The Brutality of the Old West Theme Analysis

Like many of Harte’s stories, “The Luck of Roaring Camp” takes place in a settlement in the American West during the Gold Rush era. But it’s not all campfire songs and panning for gold at Roaring Camp—the men of Roaring Camp have led difficult lives, and simply surviving in the wilderness is a feat in itself. This is the brutal environment that the titular baby Luck is born into; when his mother, the town prostitute, dies in childbirth, the Luck is suddenly at the mercy of 100 husky men in an isolated settlement in the wilderness. Indeed, from Harte’s perspective, the Wild West is a rough, unforgiving place, both in terms of the people who settle there and the natural landscape itself. The characters’ shady pasts, coupled with the tragic natural disaster at the end of the story, dismantle the myth of the Old West as being an idyllic place full of opportunity and adventure.

All of the characters have shady backstories, which paints the Western population as a whole as tough, unforgiving, and even outright dangerous. Roaring Camp is referred to as a “city of refuge,” which is a biblical allusion to settlements on the outskirts of society that housed outcasts and criminals in biblical times. This allusion reveals the moral makeup of Roaring Camp: the men are outcasts and outlaws who are implied to have been kicked out of other cities. Indeed, of the hundred men living at Roaring Camp, some are criminals; some, like Oakhurst, are gamblers; and a couple of them are “actual fugitives from justice.” They’re often described as “roughs” (people who are disreputable and violent), “scamp[s]” (mischief-makers), and all-around “reckless” men. That all the men have some sort of shady past paints a picture of the Wild West as a whole—it’s a place for rough-and-tumble outlaws and outcasts. The one woman at the settlement, Cherokee Sal, is heavily implied to be a prostitute. Her name is “familiar enough in the camp,” suggesting that the majority of the men are “familiar” with her in the euphemistic form of the word—that is, they’ve had sex with her. In describing her, the narrator admits, “Perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a coarse, and, it is to be feared, a very sinful woman.” When Sal dies in childbirth, she’s described as “climb[ing] […] that rugged road that led to the stars” and passing out of Roaring Camp’s “sin and shame.” This passage again underscores that Roaring Camp is a brutal, unforgiving place, riddled with immorality and scandal. But the metaphor of dying as a “rugged road” also begins to point to another layer of why the Wild West is so brutal.

While the people who populate the West are ruthless, the story suggests that the Western landscape itself is far more brutal, further undermining the widely held belief that the West is a place of good-natured adventure and excitement. Roaring Camp, like many Western settlements during the Gold Rush era, is incredibly isolated—the closest town is 40 miles away. Roaring Camp is also isolated in that it’s tucked away in the wilderness: “The camp lay in a triangular valley, between two hills and a river. The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of a hill […].” The “steep trail” one must climb to get out of the valley is reminiscent of the metaphorical “rugged road” that Sal climbs as she dies; both paint the West as a place of physical exertion, untamed landscapes, and extremes. And while this isolation might protect Roaring Camp from outsiders, nature has no trouble infiltrating and destroying the camp in one fell swoop, which is a testament to nature’s brutality and power. One night, “the North Fork suddenly leaped over its banks, and swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp.” As the storm continues, “Each gorge and gulch was transformed into a tumultuous watercourse that descended the hillsides, tearing down giant trees and scattering its drift and debris along the plain.” The flood rips trees out of the earth, making it clear that nature is powerful enough to destroy even itself. The men in the settlement, as tough and reckless as they may be, are powerless in the face of nature’s might, and “little could be done to collect the scattered camp.” Three of Roaring Camp’s residents die in the flood: Stumpy, Kentuck, and baby Luck. Kentuck’s death underscores his power (a reminder that residents of the Wild West are a force to be reckoned with) but simultaneously highlights his powerlessness in the face of the powerful natural world: “the strong man, clinging to the frail babe as a drowning man is said to cling to a straw, drifted away into the shadowy river that flows forever to the unknown sea.” Strong as Kentuck may be, he is reduced to “clinging,” “drowning,” and “drift[ing] away,” entirely unable to fight back against the brutal Western landscape.

Initially, it seems that nature is beautiful, peaceful, and even nurturing toward baby Luck: “Nature was his nurse and playfellow. For him she would let slip between the leaves golden shafts of sunlight that fell just within his grasp; she would send wandering breezes to visit him […] to him the tall red-woods nodded familiarly and sleepily […].” But no matter how beautiful and tender this moment is, nature is precisely what kills the Luck in the end. While “The Luck of Roaring Camp” certainly affirms that Western folks are a force to be reckoned with, closing the story with a massive, fatal flood makes it clear that the Old West’s natural landscape is what’s really the most brutal and unforgiving. Life in the Old West isn’t all adventures on horseback in the majestic wilderness. Instead, life in a place like Roaring Camp is rough, isolated, and terribly dangerous.