Wayne's characters have been idolized throughout his entire western film career. His characters' devotion to his duty as a man versus their person duty to their families (though still expressing deep love) and the like, law and manhood come first in their lives demonstrating the strength of their characters, a strength that some have attempted in the quest to reach that same manhood.
In discussing Westerns, some say that most Westerns are based on clear cut heroes and villains. Wayne's films, though seemingly West atypical, do not follow this trend due to Wayne's character's darker natures that prevent them from being the cookie-cutter cowboy. Rather, to properly understand his films, they must be perceived as being noir.
In the noir tradition, the hardboiled hero's inner state directly correlates with his surroundings. The colors and texture of the milieu that the hero is placed in acts as a mirror into his soul that the audience can easily perceive. The setting of the dry desert West offers a spectrum of options to display the violence, struggle, and inner strength that Wayne's characters possess. Similar to the hardboiled detective, he is 'an antisocial loner' that is surviving in a difficult wilderness, showing his inner savage rather than a domesticated man.
Following the idea that settings play a vital role in seeing into Wayne's characters, the cleanliness of both his characters and all the other characters generally show the level of purity in their hearts. On one side, bitter characters can be placed, while on the other, vengeful outlaws can be placed. All of these characters appearances in turn demonstrate the severe psychological problems experienced by the characters themselves.
The actions of these characters in turn help project certain points of the film, such as critiques of capitalism. These situations and stories may not help understand Western life, but they helps viewers understand the culture of the film's time and how it related to masculinity through John Wayne's several performances. As mentioned, appearance (including clothing) indicated psychological and sociopaths tendencies that made certain characters stand out. A suit did not belong in the West, so when a character appeared that did wear one, the audience knows that there is something being said about that character.
Wayne's characters, on the other hand, offer more proof of the unique nature of his unstable, lonely characters that often turn out to be existential antiheros. These men are 'socially marginalized men caught in double-binds,' and in examining Wayne's characters, the audience realizes that they can never really win in the simple Western's terms of good vs. bad.
This idea helps to explain the concept of virtues in Wayne's Westerns. Virtues are 'a matter of degree and not kind,' meaning that the extreme characteristics exhibited create the virtues that are recognized, virtues that may not be 'virtuous' in the commonly thought definition of the word. This form of ethics works comparatively to the other characters to offer some sort of measurement, though Wayne's character's ethics make them out to be moral individualists. This way of thinking is then contrasted against deontological characters, and this clash is what makes much of the movie.
The clash of value systems between Wayne's characters and his sidekicks often takes center as well. By having a feminine sidekick, whether actually male or female, the audience has a comparison between Wayne's characters' wild natures in comparison to the feminine civilized side. This comparison goes also beyond this contrast through other male characters in the story. As in common Westerns, the demonstration of masculinity is key and character development in Wayne's set of films shows the audience what masculinity really is.
At the core of these character's is self-indulgent, blowing away the idea of heroism and questioning things such as fearlessness of death of the stories main heroes. In seeing these differences in John Wayne's characters and the differences of his Western film compared to most of the genre, the audience can take away an understanding of how the masculine figure was idealized in the times of the film's production and what it indicated about the culture.
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