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Ranked among the greatest films ever made,John Fords 115th movie has lingered in Americas memory.1 As Arthur M. Eckstein observes, The Searchers, which critics consider socially and psychologically pro-found, is also Fords most influential work (3). References to the movie have appeared in the works of other filmmakers again and again: to name but a few, South Pacific (1958), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Major Dundee (1965), The Longest Yard (1974), The Wind and Lion (1975), Jaws (1975), Taxi Driver (1976), Star Wars (1977), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Hardcore (1979), Paris, Texas (1984), Dances With Wolves (1990), Unforgiven (1992), Saving Private Ryan (1998), O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000), Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of The Clones (2002), and Dog Soldiers (2002). Even Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004) offers its audience what has become a stan-dard compositional riff in Hollywood filmmaking: Uma Thurman is framed in the door of a chapel like Ethan Edwards is in the final shot of the door of the Jorgensons ranch house in The Searchers. It is this closing shot of Ethan that also makes The Searchers one of Fords most troubling films:

By Sue Matheson

The Matter of Blood Pollution, Combat Culture, and Cold War Hysteria in The Searchers(1956)

Lets Go Home, Debbie:

Abstract: As Curtis Hanson points out in A Turning of the Earth: John Ford, John Wayne and The Searchers (1998), The Searchers is not about violence. Ten years after World War II, The Searchers showcases the effects of violence on the individual, in general, and the returning hero, in particular.

Keywords: blood pollution, cold war, combat culture, John Ford, post-traumatic stress disorder, Western

The Searchers (1956). Directed by John Ford. Shown from left: Jeffrey Hunter (as Martin Pawley), Natalie Wood (as Debbie Edwards). Photo courtesy of Photofest.

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John Wayne grasping his arm in tribute to Harry Carey, Sr., before his charac-ter Ethan turns and walks away into the scorching wind and drifting sands of Monument Valleythe door swinging silently shutthe blackness falling as The Searcherss final moment. Lyrically closing Fords narrative by returning the movie to its beginning while reversing and unravelling its opening action, this sequence is troubling and unsatisfy-ing. Although a new family is formed at the end of The Searchersthat is, the Jorgensons walk into their ranch house with a new daughter and a new sonwhat should be renewal, an end-ing lifted from Shakespearean comedy, elicits instead pity and fear from the au-dience. Unwilling or unable to enter the

ranch house, Ethan remains without. A good badman, he must live out his days wandering. As Ford told Peter Bogdano-vitch, The Searchers is the tragedy of a loner, of a man who could never be really part of a family (9112).

Ethans inability to reenter society has made him one of the most famous characters in all of American motion pic-ture history (Eckstein 4). Much of his notoriety results from Fords final depic-tion of the loner, which prompts view-ers, like Tag Gallagher in John Ford: The Man and His Films and Phillip J. Skerry in What Makes a Man to Wan-der: Ethan Edwards of John Fords The Searchers, to ask why Ethan chooses to turn away from his kith and kin whom he had just recovered to wander in the desert (Gallagher 337; Skerry 86). Af-ter bringing Debbie home, Ethan could have decided to walk into the Jorgen-

sons home, reenter society, and reinvent himself. He could have started a new life with a new family. He had taken his revenge and recovered his kidnapped niece, thereby burying the past. At the end of the movie, what motivates him to turn away and continue to wander after the successful conclusion of his quest? Many commentators have attempted to answer this question by pointing out that Ethan has no other choice but to leave because he cannot give up his incestuous love for his brothers wife and his ex-treme horror of miscegenation.2 Given the enormity of Ethans antisocial desire for Martha and his hatred of the Coman-ches, one would think either disorder more than enough to justify his exile as necessary and desirable to any audience. Nonetheless, Ethans return to the desert as the door swings shut is a highly dis-turbing moment at the movies end.

Copyright 2011 Taylor & Francis Group, LLCDOI: 10.1080/01956051.2011.571082

The Searchers (1956). Directed by John Ford. Shown on the set from left: John Wayne, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, Director John Ford. Photo courtesy of Photofest.

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It has been suggested that the trou-bling nature of Ethans rejection of hu-man society could be due, in part, to our expectations of John Ford himself. A very puzzled Lindsay Anderson asks, [W]hat is Ford, of all directors, to do with a hero like this? (Roth 65). One of Hollywoods most Catholic direc-tors, Fords sensibilities tended toward introducing subjects such as the uniting of family and the reintegration of the individual into his or her community at the conclusion of his films. However, as Eckstein so capably demonstrates, Ford went to infinite trouble to develop Alan Le Mays Ethan Edwards as a mentally unbalanced and highly antisocial char-acter. Ford made significant changes to the script that he had coauthored with Frank Nugent very late in the produc-tion process, on location in Monument Valley and on the soundstage in Hol-lywood, to create the dark and disturb-ing protagonist who turned his back on hearth and home at the movies end (34). Fords choice of such a hero, how-ever, is not so puzzling when one con-siders the historic moment out of which The Searchers was made.

As Curtis Hanson points out in A Turning of the Earth: John Ford, John Wayne and The Searchers (1998), The Searchers is not about violence; it is about the effects of violence on individ-uals. Released ten years after American troops who fought in World War II re-turned to the United States, The Search-ers showcases the effects of the violence of war on the individual, in general, and the returning hero, in particular. Thus, the subject of Fords inquiry ex-plored via the character of Ethan Ed-wardsthat of blood pollutionis not limited to the unpleasant subjects of incest and racism, even though those topics are crucial in recognizing and understanding Fords view of Ethan as a negative, psychologically shattered, and tragic figure (Eckstein 1). A thief, a predator, a murderer, a racist, and a sociopath, Ethan is, as Eckstein notes, semi-psychotic (16), but Ford was not solely concerned with the plight of an extremely damaged individual when darkening the character of Ethan. Ford told Bogdanovitch that he meant The Searchers to be a psychological epic

(Eckstein 3, my emphasis). When one watches The Searchers, it becomes ap-parent that Fords concern with epic was not with an epic figures individual psychology. Ethans undesirable and an-tisocial tendencies are not epic in them-selves but epic in terms of scaleafter all, the American Civil War was the first conflict to approach the state of total war. Shared by every character in this movie, Ethans dysfunctions are always related to a much broader, general dys-function at work in The Searchers and, arguably, in American culture in 1956.

Every character in The Searchers is psychologically scarred by his or her involvement in some sort of warby the Civil War, by the Texicans war with the Comanche, or even by the war waged between the Edwards brothers over Martha within Nathans home. At the beginning of The Searchers, Fords attention to mise-en-scne painstakingly identifies Ethan as a war veteran who has just returned home. Wearing a long Confederate overcoat, Ethan jogs into the yard on a horse sporting a Mexican saddle. Strapped to his saddle roll is a saber with its scabbard wrapped in the gray silk of the Confederate Army. To further the impression of a Civil War veteran returning from the Mexican War, Ethan carries a folded serape in place of a Texas poncho. Later, he gives Debbie a beribboned medal that appears to have been won in Mexico.

Perceptions of (and attitudes toward) returning war veterans have varied

widelyfrom culture to culture and from one historical period to another. In Odysseus in America, Jonathan Shay observes that acts of war generate a profound gulf between the combatant and the community he left behind: this gulf is due to the fact that when he re-turns home as a veteran, the combatant carries with him the taint of a killer (152). The widespread effects of the lingering blood pollution created by the Civil War and carried by Ethan in The Searchers are highly significant when one remembers that the Civil War di-vided families and was a war of homi-cides waged, literally and metaphori-cally, between fathers and brothers. In the classical world, the need to purge the blood pollution created by homicide was paramount. Plutarch, for example, observes that Greek historians recorded the names of the homicidal: those who first slew kinsfolk or made war on their brothers, parricides or matricides (see Lycurgus and Numa 3.67 in Visser 194). As Margaret Visser points out in Vengeance and Pollution in Classical Athens, the pollution of a parricide is not limited to the individual who com-mits the atrocity. Those near a homicidal killer are infected by association: the pollution is the same if you associate with such a man, knowing what he has done, says Euthyphro, without purify-ing yourself, and him too, by bringing him to justice (Euthyphro 4C in Visser 196).

In the past, many cultures have re-sponded to the veterans blood pollu-tion with ritual acts of cleansing: most warrior societies, as well as many not dominated by warfare, have histori-cally had communal rites of purification of the returning fighter after battle, for example, the rites of purification found in Numbers 31.19 in the Hebrew Bible (Shay, Odysseus 152). As Shay points out, during the Middle Ages, every re-turning warrior was required by the Church to do penance for spilling blood before he could rejoin his community. In fact, each warriors penance for spill-ing blood was regulated according to the nature of the act he committed: [I]n the medieval Christian church, Shay says, if you committed atrocities you had to do more penance but even if you wore

Shared by every

character in this

movie, Ethans

dysfunctions are

always related to a

much broader, general

dysfunction at work in

The Searchers and,

arguably, in American

culture in 1956.

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a white hat and were a perfect model of proper conduct you had to do penance. . . . [but today] . . . our culture denies the need for purification and provides none (Odysseus 152). In short, in the United States, rites that cleanse the return-ing warrior of his blood pollution have been deleted from the rites of reentry into polite society: as W. P. Mahedy ob-serves, Americans view war much dif-ferently than did our ancient ancestors. In America . . . the notion of cleansing has been . . . supplanted by the idea that the justice of our national cause renders all acts of war moral. The Vietnam warriors, Mahedy states, like their ancient predecessors, were conscious of having performed in war acts unac-ceptable within their society. Like the fighting men of antiquity, they required a ritual of cleansing that entailed both a welcome home and the acceptance of

some responsibility by the people for acts they had committed. But this was not to be (5657). Like the Vietnam vets, American veterans of World War II also did not experience a ritual cleans-ing on their return homeindeed, the matter of penance to purify their blood pollution was a non-issue because Hit-lers defeat was considered to be both a military and a moral victory. As David A. Gerber notes, in contrast to the Viet-nam War, the Good War [that is World War II], as a crusade against fascism and militarism, has always evoked a na-tional pride (547).

Similarly, the national cause of the Civil War also rendered its acts moral. As a veteran of the Civil War, Ethan, too, did not experience purification rites after the cessation of hostilities because they were not deemed neces-sary. Like other Civil War veterans who

roamed as hobos on the fringes of so-ciety because they were unable to ad-just to civilian life, Ethan wanders for three years, spending some of that time in Mexico, before returning to the Ed-wardss homestead.3 At the beginning of The Searchers, the gap between the re-turning killer and his community could not appear to be greater. Still carrying his cavalry saberyears after Lees sur-render at AppomattoxEthan is living and thinking like a combatant. Unlike the Reverend Captain Samuel Johnston Clayton (Ward Bond), an ex-soldier whose sword has become a plowshare, Ethan, uncleansed, continues to identify himself as a member of the Confederate Army. He tells Clayton, I dont believe in surrenders. I still got my sword. Here it is important to note that the im-portance of the Civil War as a backdrop against which The Searchers takes place

The Searchers (1956). Directed by John Ford. Shown from left: John Wayne (as Ethan Edwards), Beulah Archuletta (as Wild Goose Flying in the Night Sky), Jeffrey Hunter (as Martin Pawley). Photo courtesy of Photofest.

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should not be underestimated. Ethan is not just a returning veteran, he is a vet-eran on the losing side of a war that he has not yet conceded. He cannot be pu-rified because, for him, the war has not ended.

Shay points out that the problem that the combat veteran presents on return-ing to civilian society has been recorded in many cultural documentsone of the earliest being Homers Odyssey. Unlike the ancient Greeks, our societys atti-tude toward returning veterans is highly ambivalent: today, Shay says, we see our heroes as unmixed blessings, almost as though pure beneficence is part of the definition. Such earlier heroes, how-ever, were men who were both needed by their people and considered to be dangerous to them. In the past, the war veteran was regarded as a social liability until purified of his pollution and rein-tegrated into civilian life. In fact, soci-ety demanded the veterans purification, because, until they were cleansed, these men continued to function as combat-ants, who, by definition, were highly antisocial. In 1516, Sir Thomas More pointed out in Utopia, some thieves are not bad soldiers, some soldiers turn out to be pretty good robbers, so nearly are these two ways of life related (qtd. in Shay, Odysseus 19). Ironically, the living for which war best prepares a war hero on return to civilian life is a criminal career (Shay, Odysseus 19). In The Searchers, there is little doubt that Ethan has put his military training to use and embarked on such a career after the hostilities of the Civil War had officially ceased. When he offers to pay his way on Aarons ranch with fresh-minted double eagles, Yankee dollars, he is continuing to carry on what appears to be a personal war with the North by rob-

bing its banks. It is not surprising, then, that he arrives in Texas three years af-ter the cessation of fighting between the North and South via Mexico.

In short, Ethan is still at war in a country nominally at peace. We learn from Clayton, who is also a Texas Ranger, the morning after Ethan arrives at the ranch house that Nathans prodi-gal brother fits a lot of descriptions. When searching for his niece who has been kidnapped by a band of Coman-che, Ethans behavior continues to be homicidal: arguably, the most outra-geous example of this behavior occurs when he murders Jerem Futterman, by shooting the trader in the back, and then callously rifles through the dead mans pockets looking for the money that he used to pay for his information about Debbies whereabouts. Ethans combat skills, which enable him to be a highly effective murderer and a thief, are ac-companied by a type of psychological damage typical of war combatants: the complete absence of moral pain, guilt, self-reproach, and self-criticism (Shay, Odysseus 80). He shows no regret at all for murdering Futterman and his henchmen. When Martin asks in aston-ishment, What are you doing? Ethan, pocketing a double eagle, replies, Im gettin my money back ya idiot. Whadda ya suppose? We did alright. Of course, one could argue that Ethan cannot be considered a murderer because he was acting in self-defense, but when Martin complains to his uncle about endanger-ing his life by pointing out, You just staked me out there like a piece of bait. I could have had my brains blown out, there is no apology for such antisocial behavior. Ethan merely grunts, Never occurred to me, and goes to bed.

Underlying Ethans homicidal be-havior, the modern tendency to dehu-manize the enemy so that one may kill without question is evident via the racist stereotyping that appears in the movie. Throughout The Searchers, racism en-courages and enables homicidal behav-ior. Notably, for Ethan, Martins status as friend or foe is often unclear because he is part Cherokee. Ethans comments about Martins Native American heri-tage can be understood as manifesta-tions of blood pollution instigated and

informed by combat culture. Fords mise-en-scne is particularly helpful to the viewer here as, in it, one finds the be-ginnings of the Edwardss blood feud is documented on the tombstone of Ethans mother: Martha Edwards was killed by Comanches. One learns early in the movie that Ethan has mistaken Martin for a half-breed. Thereafter, accord-ing to Ethan, Martin is an idiot. Af-ter desecrating a Comanche grave and shooting out the eyes of a dead warrior, Ethan turns to Martin and snaps, Well, come on blanket-head. Ford extends his investigation of the racism fostered by combat culture when chronicling Ethans shocking reaction to the women who have been recovered from their Co-manche captors at a cavalry fort. There is no way of knowing how these women who rock back and forth and gibber to themselves have become insaneafter all, it could be either the Comanche or the cavalry who is responsible for their unhappy condition. Nonetheless, Ethan, who regards them as tainted because of their sexual liaisons with the Comanche, is disgusted by their presence. Theyre not white any more, theyre Comanch . . ., he says. Clearly, he considers them to be the enemy, less than human, although he himself, soiled with thoughts of in-cest, is also a polluted creature.

Grounded in the subject of blood pol-lution, Fords interrogation of racism also extends from the psychology of the individual to that of the community or group. Like Ethan, most Texicans in The Searchers are psychologically damaged. Their racist attitudes are manifested in a group hysteria akin to that of McCarthy-ism during the cold war. In The Search-erss Texicana, as in America during the fifties, it is considered to be better dead than Red. According to Laurie, Martha would have wanted Ethan to put a bullet into Debbies brain had she known that her daughter was living as a Comanche and had married into Scars family.

As Shay observes, bereavement is only one of the traumas of combatgrief work is another. The powerful bond that arises between men in combat may be so intense as to blot out the dis-tinction between self and others, leav-ing survivors to be condemned by their very survival (Achilles 69). Fords treat-

Fords treatment of

survivor guilt in

The Searchers

is also extensive

and graphic.

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ment of survivor guilt in The Searchers is also extensive and graphic. As Shay points out, veterans carry the weight of friends deaths in war and after the war, and the weight of all those irretrievable losses among the living that, like the dead, can never be brought back (Odys-seus 76). There is little doubt that Ethan feels responsible for his brothers death. Had he stayed at the ranch with Martha, his brother would have lived. Had he been defending the family, Martha, Na-than, and Ben might have survived. Had he been present, Debbie and Lucy might not have been kidnapped. In addition, it was his decision to break the news about Lucys murder to Martin and Brad that precipitates Brads suicidal charge into the Comanche camp. Shay notes that in The Iliad the individuals unbearable guilt over the death of close comrades and loved ones triggers the transforma-tion of grief into a killing rage (Achilles 75).

Throughout The Searchers, the ef-fect of bereavement on the combatant is often precisely the same as in Homers epic. Again and again, bereavement is the catalyst that precipitates a berserk state. Ethan, for example, leaves Mar-thas funeral while it is in progress to seek revenge. His deep-seated guilt about surviving the massacre of his fam-ily and his mothers death also triggers other highly irrational and seemingly inexplicable acts: he shoots out the eye-balls of a dead Comanche warrior and squeezes off round after round while slaughtering a herd of inoffensive buf-falo. After both instances of killing rage, Ethan explains that he is getting even: without their eyes, the Comanche dead are doomed to wander forever between the winds, and without the buffalo, the Comanche will starve. Extreme mani-festations of survivor guilt, these exam-ples of berserk behavior and others like them are fueled by the war combatants desire for revengethe means by which a combat soldier is faithful to his dead comrades and keeps their memory alive. Literally unable to bury Aaron, Martha, and Ben, Ethan leaves their funeral be-fore it is finished, telling Clayton who is delivering a graveside eulogy to put an amen on it. When Mrs. Jorgenson (Ol-ive Carey) begs Ethan to do what Mar-

tha would have wantednot to let the boys waste their lives in vengeancehe becomes enraged. Not only is she ask-ing him to dishonor himself, but she is also asking him not to keep his faith with the dead.

Oddly, this rage that recognizes their deaths is also the means by which Ethan keeps Martha, Aaron, Ben, and Lucy presentif only in memory. As Shay points out, the existential function of rage keeps the dead alive by making them ever-present in thought. Odys-seuss vow, I wont forget a thing, is the vow of a combat soldier to his dead comrades to keep faith with them, to keep their memory alive; asking the veteran to forget, the family asks him to dishonor himself. For anyone, civil-ian or veteran, to be told to do some-thing dishonorable usually evokes anger (Shay, Odysseus 80).

Sustaining loyalty to the dead also af-firms that the world is still a just place in which someone (even if only the guilt-ridden survivor alone) feels guilt at what was done; such a rage can result in a combat veteran being truly haunted (Shay, Odysseus 80). In The Searchers, Ford uses Lorena, an authentic Civil War ballad about thwarted love, as Mar-thas theme to recall her presence dur-ing Ethans search and years after she has been murdered. As Kathryn Kalinak observes in How The West Was Sung: Music in the Westerns of John Ford, The Searcherss is a classical film scoreidentifiable, not only by its leitmotifs, but, on a structural level, by its intricate interconnectedness between music and narrative action (169). Lorena returns in major and minor keys to flesh out the unspoken motivation and emotional content of several sequences. Kalinak cites as examples: Ethans discovery of Marthas body, where it can be heard in minor; the disbanding of the posse and the continued search by Ethan, Martin, and Brad; the first glimpse of a grown-up Debbie as she descends a cliff toward Martin . . . Martins embrace of Debbie when he rescues her in Scars teepee; and Debbies return to the Jorgenson ranch at the end of the film (168). Also reminding viewers of the psychosexual tension between Ethan and his brothers wife, Marthas haunting music recurs

like a refrain when Ethan turns to ride up a side canyon alone only to find Lucys body. It repeats when Martin evokes the happiness of Debbies child-hood: Dont you remember me? he asks, I used to let you ride my horse.

The pervasive presence of the dead in The Searchers is further strengthened by careful parallels in costuming: Ethan finds Marthas bloodied blue dress on the ground before the sod house at the burning homestead; Brad sees Lucys blue dress on the warrior who raped and murdered her. Perhaps the most disturb-ing scene of the movie occurs when Ethan finds Scar dead and then proceeds to mutilate him. Raising Martha yet again from the dead, Ethan takes Scars scalpthereby satisfying the war com-batants need to avenge the death of a loved one; reenacting Marthas murder, he balances the score by doing what had been done before. Martin, who did not see the condition of his aunts body be-cause it would not do him any good, earlier discounted the possibility of his aunt being mutilated after her death. Nonetheless, when Ethan leaves Scars teepee with a handful of long black hair that could have been Marthas, it is im-possible not to recall a similar-looking scalp on Scars spear and wonder uneas-ily whether Marthas daughter had been

Raising Martha yet

again from the dead,

Ethan takes

Scars scalpthereby

satisfying the war

combatants need to

avenge the death of a

loved one; reenacting

Marthas murder,

he balances the score

by doing what had

been done before.

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displaying her own mothers hair as a trophy and whether the long, blonde, wavy lock beside it had been her sisters.

Ford reinforces and advances his cri-tique of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) further by carefully paralleling Ethans and Scars behaviors. As crit-ics have noted, Ford carefully presents Scar to the audience as Ethans alter ego.4 After kidnapping Debbie, Scar is never seen without Ethans Civil War decoration around his neck. Like Ethan, he, too, is bereaved by the loss of his family and psychologically damaged by the deaths of his sons. Like Ethan, he, too, has gone berserk and is waging his own private war. His murder raid on the Edwards homestead was an act of vengeanceof evening the score for his dead children. As Visser observes, vengeance must automatically follow the smirching of the familys honor; it requires equality of damage done, and blood must have blood (194). Thus, when Ethan and Scar finally do meet face to face, they speak and under-stand each others language: one speaks good English for a Comanche, the other, good Comanch.

Notably, Emilio Gabriel Fernandez y Figueroa refuses to take what he comes to consider as blood money from Ethan for introducing him to Scar. Figueroa has introduced Ethan to Scar thinking that Ethan wants to recover Debbie by trading with the war chief. He returns Ethans money to him because he does not want to also become polluted by the impending murder that he foresees during their visit. When Martin asks his uncle if he thinks that Scar will kill them, Ethans reply about the nature of revenge is particularly instructive. Be-cause it is an act that pollutes, war can only beget more killing. Scar must kill Debbies relatives. Hes got to, Ethan says, Weve been asking for it for five years.

Of course, it is also possible to read Ethans scalping of Scar less literally: mutilating the war chiefs dead body could be seen as a figurative gesture by which Fords hero expels his own de-mons. Erin Cook notes that in Western culture the darkly ambiguous man des-ignated as a war hero crystallizes in the scar-name Oulixes. He proposes, there-

fore, that we hear the name Ulysses as he who was scarred in his youth (qtd. in Shay, Odysseus 143). When viewed as Ethans double, Scars head injury physically manifests the veterans psy-chological damage. Scarred physically and psychologicallylike Ulysses who returned home after ten years only to wander again before the blood pollution he carried was finally expiatedFords combatants are fated to be outcasts. Driven from his land, Scar is on the warpath, and thus doomed to wander. Always at war, Ethan, too, must always be traveling.

As Shay points out, combat trauma can only be corrected by the commu-nity of which the veteran is a part (Od-ysseus 152).Most warrior societies, as well as many not dominated by warfare, have historically had communal rites of purification of the returning fighters after battle. Western culture, however, became unable to reintegrate combat veterans back into society because it discarded such religious rites. However, it should be noted that even if such ritu-als had existed in the United States after the Civil War, atonement for Ethan in The Searchers would still not have been possible. Ethan returns Debbie to the Jorgensons ranch house, but he is not interested in being cleansed of his trans-gressions and reintegrated back into the community. Ethans choice is puzzling to viewers now; but was it to Fords au-diences in 1956?

Here, The Searcherss historic and cinematic moment offers its viewers much insight into Ethans decision to walk away into the desert. First, it is necessary to revisit the situation of the returning American veteran just after World War II. Gerber points out in He-roes and Misfits that it is now popu-larly assumed that the men who fought in World War II were greeted univer-sally as heroes when they left the armed forces, because the Good War was considered a morally good cause. Thus, few remember today that the prospect of the World War II veterans demobiliza-tion and reintegration was a cause for widespread concern, even alarm, that began long before V-J Day, evidenced by psychologists, psychiatrists, sociolo-gists, physicians, clergymen, and mili-

tary officials predicting a major demo-bilization crisis and considering every veteran a potential mental case, even if he showed no symptoms (Gerber 547, 549).Those fears were popularly aired so often in 1945 and 1946 that veterans, themselves, began to speak out against the stereotypes of criminality, violence, and psychopathology that established them as misfits unlikely to attain normal existences (Gerber 54950).

As Gerber points out, toward the end of World War II, Willard Waller, a Co-lumbia University social work professor who was a thoughtful analyst of veter-ans, stated confidently that the politi-cal history of the next 25 years in the United States would be determined when recent demobilized men concluded pre-cisely whom to hate among such po-tential targets as racial and ethnic mi-norities, capitalists, and those with draft exemptions (548). Ironically, Wallers predictions about the social dangers of demobilization, wildly off-target about the nature of the individuals returning from World War II, anticipated Amer-icas moral collapse into hatred on the national scale. For the next twenty-five years, the political history of the United States was often determined by fervent anti-Communists and McCarthyites.

Arguably, by 1956, Americans had not had much of an opportunity to so-cially and psychologically reintegrate to life in peacetime: having returned from the European and Pacific theaters of war in 1946 and 1947, they found themselves involved from 1950 to 1953 in the Korean War and also embroiled in cold war hostilities at home. It is not sur-prising, then, that Hollywoods response to World War II veterans reintegration was extremely limited. Nonetheless, as Gerber observes, much of what is now popularly understood about World War II, the return of servicemen from the war . . . has been learned by watching Holly-wood movies (551). Dore Sharys The Enchanted Cottage (1945), Ill Be See-ing You (1945), They Dream of Home (1945), and Till the End of Time (1946), made for RKO and United Artists, are prime examples of such veteran narra-tives. During the mid-to-late 1940s and into the early 1950s, other movies that also examine the readjustment problems

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of returning veterans include Pride of the Marines (Warner Brothers, 1945), The Blue Dahlia (Paramount Pictures, 1946), Crossfire (RKO, 1947), Key Largo (1948), The Clay Pigeon (1949), Stanley Kramers The Men (1950), and Its Always Fair Weather (MGM, 1955). The best known and most celebrated of those, William Wilders The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), garnered two Os-carsone for its subject matter, which deals directly with the problems of so-cial readjustment experienced by three World War II veterans. Notably, Wild-ers description of and prescription for the dilemmas of returning warriors was released only one year before President Harry Trumans Executive Order 9835 initiated a program of loyalty reviews for federal employees and precipitated the second Red Scare. As the Cold War climate in the United States became chillier, Hollywood produced fewer movies that dealt directly with the prob-lems of servicemen returning home. In 1957, Twentieth Century Fox offered audiencesHenry Kings The Sun Also Rises, an adaptation of Ernest Heming-ways study of a World War I veterans dilemmas. The returning Korean War veterans story in The Manchurian Can-didate was released in 1962 by M. C. Productionsanother veterans narra-tive released almost another decade after the cessation of hostilities. Then, during the 1970s, in response to the Vietnam War, the veterans homecoming be-came a Hollywood combat staple. The dangers of demobilization were directly discussed in Twentieth Century Foxs Welcome Home Soldier Boys (1972), Taxi Driver (Columbia Pictures, 1976), The Deer Hunter (Universal Pictures, 1978), Wholl Stop The Rain (Katzke-Jaffe, 1978), and Coming Home (Jerome Hellman Productions, 1978).

Notably, the narrative film image of the veteran did not vanish in Hol-lywood during the Cold Warinstead, the returned veteran became part of the cinematic coding that was a response to the blacklisting of the McCarthy period. American filmmakers and screenwriters created a prominent subgenre of film noir to express the postwar stigmatiza-tion and disillusionment that veterans experienced on their return. Directors

also used the nineteenth-century fron-tier for allegories on social and po-litical issues that they could not treat elsewhere: in 1956, John Ford chose Monument Valley as the backdrop for his veterans narrative. Released while Hollywood blacklisting was still being enforced, The Searchers played to audi-ences composed of veterans and their families when all Americans were living and coping with the effects of social re-adjustment, PTSD, and Cold War hyste-ria. Placed in its cinematic moment, The Searchers recontextualizes the returning World War II veterans experience and haunts Americans with the proposition that it is impossible for the American war veteran to ever be able to return home.Simply put, Ethans inability to returnhome did not necessarily puzzle his audiencesgiven their combat ex-perience, highly ambivalent social sta-tus, and the chilly Cold War climate in which they lived. Fords viewers would have recognized Ethans dilemma as their own.

Given the similar situation of veter-ans who have returned home from more recent conflicts like the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the Afghanistan conflict, it is not sur-prising that The Searchers continues to be as relevant a film to audiences to-day as it was when it was first released. Post-9/11 viewers rate this movie as one of the greatest films ever made, and The Searchers is considered by the National Film Preservation Board and National Film Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress as culturally important.5 Au-dience and industry responses to Fords 115th movie indicate that Americas attitude to its returning veterans has changed since the end of the World War II; however, the cultural transformation that such a change heralds is not yet complete. PTSD has been recognized by the medical profession as an official diagnosis after the Vietnam War, but veterans themselves indicate that they continue to fear being stigmatized in the military today if they admit to symp-toms of severe depression, PTSD or other problems (Welch).

In part, The Searcherss relevance to-day is attributable to John Ford, himself a veteran of the World War II, creating

the cinematic equivalent of classical Athenian theater for the American audi-ence when he made the movie. As usual, Ford, a trendsetter, was ahead of his time. Presently, the Office of Naval Research, funding the Honolulu Veterans Admin-istration Medical Center (VAMC) vir-tual reality project for the treatment of PTSD and Hunter Hoffman, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Wash-ington, are in the process of discovering that a virtual reality can act as a trigger for bringing back those memories in a safe environment, enabling catharsis to take place (Brewin). Like the Honolulu VAMC virtual reality project for the treatment of PTSD, The Searchers trig-gers memories in its audiences in the safe environment of the movie theater. In doing so, The Searchers functions in the same way as one of classical Ath-ens primary means of reintegrating the returning veteran into the social sphere as a citizen (Shay, Odysseus 153), a sacred theater created by veterans for veteranswhich offered returning sol-diers a distinctive therapy of purifica-tion, healing, and reintegration that was undertaken by a whole political commu-nity. Because the closing shots of The Searchers explicate Ethan Edwardss tragedy, Fords audience members are invited to purge themselves of the ex-perience that they share. Thus, before John Wayne crosses his arm in tribute to Harry Carey, Sr., before Ethan turns and walks away into the scorching wind and drifting sands of Monument Val-ley, before the door swings silently shut and the falling blackness becomes The Searcherss final moment, Lars, Debbie, and Mrs. Jorgenson have entered the house, Laurie and Martin have walked inside, and Ethan, left outside on the porch, steps back onto the land. Like the war combatants, the viewers social sphere is shrunkfrom that of a tableau of the family composed of three indi-viduals to that of a couple, Laurie and Martin, to that of one lonely and soli-tary individual. Reversing and unrav-elling The Searcherss opening, Fords careful composition at the movies end resists any possibility of closure for the viewer, returning its audience to the vet-eran, the man whose duty it is to protect and reestablish his community and who

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is doomed to never to reenter society. In the final analysis, Fords psychological epic concludes that the good bad man must live alone: uncleansed of his blood pollution, he is never able to return to hearth and home. It is not surprising that Ford insisted the scale of this movie is epic. What member of his audience who had fought in or experienced the trauma of World War II (or any war since), what member of the audience living with a war veteran presenting post-traumatic stress and/or coping with social read-justment could have witnessed the end-ing of The Searchers and not have ex-perienced the cleansing emotion of pity and fear for the returning veteran when Ethan says, Lets go home, Debbie.

NOTES

1. See Ecksteins discussion of The Searcherss continuing popularity in Sight and Sounds worldwide poll of film critics in Ebert 927.

2. For explanations of Ethans choice not to reenter society at the movies end, see Courtney, Looking and Picturizing; Dagle; Eckstein; Lehman; Miller; Pye; Pyle; Roth; Smith.

3. As Shay observes, Civil War veterans often wandered for long periods after the war and had trouble finding employment (Odysseus 155).

4. See McBride and Wilmingtons ar-gument that Scar mirrors Ethans desires throughout.

5. Named the Greatest American Western ever made by the American Film Institute in 2008, The Searchers has been placed on Sight and Sounds list of the greatest films ever made since 1972.

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Combat Stress: The War Within. CNN.com 1 July 2004. Web. 3 Apr. 2010.

Courtney, Susan. Looking for (Race and Gender) Trouble in Monument Valley. Qui Parle: Literature, Philosophy, Visual Arts, History 6.2 (1993): 97130. Print.

. Picturizing Race: Hollywoods Censorship of Miscengenation and Pro-duction of Racial Visibility through Imi-tation of Life. Genders 27 (1998): 2 20. Print.

Dagle, Joan. Linear Patterns and Ethnic En-counters in the Ford Western. John Ford Made Westerns: Filming the Legend in the Sound Era. Ed. Gaylyn Studlar and Mat-thew Bernstein. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2001. 10231. Print.

Ebert, Roger. Eberts Video Companion. Kansas City: Andrews-McMeel, 1996. Print.

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Gerber, David A. Heroes and Misfits: The Troubled Social Reintegration of Disabled Veterans in The Best Years of Our Lives. American Quarterly 46.4 (1994): 54574. Print.

Kalinak, Kathryn. What Makes A Man To Wander: The Searchers. How The West Was Sung: Music in the Westerns of John Ford. Berkeley: U of California P, 2007. 15880. Print.

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thology of New Film Criticism. Ed. Peter Lehman. Tallahassee: Florida State UP, 1990. 387415. Print.

Mahedy, W. P. Out of the Night: The Spiri-tual Journey of Vietnam Vets. New York: Ballantine, 1986. Print.

McBride, Joseph, and Michael Wilmington. Prisoner of the Desert. Sight and Sound 40.4 (1971): 21014. Print.

Miller, Pat. The Race to Settle America: Nice Guys Do Finish and Last. Litera-ture Film Quarterly 29.4 (2001): 31520. Print.

Pye, Douglas. Double Vision: Miscengena-tion and Point of View in The Searchers. The Book of Westerns. Ed. Douglas Pye and Ian Cameron. New York: Continuum, 1996. 22935. Print.

Pyle, Christian L. The Injun in Ya: Racial Ambiguity and Historical Ambivalence in The Searchers. The Image of the Ameri-can West in Literature, the Media, and So-ciety. Ed. Will Wright and Steven Kaplan. Pueblo: Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery, University of Southern Colorado; 1996. 10005. Print.

Roth, Marty. Yes my Darling Daughter: Gender, Miscegenation, and Generation in John Fords The Searchers. New Orleans Review 18.4 (1991): 6573. Print.

The Searchers. 1956. Dir. John Ford. Warner Home Video, 2006. DVD.

Shay, Jonathan. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New York: Touchstone, 1994. Print.

. Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. New York: Scribner, 2002. Print.

Skerry, Phillip J. What Makes a Man to Wander? Ethan Edwards of John Fords The Searchers. New Orleans Review 18.4 (1991): 8691. Print.

Smith, Carlton. Coyote Kills John Wayne: Postmoderism and Contemporary Fic-tions of the Transcultural Frontier. Ha-nover: UP of New England, 2000. Print.

Visser, Margaret. Vengeance and Pollution in Classical Athens. Journal of the His-tory of Ideas 45.2 (1984): 193206. Print.

Welch, William M. Trauma of Iraq War Haunting Thousands Returning Home. USAToday 28 Feb. 2005. Web. 15 Oct. 2010.

Sue Matheson is an associate professor at the University College of the North. She spe-cializes in American and Canadian literature and film.

In the final analysis,

Fords psychological

epic concludes that

the good bad man

must live alone:

uncleansed of his

blood pollution, he is

never able to return to

hearth and home.

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