Thursday, September 16, 2010
SP The Searchers
In Jane Tompkins’s West of Everything, the characterization of the desert as a land of absence resonates in the film The Searchers, in which Ethan Edwards scours the empty-hearted land looking for his niece, a source of hope and compassion that the film proves is exceptionally difficult to manifest in the desert. Tompkins repeatedly enforces the idea that the Western landscape is brutal and merciless, a “promise of pain,” and is certainly no place that a man looking for sympathy and kindness would go (Tompkins, 72). The five-year long search for Ethan’s kidnapped niece reinforces Tompkins’s analysis of the desert by implying that it took years, thousands of miles, and several men’s lives to finally find a scarce bit of the human emotions that the western landscape so obviously disregards and for which it has no consideration. Furthermore, the fact that the state in which the niece, Debbie, was found – almost completely turned into a “savage Indian,” someone Ethan would rather kill than consider his family anymore – stresses even more how little of the traditional family values and ideals could survive in the desert. Ethan, a cowboy through-and-through, embodied the desire of the desert to banish all traces of human emotion and sensitivity when he went after Debbie in a murderous craving. Ultimately, Tompkins accurately depicts the desert as “the landscape of death” in relation to The Searchers and reinforces that in order for man to survive in the desert, he must embody that rugged hardness, for if he were to retain such weaknesses as emotions, he would be driven to near death and destruction by the desert (Tompkins, 70).
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In Jane Tompkins’s West of Everything, the characterization of the desert as a land of absence resonates in the film The Searchers, in which Ethan Edwards scours the empty-hearted land looking for his niece, a source of hope and compassion that the film proves is exceptionally difficult to manifest in the desert, in the chance that she has not been converted by her Indian kidnappers. Tompkins repeatedly enforces the idea that the Western landscape is brutal and merciless, a “promise of pain,” and is certainly no place that a man looking for sympathy and kindness would go (Tompkins, 72). Just as the desert represents these hardhearted traits, Ethan similarly has no room to consider human empathy in his lifestyle as a cowboy, and is purely motivated to save his niece on the notion that he is preserving innocence, even if that means he must end up killing the child if she has been contaminated by the Indians. This five-year long search for Ethan’s kidnapped niece reinforces Tompkins’s analysis of the desert by implying that it took years, thousands of miles, and several men’s lives to finally find a scarce bit of the human emotions that the western landscape so obviously disregards and for which it has no consideration. Furthermore, the fact that the state in which the niece, Debbie, was found – almost completely turned into a “savage Indian,” someone Ethan would rather kill than consider his family anymore – stresses even more how little of the traditional family values and ideals could survive in the desert. Ethan, a cowboy through-and-through, embodied the desire of the desert to banish all traces of human emotion and sensitivity when he went after Debbie in a murderous craving. His sudden submission to some sense of sympathy for the desperate girl illustrates a rare moment of weakness for the cowboy, in which he allows his heart to accept his niece for the girl she once was and give her a second chance. However, upon sending Debbie home safe and sound, he restrains from entering the household and instead saunters back into the desert dusk, symbolizing his inability to live in a world of human interaction and how he still needs to rid himself of his human weaknesses that allowed him to save Debbie. In a way, the desert landscape in The Searchers boasts of its perpetual ability to always be stronger and harder and harsher than any man that ever attempts to be just like it, and so beckons for men such as Ethan to come back and try harder. Ultimately, Tompkins accurately depicts the desert as “the landscape of death” in relation to The Searchers and reinforces that in order for man to survive in the desert, he must embody that rugged hardness, for if he were to retain such weaknesses as emotions, he would be driven to near death and destruction by the desert (Tompkins, 70).
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