Good Essay On The Searchers

Is Ethan a heroic character in The Searchers?

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There are several Hollywood movies that are historically resonant and thematically rich and can be considered a part of American literature. “The Searchers” is one such example and is one of the greatest Hollywood films that has been seen by very few people. Although the movie is not hard to find, as it is frequently televised and has constantly been revived (Hoberman).The storyline The storyline in the movie is adapted from a novel by Alan LeMay. The underlying story dates back to the 17th century and talks about the white women who were held captive by Indians. There have been other best-selling novels that tell the stories of these women who were captured by Indians and married into their tribe. Alter, they refused to join the white civilization (Hoberman).
The hero of The Searchers The Searchers begins movement from darkness to light and a dreamlike condition. The hero of The Searchers, Ethan Edwards, can be barely seen in the opening shot among those monuments and the scrub-covered land. The character is played by John Wayne. Ethan is caught in time and oscillates in conflict between an old order and a new order. The past haunts him and will determine his future. His love for Martha and the violence distress him, and he discovers that the violent world is indifferent to his grief and pain. It is like Ethan himself is trying to stand outside the human and be indifferent to it. He becomes vulnerability with respect to some very specific people, especially Martha. The conflict in him explores his despair explores his despair related to the violence in the world. The film covers the changes in Ethan and how his ferocious isolation and independence crumbles, as he stands alone at the end of the movie (Ford).
The relations are too complex in The Searcher. The romance between Ethan and Martha, Ethan killing the Indians’ cattle, and his brother getting killed and Scar having sex with his brother’s wife, only make the relations a bit too complex. Ethan’s secret desires are shown to be subtle. The character of Ethan is such that he lives in the presence of absence and what is absent to Ethan is satisfaction. Ethan does not know what he does not know, and it is this sightlessness that drives him to do certain things. He thinks he knows what he is doing, but he does not. It is the failure in his life and the sad flaw that makes him such a miserable, solitary hero (Ford).
The berserker vengeance of Ethan in the film is like an electrical distress, and one can decide fast that the character is insane. The entire film takes you around in an ethical flow from naïve affection to revenge. The yearning for Ethan and the woman are partially acknowledged. The unspoken passion between the two leads to a possible conclusion that eight years old Debbie might be Ethan's daughter (Ross).
The good and the bad men The West had this vision of being divided into good and bad men. The good were completely good while the bad were only bad. What makes The Searchers pragmatic is that its hero, Ethan is a morally ambiguous character. He is criminal, insensitive violent and on top of that a racist. There is something about him that the audience connects to. At the beginning of the movie, the audience yet does know many things about him. He does not seem to be motivated and is a man with a hard heart. There is a suggestion that he was in love with his brother’s wife. He has stolen money and were a deserter. The broadest outlines of the story are not very clear, and one has to focus on the subtle forms of additional information (Ford).
One is constantly surprised as to how little seem to escape his notice and what he knows about Indians. He has greatest contempt for them. He does not know what he is looking for and what he finds in the end is not what he was searching for.
The Tragic hero Ethan may be the heroic character in the film, but he was a tragic figure who was psychologically damaged. There is a constant darkening of Ethan's personality and his hatred for Indians is apparent by his barely controlled emotions. Ethan's actions and his character become progressively disturbed as the movie progresses. There is no denying that he has become the one of the most famous characters in the American pictures. He is not that traditional western hero and is seen to shoot people in the back and has no regard for any religions. He is shown to be even more brutal towards the Indians. He has bene portrayed as almost a near-villain in The Searcher. The racism assumes overwhelming dimensions in Ethan's character (Eckstein).
“The Searchers” was made during the fading days of the classic Western when Indians were no longer being type casted as savages. People were taking a more progressive view of Native Americans. However, still, the audience of those days did not think much about moral complexity, and it likes action between clear-cut bad guys and good guys. It seems that in “The Searchers” Ford was trying to justify genocide based on racism. Many of that earlier audience possibly missed the point as Ethan's racism was invisible to them. However, years later, one would accept a man even as an uncomplicated hero if he hated Indians (Roger).
There are many differences pointed out between the character of Ethan in the script and the screenplay. For example, in the script, there was a sequence in the script where he speaks out on behalf of defenseless women.

References

Eckstein, A.M. 1998, "Darkening Ethan: John Ford's "The Searchers" (1956) from Novel to Screenplay to Screen", Cinema Journal, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 3-24.
J. Ford (2005). John Ford’s The Searchers as an Allegory of the Philosophical Search. State University of New York Press. 1 (1), 1.
J. Hoberman. (2013). American Obsession ‘The Searchers,’ by Glenn Frankel. Sunday times. 1 , 1.
Ross Gibson. (2005). The Searchers – Dismantled. Available: http://www.rouge.com.au/7/searchers.html. Last accessed 2015.
Roger Ebert. (2001). The Searchers. Available: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie- the-searchers-1956. Last accessed 2015.