MP - The Searchers

“What makes a man to wander, what makes a man to roam, what makes a man to wander, and turn is back on home?” This quote is from the song in the opening scene of the Western movie, The Searchers, while the camera man steps through the door frame of a house out onto the porch where the vast desert wasteland awaits him. Although this scene is not the typical Western opening, it still involves the basic elements of a Western film such as the land and sky in the scene and a cowboy riding through the desert with a great dust plume in his wake. While the man comes into view, he is welcomed, quite warmly by family members including his brother. Later in the story, Indians steal away this man’s niece and in an effort to find her, he is encompassed in a give and take relationship with the Western wilderness. As JaneTompkins states in “West of Everything,” “The appeal of the desert lies partly in its promise of pain, an invitation that is irresistible, as Charles Sheldon suggested, because it awakens a desire for spiritual prowess, some unearthly glory earned through long-continued discipline, self-sacrifice, submission to a supernal power” (72). An often repeated scene throughout the movie is one of the cowboys riding along the desert with only themselves breaking the skyline between the desert and mountains. This depicts the vast landscape while also proving to illustrate how alone the cowboy is with the land. The humans and horses stand out as conquerors of the land, masters of themselves and all around them yet their surroundings are unstable and ruthless. “The desert flatters the human figure by making it seem dominant and unique, dark against light, vertical against horizontal, solid against plane, detail against blankness” (74). There is a male – female relationship that occurs in The Searchers where Martin goes off to find what he calls his sister while he leaves the girl whom he loves at home without much of a thought. The constant struggle that they face to be together and apart is shown with the same struggle in nature with the West. The girl and the land constantly test the cowboy while he puts a great deal of effort through each of his tasks. This bond between both the cowboy and the West and the cowboy with his sweetheart is depicted by Jane Tompkins, “He courts it, struggles with it, defies it, conquers it, and lies down with it at night. In this, it is like nothing so much as the figure the Western casts out at the start: the woman” (81).

A point that Jane Tomkins points out in her text that is conflicting to the movie is the point where she says, “The hero’s passage across the landscape has ultimately a domesticating effect… If nature’s wildness and hardness test his strength and will and intelligence, they also give him solace and refreshment” (81). In The Searchers, the landscape does not have a domesticating effect on Martin or on Ethan when they venture out. Martin’s girlfriend tries to convince him to stay but he resists and wants to go back out into the harsh environment in order to find his ‘sister.’ Nothing about either of the men becomes domesticated as the film continues on. The one and only situation that becomes a flicker of domestication is when there are family members or friends in the presence of Martin and Ethan. The land barely gives either main character a break in terms of solace or refreshment as well. The true test of a cowboy is against themselves, not nature and that proves to hold fast throughout The Searchers.