DB - The Searchers

John Ford’s The Searchers begins with a beautiful panoramic view of the desert, lone cowboy returning home. At one point in West of Everything, Tompkins speaks of how the landscape of westerns is perpetually changing, stimulating the senses and allowing viewers to have a good perspective on the insignificance of man compared with the vastness, and indeed harshness, of the terrain, the desert. On page 76, Tompkins states that “Power, more than any other quality, is what is being celebrated and struggles with in these grandiose vistas”. Throughout the movie, the backdrops, massive in scope, serve to convey just how difficult and epic the journey is, to understand how much the band of men must overcome. In fact, in The Searchers, the land is very much integral to the overall storyline and is essential to conveying the magnitude of the adventure Ethan and company are on. On page 73, Tompkins states that “To be a man in the western is to seem to grow out of the environment, which means to be hard, to be tough, to be unforgiving.” Martin, in many ways, seemed to grow into a man, or to at least become more of a man, the longer he was exposed to the beautiful, vast, and harsh expanse known as the desert, as the west. Indeed, it is true of the western that it is essentially a battle of man versus wild, of the cowboy versus the desert. While Ethan had already conquered the land and become a real man, a cowboy, Martin battled the land throughout the movie and truly becomes something more than he was before, he becomes tougher, more rugged, in many ways a typical western hero. The land is inseparable from the cowboy. One cannot think about a cowboy without simultaneously picturing a harsh desert and wide open horizon into which he is riding. The reason the land is so inseparable from the cowboy is that they in many ways were made for each other. The cowboy is the man who feels the need, the calling, to prove to himself and to others that he can tame the elements, can face head on and overcome whatever comes his way. The desert is the unconquerable, it is as dangerous as it is beautiful, as eternal as it is perpetually changing. It is the ultimate test of man, it is the frontier through which America blazed a trail toward the west, proving that the American spirit and resolve knew nothing capable of slowing it down, and that as was its destiny, America and American greatness and ideals would expand. The western is the story of man and nature, not necessarily against each other as much as coexisting, man trying to carve out a place for himself in a harsh and untamed world. The landscape is as integral to the western as the cowboy, for without it, the cowboy wouldn’t exist.