They have, however, visited Bridger’s Wells many times before and know nearly everyone in the town and most of the cowpunchers around, but they still feel themselves to be outsiders. The range they ride is beyond the eastern divide. Social propriety is a convenience it makes life continue smoothly.Īrt Croft, the narrator of the story, and Gil Carter, who has been “riding together” with Art for five years are not established members of Bridger’s Wells’s society. The problems arise when so much attention is paid to the nuances and niceties of social and vocational behavior that the necessity for moral behavior is subverted or forgotten. Clark shows that these men are painfully aware of the pressures of propriety in all of their actions, speeches, and thoughts. These pressures are of many kinds and of varying importance. Clark, however, is hard at work in Part 1 to show how subtle and complicated and filled with strong pressures the cowboy society of Bridger’s Wells is. These roughnecks, fighters, gunmen, and cowboys would probably be an unmannered lot, interested, when in town, only in whiskey, poker, and women, and not necessarily in that order. The town serves the cattlemen and ranchers who are scattered across the surrounding range. In the little town of Bridger’s Wells, Nevada, in 1883, one probably would expect propriety to be the particular province of the town’s leading ladies, few as they are.

Propriety, here, means “the quality of being proper, fitting, or suitable,” or “conformity with accepted standards of manners or behavior.” Our normal expectation might be that men who ride the range and are more or less solitary would become self-sufficient and unconcerned about the pressures which society imposes upon them as “acceptable behavior.” Art and Gil’s first action belies our expectation, for they wish to behave with propriety. This is our introduction to the most important theme in Part 1 of The Ox-Bow Incident. The town, a symbol for civilization and society, is little the valley, a symbol for unformed, untamed wilderness is big these are the antithetical elements by which this conflict will be measured.Īt the edge of Bridger’s Wells, Art and Gil spur their horses so they will travel the town’s main street at a gallop they want to “come in right” that is, they want to give the proper appearance of eagerness. In the country on the western side of the “divide,” Clark immediately suggests one contrast which is important to Art and Gil. Thus Clark prepares us for a book about two’s and pairs and tensions between pairs.

divide” and are thus on the threshold of a new country. We know immediately (if tentatively) that this cowboy story is going to be about two men, rather than the lonely hero of such books as Shane, for example. “Gil and I crossed the eastern divide about two by the sun.” The opening sentence of The Ox-Bow Incident, simple as it appears to be, presents basic information.

The ox bow incident book