Donkeys

Donkeys enter the story as animals brought to a university donkey basketball game, their bodies prepared for the sport’s comic spectacle. In William Henry Devereaux Jr.’s dream of the game, however, one donkey becomes a partner whose freedom matters as much as the play. Together, the real and imagined animals make visible the gap between amusement built on animal use and a brief vision of release.

Arrival and the Proposed Game

A student tells William Henry Devereaux Jr. that the donkey basketball game has been canceled, a report he has not heard before. Later, he sees a trailer with slatted sides in the center of the parking lot and a long line of tethered donkeys being led down a makeshift ramp. The men responsible for the animals appear not to have been told of any cancellation, leaving the game’s status uncertain in the scene.

The donkeys look scrawny and sad to William Henry Devereaux Jr.; they descend lethargically and docilely, seeming blind as they move from the dark trailer into bright afternoon sunlight. The narration qualifies that appearance: the light, rather than actual blindness, may account for it. The detail keeps their vulnerability concrete without claiming more about their condition than the scene can establish.

Bodies Prepared for Entertainment

The game’s comic premise has a material cost for the animals. Their hooves are to be wrapped in cloth and foam, and their hindquarters diapered to protect the women’s gym floor. The arrangement is itself a joke about institutional space—the donkeys would not be allowed into the men’s gym—but it also shows how thoroughly the event adapts their bodies to human facilities and entertainment.

William Henry Devereaux Jr. remarks on the animals’ dignity before the game begins: it has not yet been assaulted. That dignity is precarious. The preparations required for the performance make the animals’ bodies part of its logistics, while the line of tethered donkeys and their hesitant descent contrast with the imagined energy of a sporting event. The game’s humor therefore sits beside an awareness of the animals’ constrained role.

The Donkey in the Dream

In a dream, William Henry Devereaux Jr. becomes the star player, light and graceful on the court and carried by an excellent donkey he regards as honest, bright, generous, and kind. Their rapport is mutual in the dream’s terms: he tells the animal that after the game he will not give it up, but will let it go free. The prospect of release makes the donkey young again and gives it a reason to treat its final game as an opportunity for glory.

The pair steal the ball and fast-break down the court to the crowd’s cheers. The dream preserves the spectacle of donkey basketball but changes the relationship at its center: the animal is not merely a mount fitted for a joke, but a companion whose hope shapes the action. The imagined promise of freedom does not alter the real donkeys’ circumstances; it marks a sharp contrast with the preparations awaiting them.

Narrative Role

The donkeys connect a campus rumor, an uneasy real-world spectacle, and a dream in which play becomes a shared achievement. Their treatment in the parking lot gives the game a physical underside: tethering, protective coverings, and the accommodation of animal bodies to a gym floor. The dream answers that image not by removing the game but by imagining that the animal might leave it free.

At the dream’s close, William Henry Devereaux Jr. declares his love for the game, and Lily answers that she loves him too. Her sudden presence surprises him, and the scene turns from the donkey and the crowd toward an unexpected intimacy. The animal remains central to the dream’s exuberance, but its promised freedom is what gives that exuberance an ethical tension absent from the game’s public comedy.