The author of the book Josey Wales is based on ( "Gone to Texas") is Forrest Carter(or Carter Forrest), who also wrote "The Education of Little Tree" which enjoyed a vogue ten to fifteen years ago on middle school reading lists.
Unfortunately, he late Carter Forrest(or Forrest Carter) turned out to be quite a keen member of the KKK during the 50s and 60s.
In the movie Clint Eastwood kills people with a Sharps rifle, a half a dozen revolvers, a gatling gun, and in a quick witted improvisation, a saber. I've got to see this classic again. I'm guessing 40 victims of Eastwood's righteous wrath, but I'm probably forgetting a few.
I have read Frazier's book and seen the movie. i would recommend both. The battle scene of The Crater is very graphic, very well done getting the idea of the utther mayhem and horror of combat across, as well as the love between comrades. But this is basically a story of the life of those away from the killing fields at the time of the Civil War, a time and life we do not much get to see or think about nowadays. By 1864, the South was impoverished. The ideals which had motivated some as the war commenced are now a long way away, starvation, disorder, oppression are but a knock on the door or across the field away.
Inman comes from the North Carolina mountain country and went away to war because it was the thing to do, not for any high flown ideals otherwise. But it is ideal enough to carry him through 3 years of brutal fighting until he is finally gravely wounded and hospitalized. Beseeched by his love Ada to come home, knowing he would be returned to the lines in a useless fight, but still very weak, he simply ups and walks out of the hospital, headed home. This is a common condition enough throughout the South at this time, and various Home Guard units are out and about to apprehend these deserters. Inman is a battle hardened veteran, but knows he can expect little mercy from these units, which he tries to avoid by staying to the back country and travelling at night.
Inman's home as i said is the Carolina mountain country, like mountain country throughout the South, strongly Unionist, and like mountain country everywhere, impervious to the blowhardedness of the world around it in general. Many in the country Inman traverses in his journey care not a whit about what is happening in the great beyond except the suffering that comes to them.
Historically, there was much running and gunning between Home Guard units and folks, bands, and deserters in the back country. It would remain this way throughout the war, intensifying as the war went wore on. This particular home guard unit is criminal, an extreme, but in its depiction, does show the repression inherent in having such forces. Though the movies are dissimilar, this similarity is shared with the Jayhawkers in Josey Wales.
See the movie for its battle scene of The Crater, but know this is a story focusing not so much on the War, but on the people of the time, particularly the mountain people who consider the War little more than something ugly which must be suffered through.
__________________ 'It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag'
"Inman comes from the North Carolina mountain country and went away to war because it was the thing to do, not for any high flown ideals otherwise."
Sir, with that quote from you, I rest my case on the reason many if not most of the men of the CSA went to war. My ancestors from that region acted accordingly. Unionblue, where are you?
"Inman comes from the North Carolina mountain country and went away to war because it was the thing to do, not for any high flown ideals otherwise."
Sir, with that quote from you, I rest my case on the reason many if not most of the men of the CSA went to war. My ancestors from that region acted accordingly. Unionblue, where are you?
Larry: The case has long since been rested. No one that I know of argues that the individual fourght for any reason other than his own -- but usually because it was the thing to do. There is a wide gulf between the reason men fought and the reason for the war. I suspect Neil will say the same thing (only better). Ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
'Theblind man had sat wordless throughout Inman's tale. But when Inman was finished, the man said, You need to put that away from you.
'-I'd not differ with you there, Inman said.
'But what Inman did not tell the blind man was that no matter how he tried, the field that night (Fredericksburg) would not leave him but had instead provided him with a recurring dream, one that had visited him over and over during his time in the hospital. In the dream, the aurora blazed and the scattered bloody pieces- arms, heads, legs, trunks- slowly drew themselves together and re-formed themselves into monstrous bodies of mismatched parts. They limped and reeled and lunged about the dark battlefield like blind sots on their faulty legs. They jounced off one another, butting bloody cleft heads in their stupor. They waved their assorted arms in the air, and few of the hands made convincing pairs. Some spoke the names of their women. Some sang snatches of song over and over. Others stood to the side and looked off into the dark and urgently called their dogs.
'One figure, whose wounds were so dreadful that he more resembled meat than man, tried to rise but could not. He flopped and then lay still but for the turning of his head. From the ground he craned his neck and looked at Inman with dead eyes and spoke Inman's name in a low voice. Every morning after that dream, Inman awoke in a mood as dark as the blackest crow that ever flew.'
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'The man in the bed (in the hospital) next to Inman's sat and drew his crutches to him. As he did every morning, the man went to the window and spit repeatedly and with great effort until his clogged lungs were clear. He ran a comb through his black hair, which hung lank below his jaw and was cut square around. He tucked the long front pieces of hair behind his ears and put on his spectacles of smoked glass, which he wore even in the dim of the morning, his eyes apparently too weak for the wannest form of light. Then, still in his nightshirt, he went to his table and began working at a pile of papers. He seldom spoke more than a word or two at a time, and Inman had learned little more of him than that his name was Balis and that before the war he had been to school at Chapel Hill, where he had attempted to master Greek. All his waking time was spent trying to render ancient scribble from a fat little book into plain writing anyone could read. He sat hunched at his table with his face inches from his work and squirmed in his chair, looking to find a comfortable position for his leg. His right foot had been taken off by grape at Cold Harbor, and the stub seemed not to want to heal and had rotted inch by inch from the ankle up. His amputations had now proceeded past the knee, and he smelled all the time like last year's ham.
'For a while there was only the sound of Balis's pen scratching, pages turning. Then others in the room began to stir and cough, a few to moan. Eventually the light swelled so that all the lines of the varnished beadboard walls stood clear, and Inman could prop back on the chair's hind legs and count the flies on the ceiling. He made it to be sixty three.'
__________________ 'It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag'
Ada visits her neighbors, the Swangers... 'Their first talk was of the war, of how the prospects seemed grim, the Federals just over the mountains to the north, and things growing desparate in Virginia if the newspaper accounts of trench warfare in Petersburg were to be believed. Neither Esco nor Sally understood the war in any but the vaguest way, knowing for certain only two things: that they generally disapproved of it, and that Esco had reached an age when he required some help about the farm. For those and many other reasons, they would be glad to see the war done and their boys come walking up the road. Ada asked if there was any news from either of the boys, the two Swanger sons being off to the fighting. But they'd heard not a word in many months and knew not even what state they were in.
'The Swangers had opposed the war from the start and had until recently remained generally sympathetic with the Federals, as had many in the mountains. But Esco had grown bitter with both sides, fearing them about equally now that the Federals were ranked up just over the big mountains to the north. He worried that they would soon come looking for food, take what they want, and leave a man with nothing. He'd been in to the county seat recently, and it was all over town that Kirk and his bluecoats had already started raiding up near the state line. Came down on a family and looted their farm at grey dawn, stole every animal they could find and every bit of portable food they could carry, and set fire to the corncrib in parting.
'-Them's the liberators, Esco said. And our own bunch is as bad or worse. Teague and his Home Guard roaring around like a band of marauders. Setting their own laws as suits them, and them nothing but trash looking for a way to stay out of the army.'
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Inman meets up with a mountain ascetic and healer: 'That last phrase caught Inman's eye. He said it aloud. Pathway to the More Abundant Life.
'-It's what many seek, the woman said. But I'm not sure a sack of flour will set your foot on it.
'-Yes, Inman said. Abundance did seem, in his experience, to be an elusive thing. Unless you counted plenty of hardship. There was ample of that. But abundance of something a man might want was a different matter.
'-Scarcity's much more the general bearing of life, is the way I see it, the woman said.
'-Yes, Inman said.
'The woman leaned to the stove and knocked the last of the fire out of her pipe and put it to her mouth and blew through it until it nearly whistled. She drew a tobacco pouch from an apron pocket and refilled the pipe, tamping the tobacco down hard with a callused thumb. She lit a straw in the stove and held it to the pipe and drew until it was going to her satisfaction.
'-How do you come to have that big red wound and them two little new ones? she said.
'-I took the neck wound out by Globe Tavern last summer.
'-A dramshop knifing?
'-A battle. Below Petersburg.
'-Federals shot you, then?
'-They were making to take the Weldon rail line and we aimed to stop them. We went at it all that afternoon, fighting in pine thickets, broom grass, oil fields, all sorts of a place. Awful flat scrubby country. It was hot and we sweated so bad we could reach down and roll lather off our pant legs with our hands.
'-You've thought a number of times, I guess, that if the ball had struck a thumb's width different you'd be dead? It near to took your head off as it is.
'-Yes.
'-It looks like it could bust open yet.
'-It feels about like it could.
'-And the new ones, how'd you come by them?
'-The usual way. Got shot, Inman said.
'-Federals?
'-No. The other bunch. (The Home Guard.)
'The woman waved her hand through the tobacco smoke like she couldn't be troubled with the confusing details of his wounds. She said, Well, these new ones're not as bad. When they heal up, the hair'll cover them and it'll be just you and your sweetheart to know. She'll feel a little welt when she runs her fingers through your hair. What I want to know is, was it worth it, all that fighting for the big man's ******?
'-That's not the way I saw it.
'-What's the other way? she said. I've traveled a fair bit in the low counties. ******-owning makes the rich man proud and ugly and it makes the poor man mean. It's a curse laid on the land. We've lit a fire and now it's burning us down. God is going to liberate ******s, and fighting to prevent it is against God. Did you own any?
'-No. Not hardly anybody I knew did.
'-Then what stirred you up enough for fighting and dying?
'-Four years ago I maybe could have told you. Now I don't know. I've had all of it I want, though.
'-That's lacking some as an answer.
'-I reckon many of us fought to drive off invaders. One man I knew had been north to the big cities, and he said it was every feature of such places that we were fighting to prevent. All I know is anyone thinking the Federals are willing to die to set loose slaves has got an overly merciful view of mankind.
'-With all those fine reasons for fighting, thing I want to know is why did you run off?
'-Furloughed.
'-Yes, she said, and she reared back and cackled as if a joke had been cracked. Man on furlough, she said. Nary papers, though. Had them stole off him.
'-Lost them.
'She stopped laughing and looked at Inman. She said, Listen here, I lack all affiliation. I don't care no more than spitting in that fire that you've run off.
'And to make her point, she spat a dark gob of matter, arcing it expertly into the open stove door. She looked back at Inman and said, It's dangerous for you, is all.
'He looked her in the eyes and was surprised to find that they were wells of kindness despite all her hard talk. Not a soul he had met in some time drew him out as this goatwoman did, and so he told her what was in his heart. The shame he felt now to think of his zeal in sixty-one to go off and fight the downtrodden mill workers of the Federal army, men so ignorant it took many lessons to convince them to load their cartridges ball foremost. These were the foes, so numberless that not even their own government put much value to them. They just ran them at you for years on end, and there seemed no shortage. You could kill them down until you grew heartsick and they would still keep ranking up to march southward.'
__________________ 'It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag'
Josey Wales... In the movie Clint Eastwood kills people with a Sharps rifle, a half a dozen revolvers, a gatling gun, and in a quick witted improvisation, a saber. I've got to see this classic again. I'm guessing 40 victims of Eastwood's righteous wrath, but I'm probably forgetting a few.
Here's an interesting piece of trivia about his movies. In all of his westerns, Eastwood has never killed a Native American. (Got that off of http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075029/trivia.) I doubt that's an accident. He certainly did wreak havoc among other folks though...
__________________ Chaplain Rob Stroud, USAF (Retired) Son of SgtMaj Chuck Stroud, USMC Grandson of Corporal Charles Stroud, USA Great-Grandson of Corporal Chauncey Stroud, Fifth Iowa Volunteer Cavalry
Beseeched by his love Ada to come home, knowing he would be returned to the lines in a useless fight, but still very weak, he simply ups and walks out of the hospital, headed home.
Haven't read the book, but in the movie there is a clear suggestion that if Inman lies low and continues to recuperate in the hospital, the war will likely end before he needs to return to battle. So, he could honorably remain in the surgeons' care, but chooses instead to falsely be counted a coward by "deserting" to return to his love.
__________________ Chaplain Rob Stroud, USAF (Retired) Son of SgtMaj Chuck Stroud, USMC Grandson of Corporal Charles Stroud, USA Great-Grandson of Corporal Chauncey Stroud, Fifth Iowa Volunteer Cavalry
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