Outcasts Of Poker Flat Character Analysis

Alex Slater
Mr. Williams
Honors American Literature
02 March 2023
Natural Development
John Oakhurst finds himself exiled from the village of Poker Flat, attempting to motivate and encourage other exiled outcasts, similar to himself, to move quickly and escape the impending deadly snowstorm. John endeavors to hurry his party of outcasts, but fails. John, having no way to navigate the wilderness on his own, succumbs to the temptation of suicide rather than facing the harsh storm that would have taken his life anyway. Bret Harte, a famous writer of the Realism and Regionalism time period who helped create the vivid image of the Old West, tells the story of John Oakhurst in “Outcasts of Poker Flats”. In this short story, Harte effectively creates

This type of conflict is defined as “an external conflict that occurs in literature when the protagonist is placed in opposition with society, the government, or a cultural tradition or societal norm of some kind” (masterclass.com). Authors use character versus economics to showcase a character's struggle in society and to develop themes previously established in the story. One instance of character versus economics takes place in Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome. The title character Ethan Frome desires to leave his wife, Zeena, and elope with Mattie Silver but he can not because he realizes that he and Mattie would have nowhere to go since he doesn’t have enough money to get a living space or even take both of them out west (Wharton Chapter 8). Wharton’s choice to incorporate economic struggles as a naturalistic conflict helps create the theme of facing your consequences instead of running from them. Economic struggles appear in another story called “Outcasts of Poker Flats” by Bret Harte. In the story, society exiles a group of individuals for various crimes. There are women among the outcasts “due to [their] sex, however, to state that their impropriety was professional, and it was only in such easily established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to” (Harte 452). These women resorted to prostitution due to a conflict with economics. They couldn’t make enough money without having to resort to

Character versus heredity can be defined as conflicts that arise due to a character’s heredity (blogs.cofc.edu). An example of this occurs in “Miniver Cheevy” by Edwin Robinson. Miniver Cheevy is a man “born too late, / scorched his head and kept on thinking, / Miniver coughed, and called it fate, / and kept on drinking” (Robinson 29-32). Miniver succumbs to the heredity that is drinking in sadness. This conflict between Miniver and his hereditary drinking habits developed a theme of being cautious about heredity. Another example of this conflict happens in “Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin when Chopin describes Mrs.Mallard as “afflicted with a heart trouble” that eventually leads to her untimely death when her husband surprises her using the fact that he still lives but she thinks he died (Chopin 1). The plot escalates due to Mrs.Mallard's conflict with her heart condition. Without the character versus hereditary conflict, the plot becomes non-existent. The conflict also helps build a theme of taking better care of hereditary issues. One last example of character vs heredity occurs in “Ethan Frome” by Edith Wharton. Awful events plagued Ethan’s life including: his mother becoming crazy and ill, his father dying from brain disease, and his wife becoming sickly (Wharton Introduction). These events in Ethan’s life cause a character versus heredity conflict that furthers the theme of not taking for granted what