The Searchers:
Epic of Hope

"It never occurred to them that their search was stretching out into a great extraordinary feat of endurance; an epic of hope without faith, of fortitude without reward, of stubbornness past all limits of reason. They simply kept going on, doing the next thing, because they always had one more place to go, following out one more forlorn-hope try"
-Alan Le May "The Searchers", 1954

"My name is John Ford. I am a director of Westerns."
- quoted by Tag Gallagher

The City of Angels Film Festival 2000
ROAD TRIP! MOVING WITH THE SPIRIT

A source paper for
R. Pacatte, fsp
Pauline Center for Media Studies
50 Saint Pauls Avenue
Boston, MA 02130
Mediastudies@pauline.org
www.pauline.org

INTRODUCTION

I dare you to try and find a definition of the "road movie" genre. Even James Monaco and Pauline Kael failed me. Finally, after checking numerous books, encyclopedias and CD-roms (!) I found a definition that suits the theme of this festival to a "T":

THE SEARCHERS is a story told from the "male" perspective (the novel and film are definitely male – though with different main characters), continually on the move, enduring incredible odds, grappling with racism as its driving force. Its construction, the codes, conventions used and the social and historic milieu of the production of this John Ford classic also make us ask if this film is only a road movie – or is it a western, a crime film, social commentary – or all of the above?

The first time I saw THE SEARCHERS must have been on television in the 1960’s because in 1956 I was in Kindergarten and I don’t think my parents would have taken me to see it in the theater. The only scene I remembered, along with the terror when I finally saw it again on video, was when little Debbie ran to hide at her grandmother’s grave and she looked up to see Chief Scar. Growing up in the 1950’s, I was an inveterate fan of Westerns on television, from Rawhide to Sky King. And in the days before DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990), I always wanted the settlers, wagon trains, cattle drivers and the Calvary to win against the Indians. The Indians were surely the "bad guys" and "we" were the good guys.

I have now seen John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS fourteen times – at least. When I took my first film class, this is the movie the instructor used for textual analysis, breaking it open in fascinating ways. I, in turn, now try to do the same with my film students. THE SEARCHERS, like Roman Polanski’s CHINATOWN (1974), is, for me, one of the quintessential "teaching" movies. They both combine character, story, plot, technique and enough star power to impress the least interested. These films also deal with the complexity of the human person and life, the dilemmas we are dealt on our journey and those we deal ourselves. These elements justifiably place them on the AFI’s Top 100 Film list, and identify THE SEARCHERS, at least, as a road movie.

This "source paper" will seek to explore the following:

• Whose story does THE SEARCHERS tell?

• What drives this cinematic road trip?

• Do the protagonists move with or against the Spirit?

• How do the characters and their destinations change? Or do they?

• What does the film (and the filmmaker) say about the human journey?

• Lessons from the road

• A theological/Biblical reading of THE SEARCHERS

THE STORY: Le May or Ford/Nugent?

When Alan Le May (1899-1964) wrote The Searchers in 1954, he already had several screenplays produced, and short stories and novels published. During his lifetime, a total of three of his novels were made into films, including THE SEARCHERS. Any examination of THE SEARCHERS needs to begin with the original novel, I think, because the novel explains so much about the film. For example, it sometimes seems that the development of Ethan Edward’s character has been attributed to screenwriter Frank Nugent, and to large extent to Ford himself. Yet, even the "gaze" and against-type character played by John Wayne can be found in Le May’s own power of description:

The biggest difference between the original novel and the screenplay is that the novel belongs to Martin Pauley and the film to Ethan Edwards/John Wayne. In the novel, Martin ends up with the rescued Debbie (and we know they will remain together) and Ethan (Amos in the novel) ends up dead, killed by a Comanche squaw in the final raid. In the film, Ford and Nugent had John Wayne’s mythical stature to contend with, and there was no way he could be killed off. This challenge ultimately resulted in John Ford’s version of the epic, though at the time, not all the critics appreciated it

Another important plot change is that in the novel, Debbie is Scar’s adopted daughter though the searchers come to suspect she may be married, while in the film, she is one of Scar’s wives. (Ethan Edward’s almost too-quick ‘conversion’ at the end stretches credibility somewhat, because the whole film is so heavily weighted against Debbie’s being married to an Indian; in the book Ethan is wounded and then killed without being converted.)

To Nugent’s credit (and certainly Ford’s), the racism/miscegenation issue is carried through consistently from novel to film and from the distance of today, can been seen as a kind of examination at the civil rights movement then building in the USA. The two John Ford’s biographers I consulted for this paper provided information about Ford’s interest in racism as a social statement and theme. Gallagher wrote: "Intolerance was always a major Ford theme, and racism became a dominant motif… In THE SEARCHERS, racism first destroys Debbie’s family, then nearly destroys her; not until Ethan overcomes his racism will he regain Debbie."

Scott Eyman thinks that Ford’s corny comedy scenes in THE SEARCHERS were a possible reaction to Ford’s thinking that "he was working too close to the bone with the material of THE SEARCHERS, that there was too much about racism..." and that a release was needed. On the other hand, Eyman asserts that "Ford’s social vision was every bit as intense [as Capra’s morality tales], but far more nuanced and mature. America’s humane idealism gave him his themes, and his best films are energized by his recognition of his country’s internal conflicts…."

Le May’s novel is very stark on this issue and in the wake of the Holocaust and the beginning of the civil rights movement, what looks like a western romance novel takes can be interpreted as a blatant and seductive piece of pro-tolerance literature. He has Martin Pauley, with whom we have come to sympathize, saying something terrible:

I contend that racism is the main issue that drives the film and the book before it, though both Le May and Ford/Nugent integrate romanticism in their story-telling as well. Without it, the tale would not be palatable or acceptable to their audience.

On a lighter note, the original novel narrates the tensions between Charlie McCorry and Martin Pauley, including a fight over Laurie Jorgenson, so if Ford made the comedic parts corny, it was his own doing. As Ford kept his own string of actors he frequently employed, he seemed to have had a repertoire of scenes as well; this fight reminded me of THE QUIET MAN brawl.

DRIVING THE TRIP

Ethan Edwards, the white man, is the incarnation of the seven capital sins: pride, envy, sloth, anger, avarice, gluttony and lust. There is no one ‘sin’ that keeps the action going in this film, though I think racism is the most motivational element of all, complicated by Ethan’s sins/sinful tendencies: pride, envy, anger, avarice and lust. His gluttony we will leave to our gestalt, but he must have had this, too, because he’s so… dark.

In the beginning it seems that this is a ‘simple’ search and rescue for Lucy and Debbie Edwards who have been kidnapped by Comanche Indians in the Texas of the late 1860’s. Soon enough, we find that this is a far more complicated journey, indeed it is an epic, that keeps their uncle, Ethan Edwards and foster brother, Martin Pauley, on the move for five years:

While this quote from the novel indicates heroism, we are still confronted by the notion of ‘sin’ and in the category of human behavior we first encounter revenge (pride; anger; envy; lust): Ethan is in love with his brother’s wife, Martha, always has been and he is going to revenge her death. Ethan’s revenge and hate is marked by racism from the outset. He even tried to win Martin over to his own way of thinking by making sure Martin sees his own mother’s scalp hanging from Scar’s lance.

The thought of white women being tarnished through sexual relations, forced or not, with Indians, is abhorrent to Ethan (and maybe to us in the mid 20^th century). Soon enough, rescue no longer motivates Ethan as it does Martin; revenge and murder take over. This is emphasized all the more when Lucy’s body is found ravaged and the years pass and it is assumed that Lucy has been with the "bucks".

Avarice comes into the picture, too, though the film doesn’t "resolve" the issue. The source of Ethan’s gold remains unknown and suspicion of crime enters in, added to by the questionable ethic of how Ethan deals with Futterman and his quest for the reward for information leading to finding Debbie. When the Mexican trader leads Ethan and Martin to Scar, he returns the payment to Ethan because he is afraid Scar will kill the two men and he does not want to take "blood money". Where did Ethan’s money come from? Then, when Debbie’s "rescue" is immanent, Ethan begins speaking of her property as his, and he bequeaths it to Martin without even considering that Debbie may not be tainted, hence redeemable.

What about sloth? A disdain for work? Laziness? In the normal course of things, Ethan would probably have been a most productive ‘worker’. In THE SEARCHERS however, his work ‘product’, the search, is energized by hate, revenge, anger, all things that do not give life. For all people, work can be good in and of itself : creative, constructive, life-giving. For people of faith, to work is to imitate the action of the Creator. Ethan’s actions were not life giving in themselves, but rather symptoms of his inner darkness.

In many ways, Martin, dark of skin, and part Indian, is the antithesis of Ethan’s sinfulness, his very own ‘whiteness’. Skin color, in the end, does not matter when it comes to human integrity and dignity. Here we have the classic scenario of the anti-hero contrasted with the hero. Because this is Ethan’s story, rather than Martin’s, we perhaps fail to notice his struggles with the thought that it might be too late for Debbie; that she may already be ‘married’ or have been with the bucks. He is no less a racist, he is just willing to let it go for love of the girl and the foster family he has lost. Martin’s racism is ‘local’ whereas Ethan’s is ‘bigger’ and personifies societal or institutionalized racism.

Martin seems to be ‘innocent’ at first, and his racist utterances thoughtless, whereas Ethan epitomizes guilt. Then Martin kicks his Indian wife ‘Look’ down the hill, and the [female] viewer is horrified. Not only is Look an Indian, she is a woman. I have often wondered about this scene, for the action seems more consistent with Ethan’s behavior than Martin’s. It is indeed "too near the bone" of racism and patriarchy, and our horror at these sins is justified.

There is another element that moves the action along, the idea of the ‘circle’. Throughout Le May’s novel as well as the film, the journey is always going through cycles (the seasons) and circles… circles within circles, they ride in circles, they sit in circles, they go home again, they go north, south, east and west over and over again. Life is also a cycle, a circle that continues on.

What reinforces the image of the circle is the name of Scar’s Indian tribe: the ‘Nawyecky’ Comanches. As Ethan explains in the film while making a circular sign, Nawyecky means "Round about; go one place, means to go in another." Ethan seems to hint at trickery here, (though it is surely survival). In Le May’s novel, we get further explanation for the Nawyecky Comanche name from an Indian Agent: "… ‘Them As Never Gets Where They Are Going’. Don’t you believe it. What it is, they like to lie about where they are going, and start that way, then double back and fork off …" Sounds like a description of Ethan and Martin to me, but especially Ethan in the way he deals with Futterman. Circles within circles, turning and turning. Ethan and Martin become the people they seek.

When Ethan shoots out the eyes of the dead Indian toward the beginning of their search, he explains his cruel actions by saying that Indians believe that without eyes they cannot enter the spirit-world and that they will wander forever between the winds. Ethan again describes himself, for he does not see. He is a wanderer, blinded by anger.

What else drives the trip? Cattle, Texas, American pioneer ideology, the myth, a kind of white religious supremacy in almost the same sense that white Afrikaners believe(d) in their divine right and mandate to settle southern Africa. (Recall Mrs. Jorgen’s speech about being Texicans….)

From the stunning visual shots of Monument Valley, Utah, to the phallic setting of the scene where the two brothers meet at the beginning of the film, we are signaled about the sexual tension between them; the longing "gazes" of Ethan, Martha and Aaron’s clueless looks lead the way to the issue of miscegenation, to the tension between Martin, Charlie and Laurie that breaks out in fighting. Yes, racism and sexuality, taken separately or together, are also responsible for how the film moves from one scene, one place, one year to another.

Religion is another device, but I will treat that in another section.

The film’s technological construction obviously moves the film along on the visual level, in a way that is ultimately and completely satisfying to people who love parallel structure and closure. The porches, the doors, the contrast between inside and out, Martin, the outcast, the ‘different one’ alone on the porch the evening Ethan arrives, and Ethan alone on the porch at the end, outcast and destined to roam; Ethan lifting Debbie and the beginning and lifting her up again when he chases her down in the cave; Ethan the wanderer enters the story and leaves the same way. To the western mind, a neat ending is the only satisfying end to a story and it fulfills the road movie definition requirement that there be a reasonable resolution to the drama.

THE SEARCHERS is reflective of our national myth, so when the door closes on Ethan Edwards/John Wayne, with his stance of uncertainty and our certainty that he will survive anything, lives on. Martin will marry Laurie, but I have always wondered what will happen to Debbie.

MOVING WITH THE SPIRIT AND CHANGE

In THE SEARCHERS, it is hard to say who moves with the Spirit, or responds to inspiration. It seems that indeed, there might be movement of the Spirit, but little response on the part of the characters. There are plenty of ‘signs’ in the film, but not much listening or ‘seeing’ the ‘other’: those people not like ‘us’. The POV is definitely white. With Mrs. Jorgenson’s ‘speech’ about the sacrifices needed for a new country, our (a white audience’s?) patriotism is engaged, albeit at the expense of Native Americans. And patriotism can be a virtue that uplifts us all. The question is: is this virtue or mythmaking? Is America only for white people? (When Ford made this film, who constituted his intended audience?)

There are signs, words, warnings and clues throughout that lead to Debbie, to transcendence. If Debbie becomes the one to be redeemed, then she becomes the redeemer too. She is the goal, for better or worse. If she can be reached, if Ethan can be converted, purified from his ruthless, relentless quest to avenge Martha and purge Debbie (and the pioneering community?) by death, then the conflict has the possibility of being resolved…. It is his own redemption Ethan unconsciously seeks, and it is not until the end, for some reason left unarticulated, that he throws off a lifetime of ‘sinfulness’ and blindness to grant life to someone else, someone weaker, someone who in herself in a kind of subversive way, has actually controlled him for five years.

Martin is a man on a quest, the kind of mythical quest a boy might go through to become a man. We are continually reminded of Martin’s immaturity by the way Ethan treats him: no liquor, no respect… until near the end, in an act of semi-generosity, Ethan makes Martin his heir. Martin is the bigger man though, because he places value on the person of Debbie rather than on things or even the respect of Ethan whom he has tried to impress. That Martin has the courage to face his ‘hero’ shows that he has indeed grown.

Maybe it is the journey itself that is the Spirit, for both men are purified though they never leave their humanity behind, nor their weaknesses. Because of Ethan’s ultimate change of heart, we know something, some self-awareness, some self-knowledge, has touched him. I am reluctant to say what it might have been, because it remains unclear, ambiguous even. The only thing I will venture is that upon seeing Debbie, love of family overcame all else to grant the girl her life. Maybe all of Marty’s dogged whining at Ethan finally penetrated the hard shell of hate. Maybe, as Eyman asserts, "The murderous Ethan finally feels the pull of family, humanity is affirmed over hate and destruction. In touching Debbie, he feels the human being rather than the abstractions of his racism." (After all, Ethan is no peacemaker. In fact early on he tells the Captain (Ward Bond) that his sword has not been made into plow shears.)

The person of Scar is of interest here, in that he bore outer scars while Ethan bore inner scars. War Chief Scar at least lived who he was. Interestingly enough, we never learn the exact sources of the scars for either man. Ethan couldn’t "see" his own scars, his wounded-ness, ever the avenger even to the point of scalping Scar at the end. Ethan, the monumental myth, makes us wait until it is almost too late for us to believe he can change. But if he is not to die (and John Wayne cannot die), then he must change and this change must be reasonable enough to satisfy us. This is classic myth-movie making at its best, American style, via John Ford.

THE HUMAN JOURNEY

The figure of Ethan Edwards is large, complex and dark. He dominates THE SEARCHERS in ways that few other key film protagonists do. John Wayne’s portrayal goes way beyond his other performances, and is far from the Western hero depicted in so many American movies and television programs.

To understand this Nugent/Ford creation, one wants to go back to the original novel, and then to the author. Where did this Ethan Edwards character come from?

Scott Eyman gives an account of screenwriter Frank Nugent’s emersion training by John Ford when preparing for FORT APACHE (1948). "After Nugent had read every book extant on the American Southwest, Ford ‘sent me hotfooting to Tombstone and Apache Pass and Cochise’s Stronghold …. After seven weeks I returned to Hollywood full of erudition, steeped in Indian lore and cavalry commands."

Alan Le May, author of The Searchers, had a great-grandfather who was killed by Indians, a grandfather was wounded in the battle of Kenesaw Mountain, another "… grandfather was killed by a buffalo on the Kansas plains. One of them made a fortune in cattle and lost it again. Four of the family, one a captain, fought at Bunker Hill…" Alan Le May himself was a college graduate, had been a "horse wrangler in Colorado, swamper in Wisconsin, fisherman off Florida…", a geologist in Colombia, a soldier. He himself was a man on the move, and his stories reflect the rugged individualism, the restlessness, that must have fueled his own sense of romanticism about America and its history, and the journey a man can take in life.

So, in THE SEARCHERS, we have a literal journey, and several human journeys as people travel down the years. Against the landscape of the pioneer socio-historical myth of America, THE SEARHCERS brings us in to a moral universe from which Ethan Edwards, the individual cannot escape. Nor can we, 44 years later, and counting.

LESSONS FROM THE ROAD

Ultimately, Ethan’s own self-knowledge (and ours) is increased because be learns ‘redemption’, literally true for Debbie, rescued from her captors; metaphorically true for Ethan and us. Do the characters learn to be interiorly free while trying to free Debbie? In the end, it seems ambiguous. Ethan begins alone and ends alone, and he may continue alone. Perhaps, though, he has earned interior freedom because he can walk away, task completed, his anger spent, his past put to rest.

Human solidarity is shown among the non-Indians, and among the Indians but the prospect of conciliation seems unlikely (despite the quips that Ethan and Scar exchange about speaking ‘American’ and ‘Comanche’). To me, Le May’s novel is more sympathetic to the plight of the Indians. While racism is a motivating theme of the novel and the film, the book is tempered by Le May’s continual reference to the peace-loving Quakers, especially Appleby, who threatens dire consequences if the searchers interfere or hurt the Indians, or the work of the Quakers among them.

A THEOLOGICAL/BIBLICAL READING OF THE SEARCHERS

In an almost unintentional way, theology, through the Bible and ritual, becomes a sub-theme and a devise used to propel the story of THE SEARCHERS. Gallagher refers to Ford’s use of ritual, re-use of hymns (Shall We Gather at the River) and the image of rivers as sacrament or sign. While Le May refers to the religious, and mentions the peace-loving Quaker Indian Agents repeatedly in the novel, John Ford/Frank Nugent (with Ford’s strong Catholic background, friendship with clergy and – perhaps the influence of his marriage to a Protestant) use an Americanized type of religion unabashedly in the film, again, in a kind of dialectic form.

For example, there is the "Reverend-Captain" who combines the religious and secular in the person of the Ward Bond character. This dynamic tension between church and state, so to speak, can be said to embody the entire conflict to be resolved: between a person’s ability to transcend self to sacrifice self for others, to act for the ‘here and now’/temporal order or to act in view of a higher order/reality. This can be distilled even further: the struggle between body and soul in the person of Ethan Edwards.

To illustrate the ‘religious reading’ of this film further:

Character/event

Names

When studying THE SEARCHERS several years ago, I noticed that not only had names been changed from the book (or re-assigned and some characters deleted), but that Biblical names abounded (more in the film than the original novel). We know that Ford was a religious man, but I found no account of why the final list of names was settled on. However, it makes for interesting speculation and inter-textual reference as we seek to ‘make meaning’ from the film – without taking it too far.

Ethan: Hebrew; means enduring, that is, long-lived; also means uncertain. Grandson of Judah and Tamar (1 Ch. 2:6); issue of illegitimacy (Gen 38) (or as Judah was ‘tricked’ into marrying Tamar, was Ethan tricked out of marrying Martha?)

Aaron: Brother of Moses; permitted the creation of the Golden Calf (Ex 32) and was never punished; guilt minimized; Aaron’s relation to Ethan’s golden Yankee dollars; gold as an idol; even though Aaron doesn’t know where Ethan got the gold, he takes it and hides it (we never see it retrieved but Ethan never runs out of money either); so with the biblical Aaron, it was easier to ‘give in’ than do the right thing

Ethan also takes back the money he gave Futterman; the Mexican trader gives back the ‘blood money’; Mose Harper doesn’t want any money, just a home

Mose(s) (Hebrew: to draw out [of the water]; Egyptian: is born; the idea of regeneration by water ("Mose, do you know where the water is?" "I’ve been born again") Moses was a major prophet (one’s whose role is to convey the message of God, to speak the truth); and as a fool, Mose spoke the truth: he led the way to Debbie

Martha (Aramaic for ‘lady’; wife of a lord) image of the busy housekeeper in the Gospel (Lk 10, Jn 11), sister to Lazarus, who whom Jesus would raise from the dead, bring back to life;

Deborah (Hebrew for ‘bee’) More so, who she was in the Bible, a prophetess and a ‘judge’; one who accompanied soldiers into battle (Judges 4) and then gave the call to join battle; Debbie was a captive and the reason for the search was like a ‘call to battle’ for Ethan

Benjamin Favored son

Samuel (name changed from Sol in the novel) last of the judges of Israel, a soldier, leader, king

Redemption as a Theme (dialectical reading)

CONCLUSION

According to Tag Gallagher, "Technicolor itself is a medium better suited to mythicization than to realism" and he refers to Ford’s preference for framing and lighting his shots horizontally. Both Gallagher and Eyman (though briefly) refer to the influence of Charles Russell, the great artist of the American West on John Ford’s work. Most of the scenes in THE SEARCHERS are still, like masterpieces. The contrast of light and dark, the rich colors and textures are visually stunning. Like Griffith and other early filmmakers (and even as Manoel de Oliviera who continues to preserve and perpetuate the still-camera technique today to the dismay of some of his audience), there is little camera movement. But Ford has us thinking we are always on the move, with action coming and going or happening within the frame. There is little stillness.

THE SEARCHERS is a film of contrasts: light, dark, good, evil, redeemed, unredeemed, scarred inward and out, still and active. It is about men and women, whites and non-whites, tolerance and intolerance. These elements are like rest areas on both sides of a road that anyone can stop at along a journey, as long as one has somewhere to go. This is it’s inner drive, it’s interior dialectic structure, because we can go back and forth, from one side of the street to the other, moving along, until we reach our destination, first one way, then the other. Two sides of a street, two sides of a man. The kind of road trip epitomized by THE SEARCHERS is a metaphor for the inner workings, that stretching between experience, learning, feeling and thinking within the human person to reach truth, beauty and goodness.

The women, of course, stay at home and wait. A road movie for women is still not a safe or acceptable ‘space’ or moral universe to explore (despite the amazing success of THELMA AND LOUISE in 1991). But a man’s (or men) journey seems to be acceptable and does not disrupt our comfort zone for exploring the manifestations of our own inhumanity to one another, man or woman, race or creed, gender or age.

This conversation may yet be for another day but in the name of justice, let us not delay.

We are all on a journey to identify and integrate our humanity within the larger community. We have come through the 50’s 60’s 70’s to the new century and racism, discrimination, ethnic cleansing, intolerance continue to be a huge problems throughout the world.

For our journeys to be successful, even hopeful, it is incumbent upon us to reflect on our national myths and the social-political-economic-mediated landscape they have created and which in turn keep the myths in existence. If we wish all people to be valued as human beings, then THE SEARHCERS provides a valid wide-open space to begin or continue the reflection and dialogue begun by Alan Le May and imprinted in our visual memories by John Ford so many years ago and even today.

Bibliography

Calvocoressi, Peter (1999) Who’s Who in the Bible, Penguin:New York

Drummond, Phillip (1997) High Noon, British Film Insitute:London

Eyman, Scott (1999) Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford, Simon & Schuster: New York

Gallagher, Tag (1986) John Ford: The Man and His Times, University of California Press:Berkeley

Hayward, Susan (1996) Key Concepts in Cinema Studies, Routledge:New York

Hiesberger, Jean Marie (General Ed.) (1995) The Catholic Bible: Personal Study Edition, New American Bible translation, Oxford University Press:New York

Le May, Alan (1954) The Searchers, Berkeley Books:New York (2000 paperback edition)

Le May, Alan (1998) Spanish Crossing: Western Stories, Five Star:Unity Maine

Le May, Alan (1957) The Unforgiven, Berkeley Books:New York (2000 paperback edition)

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