The West Rules with an Iron Fist
In this novel, E.L. Docotorow tells how the town of Hard Times in the Dakota Territory earned its name. Though the overall desperation seems to be exaggerated, by reading this novel one begins to see the fantasy behind the Hollywood version of the American West. Welcome to Hard Times provides readers with a picture of what kind of hardscrabble existence the western settlers actually endured, as opposed to the sanitized images Hollywood has provided us. In the first scene of the novel, the reader witnesses the Bad Man from Bodie rape, vandalize and burn an entire town. Through these events, the reader comes to truly understand the nature of this era. When Doctorow's narrator, Blue, surmises, "Bad Men from Bodie weren't ordinary scoundrels, they came with the land, and you could no more cope with them than you could with dust or hailstones . . .expectations wore away with the weather" the author reveals the desperation that exists in the Dakota Territory (Doctorow 7). Withou!t the grueling landscape descriptions and the Bad Man from Bodie, the characters in this novel would not have the degree of emotion that they do, moreover; the novel would not succeed as an attack on the fairy tale image of the West. From the onset of th
Through this technique, the reader sees the lives of these people mirrored in the land. Because the land is rough, the characters have to choose to overcome the obstacles or become victims to them. We see the land described in harsh terms during the toughest times for the characters. It may be that the narrator felt badly about the land because he wasn't prospering, or it may be that he wasn't prospering because of the harsh setting. Either way, in this novel there definitely exists a direct correlation between the land and its people. The characters would not exist as they do without the obstacles that their setting has created for them. In this way, the land dictates its inhabitant's destiny. e novel, Doctorow describes the grueling nature of the world in which these characters exist. Throughout the novel, Doctorow describes the constant battering from the vengeful Dakota flats, the horridness of the Bad Men that come with them, and the emotional trauma with which his characters cope. It becomes obvious to the reader that the inhabitants of the Dakota Territory develop as a direct result of land that controls them. From the onset of the novel, the reader realizes that these people do not live in the fairytale Wild West. The narrator echoes these sentiments when he says, "There is no fool like a fool in the West . . . he won't know possibilities are dead, his hopes only ghosts"(190). The men and the women alike deal with hardships, incomprehensible by today's standards. To survive, these characters must develop a drive to succeed, or else, live their lives in constant fear and hopelessness. The fear that they hold emerges in the line, "Colt gave every man a gun, but you have to squeeze the trigger for yourself"(32). At the beginning of the novel, these people held the means to fight back against the Bad Men, but they
Some common words found in the essay are:
Mayor Blue, Wild West, Bad Bodie, Hard Times, American West, Dakota Territory, Consequently Jimmy, Jimmy Fee, Bodie Molly's, hard times, Territory Doctorow, bad bodie, american west, land land, welcome hard times, welcome hard, novel doctorow, people hard, novel reader, dakota territory, mayor blue, people hard times, people american west, novel doctorow describes, narrator mayor blue,
Approximate Word count = 1245
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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