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1. Alan Le May The Searchers Pdf Merge Pdf
2. Alan Lemay The Searchers
3. Alan Le May The Searchers Pdf Merger

”A man has to learn to forgive himself,” Amos said, his voice unnaturally gentle.”Or he can’t stand to live. It so happens we be Texans.

We took a reachin’ holt, way far out, past where any man has right or reason to hold on. Or it we didn’t, our folks did, so we can’t leave off, without giving up that they were fools, wasting their lives, and washed in the way they died.” The moment of realization. Amos Edwards and Marty Pauley are helping to retrieve some cattle that have been stolen from a ne ”A man has to learn to forgive himself,” Amos said, his voice unnaturally gentle.”Or he can’t stand to live. It so happens we be Texans. We took a reachin’ holt, way far out, past where any man has right or reason to hold on.

Or it we didn’t, our folks did, so we can’t leave off, without giving up that they were fools, wasting their lives, and washed in the way they died.” The moment of realization. Amos Edwards and Marty Pauley are helping to retrieve some cattle that have been stolen from a neighboring homestead when they discover that it was a feint by the Comanches to pull as many guns away from the settlements as possible. They are too far away to do much but watch helplessly as plumes of smoke ascend into the sky confirming their worst fears. When Amos comes to the homestead he is calling for his sister-in-law Martha not his brother Henry. His secret, that isn’t so secret, is that he carried a torch for Martha and she carried a torch for him so elegantly portrayed in the movie with a scene showing her brushing his coat lovingly with her hand. I know a lot more people have seen the truly magnificent movie made of The Searchers than have read the book, for the movie they changed the name of Amos to Ethan. The scene continues with Ethan/Amos about to kiss Martha.

You can see that he wants to kiss her lips and she would let him, but with willpower he kisses her forehead instead. The sexual tension crackles. With what happens, I’m sure he wished he’d folded her in his arms and locked onto her lips for all he was worth. Martha, played by Dorothy Jordan, with Ethan's coat. In the movie John Wayne comes up on the homestead on fire. He finds Martha’s dress in tatters outside. He goes inside to look for her.

He comes back out a shattered man. He refuses to let Marty go into the burning building. In fact he slugs him to keep him out because he doesn’t want to go back in there either. I remember the chills that went up my spine when I first saw the movie and thinking to myself if John Wayne couldn’t handle it I don’t want to see it. All the brutality is brilliantly kept off screen throughout the whole movie leaving our own active imaginations to conjure the scenes for ourselves.

This begins an epic search for Debbie Edwards, the young girl taken by the Comanches. It spans many years and many miles as Amos and his not so welcome companion, Marty, track down every band of Comanches hoping to find her so they can work out a trade or if need be take her back by force.

Well, that is Marty’s plan. Once she’s been with “bucks” Edwards believes the only decent thing to do is kill her. Marty knows he might have to stand between Amos and Debbie when the time comes. Marty is an orphan that the Edwards raised after his parents were killed. He thinks of himself as part of the family, but Amos sets him straight. ”Debbie’s my brother’s young’n,” Amos said.

“She’s my flesh and blood-not yours. Better you leave these things to the people concerned with ‘em, boy. Debbie’s no kin to you at all.” “I-I always felt like she was my kin.” “Well, she ain’t.” “Our-I mean, her -her folks took me in off the ground. I’d be dead but for them. They even-” “That don’t make ‘em any kin.” “All right.

I ain’t got no kin. Never said I had. I’m going to keep on looking, that’s all.” Personally, I don’t want anyone looking at me that way.shiver. Amos is a hard son-of-a-bitch. Just like with the movie you move from one moment to wanting to kick his rear end up into his neck to the next moment wanting to give him a hug.

The conflict between Amos and Marty continues for the entire book between divergent personal philosophies and even who has the right to be on this crusade. ”Like most prairie men, they had great belief in their abilities, but a total faith in their bad luck.” What really comes across in the book is the legitimacy of the writer. The dialogue, the descriptions of the way of life, and the depictions of the scenery are magnificently portrayed.

”Now came the first of the snow, a thin lacing of ice needles, heard and felt before they could be seen. The ice particles were traveling horizontally, parallel to the ground, with an enormous velocity. They made a sharp whispering against the leather, drove deep into cloth, and filled the air with hissing. This thin bombardment swiftly increased, coming in puffs and clouds, then in a rushing stream. And at the same time the wind increasedIt tore at them, snatching their breaths from their mouths, and its gusts buffeted their backs as solidly as thrown sacks of grain” John Ford, using VistaVision, captured some of the most stunning scenes of Monument Valley I’ve ever seen.

In fact the scenes are the most amazing shots I’ve ever seen of the epic scope of nature in any movie. A lot of the dialogue in the movie is lifted from the book. There is, of course, more in the book. The search is described in more detail than what Ford had time for on film. For those purists out there you will either not be unhappy with the book or the movie because they do part ways, in particular with the endings.

Truly, you have to treat them as two separate entities. Both contribute, adding additional layers, to the overall story. Wonderful framing of John Wayne in the doorway at the end of the movie. He is putting his hand on his elbow as a tribute to Harry Carey Sr.

Who always held his arm that way. John Wayne’s performance in The Searchers is truly a work of art. For those that think the man can’t act watch this movie. His face betrays loathing, simmering anger, and determination like I’ve never seen him do before.

He should have won an Oscar for this role, certainly at least a nomination, but the film was entirely ignored by the Academy receiving zero nominations. It resides high on every serious list of greatest movies ever made. I would have to agree. The book that inspired the movie was well worth my time. It added to my enjoyment of rewatching the movie. I was a huge John Wayne fan growing up.

Like, embarrassingly huge. I had a framed picture in my bedroom. I had a thick celebratory magazine that provided descriptions of every single one of his movies (some 200 or more, including bit parts). I had a John Wayne paper doll collection! Whenever a cable station had a “John Wayne Weekend,” I’d buy a stack of VHS tapes and record for hours on end. I loved his drawl, his catchphrases, his swagger, and his big right hook.

Eventually, I grew up, and my c I was a huge John Wayne fan growing up. Like, embarrassingly huge. I had a framed picture in my bedroom.

I had a thick celebratory magazine that provided descriptions of every single one of his movies (some 200 or more, including bit parts). I had a John Wayne paper doll collection! Whenever a cable station had a “John Wayne Weekend,” I’d buy a stack of VHS tapes and record for hours on end.

I loved his drawl, his catchphrases, his swagger, and his big right hook. Eventually, I grew up, and my childhood icon changed. Or rather, I changed, because the Duke was already dead nearly a year when I was born. By the time I graduated college, Wayne was no longer the paragon of American virtues – the stolid Sergeant Stryker of The Sands of Iwo Jima, the noble Army lifer Captain Nathan Brittles in She Wore A Yellow Ribbon. Instead, Wayne turned (or rather my view of him turned him) into a bit of a gaseous hypocrite. I came to see him as the man who’d discovered some old “football injuries” to keep him out of World War II, made a fortune playacting as a soldier, and then filmed an unabashedly jingoistic pro-Vietnam film advocating for a cause that killed thousands of young American men who didn't have the benefit of “football injuries” or college deferments. (As an aside: The Green Berets is so, so bad, the only way it can be viewed is as a parody).

These days, my feelings for Wayne are on a more even keel. I don’t love him or hate him but mostly view him through the tinge of nostalgia (like most people, I suppose). I’ve come to accept his complexities – and he was complex, not an all-American patriot but not a right-wing nut either. Through these shifting sands, there is one John Wayne movie I have always loved, from youth to political awakening to today.

And that is Wayne’s collaboration with John Ford in The Searchers. It is accessible – for a kid – because it is a western, because it involves horses and six-shooters, and because it ends with a bugle charge. For an adult, it is a complex psycho-sexual drama, a layered cinematic masterpiece that distracts you with magnificent vistas while darkness simmers below the surface. Back when I was young, and it was still hard to find out-of-print books, my mom managed to get me a copy of Alan Lemay’s The Searchers, the book upon which the movie was based. I started reading it, but quit shortly after starting, mostly because I was young and stupid and angry that the book and movie weren’t exactly alike.

I picked it up recently in anticipation of Glenn Frankel’s book on the making of The Searchers (the movie) and discovered something a bit amazing: it’s quite good. Frankly, I was expecting pulp. It was published in 1954, after all, and the back pages advertise other western “adventures” with names like Death Valley Slim, Apache Rampage, and Montana Rides Again. Now, I don’t mean to oversell it, but The Searchers has more in common – tonally and ambition-wise – with Cormac McCarthy. Like the movie, the novel is built upon the kidnapping of a young white girl – little Debbie Edwards – who is taken by the Comanche after her family is murdered.

Two men set out to find her. One of them is her uncle, Amos Edwards, a mysterious, taciturn man who has lived his life on the borderland between civilization and savagery. The other is Martin Pauley, an orphan who was taken in by the Edwards family after his own family was massacred by Indians. The search consumes many years and witnesses fading tracks, dead leads, brutal encounters with both whites and Indians, fierce weather, and dimming hope. The movie version of The Searchers features John Wayne in the Amos role (named Ethan in the film). The essential drama comes not from Wayne’s search itself, but from his motive.

Why does he want to find Debbie after all these years? You are never certain whether he means to kill her – to save her from “the fate worse than death” – or actually bring her home. The novel’s Amos contains some of that ambiguity.

Certainly, he is an Indian hater to the extreme. But the main focus is actually on Martin Pauley. His search for Debbie is subsumed in his larger search for his place in the world. (The typical orphan literary arc). If that seems a bit pat, the conceit is rescued by Alan Le May’s execution. He is no sympathizer of the Comanche, but at least he has taken the time to learn their culture and customs, research that is nicely interwoven throughout the narrative. The Comanche in the novel are people; just people that Le May and his characters don’t like.

(The depth of Amos’s hatred is wonderfully demonstrated by his thoroughgoing knowledge of his enemy). Le May’s grasp of the material extends beyond Indian lore, to include frontier architecture, the finer arts of tracking, and a lot about horses. The dialogue sometimes falls victim to being overly cowboy-ish, the kind of thing you’d hear on the silver screen in the 30s, 40s, or 50s. But just as often it is punchy, evocative, and frontier-elegant: “Sometimes it seems to me,” Amos said, “them Comanches fly with their elbows, carrying the pony along between their knees. You can nurse a horse along till he falls and dies, and you walk on carrying your saddle. Then a Comanche comes along, and gets that horse up, and rides it twenty miles more. Then eats itYeswe got a chanceAnd I’ll tell you what it be.

An Indian will chase a thing until he thinks he’s chased it enough. Then he quits. So the same when he runs. After awhile he figures we must have quit, and he starts to loaf. Seemingly he never learns there’s such a thing as a critter that might just keep coming on.” Le May’s description of the wild frontier is first rate. One of the best parts of the novel is, of all things, a set-piece description of a sudden blizzard: Now came the first of the snow, a thin lacing of ice needles, heard and felt before they could be seen. The ice particles were traveling horizontally, parallel to the ground, with an enormous velocity.

They made a sharp whispering against the leather, drove deep into cloth, and filled the air with hissing. This thin bombardment swiftly increased, coming in puffs and clouds, then in a rushing stream. And at the same time the wind increasedIt tore at them, snatching their breaths from their mouths, and its gusts buffeted their backs as solidly as thrown sacks of grain The Searchers is just over 300 pages long, but manages to evoke an epic scope. To be sure, a novel like this necessarily has repetitive aspects. You follow a lot of trails, meet a lot of characters, but always you know that Debbie won’t be there, at least until there are fewer pages left. Still, the journey is worth the effort: for Le May’s beautiful images; his psychological insights; and for an ending that you won’t see coming, even if you happen to have watched the movie.

From BBC Radio 4 - Classical Serial: Texas, 1848. When Comanches attack the Edwards family's settlement on the Texas plains, they kidnap two girls - seventeen year-old Lucy and ten year-old Debbie.

So Amos Edwards sets out on the dangerous mission to recover his two nieces, with the help of his nephew Mart and a rag-tag bunch of searchers. Their epic mission will last six years. The concluding episode is at the same time next week. Alan Le May's 1954 novel is a timeless work of western fiction and From BBC Radio 4 - Classical Serial: Texas, 1848. When Comanches attack the Edwards family's settlement on the Texas plains, they kidnap two girls - seventeen year-old Lucy and ten year-old Debbie. So Amos Edwards sets out on the dangerous mission to recover his two nieces, with the help of his nephew Mart and a rag-tag bunch of searchers. Their epic mission will last six years.

The concluding episode is at the same time next week. Alan Le May's 1954 novel is a timeless work of western fiction and a no-holds-barred portrait of the real American frontier. It explores the fear and the hatred that underpinned the lives of both the white settlers and the Native Americans.

And what emerges is a violent account of a creeping genocide, as one culture inevitably triumphs over the other. John Ford's 1956 film, based on the novel, starred John Wayne as Ethan Edwards (called Amos in the book and radio adaptation). Ford's film was named the Greatest Western Movie of all time by the American Film Institute in 2008. Radio 4 investigates the story behind the novel with 'In Search of the Real Searchers' at 1.30pm on Sunday 26th October.

And for more western drama, a new adaptation of Glendon Swarthout's 'The Shootist' is broadcast Saturday 25th October at 2.30pm. Directed by James Robinson A BBC Cymru/Wales Production. If you are interested in the last years of the native Americans in Texas, and you want a highly nuanced, well-written and enthralling story to go with it, this is your book.

I found it ever so much better than Lonesome Dove and The Son. LeMay does not try to make any of his characters into heros or villains, he simply tells the story (beautifully, without pathos) and lets the reader make his/her own opinions of who was morally right and wrong. There is no pat plot here, no foreseeable outcome, u If you are interested in the last years of the native Americans in Texas, and you want a highly nuanced, well-written and enthralling story to go with it, this is your book. I found it ever so much better than Lonesome Dove and The Son. LeMay does not try to make any of his characters into heros or villains, he simply tells the story (beautifully, without pathos) and lets the reader make his/her own opinions of who was morally right and wrong.

There is no pat plot here, no foreseeable outcome, up to the very last line of the book. And though LeMay does not endeavour to make us feel one way or another about the characters, you feel very touched by all their plights, and you have a new understanding, in the end, of what life was like on the Texas frontier back in those days. I was glad to find this new reprint of the 1954 Alan LeMay classic. LeMay has made a reputation as a writer of stories set in Texas. He has a score of screenplays, novels and short stories to his credit. This novel was the basis of a 1956 film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne.

It is considered to be a great classic western movie; it, and several other Ford-Wayne westerns, including the 1939 'Stagecoach' are quoted by modern directors, including Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese a I was glad to find this new reprint of the 1954 Alan LeMay classic. LeMay has made a reputation as a writer of stories set in Texas. He has a score of screenplays, novels and short stories to his credit. This novel was the basis of a 1956 film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne.

It is considered to be a great classic western movie; it, and several other Ford-Wayne westerns, including the 1939 'Stagecoach' are quoted by modern directors, including Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese as significant influences on their careers. Another LeMay novel, 'The Unforgiven' was adapted into a movie in 1960. The setting for 'The Searchers' is the post-Civil War Texas. The main characters are drawn from the intrepid homesteaders who lived literally at the edge of civilization. One family is the Edwards' who have two daughters and two sons; living with them are also Henry Edwards' brother, and Martha's brother-in-law, Amos, and a young man (probably about age 18 at the start of the story) Martin Pauley. Pauley's family had been wiped out in an Indian raid when Martin was a child and he was the only survivor.

He had been placed in a spot away from the home when the family felt threatened; apparently families in great danger took this risky precaution in the hope that a young child placed in a secluded spot may escape being captured by Indians if the rest of the family were killed. Pauley, although not related to the Edwards', nevertheless considers them to be family, including 'Uncle Amos,' because he was raised by them. The Edwards' chief friends in the area are the Mathison family. Henry and Amos Edwards, and Aaron Mathison have partnered in raising and driving cattle to market. The beginning of the story is grounded on the loss of prized cattle of Aaron's when a Comanche raiding party apparently traveling through the area hit Mathison's herd. Amos and Martin ride off from the Edwards farm to join the Mathison possee engaged in tracking down the Comanches to retrieve the stolen cattle.

The trackers, after traveling a distance from their homes, discover that the cattle theft was only a diversion to draw defenders from a homestead the Indians were going to attack. The pursuers ride at full speed to their respective farms; Amos and Martin then discover, too late, that the Edwards farm was the one which was attacked. The Edwards and two teenage sons are found dead and scalped; the two daughters, teenage Lucy and eleven-year-old Debbie are missing. Thus begins the odyssey which gives the book its title.

In condensed form, Amos and Martin begin a quest to find the two girls. Lucy's gruesome fate becomes known rather early but the search for the band which hit the Edwards family would take the searchers on a long journey, lasting literally years. Amos and Martin would travel all over Texas and parts of neighboring states/territories, risking their own lives by visiting Comanche villages to ask questions about the Indian leader they learn is named Scar.

They learn so much about the ways of the Indians that they become expert interpreters and trackers; LeMay uses their knowledge of Indian lore to inform the reader of Comanche lifestyles. This ongoing tutorial described in fluid prose, combined with the growing development of the principal characters, is what makes this book a rewarding read. The story of the searchers unfolds against a backdrop of what LeMay correctly describes as the 'most dreadful year in history'(p. 150) for the Texas ranchers. All over the Texas Plains, the settlers' footholds are loosening as frontier homes are burned out while their owners are killed and their children are taken captive by Comanches. (Reviewers note: in some cases, women and/or children would be abducted in raids and gradually assimulated into Comanche society; others would be taken for their value as hostages to be ransomed).

Only a desparate stubbornness allowed the surviving families to hold on. LeMay seems to be attributing this state of affairs to the nineteenth-early twentieth century views of Indians as being murderous by nature and dishonestly cunning in their negotiations with the government which was trying to keep peace in the West. Thus, we have the theme running through the book of outrage over the Comanche inclination to remain on the warpath, killing and raiding when they earlier signed a peace treaty binding them to live peacefully on the reservation. A short digression from the book is in order. Modern scholarship is shedding more light on what was going on with the Indians in Texas at this time. Pekka Hamalainen, in his excellent 'The Comanche Empire', Yale University Press, 2008, shows how the hostilities on the frontier in the late 1860's were exacerbated, if not caused by, misguided government practices in dealing with the Indians. The United States Government decided to relocate Indian nations, which were living freely on the plains at the time, to reservations in order to clear rights-of-way for the transcontinental railroad.

The removal of the Comanches, Kiowas, Naishans, Southern Cheyennes and Southern Arapahoes would serve that purpose and stop the Indian attacks against settlers in Texas. The result was a peace treaty filled by obscure meanings, mutual misinterpretations and shaky compromises, a document that Hamalainen describes as 'a typical U.S.-Indian treaty.' The Comanche-Kiowa treaty was intended to remove the Indians from 140,000 square miles in exchange for lavish gifts, annual payments of $25,000 for thirty years for relinquishing all of that land, and the opportunity to give up their ages-old lifestyle pursuing the buffalo across the plains to become yeoman farmers. The Indian delegates to the council signed their marks to the treaty, understanding they were allowing rights-of-ways and not relinquishing claims to their land.

A key provision of the treaty was that the Comanches would retain hunting privileges on the land they were supposed to give up 'as long as the Buffalo remained there.' To the Comanches, however, granting continued use of that land amounted to continued ownership by them. Therefore, the treaty could be interpreted as allowing the status quo. During the first winter of the treaty's existence, 1867-68, the various tribes gathered at the Indian agency at Fort Cobb in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) and accepted the government's annuities (food and clothing).

When spring came, most of the bands showed that they never considered the reservation to be anything but a seasonal residence, by leaving Fort Cobb to resume their patterns of living on the plains, raiding livestock from Texas, Bosque Redondo and Indian Territory, and trading with the itinerant comancheros. The 1867 Medicine Lodge Creek treaty proved to be not worth the paper it was written on. Liberal policies adopted by the government by the new Grant administration would eventually be discarded following wide-spread blood-letting and the Army's new commander in the West, Philip Sheridan, would engage in a campaign to punish those non-reservation intertribal bands hostile to the government's restrictive policies. This is the historical context of the events related in 'The Searchers.'

Now, back to the book: The two main characters grow in complexity along different paths. Pawley grows into adulthood as he shares long treks, Indian attacks, blizzards, lonliness and other dangers with Amos.

Amos, on the other hand, in addition to simply growing older, has surrendered to a sense of hatred and frustration that has been suppressed for a long time. Martin notices this change in Amos' remark about deciding not to stop searching until Scar and his band are destroyed; revenge against the Comanche enemy has taken precedence even to finding Debbie. Martin realizes that something is at work here that he has not previously discerned. Amos, immediately after the Edwards massacre, is changed significantly. Martin, a product of the Edwards household, realizes now why Amos never married and started his own ranch. He was secretly in love with Martha Edwards, and his loss at her death leaves him with nothing but blood hatred for the killers. Martin and Amos develop a deep respect for each other over time, but Martin's personal motive in maintaining the search is based on guilt, for not being a good brother figure for Debbie when he had the chance, and on a realization that he may have to do whatever is necessary to keep Amos from killing Debbie, who by now has grown assimilated into Indian life, when they find her.

Martin and Amos, or Ethan, as he is called in the film, find the village where Debbie is living and attack it in the company of Texas Rangers and Army Calvary. In John Ford's version of the story, Martin kills Scar while trying to rescue Debbie in a tepee; Debbie, spotting Ethan, runs from the Indian village with Ethan and Martin in pursuit. Ethan is the first to reach Debbie, and there is a tense moment when Martin, a few steps behind Ethan, must watch powerlessly how Ethan will handle the situation. A happy ending is in store, as Debbie and Ethan pause and look at each other. Ethan gathers Debbie in his arms and rescues her.

The searchers take her back home, which in this case is the ranch of the Mathison's (transformed into Norwegians by the name of Jorgensen in the film adaptation). The powerfully photographed Ford vistas of the dramatic West are matched by a scene which draws in the viewer by its beautiful simplicity.

The film had begun with Ethan, recent Civil War veteran, coming home to the Edwards' ranch. In the opening sequence, an opening door breaks the blackness on the screen as sunlight enters the portal; the Edwards family goes out, through the doorway, to greet Ethan riding up to the house. This shot is mirrored at the end, when the black screen is again punctuated by a rectangular portal. Martin and Ethan have just delivered Debbie, still in buckskins, to the Jorgensen residence and she is escorted across the porch, into the home.

The rest of the family files in through the portal, including Debbie Jorgensen, who has been flirting with Martin since the beginning and has been waiting for his safe return. The frame shows the solitary figure of Ethan (Wayne) standing, looking in. He pauses, then he turns around and walks away from the home while the door shuts, fading the screen to all black, end of story.

I always thought that was beautiful storytelling, although the meaning of the ending is open to interpretation. My take on it is that Ethan is not joining the family because he is being relegated to the past.

His (Civil) war is over, and his side lost; his frontier family is wiped out, except for his niece, and he has been living on hate for too long. Sure, he accomplished his objective in rescuing his niece, but what now? All of the familiar old parts of his life have gone away and he is no longer relevant. I have a feeling he realizes this is one of those times in life where circumstances force one to find a new direction, but in the meantime the future belongs to the offspring of the original pioneers. An interesting bit of trivia is that the teenaged Debbie in the film was played by Natalie Wood while the child Debbie at the beginning was played by her sister, nine-year-old Lana Wood. Oops, but wait, I've spoiled the suspense of the story by disclosing its ending. Not to fear, because LeMay's original version is different than the Hollywood adaptation.

Amos (Ethan), for one thing, is not a returning veteran; he has been living in Texas his whole life. He is also much more wicked than the Hollywood Ethan and is not worthy of redemption. His continued defiling of the bodies of living and dead captured Indian enemies guarantees that literary justice will be served on him before the end of the story. Without giving away the ending, it can be noted that Martin and Amos come very close to finally admitting defeat during a final visit to the Mathison/Jorgensens. They had stopped in periodically during the years in the wilderness; this was where they could reconnect to the world of family living, however briefly.

Aaron Mathison looked after the remnants of the Edwards' stock, which legally belongs to Debbie if she is ever found; Laurie Mathison and Martin would resume their awkward courtship during these short visits, leaving one with the impression that she would wait for him to take her in his arms as soon as he is free of his other obligation with Amos. Just when the searchers are ready to concede their efforts have been in vain, they get a tip concerning a sighting of Debbie in an Indian camp. They must go out one more time to try to conclude this business. Laurie has had enough of this waiting business, and she shares Amos' racial views. Laurie reminds Martin he is not looking for a little girl any more; Debbie is now sixteen, going on seventeen, with 'savage brats of her own'; she's 'the leavings of Comanche bucks' (p. (Actually Debbie has been raised as the daughter of Scar, unaware of his participation in the killing of her original family, and is betrothed to marry in the tribe). Laurie's inner shrew has been let loose, and Martin's disillusionment is reinforced when he and Amos finally locate Debbie and get a chance to talk to her secretly before they attempt to rescue her.

Martin gets a brief chance to talk with her by Indian sign language, since she has forgotten her native language, and learns that Debbie isn't waiting to be scooped up into any one's arms and carried back home. The Indian village is eventually raided but the book's ending is highly ambiguous. Let's just say that the story's threads are not so nicely tied together at the end. It's funny, i've probably seen the john ford version of this book 25-30 times, and it never once even occurred to me that it might be based on a book.

It took david mamet's mentioning it as one of his five favorite novels to get me to actually look into it. It's a very different kind of book than, the other western on mamet's list. Slower, longer, straighter, never funny. It's calm and spacious and mythic but still realistic, informative while still always emotional. The ending i it's funny, i've probably seen the john ford version of this book 25-30 times, and it never once even occurred to me that it might be based on a book. It took david mamet's mentioning it as one of his five favorite novels to get me to actually look into it. It's a very different kind of book than, the other western on mamet's list.

Alan Le May The Searchers Pdf Merge Pdf

Slower, longer, straighter, never funny. It's calm and spacious and mythic but still realistic, informative while still always emotional. The ending is different from the movie; both have their pros and cons. I think i prefer the movie's, but the last page of this hits pretty damn hard. Still a notch below and as far as westerns go in my book, but it's a different kind of thing.

Sadder, lonelier; an older world farther away, with less ego, less author, less show. There aren't even towns in this book, only land.

And memories. It also made me realize one of the reasons i don't tend to like contemporary 'literary' fiction. It's obvious, but: there's never a sense of danger. Everyone lives in safety and has a million options. If somehow they don't see them, they come off as blind or stupid.

Alan Lemay The Searchers

It's kind of hard to care about such people. (unless they're crazy.) It was Mart's first mounted close action, and what he saw of it was all hell coming at him, personally. A war pony went down under his horse at the first bone-cracking shock; his horse tripped, but got over the fallen pony with a floundering leap, and Comanches were all around him.

Both lines disappeared in a yelling mix, into which Comanches seemed to lace endlessly from all directions. They rode low on the sides of their ponies, stabbing upward with their lances, and once within reach they never missed. If a man side-slipped in the saddle to avoid being gutted, a deep groin thrust lifted him and dropped him to be trampled. Only chance was to pistol your enemy before his lance could reach you. The gun reached farther than the lance, and hit with a shock that was final; but every shot was a snapshot, and nobody missed twice. You had five bullets, and only five-the hammer being carried on an empty cylinder-to get you through it all. The Searchers is an excellent western novel that is loosely based on the story of Cynthia Ann Parker who was abducted by Comanches in Texas in 1836 when she was about 10 years of age.

She remained a captive for over 20 years until she was 'recaptured' by white society. While living with the Comanches, she was pursued by several family members but to no avail. She did give birth to several children during her captivity. Her oldest, Quannah, became a legendary Comanche chief and oversaw the transi The Searchers is an excellent western novel that is loosely based on the story of Cynthia Ann Parker who was abducted by Comanches in Texas in 1836 when she was about 10 years of age. She remained a captive for over 20 years until she was 'recaptured' by white society.

While living with the Comanches, she was pursued by several family members but to no avail. She did give birth to several children during her captivity. Her oldest, Quannah, became a legendary Comanche chief and oversaw the transition of the tribe from 'Lords of the Plains' to reservation living. Lemay's novel is set later in time, after the Civil War, and follows the efforts of Amos Edwards and his adopted nephew, Martin Pauley, to find 10 year-old Debbie Edwards who was abducted by Comanche in a murder raid that left the remainder of her family dead. While outwardly simplistic, the plot and the relationships among characters are extremely complex.

The author's descriptions of the beauty, vastness, and loneliness of the Plains are stunning. This book was made into a movie of the same name released in 1956. It was directed by John Ford and John Wayne played the lead role of Ethan Edwards (name changed from Amos so as not be confused with Amos and Andy). The Searchers is considered by many to be one of the greatest westerns ever made. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, This book has made me a better person. I feel significantly stronger now that it's behind me, because I know that if I can get through The Searchers, I can do absolutely anything.

The Characters: Both Amos and Martin were flat, single-minded, self-centered, obnoxious, chauvinistic individuals and it's difficult for me to say who I loathed more. Amos was bloodthirsty, focusing only on slaughtering Indians. But Martin was unable to think for himself (a quality I dislike in humans both fiction This book has made me a better person.

I feel significantly stronger now that it's behind me, because I know that if I can get through The Searchers, I can do absolutely anything. The Characters: Both Amos and Martin were flat, single-minded, self-centered, obnoxious, chauvinistic individuals and it's difficult for me to say who I loathed more. Amos was bloodthirsty, focusing only on slaughtering Indians.

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But Martin was unable to think for himself (a quality I dislike in humans both fictional and real) and his intentions were selfish throughout the whole story. Neither one of the men seemed particularly competent (they spent 6 years traipsing through wilderness, for Pete's sake), yet they clearly thought they were the just the coolest things around. I suppose the only other character of enough significance to review was Laurie. Wishy-washy and needy, she might have a place in the plot, but she was beneath my notice as a reader. She's really one of the more annoying minor characters I've had the misfortune to encounter. The Plot: I believe I mentioned earlier that Amos and Martin spent 6 years wandering around the American West.

That, in a nutshell, is the plot. We readers get to spend every dragging, muddy, pointless, exhausting step alongside the duo as they ride horses in circles through the prairie looking for Debbie, Martin's adoptive sister. She was stolen by the Comanche when she was a child, and Martin made a promise to find her. This is admirable, I suppose, but it was portrayed badly in two ways. One, they did it for the wrong reasons.

Amos wanted to kill as many Indians as possible, and as is made clear by the end of the book, Martin only wanted to look masculine and save the day. Debbie was just a good excuse for a couple of numbskulls to play the hero. And two, LeMay's writing style. Please make it stop.

Part of what makes LeMay's writing so disappointing is the fact that there was a lot of potential to make this story good. It reflects the American Western genre quite accurately, and with some character deepening, theme development, and inclusion of literary devices, it would have at least improved in quality.

The plot itself was based on true events, and it has the potential of being entertaining. But LeMay chose to include every painstaking detail, down to every day of horseback riding. I have nothing against setting the scene, but did we have to have 200 pages about nearly dying on horseback while failing to find what you're looking for? Thanks to the less-than-ideal character development, Debbie had little significance to me, and consequently I have had more emotional attachment to a search for a pair of matching socks.

I just wanted Amos and Martin to locate her so the book could end. And when they finally did, they lied to her, killed the family who raised her, and forced her back into white society. How very convenient that LeMay ended the book there, so he didn't have to devise a way for THAT to work out happily. The Setting: America the beautiful, of spacious skies, and amber waves of grain. Ok, yes, unadulterated American landscape is gorgeous. But I didn't get to enjoy it because I had to endure prigs like Amos and Martin wandering around on it.

If you remove the characters, everything gets a whole lot prettier. Summary: This is supposed to be the best of its genre, and I suppose if you enjoy this sort of thing it wasn't horrible. But as a lover of good literature, it made me cringe. It didn't try very hard, and the protagonists meant nothing to me. The best decision would be to run away from this volume as fast as your legs can carry you, but if you decide to attempt it despite my well-intentioned advice.

The best of luck to you.