I couldn't sleep tonight, so I flipped on cable and came across the John Wayne classic "Big Jake" on TCM. I decided to watch it again all the way through.
I forget if Grandpa or Dad first showed me "Big Jake." One or both of them insisted that I watch it when I was very small. I've always loved the film; though I've seen several John Wayne pictures, it's probably the only one I vividly remember. It resonated deeply with me and instilled something that I am only now able to articulate.
A young boy is abducted from his family by a band of dark criminals. The boy's father is wounded during the attack (the archetypal father wound!), and so the powerful matriarch (who else but Maureen O'Hara?) must reach out for help to her estranged husband Big Jake (John Wayne).
Up to this point, all three of her sons have lived within her realm. Yet she sees their immaturity and insolence and knows that they need the energy of their father.
Is Big Jake a literal father or the archetypal father? It is difficult to see John Wayne as anything less than an archetype, and this story in particular presents him as more an ideal than a man. He agrees to help, and his two healthy sons are confronted for the first time with a true patriarch. As they ride down to Mexico, they enter the wild, contentious, but crucial father realm.
One son brings resentment and mistrust. The other is uncontrolled and destructive. Big Jake barks orders, lets them fall on their asses, and even throws a few punches in order to teach them the needed lessons: respect, listening, survival.
Big Jake travels with an Indian named Sam. Sam is hardened by a life full of danger and death, and yet is soft enough to offer trust and loyalty to his friend. He gently guides Jake's sons back to Jake when they want to defy their father.
The abducted boy is Little Jake. He has been taken by a villain who repeatedly threatens to kill him. So the puer is threatened by the shadow. Big Jake and Little Jake can only be reunited through confrontation with the shadow.
The shadow wants money. It doesn't care about women or children or right and wrong. It is ruthless and unrelenting.
Big Jake carries a chest full of money to ransom the boy. But of course we find out the there is no money in the chest. (As in "The King and Corpse," the Trickster must be tricked!) Material wealth is not what's really at stake; rather, it's a struggle for the soul of the boy.
Before the boy can be freed, Big Jake gives him a handgun. The boy must defend himself. As the final gunfight unfolds, the puer races out into the night pursued by a wild bearded thug wielding a machete. The brutality of nature is unleashed, and though he is dressed like Little Lord Fauntleroy, the boy cannot be spared exposure. He is thrown into the harsh reality of the world.
But the boy is not alone. In the end he is saved by an uncle, who is saved by a brother, who is saved by a father, who is saved by a friend, who is saved by a dog named "Dog." The men survive outside the mother realm by banding together. They show their love with deeds more valuable than gold.
The story ends with Big Jake reunited with his sons and grandson. We do not see them return to the mother's ranch. Perhaps psychologically, they have left it for good.
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Great posting and wonderful story and analysis. The story reminds me of Theseus. When he reached the age of manhood his mother reveals to him instructions left by his father before he went to war in Thessaly. The instructions were to move a large boulder and underneath were placed his father's sandals and a sword and he instructed his son to meet him in Thessaly. Our fathers don't know how to leave instructions like that when they leave the mother realm or they never leave the mother realm so have no instructions. Big Jake knew his sons would need him at the age of adulthood. The western is a perfect archetypal structure for the man leaving the mother realm, (going out west) because he could not sort out the mother from the wife or the mother realm from the wife. Big Jake for all his bigness could not occupy the same archetypal energy space as his wife so abandoned his sons. She has to reach out to him for the benefit of her sons. Sounds like gramma Ross who I remember took me to look for my first apartment and gave permission for me to leave. My father did not participate in this rite of passage. It is really quite appropriate they do not return to the mother realm at the end. I remember the end of the Magnificent 7 when Yul and Steve are setting off togther after nodding approval for the Hispanic guy (really German actor) to go to his new love and start a family as if that is what real men do but Yul and Steve never did that and have regrets but not enough regrets. So this homoerotic realtionship between the two men suggest that is the intimacy they could handle lest they get too close to the mother realm and get swallowed up. Is not the western a story of escape from the mother realm but never really dealing with it until One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the modern western, in which the true intent of the Great Mother finally is exposed, castration (lobotomy). But the archetypal father is always there, never too far away and has as much infuence and developmental influence as the mother. In The Children are All Right this plays out beautifully when a father-starved family reared by two lesbians discovers the sperm-donor who quickly infiltrates the family and turns it upside down.
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