Allegory In High Noon

High Noon is easier to view as an allegory than as a stand-alone story. Its exceedingly-thin plot – Sheriff Kane needs to rally support to take on the criminal Frank Miller, who is returning to town on the noon train – serves as a platform for archetypal characters to bounce off each other and create conflict. So many symbols and themes are injected into this film that it is nearly impossible to find no deeper meaning. However, it is just as difficult to find one specific meaning in the film. The symbolism and allegorical features of the film are both extremely vague and contradictory, making any one interpretation difficult to justify and easy to disprove. When interpreting a work as an allegory, it is always worth paying some attention to the intent of the writers, and the scriptwriters of High Noon intended to write it as an allegory for blacklisting. The easiest way to see this interpretation is to see Sheriff Kane as a victim of blacklisting. His fruitless search for help in fighting Miller symbolizes how alone those brought in front of the House of Un-American Activities were. Their former friends would not help them,

Interpretation of this film will depend greatly on when the viewer is watching it and what they believe about the world; a modern watcher of High Noon might view it as a thinly-vailed reference to the French refusal to support the war in Iraq. Another viewer could also take it as a reference to the Iraq war, but view Kane as a satirical, tragic hero, fighting a battle he didn't need to fight for a group that didn't need to be defended. Yet another viewer could see an attempt to subvert traditional western tropes, and think nothing of what the allegorical intent was. None of these viewers are wrong. Any meaning to be taken from a piece of work is the sole product of the viewer, and ultimately has little to do with what the writer meant to