During Manifest Destiny in 19th century America, there was a ferocious struggle among its inhabitants for the right to call the land and abundance of resources to which it belonged home. The enormous potential for the social, financial, and spiritual privilege that America contained twisted the inclusive intentions of settlers into a bloody competition. This promise of freedom that American Manifest Destiny promoted mentally and physically restricted each of the separate cultures involved in and embodied by the characters of John Ford’s quintessential 1956 western, The Searchers.
Even in the aftermath of the civil war, racial division raged on in postbellum America. In particular, Texas was a mecca of social upheaval as it played home to bitter Confederate families, tribes of uprooted Native Americans, and the remaining Hispanics still standing after their defeat in the Mexican-American war. Each of these groups was competing to call the massive state their own, along with the abundance of land, cotton, oil, and other precious resources to which it belonged. To the followers of Manifest Destiny - that being the belief that America was destined to extend its dominion, democracy, and capitalism across the continent - Texas was a shining example of the seemingly limitless freedom that this doctrine promised. However, anybody who bought into this idea soon realized after entry into Texas that it was far from the problem-free haven it seemed.
The reward of harmonious freedom that Manifest Destiny treacherously guaranteed predicates upon the falsely-assumed superiority of the Anglo-Saxon Americans who manufactured the concept. In Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism, Reginald Horsman breaks down the Anglo-Saxon perception of American expansion, ‘By 1850 the emphasis was on the American Anglo-Saxons as a separate, innately superior people who were destined to bring good government, commercial prosperity, and Christianity to the American continents and to the world’ (139). Horsman recognizes that even in the antebellum period of Manifest Destiny, the emphasis on extending ‘good government, commercial prosperity, and Christianity’ is less an honest gesture than an excuse for the Anglo-Saxans to advertise appealing qualities synonymous with their race. Only less than a century removed from their gained independence from England, the lingering patriotic hubris, amongst other greedy motives, fueled the notion that American Anglo-Saxons could conquer relentlessly without stooping to the level of their prior oppressors whose empire was built on the bloody genocide and assimilation of indigenous inhabitants. Of course, Manifest Destiny did not advertise the byproduct of a massive casualty count that would occur in the struggle to establish homes on lands already claimed by natives. The attempt to do so in a period of vindictive racial division exaggerated by the postbellum Confederate defeat made expansion, and even general travel, a life-threatening task.
Regardless of how dangerous it was, freedom to travel was far less restricted for men than women at the time. Tasked with “keeping house,” women were confined to the rigid physical boundaries of their homes. The contrast between this female immobility and the vast atlas open to American male travelers paved an ideology of the home and the outer nation as ‘separate spheres.’ Amy Kaplan breaks down this concept in Manifest Domesticity,
‘If we juxtapose the spatial representations of these discourses, they seem to embody the most extreme form of separate spheres: the home as a bounded and rigidly ordered interior space is opposed to the boundless and undifferentiated space of an infinitely expanding nation… According to the ideology of separate spheres, domesticity can be viewed as an anchor, a feminine counterforce to the male activity of territorial conquest’ (583).
The contrast between the ‘bounded’ space of the home and the ‘boundless’ space of the nation paints domesticity - home or family life - as suffocating. The connotation of an ‘anchor’ furthers this concept of women being restricted to the home. However, the denotation of ‘anchor,’ meaning a person or thing that provides stability in an otherwise uncertain situation, portrays the family’s matriarch as a stabilizing counterforce to the male conquest that threatens the home’s safety.
This juxtaposition between the anchored domestic world of the female and the boundless foreign world of the male in postbellum America is immediately evident in the opening frames of The Searchers. Martha, the matriarch of the Edwards family, is introduced to the oppressive interior of the house that lies in the shadow of the vast outside world. As she gazes out into the expanse of desert, she clings to a load-bearing pillar of the house, suggesting she alone bears the load of keeping the house and the family it represents in order. Distant both physically and emotionally from Martha and the home she keeps is John Wayne’s iconically machismo Ethan Edwards. Ford’s direction camouflages Ethan amongst the fauna of the desert in the second frame above, communicating that his identity is lost in the gigantic wilderness of Texas and the idea of nomadic expansion that it embodies.
The drastic contrast between Martha’s home’s dark, claustrophobic interior against the enormous desert and the light blue sky overhead further emphasizes the separation between the world of the home and the nation. Julia Leyda analyzes the context of Ford’s aesthetic choices in Home on the Range: Space, Nation, and Mobility in The Searchers,
‘The oppressiveness of Ford’s interiors, particularly his shots of ceilings and doorways, conveys the constricted feeling that drives many of his characters out into the desert’s open spaces. Ford’s classic Western draws a boundary around American domestic space, signifying the permeable borders of both the family home and the nation itself’ (194).
By shooting the interiors claustrophobically to exaggerate the separation between the domestic space and the nation’s space, Ford portrays the desert as an escape from the confinement of domesticity. This emphasis begs the question: why would Ethan want to escape family life and the home it represents? Ethan denies rumors that he has been in California, leaving his whereabouts for the three years between the end of the war and his return unaccounted for. Because Ford intentionally keeps this section of Ethan’s past a mystery, his reasons for fleeing the home remain in darkness. Ethan is inarguably a man who does not belong to the domestic sphere, yet his decision to temporarily return communicates a sentimental connection to the family values it upholds. This sentiment translates to furious vengeance when a tribe of Comanche Indians burns down the house, Martha, Aaron, and their son along with it.
With Ethan’s nieces Debbie and Lucy now captives of the Comanches, Ethan pursues the Indian tribe with his adopted nephew Martin Pawley: the only family he’s got left that has not yet been killed or captured. Despite Martin’s gratitude to Ethan for rescuing him from the Indians that killed his family when he was a baby, their initial relationship is loveless. Martin must tolerate Ethan’s pent-up malice and manifesting discrimination towards Native Americans, of which Martin becomes a target since he is himself ⅛ Cherokee. Ethan’s prejudice is displayed when he shoots out both of a dead Indian’s eyes to prevent him from reaching the afterlife. This act serves no purpose in the search other than to illustrate Ethan’s loathing of the natives and to hint at his previous experience with their culture.
The subtle differences between Ethan’s and Martin’s leitmotifs indicate their separate relationships with domesticity. Leitmotifs are an operatic technique developed by Richard Wagner which fuses musical themes with specific people, events, or places. The film’s opening title sequence introduces Ethan’s leitmotif. It features a lone male vocalist, backed up by the strum of an acoustic guitar and banjo, connoting the sound of the nomadic traveler of the period. These instruments pair with the violin to add a somber undertone to the piece. In the context of the lyrics, ‘What makes a man to wander?/What makes a man to roam?/What makes a man leave bed and board,/and turn his back on home’, this bittersweet sound reflects the sadness of Ethan’s inability to fit into the domestic sphere of family life. Opposite to Ethan’s leitmotif is Debbie’s, as she represents what is left of Ethan’s domestic world. Because of this, her leitmotif is more blissfully paced with sweet violins and a serene harpsichord melody. In between the two lies Martin’s leitmotif, which bears a youthful candor noted by a fast-paced violin that sonically deviates from the peaceful tempo of Debbie’s melody. Though this divergence from the domestic theme is similar to Ethan’s nomadic acoustic singularity, a decreased violin tempo follows it, returning Martin audibly to the domestic sphere. This combination sonically mirrors a hesitancy on Martin’s part to accept the domestic life that waits for him at home with his girl Laurie. However, it also indicates that Martin’s values lie closer to domesticity than Ethan’s.
While fear of domestic restriction was genuine for men like Ethan and Martin, just as real and potentially more distressing for women was the possibility of having no home at all. In both the context of 1860s America, when The Searchers is based, and 1950s America, when it was made, women faced tremendous societal pressure to focus their aspirations on a wedding ring. Tasked with the job of ‘keeping house’ and raising a family in it, if a woman had not found a husband by her early twenties, there was a severe fear she might become an ‘old maid’ (a derogatory term referring to a woman who is too old for marriage). As Martin and Ethan’s rescue mission stretches from months into years, it becomes evident that this same fear grows in Laurie when she scolds Martin for leaving again, telling him she will not wait for him to return and that she isn’t cut out to be an old maid. Confined to the rigid boundaries of her home as her supposed partner roams the boundless desert, Laurie’s situation embodies the restriction of free mobility that women face as anchors of the domestic world associated with family life.
While domesticity does come at the cost of restricted mobility in The Searchers, it remains favorable for those uprooted Native Americans who are not allowed homes in America. James Taylor details the Anglo-Saxon treatment of Indians and hints at the architectural implications of their displacement in Native American Removal: 1800-1840,
‘All told, the federal and state governments expelled just more than 50,000 people from their homelands, some in chains, others at gunpoint, and acquired almost 30 million acres of land for settlement, taxation, and development. In the ongoing construction of a society whose citizens saw the world in terms of white freedom and black slavery, there was simply no place for “Indians”’ (113).
The massive scale of Native American removal Taylor details above is responsible for the form and function of Indian homes in the postbellum United States. Understanding that the Anglo-Saxons would use whatever means necessary to evacuate them from their homelands, the Native Americans structured their homes in a manner that made it easy to pack up and move quickly in the event of an uprooting. The teepees in the frame above reflect this relationship between form and function as they are big enough to fit about ten people at most, yet small enough to travel with if the situation calls for it. The destruction of Ethan’s home is presented as an unwarranted attack by the Comanche leader Scar, but in truth, it is likely vengeance in response to the Anglo-Saxon desecration of his own home that prompted the raid. As more of the native lifestyle and culture is revealed in The Searchers, it becomes unclear whether Ethan seeks justice for his family or a band of Native Americans to serve as an outlet for his prejudiced anger.
In light of Ethan’s increasingly prejudiced violence and Laurie’s intention to marry another suitor, Martin ultimately surrenders his nomadicity to domesticity. Though it is evident throughout The Searchers that Laurie loves Martin, her suspicion that he will never return to her from his search for Debbie is confirmed when he tells her of the Native American woman he has unintentionally married by mistake. In response, Laurie accepts a marriage offer from another suitor, the proceedings of which Martin stops on the night of the wedding as he returns in the nick of time. While it seemed Laurie was ready to go through with the arrangement, it is clear she is marrying this suitor out of fear of being alone as opposed to love for him. Given the abrupt presentation of the marriage from Martin’s perspective, it seems as if she is doing it to scare him as well, ‘Through the process of domestication, the home contains within itself those wild or foreign elements that must be tamed; domesticity not only monitors the borders between the civilized and the savage but also regulates traces of the savage within itself’ (582). As Kaplan states above, Laurie is responsible for positively taming Martin’s wild ambitions, alleviating the perception of the domestic home as rigid confinement and instead turning it into a desirable place of rest. Martin’s realization comes after he has witnessed Ethan’s despicable attempt to kill Debbie upon discovering that she has adopted the Comanche way of life. The combined thought of losing Laurie and the fear of becoming Ethan forces Martin to accept domesticity.
Ethan’s prejudice threatens to overtake his familial allegiance, but before it does so, Ethan manages to rescue Debbie. With no female love to tame his wild side like Martin has, Ethan’s discriminatory malice crescendos in the form of a surprise raid on the Comanche camp, which endangers Debbie as she is one of its inhabitants. Martin combats Ethan’s plan by sneaking into the village before the killing starts and bringing Debbie out alive, killing Scar out of self-defense in the process. Another testament to his contrast from Martin comes when Ethan vengefully scalps Scar’s dead body just like he scalped Ethan’s family. After doing so, Ethan chases Debbie away from Martin into a canyon occupied by the two of them alone. In a sudden moment of unexpected reservation on Ethan’s part, he hoists Debbie up in the air as he did at the beginning of the movie when she was a child and says: ‘Let’s go home, Debbie.’ Only moments prior, Ethan prepared to murder his niece. The single variable that changes in between this time are his obtainment of the scalped Comanche leader, a physical representation of his satisfied revenge on the tribe that murdered his family. It is once he relieves his savage thirst for vengeance that he can see Debbie again as his family, who he knows needs to be returned to the home she was stolen from.
While Debbie and Martin’s return to domesticity is triumphant, it is bittersweet for Ethan because it concretely exposes his inability to accept domesticity. The film ends with Martin, Debbie, and Ethan returning to Laurie’s house. Debbie, Laurie, and Martin can enter the house, but in the film’s closing shot, Ethan stops before the entrance; the doorway frames him, a conscious choice made by John Ford that brilliantly mimics the film’s introductory shot. The house’s interior remains ominously dark to Ethan, as it did at the film’s beginning when he returned to his home. The former soldier then turns around into the Texas desert he came from as the home’s door closes on him, and a rendition of the nomadic leitmotif begins again. This ending signifies that although Ethan rescues Debbie, he still fails to fit into domesticity. Ethan’s obsession with bloodlust for the Comanches permanently mars the version of himself that could survive the domestic sphere. The savage side of his nomadic self has taken over, making it impossible to return to any home or family life it represents.
Though Ethan’s mission to rescue Debbie is the narrative’s most obvious reference to the film’s title on the surface level, the truth is that each of the story’s characters is searching for something. The uprooted and displaced Comanches seek justice through a new homeland and violent retaliation against the Anglo-Saxons who robbed them of their domestic sphere. Laurie searches for a husband who makes the immobility of domesticity appealing. Martin navigates the wild Texas desert to find his hostage half-sister, hoping it will restore his damaged sense of domesticity. The search these characters undergo amidst the heightened racial conflict of ‘Manifest Destiny’ America is somehow restricted by the false promise of freedom it promoted. If America can still be considered an expanding imperial empire today, then who is to say this is not still the case?
Carson, James Taylor. “Native American Removal, 1800 –1840.” The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 24: Race, edited by THOMAS C. HOLT et al., University of North Carolina Press, 2013, pp. 112–114. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469607245_holt.29. Accessed 14 May 2020. Illustrates the extent of persecution Native-Americans faced in the antebellum and postbellum United States. Aids my claim that the form and function of Indian teepees came about as a result of constantly threatened domesticity.
Horsman, Reginald. “Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism.” Critical White Studies, edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Temple University Press, 1997, pp. 139–144. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1bw1kc5.33. Accessed 13 May 2020. Provides insight to the Anglo-Saxons viewpoint of Manifest Destiny as a means of enforcing their own perceived superiority over separate races that inhabited America.
Leyda, Julia. 'Home on the Range: Space, Nation, and Mobility in The Searchers.' American Mobilities: Geographies of Class, Race, and Gender in US Culture, 2016, pp. 191–216. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1wxszf.11. Accessed 6 Mar. 2020. Serves as evidence for the discussion of domesticity in America and how it relates to class and gender.
Kaplan, Amy. 'Manifest Domesticity.' American Literature, vol. 70, no. 3, 1998, pp. 581–606. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2902710. Accessed 10 Mar. 2020. Focuses on the expansion of America and how the country attempted to push its domestic values to each area it occupied.
Puschak, Evan. ‘Lord of the Rings: How Music Elevates Story.’ YouTube, Feb. 2016,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7BkmF8CJpQ. Accessed 16 May 2020. Provides information on leitmotifs that is necessary for analyzing similarities and differences between Ethan and Martin’s character.
The Searchers. Directed by John Ford, performance by John Wayne, C.V. Whitney Pictures, 1956. This is the film the essay is centered around, necessary for making and interpreting the argument.