Personification of the Patriarchy
A lot of societies are described as patriarchies, but Roaring Camp is truly an iconic example. There’s only one female resident and she’s only welcome because she’s a prostitute. The place is a veritable volcano of testosterone, spewing masculine rejection of all the daintiness, manners and polite behavior that inevitably erupts whenever women exercise any control or authority. What is notable, however, is that while the men fit the description of the rough and reckless types one would suspect to inhabit such a society, few of them actually look or act the part. The patriarchal image of uncivilized men left to their own primal impulses is here on the frontier really just an image; it is the myth in the process of creation. And that truth about what lies behind the image will soon be revealed.
Isolation
The story examines the concept of isolation as a multidimensional theme. Roaring Luck is itself isolated from any other nearby camps or communities and this has the effect of institution a sense of suspicion of any strangers that in turns bonds the community members together. The men whose lives have eventually led to Roaring Camp are isolated from their past not only by virtue of physical separation, but because most of them never talk about their past. Only a precious few seem to actually be running to Roaring Camp as fugitives looking to escape past criminality, but all the men have secrets the isolation of the place helps to protect. As the only woman among men, Cherokee Sal is isolated even within the camp by virtue of gender, yet when she needs to depend on the men most—during the pains of childbirth—she is protected just as much man would be from the harmful impulses of a stranger in their midst. Most important in the examination of the effects of isolation, however, is the influence such a state has over individuality. The patriarchy of Roaring Camp really is the Patriarchy. The men who have chosen to call it home are a socially cohesive agency that resembles an individual more than any single individual within it.
Overly Sentimental or Bitterly Satirical?
Interestingly, Harte’s story today is criticized as being too sentimental to ever enjoy the same status of popularity it once held while at the time of its publication, it was criticized in some quarters for being too harshly anti-religious in its satire of Judeo-Christian Bible stories. Consider that it is the story of a young baby whose father born out of wedlock with without the identity of the father being known (as a substitute for the virgin birth of Jesus) in which the child has the effect of civilizing a society of rough men and bringing to them an intensified sense of charitable concern about others and how they present themselves to the rest to the rest of world. In addition, the child, manifests wisdom beyond his tender years and displays certain special gifts and even manages to impact the ironic name of the town. On the surface, the story appears to be a modern retelling of the story of Christ. And yet, the change in luck that the town attributes to the boy is so minute to not even be worthy of the term incremental. Essentially, the net gain has been better smelling bodies and fewer curse words. Ultimately, the baby’s luck runs out as he becomes a victim of an event that in this case is random and natural as opposed to its Biblical precedent which is offered as proof of the existence of God: a flood. The story of the baby born to a prostitute who gets men to stop swearing and dies as the result of yet more bad luck experienced by the inhabitants of the camp becomes, instead, a bitterly ironic version of the Christ story lacking even the sentiment which it is now accused of possessing in overabundance.
