The Official Library of JP Brown

Author: Van Tilburg Clark, Walter

Description:
The Ox-Bow Incident is a 1940 western novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, in which two drifters are drawn into a posse formed to find the murderer of a local man. The novel is a masterpiece that satirizes man’s dependency on appearances of masculinity. The men’s behavior - including that of Art Croft and his sidekick - is almost all passive reactions to what is happening with issues of masculinity calling the shots. Only once - the climax of the story - does Art Croft break out of his passivity to make an action not driven by his own needs of masculinity.