We’ll be talking about the following quote in class when we discuss Stagecoach and The Searchers
“In order of appearance, the vengeance variation more or less follows the classical plot, since the films with the latter structure occur mostly between 1931 and 1955. The structure of the vengeance story further suggests that it develops out of and is a variation upon the structure of the classical plot, in which the conceptual distance between the hero and the society is no longer as simple and straightforward as it was in the classical version. Unlike the classical hero who joins the society because of his strength and their weakness, the vengeance hero leaves the society because of his strength and their weakness. Moreover, the classical hero enters his fight because of the values of society, whereas the vengeance hero abandons his fight because of those same values.”
— Will Wright, Six Guns and Society: A Structural Study of the Western, (University of California Press, 1975), 59.