The Searchers - Lee, John

The Land

The land in The Searchers represents purity and harshness, the yet untamed and brutal mechanism that ensures only the fit survive. In the wilderness of The Searchers there is no religion or skirts, women or pleasantries, there is only the trail. In West of Everything Jane Tompkins explains that the desert symbolizes God in a way, because the physical landscape precedes everything in Westerns, it is unconquered and majestic, it embodies all the traits that the cowboy wants to embody. Jane Tompkins points out that there is a contradiction here, that the Western glorifies nature as something sublime and great, but also uses it to greater establish the cowboy.

As mentioned in West of Everything, it is easy to appreciate the differences between the desert and any other "frontier" setting. The difference between the hero standing in the middle of the forest and the middle of the desert is stark because the desert is so bare, and by putting the cowboy amidst the grand emptiness of the desert it also implies that the cowboy is master of the desert.

By imposing self-reliance, the Desert is a harsh environment, but it also provides things that may be cherished not only by the Cowboy, but the audiences of the movie during it's time; solitude, a connection with nature, tangible rewards for ability, a time and place that promised freedom for those strong enough to persevere in the wild.

In many literary works that share certain characteristics with the Western, nature promises wisdom and strength, freedom from the artificial contraints of society and the obligations that other people pose. Transcendentalism, the literary movement that first sought to gain wisdom in nature and self-reliance was a response to the inhumane, mechanical process of the Industrial Revolution in Britain.

In The Searchers, our protagonist emerges from the desert, coming home from a long journey in the desert. He returns home to his only semblance of family, his brother. I believe that the brother offers an important contrast; the brother has forshook the land, settled down and raised a family, almost the antithesis of our alpha male. The brother's death and wreaking vengeance to those responsible is the central focus of the movie, what the searchers are searching for, thus the brother's purpose was to die. Our alpha male, having a dubious path and of suspcious gains, does not suffer this fate. In fact, his ability to persevere in the wild is what distinguishes him as "hero" and therefore it is hard to imagine that, should John Wayne have been ambushed by Comanches, he would never have met such a helpless demise. In fact, most of the relationships between the hero and his sidekick (or foster son) and other people (as well as between themselves) is indicative of their own relationship with the desert.
The brother and Reverend who both forsook the desert for society (one honest and one subtly dishonest) die and fail to achieve the quest, respectively. Mose Harper, though he may be a simpleton, is nonetheless held in a certain regard by Ethan Edwards, and is knowledgable of the land. Thus he is also one of the only people to recognize (in a good way) Ethan Edward's ability and "hero" stature. He does this without our knowing why, and all that we know is that though Mose Harper may be a simpleton, he is an honest and humble simpleton. Like Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet, it is as if a psychological affliction has also granted greater insight, and the implied reason is that because they are simple, they are able to percieve matters as they are; "see no evil." Therefore Mose is kindly to all, thanking even those that would insult him, and holds Ethan Edwards in high regard despite his pragmatic ways or his dubious past because he is also "one with the desert". "Pawley" is a foster son, begrudgingly admitted but very tangibly implied by Ethan Edwards leaving all his posessions to him. An inevitable aspect of this kind of relationship is that the son follows in the father's footsteps, but it is not so much Ethan Edwards doing the teaching but the trail and the desert. In Martin Pawley's first outing, he puts emotion before reason, is noticeably unexperienced in properly assessing his horse's fitness, and seems like a cowboy-in-training. Seeing the ruins of what he considered home and family soon after sets him up to follow in his father's footsteps, effectively shredding his closest social ties. He then almost gives up marriage for the sake of the trail, leading us to presume, almost automatically, that this is of course why Ethan Edwards presumably had to give up Debbie as well, mayhap because settling down means a certain kind of death for the cowboy.
Martin Pawley settles down after his quest is done, Ethan does not, and this is why John Wayne's gentlemanly suppression of all pain and expression of emotion at the end of the quest is so complete; in the end, after having given in to Ethan's ideas of ultimate good, and ending his quest, he goes away again, utterly alone, but a man of the desert to the end.