Latest / Catholic Spirit Radio / Being Catholic #401: The Searchers: Home, Hate, and the Long Road Back

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Being Catholic #401: The Searchers: Home, Hate, and the Long Road Back · Catholic Spirit Radio

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This is Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnston, and you're listening to Being Catholic right here
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We're going have a great show for you today.
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I'm here with my wife, Lynn.
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Again, that's 309-807-2427.
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And as I said, I'm here with my wife, Lynn.
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And before we start, I'm going to tell you we're going to do something different
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today. We're going to review a movie.
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And it's a good movie, and I think you'll enjoy it. We'll relate it a little
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bit to being Catholic and to our Catholic religion, and you'll see how that happens as we go along.
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Before we start, I'm going to turn this over to my wife, Lynn,
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and see what she has to say.
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Well, hello out there. Good to be with you again.
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This program we put together this week is very relevant to what's going on today with the search for,
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especially in the younger generation, I think my daughter calls it the Z generation or something.
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Generation Z. Yeah, Generation Z.
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And the need for looking for, they're searching for a way home,
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you know, a place to be called home.
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And it's not necessarily a place. It's a feeling where you feel like you belong.
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And there are many converts to the Catholic faith that are looking for that
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very thing. And they come back.
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To get this feeling of home and what's home. Isn't it a story really about all
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of us and we're searching for our way home to God?
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Yes, it is. And, you know, it's specifically, as you were saying,
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search for belonging, being home, and that is belonging to a country,
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belonging to a people, you know, belonging to a nation.
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And all people have a desire to belong.
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And so we're going to ask ourselves, you know, what is a nation and,
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you know, what is our home?
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And then we're going to do a review of the movie and show a man who is angry
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because he is an outsider and he is in search of things.
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And in the long run, he and others are in search of a home.
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And it's a basic story. Right. It's a basic story of the human race.
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It's the Odyssey. We've talked about that before.
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You know, Odysseus in the Iliad, a Greek tale where he spends 10 years trying to find his way home.
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We have John Milton's Paradise Lost, and it's the whole story of Christianity itself.
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Our fall, you know, from heaven and the loss of our heavenly home and our demise
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to this place on earth in Paradise Lost.
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So, there's some of that in it.
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And the church, it's a theme that needs to be addressed.
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And I think it's a theme that's playing out in our country today.
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We see the homelessness around us. We see people alienated. And we're wondering why this is going on.
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We're going to tie these things together as we go along. Right. Now, this...
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This movie was based on a novel by, was it LeMay?
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Yeah, it was Alan LeMay. Alan LeMay. In 1954, I believe you know.
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Right, and the movie was made in 1956, which I realize that's ancient history
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for most people. But it's a great movie.
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Yes, it is. And it has won, I think it's been placed in the world film industry
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as the seventh best, or twelfth best?
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I thought I saw seven. Could be seven and others, yeah. Yeah.
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Seventh best Western ever made.
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Okay. And the story, the novel was based on the story of Cynthia Parker,
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who was a young girl and at nine years old, living in Texas,
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watched her family being murdered by the Comanches.
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And she was taken captive.
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And it's about how her uncle looked for her for some people say five years,
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seven years, 10 years, somewhere in there.
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But it was a really, really good movie.
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You can still watch it on, like, you can get it on, what do you call that,
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on demand? Yeah, on demand.
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And, you know, some of the other... Probably Netflix.
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Yes. So, do, after you listen to this, it would, uh.
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You would be very pleased to watch the movie. It's beautifully filmed.
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Oh, gorgeous. It's gorgeous.
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And John Ford, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, filmed it.
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And he actually, it's set in Texas, but he filmed it in Monument Valley, Utah.
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Yeah, whatever. But the filming of the pictures, it's gorgeous.
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So let's get started. bomb.
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Okay, so what we're going to talk about in the beginning here is,
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first of all, you know, what is a nation?
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In other words, what makes us a nation? And there's been an argument going on
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over quite a period of time here, and I'll get to that in an article here in
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Chronicles Magazine, the current issue of Chronicles.
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It's the May 2026 issue, and the title of the article is whose creed, whose country.
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And the idea is, is how do you define a nation?
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And we'll talk about that a little bit and then that will lead us into the movie.
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It says, conservatives don't need a special occasion to debate what it means to be an American.
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One line of argument on that topic has remained unbroken since 1959 and 60 when
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Harry Jaffa published Crisis of the House Divided and Wilmore Kendall reviewed
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it critically in National Review.
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The Jaffa-Kendall controversy evolved into a running battle,
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and that battle is still going on over whether we are a creedal nation or whether
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we are a different kind of nation,
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a more practical nation based on, you know, a particular place and a particular experience.
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Jaffa argued that Abraham Lincoln understood the Declaration of Independence
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as America's philosophical charter.
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It established us as what some would call a propositional nation,
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and others have lately described as a creedal nation.
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Kendall warned that if Lincoln could use the promise of the Declaration to redefine
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America, so could any of today's enterprising left-wing ideologues.
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Today, the left takes the equality enshrined by the Declaration to mean male
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transvestites are equivalent to women, and illegal aliens are equivalent to U.S. citizens.
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Equality knows no limits, and universal rights and laws make no distinction of person or place.
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It goes on here, it says, Japa's own writing are as right-wing as any traditional
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conservative could ask.
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But the point is, Japa really can't ground that in what the Declaration of Independence as itself.
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There's no way you can interpret that in a number of ways as liberals would
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interpret it, as I just said.
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Credo nationalists have a problem.
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If the American creed is universal, one must wonder what specifically American
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is American about it, or what's American about America itself, for that matter.
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Most creedal nationalists aren't really nationalists at all,
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and only go so far as to say America was founded upon and best embodies universal rights and laws.
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Our distinctiveness is our universality.
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If that seems paradoxical, so do the mysteries of many faiths.
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Any group of people could, in theory, adopt a belief that all men are created
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equal and endowed with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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Would that make another America out of whatever place those people happen to live?
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Obviously not. On the other hand, it's not race or language that makes a nation.
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America didn't separate from Britain over such differences 250 years ago.
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And while Americans are geographically distinct from the British,
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we share our continent with white, Anglophone Canadians who are nonetheless not Americans.
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The divisions between America and England and America and Canada are at root political.
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But is politics really enough to constitute a nation?
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For centuries, the nations of Europe were creedal nations in the proper sense of that term.
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Membership in a nation meant belonging to the national church and ascribing to its creed.
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America in 1776 was exceptional in not having a national church.
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Americans were mostly Christians, but they were not defined as a polity by a single church or creed.
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By the 1830s, leaders from John Quincy Adams to the young Lincoln were trying
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to outline a political religion to fill the void left by a unifying faith.
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In other words, we don't have a particularly unifying faith.
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So this is one of the debates and questions going on. You know,
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what is a nation and what is our nation?
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And in my opinion, it's certainly not just a creed.
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It's not just saying I believe in a constitution and you're somehow an American.
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It's been an experience. It's been the experience of Americans settling this
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land, coming over here and having the experience of moving, being in effect.
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Uprooted without a home and settling in a new land and facing all the problems
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of the new land and then moving westward and settling the land as it went along.
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That's been part of the American experience. And for people who came later after
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that experience, that experience was conveyed to them through stories and through
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literature and through their education,
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through history and the school system and so forth, all of these things were conveyed.
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And it was also conveyed through our common language, the English language,
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of course, and it was particularly Americanized.
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And these people came here to be Americans, to love America,
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and to pick that language up.
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And we had a common culture in the sense of we had radio programs that everybody
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listened to, of the young, the old families together.
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We had a particular concept of marriage and family and so forth that all of us agreed upon.
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And we had a lot of television shows that were common to everybody and a lot
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of magazines and literature that were common to everybody, all ages and so forth.
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And a lot of that has fallen away.
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And let me talk about that a little bit here. Today, America is a culture of niches.
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There is no such thing as shared culture anymore. We don't watch the same shows
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or movies like we used to.
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We had whole families that watched all the same shows and all the same movies from young to old.
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We don't listen to the same music or podcasts. We don't rely on the same news anymore.
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We don't drive the same cars, read the same books anymore, eat at the same restaurants
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or shop at the same stores.
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Technology has made it possible for each individual to cultivate a unique lived
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experience, often in odd, esoteric, and sometimes dangerous ways.
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And our media institutions are dominated by those who have never known someone
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who doesn't think the way they do.
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And we have had a 50-year history here of what I would call liberalism or progressivism,
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however you want to define it,
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constantly picking out all of the faults of America and transmitting to our
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youth in schools and so forth that, in effect, America is no good.
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And not teaching the history that we used to teach and not uniting people or
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bringing them together, but celebrating diversity and, in effect,
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deliberately and so forth, keeping people apart.
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And we see this today in a lot of alienation.
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And in this movie, we'll see that alienation can cause a, and having a nonsense of belonging,
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not belonging and so forth, can cause a feeling of anger and a feeling of being
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rejected and a feeling in return of rejecting that which rejects you.
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And this anger, I think we can see today in a lot of our youth,
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and we also see the aimlessness and the feeling of not belonging anywhere to
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a lot of the homeless people on drugs and whose lives are, in effect,
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sort of negative and non-lives, you know, living on the street and not becoming
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anything and not have any particular sense of purpose.
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Because all of our institutions and so forth, in effect, are gone.
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And I think this movie brings out in a sort of microcosm the whole idea of that
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and lets us take a look at it and see where it can lead.
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And so I think that's why it's an important movie, even though it was made back
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in the 1950s, 70 years ago, and its actual setting is set in the mid-19th century,
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back, you know, right after the Civil War.
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And that was, in effect, the Civil War itself, a huge division.
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And we have another division today in our society, a division between left and
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right, if you want to call it that, between progressive and non-progressive,
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between conservative and liberal.
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And our society is divided right down the middle on a lot of those things.
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And again, a lot of our institutions are being destroyed and are being attacked.
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And we have a confused youth and confusion often leads, again, to anger.
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And we have the Catholic Church,
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which actually is the founder and the basis of Western civilization.
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And so we are about Western civilization, our country, and this movie and story
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is about Western civilization and the West itself here in the United States,
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the land, the West itself.
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And so I think it's very apropos. And so with that, we will,
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in the next segment, go into the movie itself.
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So stay with us. We'll be right back. You've been listening to Being Catholic
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with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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As you've heard, Catholic Spirit Radio is hosting their 15th anniversary pilgrimage to Wisconsin.
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Seats filled up so quickly that we've added another bus. Now more seats are available.
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This three-day trip includes exclusive tours of shrines and basilicas,
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plus luxury bus transportation, meals, and hotel.
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What a great gift idea! Departure is August 10th from Normal and Rockford.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnson. You're listening to Being Catholic.
18:41
We're back from our break, and we're talking about alienation in our country.
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We're talking about the definition of a nation, and we're talking about finding
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our place within a nation, finding our place in our sense of belonging within
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a home, and that's the themes that this movie treats.
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And so we're going to talk about the movie The Searchers and The Great American Western.
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And as my wife said, it's number 12 and number 7, I think, among some people's
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on The Greatest of All Westerns.
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And so let's get into it.
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I'll read from the article The Great American Western and remembering the film
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that defined the genre, The Searchers.
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And it goes on here, it says, America's most quintessential film genre is the Western.
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This year sees the seventh anniversaries of John Ford's The Searchers, the film's starring.
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Seventyth. What's that? The 70th. Yeah, the 70th anniversary.
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Didn't I say that? I thought you said seventh.
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Okay, the 70th anniversary. It was 1956 that it was made.
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The article here is actually dealing with two films, and I'm just going to do The Searchers.
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One of the others is The Outlaw Josie Wales, but that's another theme.
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Anyway, it said the themes of The Searchers is basically the cultural conflict
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and civilizing the wilderness dominates it. But I disagree with that.
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I mean, certainly those themes are there. But I think one theme of The Searchers,
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one huge theme is the search for home and the anger that drives a person who
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feels that they are an outsider on the outside looking in.
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And that character is Ethan Edwards played by John Wayne.
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The opening credits of The Searchers give us no indication that we are watching
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anything beyond a standard 1950s western.
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So when you start out watching a movie, that's what you think you're going to see.
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But then the screen fades to black, and we are presented with one of the John
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Ray's most memorable openings.
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The screen's darkness is broken by a door opening and looking out upon the spectacular
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site of Monument Valley, Utah, though the film's setting is in fact Texas in 1868.
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But Ford chose to do Monument Valley, and he certainly gets away with it,
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and it's not only spectacular, it's also beautiful.
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And now all of a sudden, Max Steiner's awe-inspiring music begins.
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And from the door, a woman walks onto a homestead porch.
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Initially, we only see her silhouette framed in the doorway and against the landscape.
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In the distance, a figure on horseback rides toward the camera.
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Other members of the family come out of the house.
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The bonnie blue flag softly plays over the proceedings.
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The figure on horseback turns out to be Ethan Edwards, played by John Wayne.
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Clad in a gray Confederate overcoat, a man who has apparently come home from
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the Civil War three years late.
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This beautifully filmed scene
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immediately grips the viewer and sets the stage for the story to come.
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That story concerns Edwards and his return home after a long absence.
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He is reunited with his brother Aaron and sister-in-law Martha and their three
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children, Ben, Lucy, and Debbie.
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We are not long into the film when the Reverend Samuel Johnson Clayton arrives
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at the Edwards Homestead.
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And he is played by Ward Bond.
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And Ward Bond does a great job of playing this Texas Ranger who is also a preacher.
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Clayton is a church pastor, but also a captain in the Texas Rangers.
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He wants to recruit Ethan to help him track down some stolen cattle.
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When Ethan and the Rangers set out for this purpose, they discover a dead cow
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with a Comanche lance through its body.
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But before this, we get Ethan, just for a little while, reuniting himself with
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the family, with his sister-in-law, Martha, and his brother, Aaron.
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And there seems to be, did you think, Lynn, that there seems to be a connection
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between Ethan and Martha?
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Yes. And between the sister-in-law? Yes.
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If nothing else, Ethan is extremely protective of Martha.
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And he cares for her a lot. Yeah.
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And I think it's reciprocal. It only shows him kissing her on the forehead and
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greeting, you know, just like I'm greeting my sister-in-law.
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But it shows her reaching for and sliding her fingers down his hand.
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Yeah. I mean, and it shows his eyes sort of catching hers.
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Yeah. And briefly it shows this and then cuts away. And so I think Gafford there
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in just that very brief moment.
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Captures a connection there. And it may have something to do actually with the
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child, Debbie, who is a child that gets abducted by the Indians.
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And we don't know that. And we don't know a lot about Ethan.
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We don't know where he was for three years after the Civil War.
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And then it turns out that Ethan knows, doesn't he, a lot about the Comanche. He sure does.
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And where does he get that. We don't know. It doesn't say.
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And then his brother, you know, invites him in and Ethan is seems like he's
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going to stay there for a while. Like he's going to live there. Yeah.
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And he sort of has got a chip on his shoulder almost, doesn't he?
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About like thinking his brother might not want him there.
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Yeah, very. Yeah. And then his brother says, you can stay here as long as you want to.
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And Ethan says, okay, but don't worry, I'm going to pay for it.
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I'll pay my keep, something like that. And he gives him some money.
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It's gold coins. Yeah. And the brother hides him in the chair. Right.
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So, I mean, there's, you know, something going on there, too.
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Right. And the gold coins are brand new minted coins that have never been in
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circulation. Yeah. U.S.
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Coins, not Confederate. U.S. coins, they're U.S.
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Gold coins, not Confederate coins, they're good money, in other words.
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And the brother said, you know, made a comment about that. Where did you get these?
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And Ethan doesn't say anything, does he? No. He just sort of is silent.
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So we don't know where he got the money, but he gives it to Aaron,
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and Aaron puts it in the chair.
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He's got, takes the cushion off this chair and hides it down inside the chair. Yeah.
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And like Ethan is going to stay there and pay his, you know,
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but he's not going to do it for nothing. He's going to pay his keep.
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So right off the bat, you know, we get this. And then the captain of the Rangers
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comes along, and he wants to...
26:09
Recruit Ethan into the Rangers in order to go track down these stolen cattle that Mr.
26:17
Jorgensen, the neighbor, has some cattle that have been stolen.
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And Ethan refuses to take an oath for the Rangers. He said, I gave my oath to
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the Confederate States of America.
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And one oath, he said, is enough for a man's lifetime. Something like that, doesn't he? Right.
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And says that. And then doesn't the captain, you know, Ward Bond,
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Captain Clayton, says, where were you at the surrender?
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He says, I didn't see you at the, you know, he says, you know,
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I didn't see you at the surrender.
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And in fact, he says, I don't think you were at the surrender, something like that.
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And Ethan replies, he says, I don't believe in surrenders. I still have my saber.
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Yeah, he says, I still have my saber.
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And he says, and I haven't pounded into a plowshare neither.
27:07
Right. And I mean, he says these things pretty forcefully, pretty angrily almost.
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It's like, I reject your idea of religion, almost.
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You know, I reject all of this. Your beliefs, yeah. Your beliefs.
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And anyway, he decides to go with the Rangers because he doesn't want his brother
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to come because Old Most, this old guy, this sort of a crazy guy.
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And I think maybe Old Most sort of like, It foreshadows what Ethan could become
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if Ethan gets old and says that the cattle could have been taken by Indians.
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And Ethan wants his brother to stay with Martha and the kids,
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and he'll go with the Rangers.
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So somebody's staying there to protect the family.
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Right. And so he goes up. Also, another part of the theme is you find out one of the boys,
28:07
the oldest boy that his brother has is not his brother's actual biological son.
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He was found by Ethan before the Civil War when the Indians attacked their,
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I don't know if it was a wagon train or a stagecoach and killed the kids,
28:30
this baby's parents.
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But Ethan found him. He was the only survivor.
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And he brought him to his brother and sister-in-law to raise. Yeah, Martin. Martin.
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Martin is part Comanche.
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No, he's part Cherokee. Cherokee, part Cherokee. Okay.
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He's one-fourth quarter Cherokee. And Ethan, we find out, doesn't like him.
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I mean, Ethan saved his life, but nevertheless, Ethan doesn't like him because
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Ethan doesn't like Indians.
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We find out that Ethan hates Indians, and so he can't really like Martin,
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even though he saved him.
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And at this point in the movie, in the story, Martin, the boy that he found, Martin...
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He's grown. He's like 18, somewhere in there.
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Yeah. So, well, Martin goes with Ethan and the rangers to find out where these
29:31
rustlers, who they were and what they did.
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And as they go along, Martin is the one that says there's something fishy about
29:40
this trail. They're trailing the Indians.
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And I think Martin, because the Indians are going through brush and so forth.
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In other words, it seems like they're being too obvious.
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They're leaving too much of a trail too easy to follow. And Martin is suspicious of it.
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And so they get up a little bit further and then they find one of the prized
30:03
cattle with a lance right through it.
30:06
And then they begin to find more cattle that are being killed.
30:09
And then they realize that these Indians are not taking these cattle for food
30:14
or to sell or, you know, to steal for other reasons.
30:18
And they realize it's just a ploy to get the men to follow and get them away
30:23
from the homestead and to lead them, you know, away from the homestead and leave
30:28
the family there unprotected.
30:30
And so they discover, you know, that this is the purpose. So the men rush back
30:37
to the Edwards home, you know, and they find it in flames.
30:40
And of course, Ethan is a realist and the men rush back and they were riding their horses.
30:45
And Ethan says, the horses are tired. They need rest and they need grain and water.
30:52
And he refuses to ride back with them.
30:55
And he rests his horse, gives a grain of water and almost stays with him and does the same thing.
31:01
And of course, they overtake the men because the men's horses give out.
31:05
And so Ethan and the most get there first, even though, you know,
31:10
the other men were wondering, why, you know, are you staying behind?
31:15
And Ethan, it just goes to show you that Ethan has a tremendous discipline along
31:21
these lines, and he's a realist.
31:23
He's not going to let his emotions cause him to do stupid things.
31:27
And you can see the contempt he has for the men themselves because of the way they're behaving.
31:34
And uh so he gets
31:37
there and they run the whole family is
31:40
massacred Aaron Martha and Ben are dead
31:43
while the two girls Debbie and Lucy have been abducted and and you also be when
31:50
they're gone you get the feeling of how brutal the land is and how brutal the
31:56
Indians are because it's toward evening and Aaron, you know,
32:02
suddenly realizes that there are Indians out there and he's trying to keep the
32:07
family calm and he loads a shotgun and they wonder what he's doing.
32:12
And he says, I think I'll just take a walk out and see if I can get a couple
32:15
of sage hens before supper.
32:18
And he's trying not to panic them. And then his one daughter,
32:23
Lucy, the oldest daughter lights a candle and the mother, Martha,
32:27
you know, screams at her to put it out.
32:29
And she runs out and blows it out. And then Lucia dawns on Lucia what's happening,
32:34
you know, what her father is going out there with the gun for.
32:38
And she turns toward the camera and screams at the top of her lungs because
32:42
she knows what's to come.
32:44
And it does more implying what's going to happen that way than if it shows you
32:51
what's actually happening.
32:52
And then they take Debbie, the little girl, and tell her, you know the hiding place we taught you?
33:00
You know, go there and hide. And they put her out the window and tell her to go and hide.
33:06
And as she gets to where she's supposed to hide, to the grave,
33:10
all of a sudden a shadow of an Indian crosses over her. and she doesn't make
33:14
it, you know, to this hiding place.
33:16
And an Indian shadow crosses over her and she turns around and looks up with frightened eyes.
33:22
And all of a sudden, you see this Indian brave look upward and blow this like
33:31
a horn made out of a cow's horn.
33:34
Sort of like, you know, the Jewish, what do you call them, when they blow the horn to come to. Yeah.
33:44
The sacrifice. Right. It's a signal for the rest of the Indians to attack,
33:49
that it's okay to attack, that all the men are gone. And then you don't know.
33:54
Then the screen blanks out, and that's all you know. You don't see the massacre.
33:59
In other words, the movie doesn't show what would probably be shown today,
34:03
but it implies it. And it's worse.
34:05
The implication is that their family is all killed.
34:09
And so the men
34:11
rush back to edward's home to find it in flames aaron martha
34:15
and ben are dead while the two girls debbie and
34:18
lucy have been abducted ethan debbie and lucy's
34:21
adopted brother martin paulie and lucy's fiancee brad jorgensen set out in search
34:26
of the girls after lucy's body is discovered brad rides in a fit of rage into
34:32
the comanche camp only to be killed and thus begins Ethan and Martin's drooling
34:37
five-year quest to recover Debbie.
34:40
So we're going to stop here and take a break. So stay with us.
34:43
We'll be right back. You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston
34:46
on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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As you've heard, Catholic Spirit Radio is hosting their 15th anniversary pilgrimage to Wisconsin.
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Seats filled up so quickly that we've added another bus. Now more seats are available.
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This three-day trip includes exclusive tours of shrines and basilicas,
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36:25
Bob Johnston, you're listening to Being Catholic right here on Catholic Spirit Radio.
36:29
We're back from our break, and we're talking about the movie The Searchers.
36:33
And the theme of it is, in my opinion, one of the major themes is this being
36:40
disenfranchised from...
36:43
Your society from home. You have John Wayne, who plays Ethan Edwards,
36:47
and Ethan is back from the Civil War, and of course, he fought for the Confederacy,
36:53
and the Confederacy is gone, so the nation that he took an oath to has disappeared.
36:58
It's no longer there, and he's back in a cruel land,
37:02
a beautiful, spectacularly beautiful land, but nevertheless,
37:06
a very brutal and cruel land, and the settlers in that land are trying to make
37:12
a home there, and they are in the process of uprooting Indians that have their home there.
37:17
The Indians themselves are Comanche, and the Comanche are nomads who roam around
37:23
the Niyaki Comanche, I think they're called.
37:26
That means that they roam around from place to place to go in big,
37:31
large circles, and in real life, That's the way they were.
37:34
They had huge herds of horses, and they herded them and moved from one place to another.
37:39
So they are people, sort of nomads, without any particular permanent place.
37:44
And their way of life is being encroached upon and slowly eroded and erased and being gone.
37:50
So they are losing a home as well. and some of the settlers that have been living
37:55
right near the place of Ethan's brother, Aaron.
38:00
Where this takes place, some of these settlers have given up trying to settle that land.
38:05
It's been too brutal for them, and they've left, and so they are without a home.
38:11
The settlers themselves are having a very precarious time, so the whole theme,
38:16
I think, is about But trying to come home, trying to establish a home,
38:21
trying to establish a place.
38:23
And Ethan has been a drifter going from place to place. Obviously,
38:27
he's been gone for eight years.
38:30
And we don't know, you know, during the Civil War where he was and three years
38:34
afterwards where he was.
38:36
Anyway, the conflict between the white European settlers and the Indians is large over this film.
38:42
This is a brutal fight for survival, and an existential struggle for both sides.
38:47
Although some have tried to portray it as an anti-racist film,
38:52
The Searchers is mercifully free of moralism, and it shows the hatred on both sides.
38:57
While it is clear that the two sides hate each other, their hatred is understandable.
39:03
The settlers are trying to forge a civilization from the wilderness.
39:07
Their plans are constantly thwarted by a primitive people.
39:12
Quote, whose known rule of warfare, to quote the Declaration of Independence,
39:16
is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.
39:21
The whites respond in kind. And of course, when the men get back from chasing
39:27
the Indians, you know, trying to recover the cattle and finding out that it's
39:31
just a trick and the whole place, Aaron's place.
39:37
John Wayne's brother's place, Ethan's brother's place, is destroyed.
39:42
And Martha and Aaron and Lucy are dead.
39:46
And the two girls, Debbie, I mean, rather Martha is dead. And the two girls,
39:52
Lucy and Debbie are gone.
39:53
So that's what we get. And the savagery of this conflict is well portrayed in several scenes.
40:01
And that one we just talked about, the precursor to the attack,
40:05
when it's, you know, the family realizes the Indians are going to attack how horrified everyone is.
40:11
And then Debbie, of course, is horrified when she goes out by the graveyard,
40:15
by the grave, and suddenly the Indian shadow crosses and she realizes she's going to be taken.
40:21
And a later scene is similar. Ethan, Martin, and Brad are searching for Lucy and Debbie.
40:27
Brad states that he saw Lucy in the Comanche camp. This is before Brad rode
40:31
into the camp and was killed.
40:33
He thought he saw his sweetheart, Lucy, in the camp.
40:39
And Ethan informs him that what he actually saw was a Comanche wearing Lucy's
40:44
dress and that he had found Lucy's body in a canyon and buried her in his overcoat
40:50
because John Wayne comes riding back from in a canyon.
40:55
And he's just sort of shocked and so forth. And everybody is asking him what
41:01
happened. And he doesn't really tell him.
41:03
He just says, well, they went through the canyon there and the trail leads out.
41:09
And then somebody says, what happened to your rebel coat?
41:14
And he goes, oh, I must have lost it. But actually he found Lucy's body.
41:19
And the whole implication is when Brad finds out, when he has to tell Brad that
41:24
the person he saw really is not Lucy, that it's an Indian in Lucy's clothes.
41:31
John Wayne explains that he found Lucy's body. And Brad says,
41:35
well, you know, what was she, you know, starts to stammer.
41:40
And John Wayne, that the implication is, is was Lucy raped?
41:45
And John Wayne just cuts him off and says, what do you want me to do? Draw you a picture.
41:51
Don't ever ask me about it. Don't admit, don't make me say anything more.
41:56
And then we understand why John Wayne was so shook up and so forth when he came
42:01
out of that canyon. because the Indians took Lucy up into that canyon to rape and kill her.
42:07
And John Wayne buries her in his coat. And that's why his coat is gone.
42:11
Now, I'd like to point out that during the movie, you never see those really violent scenes.
42:18
No. And you don't see Lucy's body either. But the...
42:23
Ford really had the ability to make you picture that in your mind. Yes.
42:29
It's better, right, because you can watch it as a family and watch the whole movie as a family.
42:34
You don't see that stuff, but the implication is there that it happened,
42:38
and the implication, the tension in the setting and what the men say and so forth afterwards.
42:49
Is stronger and more powerful than if you actually saw it happen.
42:53
And John Wayne, his character, Ethan, he has this extremely strong hatred of the Indians.
43:02
We don't know why. No.
43:06
And that's part of the theme of the whole movie, his hatred.
43:10
And we don't know why he knows so much about the Indians. At any rate, this sets off.
43:18
Brad is then killed. and they do catch up with the Indians and get in the fight
43:23
with the Indians, but they're unable to recover Debbie and the Indians get away.
43:29
And of course, you know, what's left of the Rangers and so forth weren't powerful
43:36
enough to overcome the Indians anyway.
43:38
So the Indians get away and then that sets out from there on.
43:42
And that sets the stage for Martin, the half-breed, and for John Wayne,
43:50
Ethan, to go hunting for Debbie.
43:52
And they spend five years off and on out in the wilderness hunting,
43:56
you know, trying to find.
43:58
That's the whole idea of the searchers and what's happening to them as they go out and search.
44:03
And John Wayne knows quite a bit about, he can speak Comanche plenty well enough
44:10
to understand and get along.
44:11
You know, when he runs into various bands, and they're looking all over,
44:17
and Wayne shows his, he scalps, when he finds a dead Comanche, somebody scalps them,
44:23
he finds a dead Comanche on the trail as they're trailing, you know,
44:26
when he's with the Rangers,
44:28
and he shoots the dead Comanche's eyes out.
44:31
And, you know, the rangers are startled, and they ask him, you know,
44:34
what was that for? What good did that do?
44:36
And Wayne says, by your religion, it didn't do any good at all.
44:42
He said, but by that Comanche's religion, he said, he can't enter the spirit
44:47
world if he doesn't have any eyes.
44:49
He'll be condemned to wander all over with the wind. And you can see how bitterly Wayne says this.
44:56
And you understand that Wayne feels the same way. Like he's an outsider.
45:03
He's always a realist bucking these people that don't know as much as he does
45:08
and don't have the same hatred of the Indians that he does and are always trying
45:12
to change plans or do something different than he wants to do.
45:18
And so, you know, you get this feeling of John Wayne, this anger that he has.
45:25
And he, in effect, almost enjoys shooting the Indian's eye out,
45:29
knowing that he's going to stop that Indian from entering, you know,
45:33
heaven, so to speak, entering the spirit world.
45:36
Yeah, this is Indian. This is corpse.
45:40
Yeah. It's not a person. Yeah, it's not. And he's not alive.
45:45
It's not alive. They find the Indian dead.
45:47
And Wayne shoots his eyes out. But this is the thing he does.
45:50
They find other dead bodies, and Wayne scalps them.
45:54
And then when he and Martin are out, and Martin is part Indian,
45:57
and Wayne is always calling him names.
46:01
John Wayne, Ethan, calls him a blanket head.
46:05
And what that means at that time is that he calls him blanket head,
46:10
meaning that he is like the Indians that hang around the forts and so forth,
46:15
wearing the blankets, you know, over their bodies and over their heads, sort of.
46:19
It's a word derogatory. In other words, derogatory, it's a derogatory term that
46:26
he's like, you know, the Indians begging for food and so forth and everything
46:29
that he calls him a blanket head.
46:31
Sort of like today we would use
46:33
the term towel head, I guess they call Muslims or something a bad name.
46:37
And he's doing the same thing and he calls him chunk head.
46:41
And he's always, and so they ride through, but he always lets Martin know that
46:46
he doesn't like him on account of he's an Indian, you know, that he's part of him.
46:49
And the theme, too, of this movie is he's searching for his niece on hand.
46:56
On the other hand, he's rejecting her, and he wants to kill her because she is no longer dead.
47:05
His niece, she has become a Comanche. Yeah.
47:09
That's a big part of this scene. Yeah. As he goes along, he realizes as they're
47:14
going along, because this happens over five years.
47:16
Right. So he realizes as he's going along, at some point, he realizes she is
47:22
now old enough that she will become a sexual object of Scar,
47:27
the chief, you know, that has stolen her, and that she will become his wife.
47:31
And at that point, he no longer considers her a white person or,
47:37
you know, his niece and that she is now a Comanche.
47:42
And so he is going to kill her. And then Martin learns from his sweetheart,
47:48
who is back at the Jorgensen family, his sweetheart, Laurie,
47:53
that she says, you know, Ethan will put a bullet through her head,
47:59
and Martha, that is her mother, would have approved of it.
48:06
Martha would have approved of it. Martha would have been the same thing.
48:12
Once she realized that she was married to a chief or something or scar,
48:17
they would have disinherited her, and she would be better off dead.
48:22
They'd be better off if they killed her. And so Wayne is setting out to kill
48:26
her, and Martin now sets out with Wayne, not so much to hunt Debbie,
48:31
but to protect Debbie from John Wayne. Right.
48:34
That's the basis of the whole story, I think. Right, that's the basis of it.
48:40
And Martin stays with him, and Martin is losing his sweetheart, Lori.
48:46
She is getting tired of him being gone and so forth, and he tells her,
48:50
I can't leave. You know, in other words, she says, why don't you stay here and
48:56
let him go hunt for Debbie?
48:58
You know, it's his niece, not yours, and stay with me.
49:02
And Martin says, I can't do that because I'm afraid of what he'll do to Debbie.
49:07
And so Martin won't, and Martin almost loses Lori.
49:11
She almost marries another person, Charlie McCrory, because Martin is constantly gone.
49:19
Well, the point is, eventually they do find her. They do find Lucy.
49:25
Exactly. And I don't understand why he did try to, he was going to kill her in the first place.
49:35
Yes, he was. But Martin dissuades him.
49:39
Martin protects her. Yeah. Martin stands in front of her, so he can't,
49:45
he'd have to kill Martin in order to kill her.
49:49
Any way he doesn't. Then an Indian shoots John Wayne with an arrow.
49:54
And so then they end up trying to fight the Indians, and Lucy gets turned loose and gets away. Mm-hmm.
50:02
I mean, not Lucy, but Debbie. Debbie, I'm sorry. Yeah. gets away. And so.
50:07
John Wayne, in other words, Ethan is thwarted from killing Debbie.
50:12
Yes. And they do find her and bring her home. And they find her again.
50:18
And she's in a Comanche camp.
50:22
And then they are at home when that happens. They find out she's there.
50:27
Old Moss lets them know that she's there.
50:30
And so they ride out with the rangers this time.
50:34
And they're going to attack. attack and Martin knows that if they attack,
50:39
that Debbie will be killed.
50:41
And so he gets permission to go into the camp by night to sneak in there and
50:46
see if he can save Debbie.
50:48
Anyway, it turns out that he is able to save Debbie.
50:53
He kills Scar, but then Ethan eventually rides into the camp along with the
51:00
rangers and comes after Debbie and he gets,
51:06
Martin tries to stop him and Martin gets thrown down to the ground and is unable to stop him.
51:14
And Wayne chases down Debbie with his horse and finally corners her in this sort of cave.
51:21
And she, you know, she's running, trying to get away and he gets her into this
51:25
cave and you think he's going to kill her, but he doesn't.
51:28
He grabs her and he says, let's go home, Debbie. And then Martin catches up and they return home.
51:36
And all of the people go into the house.
51:40
Martin and Debbie and the family all go into the house.
51:46
And John Wayne is standing outside and he's framed in the doorway,
51:51
standing outside of the house in the doorway.
51:55
The shot is taken from inside the house. As you're looking out through the doorway,
51:59
the family's inside. You just see their silhouettes.
52:03
And Wayne is standing outside sort of framed in that door.
52:08
And then the door shuts. And that's the end of the movie. And Wayne is still
52:13
outside. He never crosses the threshold. He never enters.
52:17
And then this beautiful music of Max Steiner starts playing.
52:21
And then the song itself, which is just an ordinary song, starts playing.
52:26
And it says, you know, a man searches and searches looking for peace of mind,
52:31
but where does he find it? Oh, where?
52:34
Oh, where? Oh, Lord. Oh, where? That's the end of the movie when it's saying,
52:37
oh, where? Oh, Lord. Oh, where?
52:39
And Wayne, you see, is still an outsider. So.
52:44
And it's one of the early movies that show the whole theme of trying to come home and not being home.
52:51
And I think it has a meaning
52:56
today because we have the same theme of a lot of our youth and maybe even ourselves
53:04
being sort of living in an America which is divided and which anymore we can't understand for sure.
53:13
Exactly who we are and why we are a nation.
53:18
And a lot of our culture and so forth is being deconstructed and being lost.
53:22
And I think there is a sense of loss and a sense among the young people,
53:27
the Generation Z, that they don't have a home and that their home is no good.
53:33
And it was a Catholic church that actually made Western civilization.
53:38
And I think it behooves the Catholic Church to address this issue,
53:42
and a lot of our young people are joining the Catholic Church looking for some kind of solidarity,
53:52
some kind of belonging, and some kind of stability, and I think we need to address
53:57
this issue. We'll have to talk more about it next week.
54:00
Yeah, it really shows what prejudice, anger, and loss does to people.
54:09
St. Michael, the archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the
54:13
wickedness and snares of the devil.
54:15
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Host,
54:20
by the power of God, trust in hell, Satan, and all evil spirits who wander through
54:25
the world through the ruin of souls. Amen.
54:27
You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
54:32
If you'd like to contact Bob, email bob at catholicspiritradio.com.
54:37
Again, that's Bob at catholicspiritradio.com.
54:41
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