A study guide for Walter Van Tilburg Clark's "The Ox-Bow Incident"

By Gale and Cengage

A study guide for Walter Van Tilburg Clark's "The Ox-Bow Incident", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students series. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: May 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535842365

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The Ox-Bow Incident

Walter Van Tilburg Clark

1940

Introduction

The Ox-Bow Incident is a western novel by American author Walter Van Tilburg Clark, first published in 1940. The novel, set in late nineteenth-century Nevada, is about a group of townspeople who track down and lynch three innocent men suspected of cattle rustling and murder. At bottom, the novel is about mob psychology—about the passions and prejudices of men (and one woman) who take justice into their own hands but whose enactment of justice is a travesty.

Although The Ox-Bow Incident is classified as a western, it turns many of the conventions of the western novel on their head. A common fixture in western novels of the early twentieth century is a lone hero who represents the force of good and who mysteriously appears to rescue a family or a community from the forces of evil—a gunslinger, a cattle thief, a robber baron, a greedy rancher, or the like. These conventional westerns have often been referred to as horse operas (a play on the common term soap opera). Clark's novel stands apart from the horse opera in that it contains no hero. The characters who give expression to more reasonable and restrained versions of frontier justice are ineffectual, while the mob's corrupt leader is able to enforce his will. The novel, then, becomes a meditation on a very dark side of the human psyche. At the time it was published, many readers saw the novel as a parable about the rise of fascism and the ability of fascist leaders like Adolf Hitler in Germany and Benito Mussolini in Italy to bend people to their will. The Ox-Bow Incident is available in numerous editions, including a 1992 edition published by the Book-of-the-Month Club as part of its Classics of the Old West series.

Author Biography

Clark was born in East Orland, Maine, on August 3, 1909. His father was a distinguished economist at the City College of New York, and his mother was an accomplished musician. When Clark was still a child, the family moved to Reno, Nevada, where his father served as president of the University of Nevada from 1917 to 1937. Clark attended the university, earning bachelor's and master's degrees in English andphilosophy. He thenreturned east to work as a teaching assistant at the University of Vermont from 1931 to 1933.

Thereafter, Clark's life was a peculiar blend of teaching, writing, and ranching. He taught high-school English (and coached athletics) in New York State from 1936 to 1945, but his exhausting schedule forced him to take time off to recuperate in