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The core story of “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”—a group of travelers get stranded in the snowy mountains, rations run low, and nearly everyone dies—feels reminiscent of the story of the Donner Party, a group of American pioneers who made the long trek to California from the Midwest via a wagon train. Unfortunately, the group found ...
Morality vs. Immorality. In Bret Harte’s “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” a committee of citizens from a struggling mining town in Gold Rush-era California banishes a group of undesirable residents: John Oakhurst (a gambler), Mother Shipton and the Duchess (prostitutes), and Uncle Billy (a drunk). Society firmly brands these four outcasts as ...
Article History. The Outcasts of Poker Flat, short story by Bret Harte, first published in the magazine Overland Monthly in 1869 and later published in the collection The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches (1870). It has become a minor classic of American literature. One of the best examples of Harte’s local-colour fiction, this story ...
The Outcasts of Poker Flat: Directed by Joseph M. Newman. With Anne Baxter, Dale Robertson, Miriam Hopkins, Cameron Mitchell. Trapped in a snowbound mountain cabin, an assortment of travelers receives the unwelcome visit of a wanted outlaw.
The outcasts must leave Poker Flat with armed guards because Oakhurst is “known to be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation the armed escort was intended” (Paragraph 6). The other outcasts include a sex worker well known as “The Duchess,” an older sex worker “Mother Shipton,” and the intoxicated “Uncle Billy,” also ...
Bret Harte. As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he approached, and exchanged significant glances.
" The Outcasts of Poker Flat" by Bret Harte is an 1869 story about four troublemakers who are banished from the California gold-mining town of Poker Flat. John Oakhurst, a gambler, lives in Poker ...
