The Ox-Bow Incident

I picked this book up on a whim for 35 cents at a used bookstore in Maine.

By far, this is the best 35 cents that I have ever spent in my life. Not knowing anything about the book, I was expecting a sort of rough Western story about how a hero was able to face off against a lynch mob. This book delivers so much more than that. The exploration of mob psychology, authoritarianism, and the nature of injustice was enthralling. Reading this book is like witnessing a car hit a pedestrian in slow motion. I know, that doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement of the book, but hear me out.

I’ve never witnessed a car accident in slow motion, but I imagine it this way: I’m standing on a curb seeing a car headed toward a witless pedestrian (slowly, of course) and I’m thinking that maybe the car won’t strike him. The pedestrian’s head is down and he doesn’t see the car, so I’m worried. I look at the driver of the car, and I see from the way his eyes are focused that he does see the pedestrian. The passengers of the car are yelling. One of them is pointing angrily at the pedestrian, another is eerily smiling, while the other is pleading passionately, a pained expression etched on their face. I feel a sense of relief, he’ll stop in time – slam on those brakes. He’ll listen to reason. Indeed, he does start to decelerate and that’s when the pedestrian finally sees him. The pedestrian’s eyes widen, and he starts to leap. Maybe he’ll be able to evade the car if, for whatever reason, it can’t stop in time. But the car is no longer slowing down. In fact, it’s speeding up. The passenger who was pleading looks sad, but resigned while the others maintain their facial expressions. Now the clash is inevitable. I can’t watch this, but I can’t look away either. Maybe a miracle will occur, some kind of divine intervention. No, it happens, the man dies.

At one point in the book, one of the doomed men says of the lynch mob: “I thought there was a white man among you.” It’s a jarring quote, and I took it at face value at first. But, no, it is clear use of irony. Clark was well aware of racist lynching and he clearly had this in mind when he wrote the book. One of the most sympathetic characters in the book is a black man, Sparks, who has the least social standing in the entire community but is steadfast and brave in his stand against the lynching. Clarks book is a protest not just against injustice, but against the profound racial injustice he saw all around him.

Van Tilburg Clark has created a deeply intelligent book that serves as a startling reminder of our capability for evil. We make excuses for inaction in the face of injustice. After all, what can we do? Clark’s choice to have his protagonist act as a mostly passive members of the mob is a good one. I can’t imagine the book being as effective without this decision. Personally, I was forced to question my own decisions. When had I participated or stood by while someone was bullied? When have I chosen to be quiet in the face of injustice? When I have chosen the easy route of inaction?

This is an engrossing read that inspired a lot of self reflection.

“The book was written in 1937 and ‘38, when the whole world was getting increasingly worried about Hitler and the Nazis, and emotionally it stemmed from my part of this worrying. A number of the reviewers commented on the parallel when the book came out in 1940, saw it as something approaching an allegory of the unscrupulous and brutal Nazi methods, and as a warning against the dangers of temporizing and of hoping to oppose such a force with reason, argument, and the democratic approach. They did not see, however, or at least I don’t remember that any of them mentioned it (and that did scare me), although it was certainly obvious, the whole substance and surface of the story, that it was a kind of American Naziism that I was talking about. I had the parallel in mind, all right, but what I was most afraid of was not the German Nazis, or even the Bund, but that ever-present element in any society which can always be led to act the same way, to use authoritarian methods to oppose authoritarian methods.

What I wanted to say was, ‘It can happen here. It has happened here, in minor but sufficiently indicative ways, a great many times.’”

Walter Van Tilburg Clark, 1960.