Way into the wild

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Weg in die Wilderness (English original title: Lonesome Dove ) is a 1985 published novel by Larry McMurtry , which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 . It is the first published, but chronologically third novel Lonesome Dove - tetralogy .

The novel was filmed in 1989 under the title Way in the wilderness - Lonesome Dove (also: Der Ruf Des Adlers ) as a four-part television series. The main roles were played by Robert Duvall , Tommy Lee Jones , Diane Lane and Anjelica Huston .

action

The novel is divided into three parts.

part One

Former southern officers and Indian fighters Augustus McCrae ("Gus") and Woodrow Call ("Call") have retired in Lonesome Dove, a small town in southern Texas . They run a horse rental and horse trade and are bored. While Call tries to keep himself busy, Gus spends his time talking, drinking and occasional visits to the Dry Bean saloon , where Lorena Wood works as a prostitute . Call and Gus are housed by former Mexican bandit Bolivar, and they are helped with farm work by orphan boy Newt and former soldiers Pea Eye and Deets. Soon the adventurer Jake Spoon and the cowboy Dish join them.

Dish stays longer in Lonesome Dove than he originally intended because he has fallen in love with Lorena, who is also secretly adored by Newt. Spoon, on the run from a sheriff (he accidentally shot a dentist), tells about his travels and especially about Montana , where there is still free land to be won and Indians to be fought. So the thought slowly matures in Call to put together a herd and drive to Montana with the people who are on the ranch, in order to sell them there and to settle. He and the men set off on the three-thousand-mile journey with Lorena. From the outset, Gus intends to leave the trail to see his childhood sweetheart Clara.

part two

Fort Smith Sheriff July Johnson sets out to catch Jake Spoon. On the way, however, he received the news that his wife Elmira used his absence to leave him on a whiskey ship. Desperate about this news, he breaks off the search for Jake and looks for his wife instead. He is accompanied by his deputy sheriff and Elmira's son from his first marriage, Joe. Both are murdered by an Indian named Blue Duck.

Jake stepped off the trail to play cards in a town. Since he can no longer connect, he joins a group of bandits. Soon he is their prisoner rather than companion; it is impossible for him to do anything about their murders of innocent settlers and travelers. Finally, they also murder the horse dealer Wilbarger, who was friends with Gus and Call.

Lorena is kidnapped by Blue Duck and sold to other Indians who rape her. Gus manages to free them. When he and Call hear of Wilbarger's death, they set out to catch the murderers. They manage to take the gang by surprise. They disarm her and hang everyone, including her friend Jake.

Part three

Elmira is pregnant and with two buffalo hunters she met on the whiskey ship on her way to a town where she hopes to meet her first husband Dee Boot, known as Pistolero . On the way she meets Clara, on whose farm she gives birth and leaves the child while she moves on. In Ogallala , she finds Boot, who is in jail waiting to be executed because he shot a boy. July also passes Clara's farm on the way to Ogallala and learns that Elmira was also here and that the child is his. He finds Elmira in Ogallala, but she flees from him again with one of the buffalo hunters and is murdered by Indians in the desert. July decides to stay with Clara.

Gus visits Clara with Lorena and renews his friendship with her. Lorena stays with Clara and takes care of the household, while Gus moves on to Montana with the herd. Eventually they cross the Yellowstone River . However, Gus is so badly injured during an Indian attack on a scouting ride that he dies despite having a leg amputated. He bequeathed his share of the herd to Lorena in his will and asks Call, dying, to bring his body from Montana to Texas and bury it there, where he used to sit with Clara. Call promises him that. Call loses interest in his company, says goodbye to his men and sets out to deliver the two letters Gus wrote to Clara and Lorena. Clara accuses him of being a failure because he never had the courage to tell Newt that he was his father.

July asks in vain for Clara's hand and Dish advertises in vain for Lorena, who only mourns Gus. Call witnesses the execution of Blue Duck in a small town en route to Texas. When he arrived in Texas, he buried Gus as promised. Then he returns to Lonesome Dove, where old Bolivar lives alone in the ruined ranch. The novel ends with Bolivar telling Call why the saloon no longer exists. His owner burned him down in desperation that Lorena, whom he had secretly loved, had left him. In doing so, he himself was killed.

The extensive novel (735 pages in the Goldmann paperback edition) develops a broad-based image of the American West in the second half of the 19th century in the style of a love and adventure novel .

output

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Larry McMurty: Path into the Wild . Goldmann Verlag , Munich 1990, (back cover of the Goldmann paperback edition).