Reading Notes W4: The Outcasts of Poker Flats, PART B

Citation: “The Outcasts of Poker Flats” – Bret Harte, p.216-225

Themes:

Recurring theme of Harte that nature is a force that cannot be beat.

Luck: in both “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and “The Outcasts of Poker Flats”  luck is a major theme as well as hope, however in this story, the idea of luck and hope are lost when the characters leave the town and Billy takes their transportation and snow begins to fall.

Innocence and Guilt: In the story, Piney Woods and Tom Simpson are used as innocence compared to the expatriated characters of the Dutchess, Mother Shipton, Uncle Billy, and our main character, John Oakhurst.

Setting:

               Setting plays a crucial role in not only the mood of the story, but the morale of the characters. With the snow came loss of motivation and almost a melancholy feel. This shows how characters emotions were impacted by setting.

Like “The Luck of Roaring Camp”, Harte uses local color. He uses the vernacular of people of that time and area (California gold mining community) with vocabulary such as derringer, folly, draggle, and sluice.

Harte uses allusions to the Bible which plays on the theme innocence and guilt.

Snow is used as a symbol of the cleansing of sins and purifying element. As the snow falls, the sinful characters slowly pass.

Irony:

The use of irony is also heavily used in this tragedy. Some of which include the Oakhurst’s luck, which got him banished from Poker Flats, and his death, in which he kills himself and uses a poker card (motif) to mark his grave. An example too of dramatic irony is how John knows that Billy stealing their mode of transportation will ruin the survival of the group, but to protect their hope and keep motivations up, he doesn’t say anything.

“I’m proud to live in the service of the lord….bound to die in His army.” ?? May be foreshadowing the deaths of the characters and their loss of luck. Plays into the irony of Oakhurst again as well.

Personification is used to add eerie feel to the forest as well as a melancholy feel of the deaths and the snowfall.