Project 1: Redemption

“Be the change you want to see in the world,” said Mahatma Gandhi. Change is an integral part of human nature for it constantly happens in the various aspects of our lives. Some of the changes that happen in our lives are inevitable, like how the day goes by as the night creeps in. Some of the changes that happen to our lives are truly remarkable that they help shape our values and morals. Like the stories The Luck of Roaring Camp and The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit, change is fundamentally incorporated in the characters’ lives that the result of surpassing the challenges they experienced allow them to change positively.

The characters in the stories presented change as a sense of responsibility. In The Luck of Roaring Camp, we see a positive change to the rough men of the camp as they treat the infant as a blessing. Thus, they name him Thomas Luck: notoriously known as The Luck. The change starts when Stumpy, The Luck’s caretaker, demanding that every inch of the infant’s cabin should always be cleaned thoroughly and spotless and that holding the infant is a privilege that requires overall hygiene improvement amongst the men (Harte, paragraph 16). We know that the rough men of the Roaring Camp are outlaws and somehow barbaric, but when they were blessed with young life, they desire to father him, and that desire let their parental instincts to kick in: only wanting the best for their child. 

Our protagonist’s change in The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, is rather complicated. Joaquin attains a sense of responsibility to himself after he is deprived of his blissful freedom. Ridge writes, “They [Americans] left him, but the soul of the young man was from that moment darkened (Hick, page 165).” We know that Joaquin respected and adored the American people especially after they had taken California from Mexico. He ventures in California and becomes satisfied of his work as a miner when he is attacked by the lawless Americans in his home and his lover is ravished in front of him and he is not able to fight back (page 165). This marks his skeptical views of the Americans, yet, he shrugs this discovery off and moves on from this experience without inflicting harm against them as he keeps his state of mind in check. Joaquin’s xenocentric perception toward the Americans starts to waiver. This doubt makes Joaquin conscious of his own well-being, and it is his stepping stone towards self-actualization.

The change in the stories reveals the reality cloaked in fantasy. As Harte describes notable characters in The Luck of Roaring Camp, we can associate their behaviors and their physical appearances (Harte, paragraph 6) as fantasy—their demeanors are that of derailed runaway teenage boys. They do not seem to care about their hygiene, they gamble to feed themselves, they have vices, and they especially do not act their age. When the baby is born, their perspective in their own lives has positively changed, and they are open to sacrifice their little happiness for the infant. All of a sudden, they desire to be a good role model for the young life that inhibits their premises. They begin acting civil, and they also contemplate on building a hotel in their camp to expose The Luck of female companionship for the betterment of the infant (Harte, paragraph 19). The rough men are now facing one of the realities of life—that when a new life is born, he or she craves love and attention, and he or she needs a model to help him or she grow and flourish. This is the reality that the men of the Roaring Camp meet when The Luck is born.

However, in The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, Ridge writes, “His sky seemed clear and his prospects bright, but Fate was weaving her mysterious web around him, and fitting him to be by the force of circumstances what nature never intended to make him (Hick, page 166).” Joaquin fantasizes about being a man of his own in California as it had been won by the American to be its territory, and as an American citizen. He desires to be as free as the American people handling their own property and being able to speak their own minds as opposed to the usurpations and revolutions in his country, Mexico. He does not expect that he will always be betrayed wherever he goes and whichever party he tries to save himself from. There are debilitating instances that enable Joaquin to face reality as a huge cold hard stone that he carries on his shoulders: he is forced to leave his mining job and his lover is sexually assaulted, his farm is remanded from him, and he is branded a thief while is being battered and his half-brother is murdered. These instances shape Joaquin to act as his predators and become a lawless criminal; he kills his oppressors one bullet at a time. Joaquin’s demeanor changes from being a gullible American Dream believer to being cautious and suspicious of the Americans whose goal is to steal from legal owners of a property, and to oppress the People of Color on the land they acquired through war.

            Both stories present death as a huge factor that changes our lives forever. Harte ends his story with, “the strong man, clinging to the frail babe as a drowning man is said to cling to a straw, drifted away into the shadowy river that flows forever to the unknown sea (Harte, paragraph 23).” We realize that even though we are blessed with luck in our lifetime, the cycle of life dictates that we will inevitably perish. This may provide negative changes as to the people left to inhabit Earth moves forward clinging to memories and crying rivers of grief. But ironically, Ridge writes in a metaphorical manner that taking your oppressors' lives can bring forth peace and justice for you (Hicks, pages 169-170). Joaquin Murieta becomes a hero of his colleagues because he initiates and urges them to stand up for themselves, like Robinhood, he is a symbol of salvation.

The stories The Luck of Roaring Camp and The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit offers the same theme and that is change. We realize that change can bring forth positive or negative effects depending on the circumstances we face each day. Both stories allow us to explore changes as a sense of responsibility, and as a reality check that might have been cloaked by fantasy. We realize that the simplest change in our lives can provide us immeasurable happiness or deprive us of it. As we live a cycle of life, we understand that death is unpreventable and that we have control over it to make it a positive or a negative change in our being. We might be twisted by the changes that happen to our lives, but no matter how much we adjust to them, we have to remember that we are unbreakable.

WORK CITED:

Harte, Francis Bret. The Luck of Roaring Camp. Vol. X, Part 4. Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1917; Bartleby.com, 2000. www.bartleby.com/310/4/.

 Hicks, Jack et al.  The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit. The Literature of California, vol. 1, University of California Press, 2000, pp. 163-170.

Revised: 3/10/2019
               3/17/2019