He rolled in the cigarettes in his lips, liking the taste of tobacco, squinting his eyes against the sun glare.
Simple declarative imagery. No fuss, no frills, no fancy figurative language. Just like the man himself. The western is not a genre dominated by overly long novels. For the most part, this is a genre that is economic for a bookstore; the thin walls on either side of a doorway can hold the bulk of a small shop’s inventory. L’amour sets the stage for what is to come with his opening line. Essential and allusive; he’s not going to directly lay out information, but you don’t have to work too terribly hard to put the clues today.
To each of us is given a life. To live with honor and to pass on having left our mark, it only essential that we do our part, that we leave our children strong.
These are expressions of the thoughts of a woman—a mother—on the verge of disaster. They are not expressions of her philosophy, but that of her father passed on to her and now, in a melancholy state, invading her thoughts. In a very true sense, however, this is just a device for the direct transmission of the author’s philosophy. This idea of the privilege of being given life coming with the responsibility of living it with honor pervades throughout the fiction of L’amour.
There was a curious affinity between man and dog. Both were untamed, both were creatures born and bred to fight, honed and tempered fine by hot winds and long desert stretches, untrusting, dangerous, yet good companions in a hard land.
The philosophical meandering here is promoted by the close, watchful eye Hondo’s dog Sam keeps trained upon his master. The action and dialogue of the novel is often punctuated by the intrusive observations of the narrator acting as a commentator as much as a spectator.
Across the vast sweep of the sky there were clouds, darkening clouds pressing ominously down toward the far hills. Flat upon the earth, skyward they lowered in huge, unbelievable masses.
Not all is moralizing and philosophizing by the narrator. His observation skills are quite adept and usually engaged to open chapters. The chapter openings provide the author with opportunities for showcasing his literary skills without coming into conflict with the general adherence to a stripped down prose style such as that displayed in the novel’s opening lines.
