Thursday, September 17, 2009

The Searchers

Scenes from the western “The Searchers” exemplify, in my opinion, two main traits: the roughness and alpha man stereotype of the cowboy and the greatness, profoundness and deepness of the western land. In the movie we can see at the very beginning how emphasized these two qualities are, you can see the lonely cowboy riding a beautiful brown horse whose colors fade out into the wilderness of the western desert. “It is an environment inimical to human beings, where a person is exposed, the sun beats down, and there is no place to hide. (Tompkins 71)” Tompkins describes the land as it is, and you can relate it to the cowboy. The land and the cowboy are very much alike, just like an Eskimo the North Pole.

By merely analyzing the character, in this case the cowboy, a person can truly picture the setting of his life. But what a person pictures is exemplified in movies and was in reality much harsher. Throughout the movie Ford shows us the several obstacles the cowboy has to withstand and overcome, blizzards in winter, persecutions with the Indians, crossing rivers, riding for day, withstanding hunger, thirst amongst other things. Cowboys definitely lived and harsh life which was very well portrayed in the movie.

In the movie we can also see “the evolution of the cowboy”, how Martin matures, with Ethan’s guidance, to become the cowboy who found his sister Debbie after all those years of searching non-stop. Tompkins also says, “The emptiness we see in the desert, the sense of a hostile environment, is an effect of a certain way of life and of certain desires. (Tompkins 77)”; what does she mean by this? Tompkins only confirms what has been said before! That the cowboys way of life is purely a reflection of the ambience to which he is exposed to and in which he grows up to become a man.

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