Essay Questions

What rather progressive—if not downright subversive—message does the story seem to be making about the gender roles and civilization?

Historically, the success of civilizing man’s primitive nature has been attributed to men to whom such elements as law, education, exploration, politics and defense are attributes deemed overriding factors. Harte presents a patriarchal community in which women exist only for the purposes of sexual satisfaction and the result is disorder, status and in some senses anarchic disregard for the very foundations of the communal spirit of civilization. It is only when these rugged men begin adopting traditionally feminine gender roles—or, put another way, roles associated with caretaking—that the camp becomes civilized. Thus, the implicit message is that civilization has been determined more by feminine influence than that of the male which—also hinted strongly—left to its own devices would like implode altogether.

Harte’s story is often said to be an examination of the theme of value of community, but in what way is the story an ironic commentary on this same theme?

Even before the “Luck” arrives, a spirit of community is fostered within the camp, even if it does not a community which has yet learned how civilize itself. This sense of community is primarily directed outward, however: the miners are less a cohesive group sharing any collective identity than a social order bound together over a shared suspicion of any outsiders. While suspicion of outsiders is an element common to almost every self-contained society, the isolation it engenders is further enhanced by the actual physical isolation of the camp. So even though the miners do represent the values of community, even once the Luck arrives it is still a sense of community ironically based upon a foundation of isolation.

How does the story’s narrative style undercut criticisms of over-sentimentality?

The story is written from the third-person point of view with a narrator who remains anonymous, but not without character. The tone is one of authority with displays of knowledge about the men, the camp and the specifics of their society which naturally leads a reader to associate the voice with that of the author. In doing so, Harte invests his narrator with a trust that avoids the complication of assuming the story is true while at the same time endowing the circumstances with a level of veracity that it becomes more difficult to automatically dismiss it as something beyond reality. The story is sentimental even with its downbeat ending and that is inescapable, but by providing the narrator with an authoritative and knowledgeable voice, the sentimentality avoids bleeding into the realm of pure fantasy. At least for many readers, it has.