Patrik Walter Frei

13-126-065
Short story seminar

The Outcasts of Poker Flat Presentation notes

Naturalism (Based on Abrams 261-262 and discussion from last week)
Anti-hero as protagonist
Small peoples story
Circumstances: Determine their lives
Detailed description
Ordinary language when characters talk
Time and place is indicated
Chronological order (except one flashback)
Portraying the ugly/ dark nature of human
Questions social issues and traditional values
Anti-Naturalism: Metaphors, symbols, personifications
Interpretation: Impossibility to overcome appearances
Concepts
Frontier justice, law of the jungle
Darwinism Survival of the fittest
higher-order animal whose character and behavior
are entirely determined by two kinds of forces, heredity and
environment. A person inherits compulsive instincts (Abrams 261)
The post-Darwinian character
a human being exists entirely in the order of nature and does not have a soul
nor any mode of participating in a religious or spiritual
world beyond the natural
world (Abrams 261)

God is dead [] what sacred games shall we have to invent? (Nietzsche

181)
Oakhurst: Life as Poker/game analogy determined by luck

Towards an interpretation I
The manifestation of reality through appearances
Prototypical characters (vague background)
Fluid nature of appearances in microcosm amphitheater
Antithesis to the mirror? Impossibility to take off human lenses
The steep hill to Sandy Bar the crossing of the mountain top as a symbol for
transcendental knowledge
Towards an interpretation II
Achilles/Oakhurst as strongest yet the weakest
Oakhursts struggle with his worldview
Dichotomies and categorization wont do anymore
Music game example
Endless game we play is the assuming of roles

Suicide by shot in heart due to lack of faith in the irrational romantic idea of
the supernatural (Oakhurst as nihilist) with the triggering element exclusion
by society

Patrik Walter Frei

13-126-065
Short story seminar

failure to make sense of world by game analogy, acceptance of an nongraspable indifferent reality
Oakhurst bequeaths deuce of club to humanity
Everybody has to play
Discussion
How plausible is the interpretation of John Oakhurst nihilist crisis?
Is he a direct precursor to modern man with his much more elaborated games?
Why does Mr. Oakhurst not wake them? (p. 4)
Why do you think Mr. Oakhurst committed suicide? (p. 7)

Works Cited
Abrams, Meyer Howard. Naturalism. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th ed.
1999. Print.
Drooker, Eric. Upwardly Mobile. Nd. Web. 22 October. 2014.
Kowalewski, Michael. Romancing the Gold Rush: The Literature of the
California Frontier. California History 79.2 (2000): 204-225.
Nietzsche, Friedrich.The Gay Science. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York:
Vintage Books, 1974.