In looking toward the mythos of the West circa the Gold Rush, one may come able to forget that the myth must have started somewhere. It is in this that Bret Harte’s short story “The Outcasts of Poker Flats” had define America by exploring a story on the happenings of Gold Rush California, a tragic tale of outcasts who would succumb both to themselves and the wilderness of California alongside an ill-fated pair of lovers. In doing this, Harte had come to describe an odd camaraderie between these individuals and the humanity that most would have to possess through their struggle. The story was structured in the context of the American Gold Rush in California, a time when a mass population influx had occurred from the sparse and relatively newly …show more content…
obtained California. Harte himself had written the short story meanwhile literally living inside California at the time, a point which would allow him to see the inner workings of the society at large rather than purely writing a point of fantasy, and as such this helps show a greater nuance in the short story. Through this mass California population surge, a new type of social construct must have been created meanwhile the region would house hundreds of thousands within the span of roughly five years’ time. This new life would bring a great deal of wealth to those fortunate enough, and those fortunate enough would also bring along the inner workings of whatever vices were wanted (i.e. prostitution, gambling, etc.). For this, Harte helped create the picture of such “pariahs” in creating a couple of prostitutes, a gambler, and a thief were kicked out of a community that sought to find new virtue after a string of bad incidents such as losing a great deal of money to the gambler, and these individuals would come against the forces of nature in the literary stylings of naturalism, a story type that involves an emphasis on man versus nature and the grandiosity of the environment winning. The story maintains a steady angle from the third person limited point of view and favors a single member of the outcasts, John Oakhurst, as the story progresses. The story’s main member comes as Mr. Oakhurst, the gambler, as he sits as the sober member, a metaphor particularly shown when he remains literally sober upon the rest of the crew getting intoxicated (218). The story also mainly comes to address the tone in a matter-of-fact manner that Oakhurst holds, and this is shown meanwhile he seeks to keep his “equanimity,” a cool temper and a level head (219). The language helps to elaborate a sense between both the nature of the outcasts and the grandiosity that physical environment surrounding them holds.
For example, the more descriptive terms first begin with speaking of the outcasts’ behaviors such as Uncle Billy going from “bellicose” into a “stupor” (218). This helps to elucidate how the actions and behaviors of these Western outcasts can come so differently compared to a more Eastern U.S. audience, just as the Duchess becoming “maudlin” helps show the manner of a prostitute (218). The story also quickly melded in the scenery as being a “wooded amphitheater” and the surrounding mountains as “gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above the circling pines around him at the sky, ominously clouded” (218-219). This helps to elaborate the great power and presence of nature in a the newly occupied California territory, and this also helps to show how insignificant the outcasts were meanwhile residing below all of this, setting up camp. In helping to symbolize the insignificance of the troupe, Harte had also come to show how the image of nature trumps that of the ill-found outcasts’ decision to not look ahead. This particularly symbolizes that the troupe could have gone farther if only their nature had not held them in such a stupor, and the “ominous clouds” that eventually turn into a blizzard helps to symbolize how these outcasts come trapped by such a vice (219). In fact, Harte maintained symbolism in place of other …show more content…
figurative language in a stylistic manner as to keep the focused nature of Oakhurst, so there are rare instances of similes throughout the short story. In this same spirit, Harte puts the final symbol of the outcasts’ vices as coming as what kills them meanwhile they could have gotten saved if they went on, but the outcasts were unable to keep going on because of their own vices, accepting their half-finished journey in a dangerous place showing the same ills of their immoralities. Harte’s diction also helps elaborate the happenings to the outcasts. For instance, the horrors to come were shown by speaking about them coming into “prescience” meanwhile they sleep for the night on a journey unfinished and in the heart of the mountains, coming from an ominous narrator to show about what will soon come (218). Harte helps elaborate the picture of nature by use of imagery when speaking about “precipitous cliffs” and quickly speaking about “ominous” clouds right after the grandiose place that nature is compared to the outcasts (218-219). This grander place of nature also helps to metaphorically elaborate the compared to that of humanity. This build up and diction also help show that bad things will come soon both from the “gloomy” mountain walls and the “ominous” clouds, forewarning of a coming disaster, maintaining a secondary tone in contrast to Oakhurst’s matter-of-fact nature. From coming trapped between both the outcasts’ immoral vices and the ferocious manner of nature, the story creeps in a sense of never ending woes between both the internal vices these people fall from and the external issues of both nature and society.
The externalized issues come first with the society that the outcasts have been kicked out of but also to show an issue through the continued problems with nature, such as the journey to Sandy Bar coming as too long of a journey or the area where it was hard to find a camp in the first place. It comes that all these internal and external issues relate to the nature of the immoral outcasts, that they are stuck in their own deaths that in such hostile territory and they cannot find the strength to continue, staying in the best place to stay in camp representing the best these souls could find in the first
place. In the end, Bret Harte helps to use his having lived in California to tell a truly California story through “The Outcasts of Poker Flats.” Harte allows this conflict of man versus nature to shine in his naturalism literary style, and, as the style would necessitate, nature overpowers these pariahs as a metaphor for their own nature, trapped under insurmountable conditions they eventually find themselves in due to their vices. It is in all this that Harte shows a piece of California to the rest of the world, from the grand images of nature to the inhabitants who had made this trek to live in the mysterious California of the Gold Rush time period, and this all helps show a place of morality and naturalism within California during the 1800’s.
When Spaniards colonized California, they invaded the native Indians with foreign worldviews, weapons, and diseases. The distinct regional culture that resulted from this union in turn found itself invaded by Anglo-Americans with their peculiar social, legal, and economic ideals. Claiming that differences among these cultures could not be reconciled, Douglas Monroy traces the historical interaction among them in Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California. Beginning with the missions and ending in the late 1800s, he employs relations of production and labor demands as a framework to explain the domination of some groups and the decay of others and concludes with the notion that ?California would have been, and would be today, a different place indeed if people had done more of their own work.?(276) While this supposition may be true, its economic determinism undermines other important factors on which he eloquently elaborates, such as religion and law. Ironically, in his description of native Californian culture, Monroy becomes victim of the same creation of the ?other? for which he chastises Spanish and Anglo cultures. His unconvincing arguments about Indian life and his reductive adherence to labor analysis ultimately detract from his work; however, he successfully provokes the reader to explore the complexities and contradictions of a particular historical era.
The Frontier Thesis has been very influential in people’s understanding of American values, government and culture until fairly recently. Frederick Jackson Turner outlines the frontier thesis in his essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”. He argues that expansion of society at the frontier is what explains America’s individuality and ruggedness. Furthermore, he argues that the communitarian values experienced on the frontier carry over to America’s unique perspective on democracy. This idea has been pervasive in studies of American History until fairly recently when it has come under scrutiny for numerous reasons. In his essay “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature”, William Cronon argues that many scholars, Turner included, fall victim to the false notion that a pristine, untouched wilderness existed before European intervention. Turner’s argument does indeed rely on the idea of pristine wilderness, especially because he fails to notice the serious impact that Native Americans had on the landscape of the Americas before Europeans set foot in America.
One of the more romantic elements of American folklore has been the criss-crossing rail system of this country – steel rails carrying Americans to new territories across desert and mountain, through wheat fields and over great rivers. Carl Sandburg has flavored the mighty steam engine in elegant prose and Arlo Guthrie has made the roundhouse a sturdy emblem of America’s commerce.
In the world of Appalachia, stereotypes are abundant. There are stories told of mountaineers as lazy, bewildered, backward, and yet happy and complacent people. Mountain women are seen as diligent, strong, hard willed, and overall sturdy and weathered, bearing the burden of their male counterparts. These ideas of mountain life did not come out of thin air; they are the direct product of sensational nineteenth century media including print journalism and illustrative art that has continuously mislead and wrongfully represented the people of Appalachia. These stories, written and told by outsiders, served very little purpose to Appalachian natives other than means of humiliation and degradation. They served mostly to convince readers of the need for so-called civilized people and companies to take over the land and industry of the region, in particular the need for mineral rights, railroads, and logging as the mountain folk were wasting those valuable resources necessary for the common good.
There are many ways in which we can view the history of the American West. One view is the popular story of Cowboys and Indians. It is a grand story filled with adventure, excitement and gold. Another perspective is one of the Native Plains Indians and the rich histories that spanned thousands of years before white discovery and settlement. Elliot West’s book, Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to Colorado, offers a view into both of these worlds. West shows how the histories of both nations intertwine, relate and clash all while dealing with complex geological and environmental challenges. West argues that an understanding of the settling of the Great Plains must come from a deeper understanding, a more thorough knowledge of what came before the white settlers; “I came to believe that the dramatic, amusing, appalling, wondrous, despicable and heroic years of the mid-nineteenth century have to be seen to some degree in the context of the 120 centuries before them” .
“California is a story. California is many stories.” But whose story is heard? What stories are forgotten? In the memoir, Bad Indians, Native American writer and poet Deborah A. Miranda constructs meaning about the untold experiences of indigenous people under the colonial period of American history. Her memoir disrupts a “coherent narrative” and takes us on a detour that deviates from the alleged facts presented in our high school history books. Despite her emphasis on the brutalization of the Indigenous people in California during the colonization period, Miranda’s use of the Christian Novena, “Novena to Bad Indians,” illustrates an ‘absurd’ ironic stance amidst cruelty and violence. The elocution of the Novena itself, and the Christian
The setting of the essay is Los Angeles in the 1800’s during the Wild West era, and the protagonist of the story is the brave Don Antonio. One example of LA’s Wild West portrayal is that LA has “soft, rolling, treeless hills and valleys, between which the Los Angeles River now takes its shilly-shallying course seaward, were forest slopes and meadows, with lakes great and small. This abundance of trees, with shining waters playing among them, added to the limitless bloom of the plains and the splendor of the snow-topped mountains, must have made the whole region indeed a paradise” (Jackson 2). In the 1800’s, LA is not the same developed city as today. LA is an undeveloped land with impressive scenery that provides Wild West imagery. One characteristic of the Wild West is the sheer commotion and imagery of this is provided on “the first breaking out of hostilities between California and the United States, Don Antonio took command of a company of Los Angeles volunteers to repel the intruders” (15). This sheer commotion is one of methods of Wild West imagery Jackson
...to Americans: if their prospects in the East were poor, then they could perhaps start over in the West as a farmer, rancher, or even miner. The frontier was also romanticized not only for its various opportunities but also for its greatly diverse landscape, seen in the work of different art schools, like the “Rocky Mountain School” and Hudson River School, and the literature of the Transcendentalists or those celebrating the cowboy. However, for all of this economic possibility and artistic growth, there was political turmoil that arose with the question of slavery in the West as seen with the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska Act. As Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in his paper “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” to the American Historical Association, “the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”
Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust tells the story of people who have come to California in search
The West: From Lewis and Clark and Wounded Knee: The Turbulent Story of the Settling of Frontier America.
The Gold Rush was one of the most influential times in California History. During the four years from 1848-1852, 400,000 new people flooded into the state. People from many countries and social classes moved to California, and many of them settled in San Francisco. All this diversity in one place created a very interesting dynamic. California during the Gold Rush, was a place of colliding ideals. The 49ers came from a very structured kind of life to a place where one was free to make up her own rules.
As most folks do, when I think of the term “Gold Rush”, it conjures up images of the West! Images of cowboys and crusty old miners ruthlessly and savagely staking their claims. Immigrants coming by boat, folks on foot, horseback, and covered wagon form all over the US to rape and pillage the land that was newly acquired from Mexico through the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo… California. But let me tell you about a gold rush of another kind, in another place, even more significant. It was the actual first documented discovery of gold in the United States! Fifty years earlier…in North Carolina!
The development of the Western genre originally had its beginnings in biographies of frontiersmen and novels written about the western frontier in the late 1800’s based on myth and Manifest Destiny. When the film industry decided to turn its lenses onto the cowboy in 1903 with The Great Train Robbery there was a plethora of literature on the subject both in non-fiction and fiction. The Western also found roots in the ‘Wild West’ stage productions and rodeos of the time. Within the early areas of American literature and stage productions the legend and fear of the west being a savage untamed wilderness was set in the minds of the American people. The productions and rodeos added action and frivolity to the Western film genre.
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.
Western movies such as Rio Bravo and El Dorado illustrate America’s rugged and picturesque scenery explaining life as it was in the wide open country, at a time when few laws were in place to safeguard the public. These two films tell the story of four men who arrest and