deal with the problems their ok. Despite empathy being a nearly universal trait among people, through watching others suffer it against assist in their ability to overcome their sadness. Now with the contrast between their emotions the ponies, the ponies representing the sadness only serves to remind them of the feelings they no longer have to further strengthening how they have overcome the previous