I ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT PALADIN RECITING SOLILOGUYS AND POETRY WOULD HAVE BEEN RESENTED BY THE AVERAGE FARMER OR TOWNS PEOPLE HE SPOKE TO. LIKE HE WAS TALKING DOWN TO THEM. SOMETIMES LUDICROUS WHEN TALKING OVER SOMEONE HE JUST KILLED.
shareOnce upon a time there was great admiration in the US for learning and education. What may seem ludicrous to you is viewed as admirable by other people.
In its time HAVE GUN - WILL TRAVEL was known as the thinking man's western. English teachers recommended it to their students because Paladin spoke proper English rather than the cowboy vernacular.
Welcome to the board, Gary.
If anything, the average person would have had no idea what Paladin was talking about when he quoted poetry or other literary works. In all likelihood, it would have gone over everyone's head and they would have been puzzled about Paladin's fancy talking. If the average person was listening in on a conversation between a group of surgeons discussing medical procedures, wouldn't they be puzzled by the terminology and language used?
Quite often people are intrigued by those who are well-read and gain some knowledge themselves through osmosis. Remember when you were a kid and heard a teacher use a word and then you went home and said it and your parents were pleasantly surprised that you used the word in the proper context?
One must disagree with you, Chesterprynne. In school, students learned complicated pieces by memory and repeated them before company and as party pieces.
To this day my 88-year-old uncle can recite GUNGA DIN by Rudyard Kipling word for word. He learned it as a child. His brother, my uncle, entertained his friends the night before D-Day with the same poem. Were they offended? No, they were entertained. Several mentioned it in their memoirs.
BTW, that uncle didn't survive the the attack, but the men he served with still had fond memories of his recitations. It took their minds off the coming battle. It was different before television entertainment was pervasive. People entertained themselves.
You have a point, for people who grew up in the 20th century, but most people in the Old West were not nearly as well educated as Paladin was. Keep in mind, many towns were lucky if there was a schoolhouse within a 20+ mile-radius. People were struggling to put food on the table and just surviving. Life in those days was much more difficult than it is now. Often school was viewed as a luxury and the children were needed to work on the farm, etc. I too remember having to analyze and recite Lord Byron and the like when I was in school. However, HGWT was set in the post-Civil War era. The average person was not exposed to literature except, in all likelihood, the Bible.
In many episodes, Paladin was referred to as a dude, because he was atypical to what was expected in the Old West. He was considered a dude because he was well-spoken and gave an air of sophistication which was rare for the time and place. Notice how well Paladin fits in with San Francisco society. Since San Francisco was and is a cultural center, Paladin could, most likely, hold conversations with people who would have actually understood his references to literary works.
There are a few episodes where other characters make fun
of or appeared baffled by Paladin's fancy talk, but I can't
name them.
Education was different then, as another poster tried to say.
So was entertainment. People's education ran to a lot of
memorization: Bible verses, poetry, extracts from Shakespeare ...
we don't do this now. In the west people craved culture
and liberal arts partly as a mark of success (but one can look
up "Chautauqua" for something that came along a little bit later
than the HGWT era). Every ghost mining town, an opera house!
Life was hard, sure, but it wasn't all "Deadwood" and many
families and communities got what they could get.
There was a church and a school in most towns. Where there were neither a meeting house of some sort was used for both purposes. The spoken word was respected as was the learned person.
A lotta folks in the Old West would've been more familiar with classical literature, the Bible, Shakespeare and some poetry than you might think. They might even have an acquaintance with Latin. Go to a street corner in your neighborhood and ask someone in their early 20s how familiar they are with "As You Like It," "Paradise Lost" or what the Five Gospels of the New Testament are about. I bet even Festus Hagan would know plenty of 'lijun.'
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"
It seems like education is in cycles. Historically, in some eras, it was more encouraged than others. For example, in Ancient Greece, people would come from miles around to hear a lecture. It was a form of entertainment, while being informative. During the early years of the U.S., the best educated people generally were those whose families could afford private tutors, while many only attended the local schoolhouse periodically, often depending on how badly they were needed at home to do chores. In some cases, the child who seemed more bookish or less adept at more physical labor would be the one who would go to school while the siblings worked on the farm or factory whatever the case might have been. On the frontier, a person who was familiar with Shakespeare and Byron would have been qualified to be a teacher.
My mother grew up in a small town in Georgia during WWII and she always mentioned to me that everybody read the newspaper and was aware of current events--even people who had limited education. They believed that not going to the schoolhouse was an excuse for not being informed and educated. Ideally, during my mother's childhood, parents wanted their kids to go to school, but sometimes that just wasn't possible due to the circumstances of the day. Unfortunately, today too many kids know what's going on on Twitter and Facebook, but don't know what is going on anywhere else. Many kids today have so much technology that are great educational tools at their disposal, but they don't use them for that purpose as much as they should.
Paladin would have made a pretty good schoolteacher if he had chosen that path.
Paladin could have taught college, military arts, or possibly practiced law. He was the head of the San Francisco Cattleman's Association, a member of the Opera and the highest society. He could teach self-defense, and did so in an episode called THE PROTEGE. In addition he could teach art appreciation and other liberal arts classes if he so chose. There's no end to his talents.
Richard Boone once said, 'I wish I knew a guy like him. He's terrific.' Most people who knew Richard Boone said that he was Paladin.
Posters mentioned that on the radio version of HGWT, Paladin returned East to claim an inheritance. What if Paladin eventually became an instructor at West Point after losing his inheritance, not from gambling, but from one of the economic Panics of the late-19th century; such as the Panic of 1893. By this time, he would have been considerably older and the soldier-of-fortune lifestyle may not have been as viable or practical.
shareThat's certainly a possibility. Of course, by that time, Paladin would have resumed his real name and settled down with a wife and children.
I wonder if it was the doctor or the Englishwoman. It could have been some other lucky lady. Paladin was the man.
Kipling's racist/imperialist poetry would hardly be considered "literature".
shareI think the people would have been confused why someone types with their caps lock on.
When there are two, one betrays-Jean-Pierre Melville
Noirkiss, your rebuke is late, lame and off topic. What do you think about Paladin's speech?
Some things you just can't ride around...
Noirkiss, your rebuke is late, lame and off topic.Never too late, not lame and shouting a post is never off topic.
Irrelevant, unrelated and no one asked you. You've contributed nothing substantial to the thread or the board.
Begone, sockpuppet. You've nothing useful to offer.
'Life is hard. It's harder when you're stupid,' John Wayne.
;-)
Lower-case letters were not available on the 1874 Remington Model 1 (Sholes/Glidden design) and some other early typewriters. The 1878 Remington Model 2 introduced lower-case.
English teachers recommended it to their students because Paladin spoke proper English rather than the cowboy vernacular.
"Ain't" ain't considered wrong in British English, especially among the upper classes. (This was true a century ago, anyway.)
shareBut he ain't not American. Funny thing is, his use of the word slipped right past me for a couple of sentences. I'm wondering whether Boone even realized he said it.
shareYou might also recall that Paladin demonstrated an incredible skill at whiskey-tasting in one episode. A Lynchburg, Tennessee product won, IIRC. Clearly Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey.
"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's LIVING!"
Captain Augustus McCrae
That's true, Captain. Paladin also knew his way around the taste of the vine.
Some things you just can't ride around...
See "MAD's View of HGWT" which, at the moment, is directly below your entry.
And please don't type in all caps. It's considered the electronic equivalent of SCREAMING.
I apologize for posting this a second time. At least this time there's a direct connection with the thread.
I watched "The Road" the other day, and was impressed with the acting and writing (though the story would have been even better had it been developed over an hour). I'd like to see more episodes.
Regardless, when Paladin is asked who he is, he tosses the questioner his business card! This reminded me of a MAD article. (Should you pass this around, please keep the source information intact, if only out of respect for the writer (Tom Koch). The poem is a parody of Sir Walter Scott's Lochinvar.
The MAD Treasury of Unknown Poetry, volume III
Tom Koch
MAD #54, July 1961
Oh, young Paladin has come out of the West;
Of all the horse operas, his show's watched the best.
The weapon he carries: a neat business card;
And with its sharp edges, many crooks have been scarred.
When ads are concluded, and stories begin
There ne'er was a hero like young Paladin.
He knows table manners; politely he bows;
He even quotes Shakespeare to some of the cows.
When he faces the camera, all smiling, of course
There's even a smile on the face of his horse.
The crooks skulk around, but they can't hide chagrin
At the guff they must take from this dude, Paladin.
He spouts off to rustlers Keats, Shelly, and such,
But they're always too busy to listen too [sic] much;
No one on the networks gets quite such a bang
Out of quoting long sonnets to men while they hang.
Some day he will get what's been long due to him;
The bad guys will shut up the smug Paladin.