AbstractsLanguage, Literature & Linguistics

Life on the frontier as seen in the early sketches and tales of Bret Harte

by Robert Benjamin Resnick




Institution: Boston University
Department:
Year: 1948
Record ID: 1483740
Full text PDF: http://hdl.handle.net/2144/6264


Abstract

The spirit of the miner and frontiersman was not always one of pathos or loneliness. The simplicity of their existence made for a humor and self-confidence not to be found elsewhere in America. Theirs, as Harte expresses it, was a humor of democracy in which hardship, danger, and death were endured by being made light of. Cynicism could not be afforded on the frontier. The tendency to minimize rather than exaggerate a situation was a very singular element in the humor of the West and in the humor of Harte. Harte's treatment of the Spanish and Mexican civilizations in early California is important in that it not only gives the reader an historical background of the far West but prepares him for the incongruities which came about when Old and New World cultures clashed. Harte, generally sympathetic to the Spaniards and Mexicans, found an element in the mode of their existence which he took time to criticize and almost sneer at: namely, the Spanish Catholic church. In "The Legend of Monte del Diablo,'' for example, Spanish padres are made the objects of ridicule at the hands of a Devil who can see nothing but Anglo-Saxons and the hordes of gold which they are carrying out of California. The system of lasting partnerships was one of the more particular and romantic elements of pioneer existence. Loneliness and rampant lawlessness were two of the main reasons for the formation of partnerships. Harte's best example of loyalty of one man for another is his "Tennessee's Partner." In this story he shows where even death cannot separate the devotion which the one man has for the other. "The Iliad of Sandy Bar" is another famous example in which the theme is undying friendship. Here we see that love, time, and distance cannot rupture the devotion of Scott and York for each other. Harte always ends a story of broken friendship with the feeling that the parties concerned have either already become reconciled or will be so in the future. Gambling was tolerated in California till about 1855. Before this time – and it is with these years that Harte was concerned – the John Oakhursts and Jack Hamlins of California retained almost complete control of the destinies of many men. They lived virtually by the turn of a card. Harte in "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" gives us one of the best stories in which the philosophy of a gambler is tested to the limit. Oakhurst, whose steel nerve and steady right hand were the weapons of his existence, finally recognized his defeat at the hands of Mother Nature and "cashed in his chips." The fatalism that was the gambler's and the superstitions which accompanied that fatalism helped to set apart the California tempo – the easy-come-easy-go mode of existence – from that of the rest of the United States and even the world. The two reasons for the rampant lawlessness in the early West were the irresponsibility of the pioneers and their attitude toward the foreign elements in California. Dueling was one of the main sources of lawlessness. This system of revenging one's honor was carried over into California…