The Ox-Bow Incident

The Ox-Bow Incident Book Report

The Ox-Bow Incident was written by Walter Van Tilburg Clark in 1940. The book is about a group of cowboys going after rustlers who had killed a person. The author is trying to teach us that lynching is not justice.

The story opens in Nevada, in a fictional valley, where a town lays. Like in all westerns, we meet the characters in a saloon. The main characters are Davies, Gil, Tetley, Croft, and the Judge. At the beginning, a friend of a character is killed by rustlers as they are stealing cattle. The cowboys group together to form a posse. The Judge fears the rustlers, if caught, would be hanged before they see a fair trial. The posse leaves and catches the rustlers in the middle of the night. The rustlers plead for their lives, saying they are innocent, however, the posse feels otherwise. After the posse hangs them, some of them feel guilty, and Tetley commits suicide.

The moral of the story is that ordinary people should not take justice into . their own hands. The author lets the readers know in many ways. For example, the lynching, when several of the characters were opposed to it and they did not think it was right. Afterward one of the men that lynched the victims, feeling guilty, killed himself. The author also reminds the reader of Jesus (crucified between two thieves), when the Mexican is lynched between two white men.

I would say that this is the best Western I ever read. People should read the The Ox-Bow Incident because it shows the true nature of what would happen if people took matters into their own hands.