Analysis of alienation in John Huston's The Misfits

Misfits, written by Arthur Miller is the story of a fading beauty and ex-stripper who falls in love with the aging cowboy Gay Langland. Roslyn is a divorced woman and has become embittered in her relationships with men. She briefly finds happiness with Langland, but then rejects him when she discovers that part of his business of being a cowboy is rounding up wild horses and selling them for dog food. Eventually, she demands that the horses be set free. Although Langland refuses, his helper Pearce Howland, an injured rodeo cowboy, accedes to her demands.

Everyone "The Misfits" is damaged and a 'misfit' in some way, much like the horses. The horses are meant to symbolize the plight not just of Roslyn, who clearly identifies with them, but all of the men who are infatuated with her. Pearce has loses his livelihood because of an injury he sustains at a rodeo; Guido Racanelli, Langland's friend, is a veteran and haunted by his memories of the war. The men's way of life -- ranching and living on the rage -- is clearly dying. The men try to stay alive and Roslyn's feminine presence briefly diverts them from their unhappiness, self-obsession and harsh life. This is in contrast to the values of most tales of the American West, which celebrate masculinity and the ability to dominate women, nature, and animals. The cowboys are helpless in the face of fate except when they are trapping the horses to send them to their deaths. The West is no longer a place where people can hide and reinvent themselves. Like the wild animals they try to capture, all of the people in the film are ultimately destined to be ground up and discarded as misfits in society.

Roslyn has a strong sense of sympathy with animals. Despite her beauty, Roslyn is clearly aging. Her identification with the less fortunate is an extension of her own sense of being vulnerable at the hands of men. Her love of animals and expression of horror at the cruelty of the west is naive yet touching. She is continually taken aback at Langland's callousness to animals. Her new relationship is almost destroyed when she sees Langland's real work: roping horses and making them submit so he can slaughter them. His entire life, Roslyn realizes, has been built upon cruelty. She feels that what she saw as her last chance at starting anew is lost. Guido offers to set the horses free for her if she will leave Langland for him, but that only further depresses her, as she sees it as evidence that men will only show kindness when they want something in exchange. She had also rejected Guido before because of the way he treated his late, pregnant wife, refusing to drive the woman to the hospital when she was in labor