The Luck of Roaring Camp

So far with all the reading we have read this semester I have found "The Luck of Roaring Camp" to be my favorite and most surprising story this semester. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and felt that it really broke away from the norm of the past two American baby stories we have read. In the other stories the baby represented a bad omen and was portrayed in a negative light. But in "The Luck of Roaring Camp" it represented a change for the better and a sign of hope to those who lived in roaring camp. "And so the work of regeneration began in Roaring Camp. Almost imperceptibly a change came over the settlement." (Harte. P.535) What surprised me the most about the story was the drastic change that the men of the camp went through when Tommy Luck became a member of their settlement. All the men in Roaring Camp were rugged individuals, who weren't found of strangers and so though that one woman lived in their settlement. But as soon as Tommy was introduced into their lives we saw Kentucky, Oakhurst, and others display a side we never knew existed in them. "Yet such was the subtle influence of innovation, that he (Kentucky) thereafter appeared regularly every afternoon in a clean shirt, and face still shining from his ablutions." (Harte. P.536) I also liked how readers were able to see how life in the west coast was during this time. Showing people in the east coast that live can be vastly different from theirs, but that they face the same challenges when it come to achieving the American dream. But what I really liked about the story was the affection that so many men displayed for a baby which was not very common for that time, and to me suggested to male readers that it is ok to love and show some tenderness every once in a while.