1. The Outcasts at Poker Flat
Bret Harte
The Outcasts at Poker Flat

2. Bret Harte
Was the Secretary of the United States Branch Mint in San Francisco
In 1868 named editor of Overland Monthly.
Wrote Outcasts at Poker Flat and Luck of Roaring Camp and became famous
in 1871 signed with The Atlantic Monthly for $10,000 for 12 stories a year, the highest figure offered an American writer up to that time.

3. Bret Harte Harte left for the East, never to return
After several years of indifferent success on the lecture circuit, Harte in 1878 accepted consulships in Crefeld, Germany., and later in Glasgow, Scotland. In 1885 he retired to London.
He found in England a ready audience for his tales of a past or mythical California long after American readers tired of his formula

4. Mark Twain’s Opinion
I detest him, because I think his work is 'shoddy.' His forte is pathos but there should be no pathos which does not come out of a man's heart. He has no heart, except his name, and I consider he has produced nothing that is genuine. He is artificial. - interview in Sydney Australia Argus, 9/17/1895

5. Harte, Realism and Local Color
Like Twain, Harte’s writing centered on western U.S. and employed local color
Local color or regional literature is fiction and poetry that focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region.

6. Harte, Realism and Local Color
Local color attempts to portray accurate dialect patterns, mannerisms, thoughts, and topography of a specific region.
Often uses eccentrics as characters, possesses whimsical humor
Local color began in 1880’s with short stories as its principal medium

7. Harte, Realism and Local Color

8. Harte, Realism and Local Color
Regionalism, or local color fiction, was a perspective of literature that gained popularity in the United States after the Civil War.
Local color writers depicted nearly every region of the United States, leading realism to their stories by describing customs and manners and re-creating dialects.

9. Harte, Realism and Local Color
Because these authors set their stories in regions as they remembered them from their own youth, they often blended realism with nostalgic sentiment.
According to the Oxford Companion to American Literature, "In local-color literature one finds the dual influence of romanticism and realism, since the author frequently looks away from ordinary life to distant lands, strange customs, or exotic scenes, but retains through minute detail a sense of fidelity and accuracy of description" (439)

10. Principles of Realism Insistence upon and defense of the commonplace
Character more important than plot
Attack upon romanticism and romantic writers
Emphasis on morality often self-realized and upon examination of idealism
Concept of realism as realization of democracy

11. Identifying Characteristics of Realistic Writing
Non-transcendental—purpose of writing is to entertain and instruct
Realists were pragmatic, relativistic, democratic and experimental
The subject draws from “our experience,”—the common, the average, the non-extreme, the representative, the probable

12. Identifying Characteristics of Realistic Writing
The morality is intrinsic and relative. Relationships between people and society are explored.
The style is the vehicle which carries philosophy, subject matter and morality.
De-emphasizes authorial comment
Objection towards the omniscient point of view

13. American Realism

14. American Realism

15. American Realism

16. Realistic Elements
The speech in the mining camps is reproduced accurately—”It’s agin justice to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp—an entire stranger—carry away our money.”
The setting and descriptions of those settings are realistic: “…the party soon passed out of the moist, temperate regions of the foot hills, into the dry, cold bracing air of the Sierras.”

17. Allusions
There was a Sabbath lull in the air, which in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked ominous.
In point of fact, Poker Flat was after somebody.
He was too much of a gambler not to accept fate.
We’ve had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat…
Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in the winds, and the great pines in the canon, seemed to bow to the wrath of the son of Peleus.

18. Theme and Naturalism
Naturalism suggests that social conditions, heredity, and environment are inescapable forces that shape human character. In other words, Nature (the being that surrounds humanity in all facets) controls humans and is indifferent to their plight
They are all people of lower class
One of them steals from the others
The weather conspires against them

19. Personification
A literary term for the techniques of endowing animals or inanimate objects with human characteristics
How does Harte personify the sun in this story?

20. Character Growth
Characters who change through the course of a story are dynamic.
How does Mother Shipton change?
What decision does she make to indicate this change in character? What is the effect of this change upon the reader’s opinion of Mother Shipton?

21. Symbolism
At the end of the story, Harte presents an image of the women, frozen, with peaceful expressions on their faces.
What might this symbolize?
What does the scene of John Oakhurst’s death symbolize?

22. Archetype
An archetype is an imaginative pattern repeated through the ages. Harte is credited with inventing the Western archetypal hero—self-reliant, solitary, and fearless. The original Westerners were only human, yet why do most people prefer legend over reality?

23. Archetype