HELL ON WHEELS: LESSONS IN MANHOOD

Hell on Wheels: As much as I enjoy a good western (products of the latest 40s to 70s western craze), I cannot see in what direction AMC’s Hell on Wheels is headed. I mean, what was the point of Bohannon robbing all of those trains for its payroll; only to be caught and pardoned for his crimes and so that he can work for Durant again, which virtually has more in common with enslavement.

Bohannon is more of a lost soul than any of the other characters on the series. Elam Ferguson in he twisted way is more focus on his direction than Bohannon in his. Will Bohannon ever move past the death of his wife and son? Will he finally find justice from killing the last man involved in their death? Or, will he feel more remorse and absolutely no satisfaction as the many came before him after seeking revenge often do?

Hell on Wheels’ storyline seems to be floundering much like HBOs’ Deadwood often did, which includes the fatten pigs. 

In the episode ‘Slaughterhouse’ The Swede and Reverend Cole (the psychotics duo) have constructed a co-dependent madness, which blind each man to the true nature of his weakness and leads them both to shift the blame and to fulfill their murderous ambitions on the McGinnes’ brother Sean and Mickey for no other reason than the of Irish immigrants. They are two men innocently accused of murdering a whore by The Swede, the reverend and the butcher. 

Ferguson is no different when it comes to dealing with his weakness and racial identity. He views being asked to help Bohannon as a shift in his place of power as a free slave. To prove that he is just as much a man as Bohannon, he rushes to enter the front door of slaughterhouse before Bohannon just because he sees going through the backdoor as negating him back to his former state as a slave, which is a major affront to him. 

Furthermore, there maybe real danger ahead for Joseph Black Moon and Ferguson as both are involved with ‘forbidden fruit’. When the discovery is widely known, it will not matter to the lynch mob that throws the ropes over the branch, that one woman was a reverend daughter and the other a common whore, or that the men they are about the hang are trying to be good men in a white world. Both women are white.

Memorable quote: 

Bohannon: “. . . proved you’re a man. Get your ass on out of here before I show them otherwise”.

This theme of racial unrest continues into the next episode, "Scabs", which burst along all racial lines.

 

Some times the word ‘place’ is an evil thing.

Prep for episode 4 "Scabs"

Hell on Wheels Handbook - The Rights of Freedmen