Descent into Hell: Mythic Paradigms in The Searchers

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Many biographers and critics, when examining the films of John Ford, underscore the epic, folkloric, legendary, or mythic quality of his cinematic narratives.1 Ford was a voluminous reader, and so perhaps the mythic side of his work emanates in part from a wide exposure to literatures, oral and written, of various peoples and eras. For instance, in Ford's The Wings of Eagles (1957–the year after The Searchers), a joke is made about the Odyssey, a volume of which lies on the table between director “John Dodge” (Ward Bond) and his screenwriter Frank Wead (John Wayne), a clear indication of Ford's awareness of the ancient Greek epic tradition.2 Yet, even if Ford were not as intimately familiar with specific mythological texts and traditions as his movies might suggest, he was clearly drawn to stories dealing with archetypal experiences and polarities that are characteristic of the stories of all cultures.3 Several mythic paradigms that are central to The Searćhers immediately come to mind: “Journeys and Quests,” “The Hero and His Arms,” “Violence and Catharsis,” and “Immortality and Apotheosis.”4 Moreover, that The Searchers is envisaged as a myth, and not a historical or quasi-historical tale of the Old West, is suggested by the patently false premise with which the film begins. We see a black screen with the phrase “Texas 1886,” and then encounter a magnificent view of Arizona's Monument Valley, a landscape of sculptured buttes and mesas that is far from Texan and possesses its own mythic aura.5 In this article, I concentrate on another folktale motif that is enacted within the mythic landscape of The Searchers: namely, the descent into the underworld, which the ancient Greek writers called katabasis.