Brett Harte

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Brett Harte

• The Outcasts of Poker Flat

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Wild West

• What are the characteristics of the American
  western?
• Who are the recognizable characters of the Wild
  West?
• What do we recognize about them?
• Video Clips---How do these clips support your
  quick write?
• Stagecoach
• Treasure of the Sierra Madre

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(No Transcript)
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At the height of his career, in the 1860s and
1870s, Bret Harte was one of the most famous and
most highly paid American writers. His popular
accounts of life in Gold Rush-era California,
including short stories such as "The Luck of
Roaring Camp" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat,"
seized the public imagination and made him an
international celebrity. Harte's invention of
prototypical "western" characters--the shady
prospector, the cynical gambler, the tough
cowboy, the prostitute with a heart of
gold--created the mythology through which
Americans learned to understand the culture of
the "Old West." Combining realistic descriptions
of the specific regional characteristics of
California life with sentimental plots, Harte hit
on a formula that delighted nineteenth-century
readers and continues to influence American
narratives of the West. (Annenberg)
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Literary Terms

• Local Color
• Rough and tumble West
• Stereotypes of what easterners would have thought
  of westerners
• 3rd person omniscient
• Ability to see inside the other characters
• Characterization (both direct and indirect)
• Direct draws distinctions between Oakhurst and
  the other characters
• Indirect draws conclusions about characters based
  on their actions
• Theme

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• Achieved fame as a regional Western writer
• Although, his basic attitudes were more Eastern
  than Western
• Wrote fixed formulas of western gold miners
  Forty-Niners
• Mild humor, colorful characters, colorful
  language, and situations where virtues finally
  triumphed over apparent immoralities

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• Comprehension Who are the central characters in
  "The Outcasts of Poker Flat"? How do they
  construct or participate in stereotypes about
  characters from the Old West? How do they
  challenge these stereotypes?
• Context Bret Harte was a mentor to Mark Twain,
  giving him some of his first writing assignments
  and, according to Twain, teaching him a great
  deal about his craft "He trimmed and schooled me
  patiently until he changed me from an awkward
  utterer of coarse grotesqueness to a writer of
  paragraphs and chapters." Later, however, Twain
  attacked Harte's work as overly romantic,
  unbelievable, and repetitive. How is Harte's work
  similar to Twain's? What ideals and narrative
  strategies do they share? How are they different?

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• Exploration Compare the plot and characters of
  "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" to the plot and
  characters of one or more Western movies
  (Stagecoach, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
  Unforgiven, or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,
  for example). How do subsequent American
  portraits of the Old West draw from Harte's
  depictions? What familiar ideas about the Old
  West seem to start in Harte's work?

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• Excerpt and questions
• American Passages A Literary Survey. Annenberg
  Lerner. Annenberb Foundation.
• http//www.learner.org/amerpass/unit08/author_acti
  v-6b.html