Tennessee's Partner

“I am aware that something more might be made of this episode, but I prefer to tell it as it was current at Sandy Bar,—in the gulches and barrooms,—where all sentiment was modified by a strong sense of humor.”

These lines emphasize the narrator’s point of view as he recounts town gossip and points out the irony that characterizes the anecdotes that have passed through Sandy Bar’s working-class gathering spaces. These lines also explicitly set up the dichotomy between sentiment and humor that runs through the story in conjunction with its exploration of The Utility of Humor. As in many other episodes, irony here downplays what would otherwise be a highly emotional narrative of the partner’s betrayal by both his friend and wife.

“And now, young man, I’ll trouble you for your knife, your pistols, and your money. You see your weppings might get you into trouble at Red Dog, and your money’s a temptation to the evilly disposed. I think you said your address was San Francisco. I shall endeavor to call.”

This passage characterizes Tennessee by demonstrating his command of irony and humor as he spins his robbery to sound like a self-righteous favor. Tennessee’s dialect here sounds relatively elevated, closer to the voice of the narrator than to the homespun language of his foil and partner. This robbery serves as the story’s inciting incident, resulting in Tennessee’s arrest and execution.

“Both were fearless, both self-possessed and independent, and both types of a civilization that in the seventeenth century would have been called heroic, but in the nineteenth simply ‘reckless.’”

This passage describes how both Tennessee and the judge might have been viewed differently in an earlier era, nodding to the way civilizations collectively create their own honor codes and systems of justice. The narrator highlights the fluidity of these identities even within the syntax of this passage, beginning with a rosy description of positive qualities before redefining those qualities more negatively as recklessness.

“The feverishness of day and its fierce passions still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank of the river, striking no answering reflection from its tawny current.”

The narrator pulls away from the immediate action to observe the movements of the townsfolk from far away. He emphasizes the remoteness of the camp and the way this necessitates self-sufficiency; the dark, obscuring river offers no mirror or guidance. It is in this wild and isolated context that the story’s exploration of The Pros and Cons of Self-Created Justice unfolds.

“And above all this, etched on the dark firmament, rose the Sierra, remote and passionless, crowned with remoter passionless stars.”

The narrator uses subtly religious imagery to describe the setting, replacing a deity figure with the darkened silhouette of the mountain range. The association between landscape and divinity illustrates the intense relationship between prospectors and the land, which can bestow fortune on them or lead them to ruin.

“The Judge appeared to be more anxious than the prisoner, who, otherwise unconcerned, evidently took a grim pleasure in the responsibility he had created.”

This sentence reveals how little Tennessee changes; he is a static character even as his fortunes turn. Whereas the other characters eventually shed their humorous distance and disdain in favor of raw sentimentality, Tennessee never publicly embraces the seriousness of his situation.

“For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure. Short and stout, with a square face, sunburned into a preternatural redness, clad in a loose duck “jumper” and trousers streaked and splashed with red soil, his aspect under any circumstances would have been quaint, and was now even ridiculous.”

These lines emphasize Tennessee’s partner’s rough and uncouth presentation, separating him physically and socially from the other townsfolk. In contrast to the wily and criminal Tennessee, the partner’s clothes and sunburned face imply a life of “honest” manual labor. He is also emotionally honest, and this rawness and inability to hide behind humor make the narrator uncomfortable, leading him to laugh off the partner’s appearance as ridiculous.

“‘Do you know anything in his behalf?’ and I sez to you, sez I,—confidential-like, as between man and man,—‘What should a man know of his pardner?’”

This passage uses parallel structure and rhetorical questions to demonstrate Tennessee’s partner’s imperfect yet effective attempt to use humor to make his appeal to the townsfolk. His rough dialect contrasts with his lofty aims, developing the theme of The Transcendent Nature of Friendship.

“Tennessee smiled, showed his white teeth, and saying, ‘Euchred, old man!’ held out his hand. Tennessee’s Partner took it in his own, and saying, ‘I just dropped in as I was passin’ to see how things was gettin’ on.’”

This passage reveals the closeness between Tennessee and his partner while also demonstrating the contrast between their characters. As Tennessee laughs off his death sentence like a bad turn in a card game, his partner takes his hand and makes a much more plainspoken joke, brushing off his emotional testimony and bribery attempt as though he were merely stopping by the court. Neither man is willing or able in this public moment to say earnestly what they feel or to acknowledge the gravity of the situation.

“How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say anything, how perfect were the arrangements of the committee, were all duly reported, with the addition of a warning moral and example to all future evil-doers, in the Red Dog Clarion, by its editor, who was present, and to whose vigorous English I cheerfully refer the reader.”

This passage portrays Tennessee as a conventional Western outlaw, emphasizing his tough, unemotional exterior and situating him within a straightforward moral binary. However, Harte’s narrator nods to the fact that this characterization is more literary construction than reality by attributing the description to an article with a clear agenda.

“He said he had come for the body of the ‘diseased.’”

This line references a word humorously misspoken by Tennessee’s partner as he comes to collect the body of his “deceased” partner. The narrator still views the partner with judgment, highlighting and subtly deriding the partner’s dialect and/or lack of education.

“The unpicturesque site, the rude and unlovely outlines, the unsavory details, which distinguish the nest-building of the California miner, were all here, with the dreariness of decay superadded.”

The narrator describes Tennessee’s partner’s homestead using parallel syntax; a parade of words starting with the prefix “un” characterizes the homestead by what it is not. The tone is judgmental and disdainful as the narrator evaluates the partner’s home as inferior to even the low standard of other miners’ homes.

“It ain’t the first time that I’ve packed him on my back, as you see’d me now. It ain’t the first time that I brought him to this yer cabin when he couldn’t help himself; it ain’t the first time that I and Jinny have waited for him on yon hill, and picked him up and so fetched him home, when he couldn’t speak, and didn’t know me. And now that it’s the last time.”

The partner’s eulogy is a more successful use of rhetoric, in this case parallel sentence structure, to deliver an impactful public message. Unlike the appeal during the trial, this speech embraces sentiment in a raw and emotional way that causes significant changes in the collective attitude toward both Tennessee and his partner.