The Ox-Bow Incident

The Ox-Bow Incident a must read for fans of westerns

It is easy to put off reading this book because you think you already know the story. As a classic western many people are familiar with it but have not read it. What you will miss is a great author who knows how to write. Even though the original publish date is in 1940 it reads better than many contemporary novels in this genre. Walter Van Tilburg Clark can craft a great sentence, a great paragraph, and remind the reader of that other great western writer, Cormac McCarthy. If you like tales of the old west, this novel will not dissapoint.

Good book, but sad

In The Ox-Bow Incident, three innocent people are hung without getting their requested trial. This generates sadness towards them and hatred towards the posse that did it. Maybe if there's a sequel, the posse will be hung. This story has many characters to keep track of well. If the author narrowed it down to six characters including the three that got hung, it would be easier to keep track of them. Overall, it's a book that I would recommend to people 15+ 'or if you're good at reading, 10+' that can handle some swearing and murder and enjoy old west stories.

The Western Setting Helps Reveal Theme.

Sometimes people¿s definition and view of justice is clouded when wrong-doing strikes close to home; in ¿The Ox-Bow Incident,¿ by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, the people in a small town at the turn of the twentieth century face the consequences of taking the law into their own hands. After taking the action that they do, they realize that they were hasty and eager to jump to conclusions. A few of the men feel so badly that they hang themselves. The theme has to do with justice, the justice system, and more specifically the court systems, and what happens when a group of men takes the law into its own hands and the penalties they suffer as a result of breaking the system of law and order. Walter Van Tilburg Clark chooses the old west as the setting for ¿The Ox-Bow Incident¿, because it is still fresh, new and unsettled. Although there is a system of law things are so spread out that it seems slow and inefficient at the time. This is the perfect setting for Walter Van Tilburg Clark to show/prove that the law will prevail no matter what the circumstances. The story takes place in a very small town/ranching community around the turn of the century. It is in the spring of the year. As the story progresses and the ranchers acquire sour attitudes/moods, it begins to snow and act as though winter is not quite over. By the end of the story, the wind is blowing and it is very cold out. There is a sense or feeling of emptiness in the air. The men match the physical setting. They feel cold-hearted and empty inside. Both the emotional and physical setting help to reveal and make clear the theme.

Frontier Justice?

True justice, though often hard to come by, is a necessity for righteousness; in "The Ox-Bow Incident" by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, a group of men form a posse and lose their sense of righteousness. The story takes place in and around a small town in Nevada called Bridger¿s Wells and is told through the eyes of a man by the name of Art Croft. Croft and his companion Gil Carter trek into Bridger Wells midday one day in spring, weary from a long winter out on the range. They are well received by their acquaintances in the town and relax in Canby¿s saloon, but are soon interrupted with news that cattle rustlers have stolen about a thousand head of cattle from Drew¿s ranch, the largest ranch in the area, and have murdered one of his work hands, a man named Kinkaid. Every man in the town of Bridger¿s Wells is soon alerted, and a posse is formed to search for the rustlers and seek revenge. Everyone knows that this is not posse but a lynch mob, thirsty for blood. The mob is lead by a man named Tetley, a previous confederate officer who is followed by Croft and Carter, and some twenty odd men. Many of these men joined the posse despite their uncertainty of the situation. After hours of stalling and warnings the posse heads out in search of the rustlers and encounters a number of obstacles on the way. They head directly into a late snow, are surrounded by complete darkness, and Croft is soon shot in the left shoulder due to a misunderstanding. The mob finally reaches an area of land called the Ox-Bow Valley where they see their three suspected rustlers and split up to surround the campfire. There they find a young man, his old sidekick, and his Mexican worker. They accuse the three of the suspected crime and unlawfully sentence them to death by lynching, with no real evidence of the guilt or innocence of the men.

In his novel, Clark expands on the setting of the story in great detail. He tells of the town of Bridger¿s Wells, a town with one main street, lined with small houses, a general store, a saloon, an office building, an inn, a church, and a meeting hall. Bridger¿s Wells is a small town in a valley, which is only accessible by traveling down steep mountain passes. With this description, Clark ties in his theme of the lack of and need for law and order and justice in this land. When the posse is convening in the small town, the men feel as though they must join in, and there is no one there to stop them. Sheriff Risley is too far away, and it is too far to go to find Drew and ask him if the story is really true and to see if Kinkaid is really dead. They are in an isolated area, and because of this, feel like they can handle the situation without seeking the court of law. As the story progresses on, Clark describes just how isolated the town is. The men of the posse reach a mountain pass where they struggle with the rough terrain: the steep, winding road strewn with boulders, fierce drop-offs, unknown crests. When the men reach the final place of the lynching, they are in the Ox-Bow Valley. This Valley is located over the mountains to the west of town and gets its name from the creek in the valley that winds around on itself like a snake. Clark uses this setting to expand even more on his theme, and to give a few possible reasons for the men¿s haste and disregard for true justice. By the time the posse reaches this valley they are already thirsty for revenge, but the wildness and power of the land seems to increase that thirst. The anger of the howling wind, and the bitterness of the cold snow seem to validate their feelings and make them long for ¿justice¿. Many of the members of the posse do not wish to hang the men, but choose not to say so. Maybe these men are afraid to stand up to Tetley, or maybe they don¿t want to go home empty-handed after a long night fighting the land to reach the rustlers. The justice that they longed for is not true justice, but their justice.

Foreshadowing reveals theme

'The Ox-Bow Incident' takes place in Nevada in the spring of 1885. Two friends, Gil and Carter who were out riding the range have just come back to town when they hear that a friend of theirs has just been killed and that about forty head of cattle were taken. They join a posse and set out to find the cattle rustlers. The sheriff and owner of the ranch where the cattle were taken from are not part of the posse because it was made up so fast. The only black man in town, Sparks, says that he had seen them heading towards Bridgers Pass with the cows so the posse takes this route. When they catch up to the people that they were looking for, it is night time so they decide to wait until the morning before they take action against the criminals and lynch them. When morning comes, the posse takes a vote to see if the men should be taken back to town for a trial or if they should be hung on the spot. The men decide to hang the men right there at the Ox-Bow. Once the men are hung, the posse heads back to town when they meet the sheriff and the owner of the ranch, Harley Drew. He informs them that the men that they have just killed had bought the cattle earlier, that their friend was only wounded. They have just killed three innocent people.

The theme of this book is very clear. Walter Van Tilburg Clark, foreshadows to show the theme. At one point in the book, Sparks and Gil are talking about lynchings they have separately witnessed and what a bad experience that was. This says that if anyone is hung in this book that this too will be a bad experience. The three men who are being accused also had a very solid explanation as to why they had cattle with the brand of Drew's ranch on them, why there is no sales ticket, and what they are doing with the gun of the man who was supposedly killed, Kinkad. Because they all told the same story and because it all made perfect sense, readers may wonder if this is actually the truth. All of these things make the theme very clear: When people take the law into their own hands and do not let the officials do their jobs the rights of individuals often get trampled upon; In 'The Ox-Bow Incident' the mob acts before thinking and this results in tragic consequences.

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