The painting mentioned in the preface of the book, a portrait of Joey painted by Captain Nicholls and now hanging in the Village Hall (of an unnamed village), was a fiction of Morpurgo's.

The two meet Friedrich, who befriends them and tries to care for them, growing to love Topthorn and telling them that he did not want to be a soldier. After a relatively undistinguished (and rather unhappy) educational career in boarding schools and college, Morpurgo became a schoolteacher. He makes friends with Topthorn, a beautiful black thoroughbred, and the two are inseparable from that moment on. When he finally pulls himself free, he “stumble[s] on into the night, guided only by the belief that where the night was at its blackest, there alone [he] might find some safety from the shelling” (108). Over the course of the conflict, newer and more protective technologies, like armored tanks, replaced cavalry units.Determined to keep Joey, Albert does what he must: His “gentle words and kindnesses of the past” (14) are replaced with shouts and flashes of a whip “whenever [Albert] felt [Joey isn’t] giving it [his] best” (14). Their one consolation is that they are stabled at a local farm and cared for by Emilie - a frail, young French girl - and her elderly grandfather. As a side effect of the interest in the film adaptation by Steven Spielberg, the publishers of the book have recently been "inundated" with requests for translation rights for the book to coincide with the film's release in late 2011. He expresses himself with his fists and is proud and competitive, only acquiring Joey in the first place because he does not want to lose an auction to a neighbor whom he particularly dislikes. Joey also enjoys the company of Nicholl's best friend, Captain Jamie Stewart, and his horse, Topthorn.

At the end of the war, Major Martin announces that they will auction off all the horses, despite the protests of Sergeant Thunder and the rest of the soldiers. Although he instills confidence in his men, Captain Nicholls is in fact scared on account of the battles to come, and he confides in Joey his feelings about the futility of war. The exhibition details the historical background to the story, and exhibits include pages from Morpurgo's original draft of the novel. The novel is often considered one of Morpurgo's best works, and its success spawned a sequel titled Farm Boy, which was published in October 1997. War Horse also filters human experience through the consciousness of an animal, in part to critique the blind spots and failures of human civilization.War Horse study guide contains a biography of Michael Morpurgo, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. And the horse, Hebe, had her head just over the top of the stable, and she was listening; that’s what I noticed, that the ears were going, and I knew she knew that she had to stay there whilst this went on, because this kid wanted to talk, and the horse wanted to listen—this was a two way thing. He urges the cruel man not to go higher because he will pay any amount necessary to win back Emilie’s horse. The book ends with Albert marrying a woman named Maisie, and with Joey saying that she didn't like the horse very much.

They said ‘He’s been two years in school and he hasn’t said a word, so please don’t confront him or he’ll run back to Birmingham’, which is a long way from Devon and they didn’t want that. Emilie's grandfather outbids a butcher, and is almost about to take Joey back to the farm until Albert stops him.In addition, in Albert's world on the farm in Devon, his father becomes aggressive and verbally abusive when he drinks. The book is told from the point of view of a young horse named Joey and chronicles his journey and the relationships he builds with his various owners during World War I. He used equine artist Ali Bannister, who acted as the chief "equine hair and make-up" artist on the Steven Spielberg film of the book and who also drew the sketches of Joey seen in the film. She is very demonstrative in her love for Albert and is clearly a loving, encouraging, and protective mother.