Last evening we watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The Italian post-doc leaves in just one month and this film was on the must watch list.

I laughed when I received an email from Mr. Big Food with the subject line:

reading before we watch “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”

From time to time Mr. Big Food teaches Introduction to Ethics and he uses classic Western movies to introduce and develop key concepts. Great class. One of the readings was a paper, Vico’s age of heroes and the age of men in John Ford’s film “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (Vittorio Hosle and Mark W. Roche, CLIO. 23.2 (Winter 1994) p131). The paper itself is as cumbersome as its title but it gets the idea across.

As Vico (1668-1744) conceives history– all ‘nations’ or as we’d put it, civilizations, do and must progress through three ages: The Age of Gods, The Age of Heroes, and The Age of Men. Of course there are transitions between them. In Liberty Valance the American West is transitioning from the Hero (Tom) to the Man (Rance).

This is the long way to come around to the title of this post. My brain is currently writing a scene for the next book, tentatively titled Miss Missy’s School Days, where we learn that the Deer Students have lost their great grandfather. I’ll say “lost” and then “died” but never “shot” but of course that’s what happened.

[Thanks for sticking with me on this.]

In these parts, deer blinds situated in trees are called “shooting houses.” In shop class, Jordan will teach the Deer how to build “hiding houses” to level the playing field. Of course, great grandfather will have none of this. People in shooting houses is wrong, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Disgrace to the sport, etc.

All of this got me thinking about the Hero and the Hunter in this Age of Men. Are today’s Hunters (not population controllers) men seeking worthy adversaries? And as real life is not a Die Hard movie, is a 12 point buck or an alligator or an elk the best he can find?

Back to our regularly scheduled day.

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