Interpreting The Theme Of Silence In Montana 1948 By Larry Watson

"Silence could easily be designated the official language of the northern planes” is a quote by author Larry Watson, who tries to explain whats wrong with the “Mid-West”. He does this by using his novels with fascinating fictional stories to get across his point. This purpose of Watson has been a reoccurring one through out many of his novels, like ‘Justice’ and ‘White Crosses’. However, he used it most efficiently in the novel Montana 1948 where he uses a specific structure of character development, to an unfortunate event to ending with somewhat of a resolution. By doing so he managed to get across quite vividly the consequences of silence.

Watson began his story with character development, which is the way most authors begin their novels.

With out doing so the readers cannot get to know the characters and so cannot feel sympathy with any events that occur.

This is very important for Watson as he requires this history of characters to be well understood before moving forward. Setting is part of character development as it gives us an idea of the social stature of the time. For this novel in was set in Montana in 1948, as the title suggests. This instantly gives the idea of cowboys, and barren lands to the readers, like an old cowboy movie “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’. This is something I believe Watson was taking advantage in the process of creating his novel. He once said that he chose the setting because he “knew the people, their values, their walk and their talk”. This is because he actually grew up their and was accustomed to their way of life, even the harsh discrimination of that time period. This is what his novel was mainly focused on, racism towards the native Americans. We see this when a character in Montana 1948, who was an ex-sheriff, said “Screwing an Indian. Or feeling her up or whatever. You don’t lock up a man for that.” As the town sheriff, he is supposed to be the most open minded man in the town, but after reading that the

readers get a clear understanding of how that time period really was. So, we learned in the beginning of the novel that the main charters brother was abusing native women. However, since the natives were discriminated against they couldn't tell anybody because they would either not believe them or they just didn't care. So they remained silent. And Frank, the brother, continued his crimes. Watson has used this initial structure of character development to get the readers grasp of the situation, and now we know why Watson has used this setting and characters for the novel. As it is a perfect situation for him to tell us the consequences of silence.

The next stage in the structure is the unfortunate events, where Watson uses a disaster to really get his point across.

In the story, Frank murders the main characters native American house maid. This was because some other main characters knew about Franks crimes, but chose to remain silent. This silence was due to Wesley’s, Frank brother, choice of disobeying his sheriff duties because of family ties. Not only was his brother the criminal, his father was an ex-sheriff who actually already knew of Franks crimes. So for Wesley, speaking out would be a “challenging of authority” as Watson puts it, as well as disconnecting in social life with the rest of his family. “I won’t do anything to arrange his punishment in this lifetime” is what Wesley stated after hearing of his brothers crimes. Watson has used this idea of silence in a way that causes harm. In the real world, the silence on Mercer county can cause harm, but they are silent not only because of dangerous information. But due to that is the way the region is. The scorching, dry weather; “the immensity o land and sky”; and the fact that the war recently has ended. Then there are the unfortunate reasons of people being silent: repression, ignorance and keeping to yourself so other will not be disturbed. These are the real world reasons of silence in society, and Watson has experienced them enough to tell us a story in the attempt of change. Otherwise there will be

consequences.

The last part in Watson’s structure was the resolution, he had to find away of resolving the problem but still keeping his purpose strong in the novel. He did this by having Frank, the abuser, kill himself. This was a shock in the story line and actually left the readers bewildered. The reason Watson did this is because he needed the ending to be resolved but still have that consequence. The consequence being another death. There was also another way Watson’s purpose could be viewed in the story. Wesley had a 12 year old son, who came to know of all the events and knew much more than the family thought. This caused him to slowly lose that purity. “You see, I knew! I knew that Frank’s suicide will solve all our problems” was a line that the son said. From it, it’s clear to see that the information he with held, kept silent caused him to be quoted damaged mentally. This is another consequence of silence that Watson has sadly shown us.

In the end, Watson has used a three stage structure of getting to know the characters and their history, then there is a disaster that causes the readers to feel sympathy and emotion towards the characters. And lastly he has a resolution that still managed to leave the readers pained. This was his structure in which he successfully portrayed the consequences of silence. I believe Watson wanted to show us this because he knew what true silence was like, he lived among the quiet folk and probably found it horrid. The way people keep to themselves, not socialise, end up making a cold society uneasy to live in. Watson wanted this to change and used his skills as a writer to help the world understand the consequences of silence.