seem “straightforward and noble” but also “highly artificial.” 100 By focusing on the hero which is more of an individual concept, the reality of war is lost. This individualism can also be seen in the film The Searchers (1956) which was directed by John Ford. Although not a film which depicts a war as such, The Searchers can be seen to represent war as the protagonist Ethan wears his Confederate Army uniform when the audience first meets him, and the film centres around racist ideas of Native Americans and the war between white Americans and Native Americans. Although not typical to the Western genre, the film, similarly to Homer and David, has a “concentration on a solitary hero rather than a social group.” 101 This helps to emphasise one of the main aspects of the Western which is the ‘hero.’ Homer and David’s work depicting individual situations of battle accentuates the hero and how a battle is essentially won by one person. In The Searchers , this is also the case as the story follows Ethan as he attempts to find his niece after she is taken by Native Americans. The Western genre in general is “based on a triplex system of the hero, the adventure, and the l aw” so Ethan’s character is essential to the story. 102 However, the film has been criticised for its representation of racism, and argued that Ethan is not a hero at all. As Tag Gallagher states, Ethan, “so thoroughly perverts the hero’s traditional tasks.” 103 It is clear that Ethan is “not a saint on a mission of goodness.” 104 It is als clear, that he is interested in his brother’s wife. Even in his search for his niece, he is mostly desperate to get her away from the Native Americans, and has interests in her 100 Rutherford, Greece & Rome, p. 39 101 Tag Gallagher, John Ford: The Man and his Films (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 328 102 George N. Fenin and William K. Everson, The Western: From Silents to the Seventies (Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd, 1978), p. 25 103 Gallagher, John Ford, p. 337 104 Stanley Corkin, Cowboys as Cold Warriors: The Western and US History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004), p. 137
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