man whom shot liberty valance term paper
Excerpt from Term Paper:
Man Who also Shot Freedom Valance plus the Brilliance of John Ford
John Ford’s The Man Who have Shot Liberty Valance (1962), a classic western with a few film noir elements included, is definitely elegiac in the sense that it is narrative approach is that of eulogistic remembrance by simply now-Senator Ransom Stoddard, of horse rancher Tom Doniphan, who once saved Stoddard’s life and changed it much for the better, and who had been the real person who shot Liberty Valance. According to Robert Horton, “This might be the saddest European ever made, closer to an elegy than an action movie, so that as cleanly fabulous as its central symbol, the cactus rose” (“Editorial Reviews”). Upon Jeff Doniphan’s death in the little fictional city of Shinbone (state unknown) Ransom and Hallie Stoddard arrive back town to pay their particular final values to Doniphan who lost so much of himself, and so much of his own future happiness, pertaining to both of them. After Ransom Stoddard’s return to small Shinbone, the press barges in in Stoddard great wife Hallie as they stay quietly and reflectively in the funeral house paying all their final aspects. In the same way that another great film classic, Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) begins with a journalistic inquiry, the trio of paper reporters at the beginning of The Gentleman Who Taken Liberty Valance have come to find out why a man of Stoddard’s national importance would travel three days by educate from his home in Washington, M. C. To go to the memorial of an obscure horse rancher. Stoddard’s remembrances become the elegiac element of this western, which is also a deep breathing on the connotations of subjective ideas, such as law and order, real truth, justice, braveness and prize. In a place like Shinbone, where the man with the quickest gun the actual rules, Jeff Doniphan has received more impact on Shinbone, and on life beyond this, than anyone but Stoddard himself (and perhaps Hallie) could possibly know.
Western events and symbols in The Guy Who Shot Liberty Valance used to develop John Ford’s implicit thesis on backwoods, civilization, and time passageway include, for starters, the rickety stagecoach: when essential to little towns like Shinbone, and fact the actual lifelines of such towns. Now, however , having been changed by the train, it sits down forgotten within a warehouse, dust-covered, obsolete, and forgotten. Figuratively, metaphorically speaking, the moment Ransom Stoddard first happens in Shinbone, it is simply by stagecoach, but when he and Hallie come back to Washington following Tom’s memorial, they go by train.
Another important icon is definitely the cactus blossoms Hallie enjoys. In memories of Ben at his funeral, Hallie places just one cactus bloom atop his coffin. The gesture highlights the idea of who also Tom has been to Hallie: someone who, through quiet determination, strength of character, and selflessness, enabled Shinbone as well as its people, which include her and Ransom, to blossom in every area of your life, just as the cactus truly does, miraculously, wonderfully, in the barren the desert.
The centrality of Hallie’s role as being a leading persona in The Man Who Taken Liberty Valance is threefold. First Hallie is the archetypal frontierswoman who also settled the American west. As such, the girl with strong, established, and hard-working, yet mild, nurturing, and physically beautiful. She brings out the best (and occasionally the worst while well) in others, which includes Tom Doniphan and Ransom Stoddard, two rivals on her behalf love. If Ransom Stoddard represents the east and Tom Doniphan the west, Hallie comes eventually to symbolize both. In the beginning Hallie represents the untamed potential with the west (Hallie cannot examine or write). Later, after she déconfit Stoddard and moves with him to Washington, Hallie represents the delicate refinement of the east. Still, the east is never in Hallie’s bloodstream like the western. During almost all her amount of time in Washington, the lady yearns privately for simpleness of Shinbone. If we find this while Hallie’s history, it is an American western type of the bildungsroman (coming-of-age story) in which Hallie learns to realize love so that it is, and comes to know her authentic self.
Ben Doniphan and Ransom Stoddard each have both strengths and failings, inversely proportion to each other. Stoddard understands theories of the law yet Doniphan knows how the legislation really features. Similarly, Ransom symbolizes the spirit of the law: guidelines of correct and incorrect; morality and justice, but without the seasoned knowledge, which in turn Tom features in abundance, showing how such ideas function on the globe. When Freedom Valance desires his meat picked up, Ranse picks up to avoid a fight. Ranse does not discover why Tom would prefer to fight than pick up a steak in the floor. Ranse considers both Tom and Liberty persistent, while Jeff (and probably Liberty) consider Ranse a pushover. Ranse is a guy of personal integrity, who knows a great deal about how precisely people, in Shinbone and everywhere more, ideally should be, but very little about how people (at least in this town) actually are. Mary, on the other hand, though he has little book learning, understands from lifestyle how to size up others, including Stoddard (and Liberty). What Doniphan knows much less of although, is tips on how to share himself with others, or turn into close to these people. For example , Hallie is the subject of Doniphan’s love, nevertheless she is simply that: a subject. Several times Jeff tells Hallie, “You’re very when you’re mad” (or angry, or emotional). Still, he does not ever before ask Hallie to explain her feelings, nor does this individual try to help her feel better, as Ranse always does. Clearly, Jeff would protect Hallie by harm in the event that she stayed at in Shinbone and wedded him. Yet he would under no circumstances truly find Hallie while an independent human being, separate via himself, with her personal strengths, weak points, hopes, anxieties, desires, etc . Tom generally tells Hallie “You participate in me, ” to which Hallie always replies “I avoid belong to any person. ” Likewise, Tom reports to all, “Hallie’s my woman, ” and naively is convinced this is so. But Ben never demands Hallie to become his woman. Meanwhile, Hallie, before Tom’s eyes, “his girl” is falling fond of another.
Ransom sees Hallie as a full human being. He works with her in the kitchen and it is not frightened to do “women’s work. inches Ranse shows Hallie to study and compose, encouraging her desire to teach others with her operate his institution. Tom, alternatively, tells Hallie she does not need to learn to read and create. Tom does not notice that Hallie wants to discover how to read and write. Consequently , when Ranse’s school and Hallie’s teaching career break apart, Tom does not have any idea simply how much these things upsets Hallie, or why they will even ought to.
The question of whom we side with more: Ranse or Tom and why, is definitely complex. The very best answer is the fact we affiliate with both, nevertheless at several times and for different reasons. Ultimately, all of us side even more with Ben and feel sympathy and admiration for him. A great deal of the strength of the ending of this kind of movie is that our substantial sympathy for Tom, given his previous attitudes and actions, provides a surprise.
The two Tom and Ranse stand for, distinctly however equally, the very best of imperfect humanity. We see our best (and each of our worst) selves within all of them. For most of the movie, we all side with Ranse, who appears to be above the old fashioned, childish hostilities of Ben and Liberty. But in the conclusion, when cerebral Ranse finally acknowledges the seriousness of Liberty Valance as a danger, and that he, like Tom, can brandish a gun, this withought a shadow of doubt validates Tom’s viewpoint. Second, Tom’s activities the night Freedom dies reveal at long last the person Tom really is. Just before these two turning points, Ben, even though within the right aspect of the law, seems comparable to Liberty: cocky; simplistic; selfish, boorish. For example , just as Hallie is a subject Tom can “acquire” at some point, Ranse is known as a “pilgrim. ” To prove his brilliance with a gun, Tom deliberately shoots total cans of white color onto Ranse’s expensive match, an act at once malevolent and idiotic. Ranse right away evens some misconception by punching Tom, knocking him towards the ground and showing Jeff Ranse is known as a “real man” after all, not only an inapropiately dressed eastern “pilgrim. ” In those values, Tom’s pugnacious personality is much like Liberty’s, except for Tom’s honesty and respect for legislation. But by the end, Tom both sacrifices Hallie to Ranse, and protect Ranse’s politics future by simply both assuaging Ranse’s guilt about getting rid of Liberty, and in addition by neglecting to take credit rating for it himself. Those two acts demonstrate compassion and depth in Tom that surprise all of us. At that point, we see Tom as he is: not really through his swagger or perhaps his macho threats, but through activities performed fearlessly, selflessly, devoid of fanfare.
In comparing David Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance with a more recent western, Kevin Costner’s Dances with Baby wolves (1990), with which “Kevin Costner came along and singlehandedly [sic] breathed fresh life in to the genre” (Berardinelli) the two directors’ interpretations of the American persona are essentially similar: a strong but essentially
