CHARACTER
Horse: A Novelby Geraldine Brooks

Jarret Lewis

Jarret Lewis

Quick Facts

  • Role: Central historical protagonist; enslaved groom and later trainer of the racehorse Lexington
  • First appearance: A long, skinny boy at The Meadows—“He’s half colt himself” (p. 21)
  • Arc & setting: From enslavement in Kentucky through the Deep South to Civil War–era Kentucky, ending in postwar freedom in Canada
  • Key relationships: Lexington; his father Harry Lewis; the painter Thomas J. Scott; the owner Richard Ten Broeck; childhood friend Mary Barr Clay

Who They Are

Jarret Lewis is the novel’s beating heart—a gifted horseman whose life stretches from bondage to self-determined freedom. His bond with Lexington is not just affection; it becomes a language, a livelihood, and ultimately a pathway to autonomy. Jarret also embodies the novel’s insistence on recovering the erased labor and expertise of Black horsemen central to the American thoroughbred world, a reclamation that aligns with Hidden Histories and Erased Narratives. His story moves from being someone’s property to becoming a man who can literally purchase his own image, turning a life once owned by others into a history authored by himself.

Personality & Traits

Jarret’s strength lies in quietness—watchfulness that becomes mastery. He trusts observation more than speech, translating horses as if they are kin while reading the people who seek to control him. The result is a poise that looks like calm but functions as strategy: he absorbs, adapts, and advances.

  • Intuitive and empathetic: He has “a feel for horses, deep in the grain” (p. 21); his “first language had been the subtle gestures and sounds of horses” (p. 21). This intuitive fluency powers the novel’s exploration of The Human-Animal Bond.
  • Quiet and observant: “Words could be snares” (p. 50), so he listens and looks. He learns complex techniques by watching the painter at work (p. 54–55) and later applies the same discipline to literacy.
  • Resilient and determined: After brutal field labor at Fatherland, he forges resolve: “He would leave the boy behind... He would go on in the world as a man” (p. 218). His grit is the engine of his Freedom and Agency.
  • Dignified and proud: He holds his ground even when it’s risky—correcting assumptions with “My pa’s a free man” (p. 53) and later insisting, “I ain’t a boy. Sir.” (p. 292).

Character Journey

Jarret’s arc is a steady stripping away of imposed identity. He begins at The Meadows as “Warfield’s Jarret,” a boy shaped by his father’s tutelage and by a newborn foal who will become Lexington. The sale south to Richard Ten Broeck jolts him into a wider, more violent economy of slavery; his attempted escape with Lexington is both a declaration of love and a claim to personhood. Fatherland’s fields become a crucible, transforming him from a protected stable boy into a man who understands the system’s full brutality and vows to outlast it. Back in Kentucky, his authority grows alongside Lexington’s legend, and during the war he seizes his moment—shielding horse and friend, outwitting raiders, and riding north toward freedom. Years later in Canada, he returns to New York to buy the painting that depicts him beside Lexington: no longer “Warfield’s” or “Ten Broeck’s” anything, but simply Jarret Lewis, the man who owns his own story.

Key Relationships

  • Lexington (Darley): Jarret’s deepest relationship is wordless, built on touch, timing, and trust. He shapes the colt’s temperament through patient care, and Lexington in turn offers Jarret purpose, leverage, and a vision of a different life. Their partnership is mutual: Jarret makes Lexington a legend, and Lexington makes Jarret visible—and, ultimately, free.

  • Harry Lewis: As Jarret’s first teacher and model of dignity, Harry supplies both skill and a template for pride: a free Black man in a world determined to deny such status. Jarret inherits Harry’s horsemanship but refuses the diminishment the racing world inflicted on his father—growing into the “good-size man” Harry was never allowed to become (p. 27).

  • Thomas J. Scott: Scott is the first White man to treat Jarret as a peer in knowledge, listening when Jarret corrects and advises him. Jarret learns by watching Scott paint (p. 54–55), and Scott learns to see Jarret clearly—culminating in the portrait that becomes a vessel of Art, History, and Memory. In Scott’s canvas, Jarret is rendered not as property but as a “slender young gentleman,” a man with quiet authority.

  • Mary Barr Clay: A childhood friend whose privilege both enables and limits her help. She warns Jarret about Lexington’s sale and aids his escape attempt, but their every interaction is constrained by the racial hierarchy they inhabit, highlighting the limits imposed by Race, Slavery, and Systemic Racism.

Defining Moments

Jarret’s life turns on decisions made in silence and in crisis—acts of care that are also acts of defiance.

  • 1850: Lexington’s foaling. Jarret stays through the night with the mare and foal (p. 28–29), imprinted at the very moment Lexington enters the world. It establishes the reciprocal trust that will guide both their fates.
  • 1853: The attempted escape. After learning Lexington has been sold, Jarret chooses risk over submission, confessing to Mary that “I might as well be dead... if this is how living gone be” (p. 113). The bid fails, but the choice clarifies his priorities and self-conception.
  • 1853: Fatherland’s fields. Forced into brutal field labor, Jarret witnesses slavery’s worst violence up close. The suffering burns away passivity; his vow to “go on in the world as a man” (p. 218) becomes the inner axis of his life.
  • 1865: Quantrill’s raid. Jarret hides Lexington, rescues Scott, kills two raiders, and leads stolen horses to safety before riding north (p. 291–294). In one compressed episode, he becomes protector, strategist, and self-emancipator.
  • 1875: Buying the painting. As a prosperous Canadian citizen, Jarret travels to New York to purchase Scott’s portrait of himself and the now-blind Lexington. Owning the artwork ratifies what his life has proved: he controls the narrative of who he is.

Essential Quotes

His first language had been the subtle gestures and sounds of horses. He’d been slow to master human speech, but he could interpret the horses: their moods, their alliances, their simple wants, their many fears. (p. 21)
This frames Jarret’s “fluency” as bodily and intuitive. The novel treats that fluency as intelligence—an expertise cultivated under slavery but belonging entirely to him.

"Miss Clay." Jarret dropped his voice. "I might as well be dead, if this"—he lifted both hands, palms upward, in a wide, all-encompassing shrug—"if this is how living gone be." (p. 113)
The line exposes the moral calculus behind his escape: life without control is a kind of death. It also shows his courage—naming his condition even to someone whose help cannot erase its causes.

He resolved that he would make it so. He would leave the boy behind, discarded in the dust of this damnable field. He didn’t know how, but he had to find a way. He would go on in the world as a man. (p. 218)
Fatherland transforms suffering into resolve. Jarret’s adulthood is not biological but ethical: a chosen stance of self-definition in the face of dehumanization.

"I ain't a boy. Sir." (p. 292)
Spoken under threat, the sentence rejects diminishment and demands recognition. The clipped rhythm and added “Sir” sharpen its defiance: he honors decorum only to assert equality within it.

"Colonel Bruce, you must be aware of the rising difficulty for men like me in the thoroughbred world... This sport that once gathered all classes and, yes, colors, will not thrive long if it continues to spit on the talent that built it." (p. 276)
Jarret moves from private mastery to public critique, naming the sport’s erasure of Black expertise. He argues not only for justice but for the industry’s survival—an indictment and a prescription in one.