The novel introduces Jefferson Hope as a courageous, adventurous traveler during the peak of the California Gold Rush, seeking excitement and prospects for an exceeding, improved life, yet his unwavering loyalty, and love for Lucy Ferrier, whom he encounters during his voyage becomes the source of his downfall. Doyle paints Hope as a cliched, stock figure, a travelling Westerner in the Plains of Nebraska, who saves the love of his life yet eventually demise as a revenge seeking murderer after Lucy’s death. When he first meets Ferrier on his voyage from Salt Lake City, he serves as her savior and “knight in shining armour”; which he helps calm down her horse after a bull gores it with Lucy at the reins and saves her life. Due to this encounter, …show more content…
Instead of dedicating his life to help lovers avoid the same fate he and Lucy had encountered or to free the Mormon community from the totalitarian torment they faced under the Elders, he instead dedicates the rest of his life to follow Stangerson, who had killed her father John, and Drebber whose loveless marriage causes her eventual death. This shows a departure from the typical route of a protagonist avenging justice to loved ones who have been unlawfully wronged to becoming an eventual antagonist, just as bloodthirsty and immoral as the same people he follows and hunts down. Lastly, Doyle exhibits the irony in the Mormon religion, and the abuses and psychological exploitation cast in the name of the faith, whether it be to the Mormons or the non-Mormons, through the eventual downfall of Hope. Although the Mormon faith was founded in order to flee persecution and settle for a better life free from objection or prejudice, these same people develop a greed and lust for power, control and abuse just as the persecutors they fled from inflicted on