Tennessee's Partner

A thief and grifter who drinks to excess, Tennessee is a foil to his partner. While his partner seems humorless and straightforward, Tennessee participates in the humorous and cheeky banter that characterizes public discourse in Sandy Bar. Tennessee is much more representative of tropes relating to frontier literature, behaving like a lawless bandit and marauding through the town “emptying his revolver” as vigilante townsfolk chase him (Paragraph 5). Still, he does not engage in pointless violence: When the judge who captures Tennessee reveals his two revolvers and a bowie knife, Tennessee submits peacefully. The scene is written with a touch of irony, dramatizing Tennessee’s gambling nature and his participation in the humorous communication style of the town. He likewise takes his trial and sentencing with good grace, though he implies that he does not wholly recognize the court’s authority; for him, the law of force by which he was captured apparently reigns supreme.

Because Tennessee dies early in the story and never speaks out to defend himself, most of what the reader knows comes from his partner or local gossip. The question of why his partner remains so loyal to him when he seems to have few redeeming qualities looms large in both the town and the narrative. However, the obvious depth of the partners’ friendship implies a human side of Tennessee that must be worthy of love. The unanswered questions about Tennessee encourage the reader to question what the town’s collective creation of identity leaves out.

The narrator in “Tennessee’s Partner” is different from his rugged subjects. He speaks with deftness, precision, and a touch of irony, offering judgments and commentaries on the actions of the characters he describes. His elevated language and vocabulary locate him in a seemingly different social class than the townsfolk, making him more of a literary intelligentsia figure not unlike Bret Harte himself. The reader sees the story through his eyes, only privy to details that he knows or has heard from other locals. This creates a feeling of voyeurism and intimacy and familiarity, as though the reader were just another townsperson.

That narrator frequently refers to and dramatizes The Utility of Humor, one of the story’s central themes. The narrator describes humor as a central way that people relate in the town, especially as they make serious choices with life-and-death stakes. The narrator’s own humorous voice distances the reader from the story’s emotional reality, deemphasizing graphic and salacious moments while focusing in on ironic and unexpected interpersonal scenes. There is something potentially contradictory about the way the narrator interacts with the town; he seems like an observer from a different class, observing Sandy Bar with amused detachment, but his use of the pronoun “we” in communicating the town’s attitude frames him as an insider. The instability of this narration frees the perspective to shift with its subject matter, especially as the emotional distance between the narrator and the object of observation collapses; it also reflects the story’s interest in the fluidity of identity on the frontier.