Morality vs. Immorality Theme Analysis

In Bret Harte’s “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” a committee of citizens from a struggling mining town in Gold Rush-era California banishes a group of undesirable residents: John Oakhurst (a gambler), Mother Shipton and the Duchess (prostitutes), and Uncle Billy (a drunk). Society firmly brands these four outcasts as immoral and thus deserving of whatever fate may befall them as the make the dangerous journey through the mountains to the next town over. And indeed, tragedy does strike: at least three of the four outcasts die in the mountains, as does an innocent couple that falls in with the group. While it may seem like justice has been served, the deaths of these two thoroughly innocent people (one of which, Tom, is literally nicknamed “The Innocent”) complicate notions of morality and punishment, as they clearly didn’t deserve to die. Likewise, although Harte doesn’t exactly portray the outcasts as heroes, he also doesn’t show them to have done anything to deserve their deaths, either. Thus, through the tragic end that befalls the outcasts and the innocents alike, the story suggests that people can’t easily be pinned down as moral or immoral, and that punishment is not always deserved.

Throughout the story, it’s clear that the four outcasts are not saints, suggesting that perhaps the town was right to brand the four as immoral. John Oakhurst, the protagonist of the story, is a serial gambler whose addiction is so strong that he even gives up sleep days at a time to gamble. The other man in the group, Uncle Billy, is a drunk suspected of being a petty thief. True to form, he steals from the outcasts while they’re trekking through the mountains and then abandons the group. While this confirms that Uncle Billy is immoral in terms of his penchant for thievery, this act also deepens the scope of his immorality—by stealing the group’s mode of transportation, the mules, he callously sentences his other three comrades to starvation and death. Mother Shipton and the Duchess also have unsavory reputations in town. The narrator explains: “It is but due to the sex, however, to state that their impropriety was professional, and it was only in such easily established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in judgment.” With this, the story implies that both women are prostitutes and are therefore seen as sexually promiscuous and sinful. To add to this, Mother Shipton and the Duchess are also crude and curse frequently, which was a sure sign of poor character in the nineteenth century, especially for a lady.

However, Harte also casts doubt on whether or not the four outcasts are quite as immoral as they’re made out to be, and whether or not they truly deserve to be exiled for their perceived crimes. Though Mother Shipton and the Duchess have committed an offense against Christian values by practicing prostitution, Harte is quick to point out that they themselves are not evil, but merely easy targets for banishment. As the story unfolds, both women prove to be deeply compassionate and caring: Mother Shipton starves herself to death so that Piney (Tom’s fiancée) can have her rations and thus live a little longer, while the Duchess tenderly takes care of Piney in their final days. Several days after Piney and the Duchess die, they are found clinging to one another in an embrace: “And when pitying fingers brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from the equal peace that dwelt upon them, which was she that had sinned.” In death, Piney and the Duchess resemble one another so strongly that it is no longer clear who is the virgin and who is the prostitute—who is moral and who is immoral—which speaks to the idea that people can’t be neatly shelved as one or the other.

The narrator also suggests that there is more to John Oakhurst than meets the eye. At the beginning of the story, the narrator reveals that Oakhurst was almost hanged rather than banished—but that this didn’t necessarily have to do with the man’s morality. What happened was that several men on the committee who had lost money to him at cards proposed that he be hanged so that they could recover some of their losses. Only some men who had managed to win money from Oakhurst at cards argued that he should be allowed to be exiled. Rather than prove that Oakhurst’s gambling is morally wrong, his punishment simply speaks to the fact that he’s made some enemies while gambling. Surely, the men on this committee gamble too—after all, many of them have lost or won money from him—yet they aren’t banished for it. In addition, the committee has already hung two other “improper persons” before the outcasts are banished. Presumably, these victims also got on the committee’s bad side somehow, or were even more socially marginal than a gambler or prostitutes. In showing Oakhurst, Mother Shipton, and the Duchess as being less immoral than they first appeared, Harte implies that the real reason for these hangings was the town’s distress, not the deeds of the hanging victims.

In the end, it seems that only Uncle Billy truly deserved his stained reputation and punishment—but whether he managed to escape the mountains or succumbed to death like the others is left ambiguous. The other three outcasts, though, prove themselves to be morally complex and not at all deserving of exile and death. Through his characters’ tragic ends, Harte spins a cautionary tale, warning readers to avoid simplistically categorizing others as good or bad, moral or immoral. As Oakhurst, Mother Shipton, and the Duchess clearly prove, there is more to most people than meets the eye.