Who Is Bret Harte's The Luck Of The Roaring Camp

Bret Harte wrote The Luck of the Roaring Camp in 1868. This work truly demonstrates the balance between the weakness and goodness of humanity. The story takes place in a poor mining town in California, called Roaring Camp. There was only one woman in the town named Cherokee Sal. She was pregnant and died after giving birth, later having her body thrown over a hillside. The miners were then left to figure out what to do with her child. Harte describes the men of the camp as reckless, fugitives, and criminals. He presents these immoral men in a romanticized way, allowing the readers to see that they have some inner good qualities. This story stands out because it was unlikely to see how these rough miners would be able to possess good moral qualities. The men

Harte shows how the men of the camp became dedicated to taking care of Luck, and how his guardian, Stump, was serious about his well-being. Harte brings light to this in the story when he states that, “The reflections of the latter on the appearance of Roaring Camp tended to produce stricter habits of personal cleanliness. Again, Stumpy imposed a kind of quarantine upon those who aspired to the honor and privilege of holding The Luck. It was a cruel mortification to Kentuck--who, in the carelessness of a large nature and the habits of frontier life, had begun to regard all garments as a second cuticle, which, like a snake's, only sloughed off through decay--to be debarred this privilege from certain prudential reasons. Yet, such was the subtle influence of innovation that he thereafter appeared regularly every afternoon in a clean shirt and face still shining from his ablutions. Nor were moral and social sanitary laws neglected” (Harte). The men at the Roaring Camp are seemingly a band of reckless outlaws, yet they manage to teach the readers a lesson of morality. This story shows that having weakness can bring out the good in