Riders of The Purple Sage - Setting and Theme

Setting and Theme

Setting and Theme have been combined in this analysis to prevent sounding repetitive. In Riders of the Purple Sage, so much of the setting affects the theme.

Riders of the Purple Sage is set in 1871 in Utah. It is set in a fictional area of Southwest Utah called Cottonwoods. Cottonwoods was founded by the father of Jane Withersteen, therefore Jane Withersteen inherited the worth of the village, “And then she sighed, remembering that her father had founded this remotest border settlement of southern Utah and that he had left it to her. She owned all the ground and many of the cottages. Withersteen House was hers, and the great ranch, with its thousands of cattle, and the swiftest horses of the sage. To her belonged Amber Spring, the water which gave verdure and beauty to the village and made living possible on that wild purple upland waste. She could not escape being involved by whatever befell Cottonwoods.”

In the above quote, several archetypal aspects of the west can be seen. The west is very often, like other epic stories, seen with a religious connotation. Based on this interpretation, the village had been founded by one person with religious motives. Colonizing under Brigham Young, the Mormon prophet, was considered a "call from God." The spring could represent the giving of life.

One of the main aspects of the west highlighted by Riders of the Purple Sage was the distance between towns and the mostly uncharted areas between them. The west was often characterized by little towns approximately 50 miles apart from each other. In these sections, locations like Deception Pass and Surprise Valley are found often.

Several thematic elements play a role in Riders of the Purple Sage including the significance of morality, honor, redemption, isolation and religious confrontation.

First, Zane Grey defends morality in characters like Jane. Jane is heavily persecuted for her views on what is moral and what is not moral. In the eyes of the reader, Jane is the righteous one, and thus, she is moral. She is troubled by the leaders of her local congregation not adhering to the professed principles of her faith. This theme could be generalized to any religious organization, since religious leaders can and do seek power, wealth, and oppress outsiders. Morality plays a role in most westerns in that the community questions the morality of the hero, as Jane questions the morality of Lassiter.

Second, Zane Grey shows honor in his characters including Jane. Despite her persecution, Jane’s prized possessions, the Blacks (Arabian stallions), bring her great joy and her friends seek to protect her prized steeds. In the conclusion, Jane surrenders the Blacks to help Venters and Bess escape. Through this close relationship of honor, the trio is able to keep fighting.

Third, a major theme in this story is isolation. Jane, Fay, and Lassiter are isolated as they are forced to live forever in Surprise Valley after Balancing Rock fell. Bess and Venters spent quite a bit of time there, avoiding Oldring's rustlers. Because of the isolation of the location, they were protected for a great time.

Finally, the story is based on religious confrontation. The LDS Church is portrayed very poorly in Riders of the Purple Sage. The local Mormons are shown as very intolerant of the gentiles and even of Mormons who befriend the non-Mormons. Jane seems to believe that many Mormons do not live up to the standards of the religion. Lassiter admits that he has met some Mormons who are not evil. The LDS Church generally is portrayed as oppressing women within the church and all non-Mormons. Non-Mormon characters are either killed or flee from Cottonwoods, including Jane and Lassiter who voluntarily cut themselves off from all human society to avoid being under Mormon dominion. Social pressure, xenophobia, and threats based on religious salvation are shown as major problems in the novel. Lassiter attributes this to a vague Mormon desire for "empire." Ranchers and railroads later became the common villains seeking for empire in Western stories.

In some of his later Westerns, Grey treated Mormon men in a more neutral way, but in Riders of the Purple Sage they are simply villains who use their religion as an excuse for greed and lust. The character of Lassiter is clearly recognizable as the archetype of the Western gunman hero; dressed in black, the fastest gun around, a loner, laconic and soft-spoken, combining a deep respect for women with a quick willingness to use his guns to dole out his own ideas of justice.