Week 4 Analysis: The Outcasts of Poker Flat

The Outcasts of Poker Flat

The Outcasts of Poker Flat was an interesting read that had a few different themes that I found prevalent throughout the story. The first theme that I saw was the difference between good and evil. In this story the outcasts are all initially perceived as bad people and for this they are exiled by the society in Poker Flat that decides who lives, who dies, and who is exiled. As we go further in to the story you start to realizes that some of the characters are not as bad as the others and that some of them are actually good people. This is interesting because even though some of them are good people and some are not, they are all sentenced to the same fate of exile. In the end when they all get to the cabin, Uncle Billy immediately betrays all of the other exiles and runs off with their horses and supplies leaving the rest of them to perish inside the cabin. In the end all the exiles inside the cabin die, but for the most part they were good people. John Oakhurst repays his debt to Tom, and Mother Shipton essentially sacrifices herself so that Piney can live by giving up her portion of the food to Piney so that she could live. While it is not known whether or not Uncle Billy made it to the next camp, Uncle Billy definitely had the best chance of survival with all the supplies he took. In the end doing good did nothing for anybody, since the ones who looked out for each other died in the cold while the one that betrayed the rest for his own gain most likely continued to live. This puts in to perspective good and evil. Do you get anything in return for being good? Is being evil inherently bad if you are to gain from it? I think these are moral questions that this story raises about humanity and peaked my interest while reading this story.

The second theme that I saw was luck and its roll in life. Realistically some parts of life is just luck and there is not much you can do about. Some people are born into immense wealth and can live mostly care free, while some might be born into hardship that may lead to a life of sadness and anxiety. You might live for the next eighty years or you could die next week because you left your house a bit late and get caught in a car accident, it really all comes down to luck. This theme of luck is clear even in the name of the story and the town being Poker Flat. While poker does require a lot of skill and wit to be good, Poker does have many elements of luck that can turn the tide on even the best of poker players. John Oakhurst lived his entire life off of this game of luck, and because of his immense luck and skill in the game, he was exiled. It is after being exiled that Oakhurst starts to realize what luck is and how it affects our life. Oakhurst proclaims that luck "''is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it for certain is that it’s bound to change. And it’s finding out when it’s going to change that makes you.'"It is here that Oakhurst realizes that our fate in life and death is not sealed, but just random occurences that shape our lives. It is at this point that Oakhurst took his own life. Oakhurst took his life because he was done with luck, and did not want luck to dictate if he would survive or not. Oakhurst took direct control of his life and killed himself because he wanted to be in control of his own destiny for once. The narrator recognizes this and says that "He was too much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at best an uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of the dealer." It was clear that Oakhurst felt that life was like a game of poker, and that when life deals you cards you are not favored to win. Oakhurst did the only thing that he could to take himself out of the game for good, and that was to take his own life.