High Plains Drifters Essay

The Westerns were born out of a violent part of the American history. The Southwest of America was invaded by white settlers, and the lands that belonged to the Indians were forcefully taken away from them. The U.S. cavalry was used to snatch those lands. Thus, the American Civil War opened the Southwest to the white settlers. The conflict of the Southwest became the most common theme of the Western genre of literature and movies. Violence was a very integral part of this theme.

One of the reasons for the incredible success of the Western as a genre was the fact that the literature and movies belonging to it lacked the sophistication of the rest of the nation. The Westerns were stories full of rugged adventure, violence and an intimidating

What is disturbing is that the stranger is the central character of the movie, and he has been presented by Eastwood in a manner that gives birth of a kind of moral vacuum. Naturally, High Plains Drifters has been called a disgusting movie that is ugly and rotten. In short, it therefore is a good Western. The stranger, the “drifter” of the movie is a murderer and a rapist, and yet Eastwood makes him the moral centre of his work. The stranger does not just assault the characters in the movie; he assaults the audience as well. His flashbacks of bloody violence, and the sheer amount of time Eastwood gives those scenes make it nauseating for the audience. He begins by killing three men who harass him, and follows it up by dragging a woman to a barn and raping her brutally. This later act is to just teach her a lesson in manners. From this till the end, where the outlaws are killed and Lago is on fire, High Plains Drifters is a saga of death and destruction, with the stranger as the epicenter. The movie tells us how corrupt, cowardly and morally bankrupt the townspeople are, and we are to look at the stranger from this angle. He is just seeking vengeance for all the wrong things that have been