NH The Searchers

"Injun will chase a thing til he thinks he's chased it enough. Then he quits. Same way when he runs. Seems like he never learns there's such a thing as a critter that'll just keep comin' on. So we'll find em in the end, I promise you. We'll find em. Just as sure as the turnin" of the earth." These are the words of John Wayne's character Ethan Edwards in "The Searchers". These words describe the essence of Ethan Edwards and the way that he lives his life. He is clearly extremely persistent as he searches for Debbie for years and he also served in the confederate army for many years. Ethan Edwards is a strong character in stature and also in personality and the main things that have made him this way are his travels and his time spent on the landscape experiencing the goods and evils of the world. Tomkins discusses this type of man and how he is made up to be the way he is. "To be a man in the Western is to seem to grow out of the environment, which means to be hard, to be tough, to be unforgiving"(Tomkins, 73). These aspects are clearly aspects that belong to Ethan as he travels along the rough terrain with Marty and is quite unpleasant toward him at times. He is also the true definition of a man of the Western as we see him throughout the movie riding in the desert, unclean and also unpleasant.
"The qualities needed to survive on the land are the qualities that the land itself possesses-bleakness, mercilessness"(Tomkins, 73). Tomkins often discusses the hardships of the land and compares it to certain tough qualities that relate very well to life. Theses are true qualities of the land and it can be tough, but I also feel that the land is also what you make of it, just as life is. It can be extremely difficult but the hardships that you make it through on the land, just as in life, always end up being for the best and making you stronger. Ethan Edwards did have the qualities needed to survive on the land according to Tomkinsbut I also felt that he resented the land. Ethan was a great, strong man because of his experiences on the land and what he had gone through in his life on the land. The Civil War was a large part of that. His connection to the land seems to be resented because in a way it seems to me that the land is his enemy. He has spent so much of his life on the land that he has nothing else. Whether Ethan likes it or not the land is all he has and all he knows and he uses his abilities from experiences on the land to his advantage.