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69 TWO WAYS TO YUMA Locke, Liberalism, and Western Masculinity in 3:10 to Yuma Stephen J. Mexal Westerns . . . created a model for men who came of age in the twentieth century. —Jane Tompkins, West of Everything John Locke and the Western Hero At one of the climactic moments of the 1957 film 3:10 to Yuma, rancher Dan Evans (Van Heflin) realizes, in the timeless tradition of countless devil-maycare western heroes, that his task has become all but hopeless. Dan has agreed tobringoutlawBenWade(GlennFord)tojusticeforthepriceof$200,money he desperately needs to pay his land debts. His job is to put Wade on the 3:10 p.m. train to Yuma, Arizona, where Wade will be imprisoned. It is near the end of the film—when he is holed up in a hotel room with Wade and waiting in trepidation for the train—that Dan realizes he is utterly alone in his charge. The men who had originally agreed to help him have abandoned him, and Wade’s seven-man “outfit” of criminals is waiting outside the hotel, nearly certain to kill Dan and free Wade the moment they leave the hotel room. Recognizing that the undertaking has essentially become a lost cause, Butterfield (Robert Emhardt), the stagecoach owner who originally agreed to pay Dan the $200, absolves him of his duty. It’s just not worth it, Butterfield decides. Then, somewhat incredibly, he offers to pay him the money anyway, even though he has just released Dan from his obligations. Earlier, Dan has declared his interest in the situation to be merely transactional . He is, he announces, “just doing this for the money” to pay his 70 Stephen J. Mexal debts and maintain his property. And so, with his contractual obligations to Butterfield dissolved and his financial compensation secured, to risk death by trying to deliver Wade to the train anyway is irrational. Yet Dan does precisely that. Declaring that he’s “got to” go through with the plan, even though neither contract nor financial exigency is actually forcing him, he seems to abandon rational self-interest and familial obligation . He must deliver Wade to justice, he says, if only because “people should be able to live in decency and peace together.” In saying this, he proclaims rational self-interest to be subordinate to a broader public good. Tellingly, Dan links this new interest in the public good to a particular conception of masculinity. As he prepares to leave the hotel room and face seemingly insurmountable odds, he tells his wife, Alice (Leora Dana), who has come to try to change his mind, that though he has not been able to provide her with much in the way of material luxuries such as jewelry, or even necessities like ample food, he nevertheless hopes that this one moment in which he rejects economic individualism and embraces civic-mindedness will make up for his defects as a provider and a husband. Abnegative republicanism will be his legacy as a man. This final act, Dan proclaims, will be something “worth remembering” for his wife and children. Ultimately, Dan Evans does not die, and he successfully accompanies Ben Wade to the jail in Yuma. In the 2007 remake of the film, though, the character is not so lucky. In this version, at the crucial moment when all hope is apparently lost, Butterfield (Dallas Roberts) again absolves Dan (Christian Bale) of his obligations and again offers to pay him the $200 anyway. Again, Dan turns him down. Dan then turns to his fourteen-year-old son William (Logan Lerman) and bestows manhood upon him. “You’ve become a fine man,” he tells his son. “You got all the best parts of me.” Much as in the 1957 film, Dan links patrimony to a particular conception of the good, or what he identifies as the “right.” However, in the 2007 film, right action does not mean subordinating individualism to abstract notions of justice and civic responsibility. Instead, Dan renegotiates his contract. In place of the original $200, he demands from Butterfield water rights for his land and $1,000 to be given to his wife. Butterfield agrees. And though Dan asks his son to “remember that your old man walked Ben Wade to that station when nobody else would,” it is clear that his real legacy of masculinity is one of property, not civic spirit. In the 2007 film, Dan Evans also succeeds in putting Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) on the train to the...

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