Two sisters journey to the Old West in search of adventure. Almost sounds like part of The Broadway Melody, but no. This is my own personal story. My sister and I embarked on a grand quest last summer to drive all of Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles. Part of that historical road splits right through Oklahoma, angling from Tulsa to Oklahoma City on its way to Texas. Repeatedly blasting the title track from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical Oklahoma!, we fell in love with the land, its history, its culture, and its people all over again. From the forced migrations of the Native Americans to the stampedes of covered wagons, from the desperate flight of the victims of the Dust Bowl to the motorcycle roars of the roadies of Route 66, Oklahoma is a land that never lies still.

In our idealistic planning for our trip, my sister and I envisioned cruising through rolling green fields and wide-open blue skies with fluffy, white clouds. We got some of that (Exhibit A: The picture at the end of this post). We also got to experience a blow-up Oklahoma storm, terrifying to witness as it suddenly overwhelms everything one can see—dark, violent, deafening, destructive. Frankly, as we sheltered in a roadside diner, I gave our rental car up for lost and just hoped the shattered trees and flying debris would avoid going the same way as the water pouring through the diner’s windows.

In retrospect—knowing that we survived—I’m grateful for that experience. Not only does it make for a stellar story, but it was truly a testing of faith in the midst of some pretty real fear. We gained a lot of perspective on life in those few hours in the diner, and we connected with many people who became co-survivors instead of simply the people at the next table. The native Oklahomans we met there—especially the ones employed by the diner—went out of their way to both protect their guests and to assuage the unease of the situation. They made us all feel that we wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else during that storm—except maybe a few hundred miles away from it…

Like my own story, Cimarron is also a tale about Oklahoma and the people who move into and within it. Opening with a stunning recreation of the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889, an event that some of the film’s original viewers had lived through and/or participated in and remembered well, from the beginning Cimarron captures the essence of pioneer life. Following the experiences of the Cravat family over several decades, the movie works at a number of levels not only to display the hardships and triumphs of early Oklahomans, but also to address social evils, namely racism and sexism, prevalent in the decades portrayed in the film.

Cimarron‘s version of the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889

The word cimarron, as explained by one of the characters in the movie, means “wild, unruly.” In the film, this word is applied both to the land of Oklahoma and to the patriarch of the Cravat family, Yancey. The Cravats’ young son is also named Cim, short for Cimarron. Yancey and his son, then, represent both settlers of the land and the land itself—murky history, full of adventure, young and developing. Yancey is never content to stay in one place for very long. For him, there is always a better adventure, a greater opportunity waiting to be seized by those who dare to reach for it. He is convinced there is a bright future for Oklahoma and is determined to mold that future. Shocked that his wife’s wealthy family does not see the promise of the pioneering life, Yancey blurts out his perspective on settling Oklahoma after a fancy family dinner: “Don’t you realize that this is a new empire? Why, folks, there’s never been anything like it since Creation!” Claiming a place in Oklahoma is an opportunity of biblical proportions to Yancey. Yet his situating himself within the story of Creation seems to allow him to set himself up as God in this new world. He consistently dominates those around him, including his wife, refusing to listen to her reason or her pleas to remain at their new home in Osage and continue working on the newspaper he has established there. When he can’t convince his wife to pick up and move west again, Yancey simply leaves his family. He is absent for years; and when he returns, he possesses no guilt for the pain of abandonment he’s put his family through. He merely deserts them again when the next great adventure arises.

While Yancey exemplifies the wildness of the land and its restless history, his wife Sabra truly embodies the pioneer spirit. Voluntarily leaving her family in Wichita, Sabra is at first shocked by the rawness of Oklahoma. Osage, her new home, is full of violence and corruption. It seems like no place to raise a family with bank robberies, shootouts, and (what she perceives as) dirty Indians and women of ill repute all around. Perhaps it is the newspaper Yancey starts or the women’s club that Sabra helps to lead, but her settling experience in Oklahoma changes her from a naïve young wife into an independent business woman and later even a politician representing the land-now-state which she has helped to shape. In this light, regardless of the dominance of the character of Yancey, Cimarron’s story might be seen to be about Sabra. Unconventionally, Sabra is the Cravat who stays in Osage and works on the “Creation” for which Yancey had such grand goals—in other words, the film emphasizes the influence and power of pioneering women, women who shatter the boundaries of the world they live in and work alongside the more typically dominant men to shape the future of the United States.

For Me Then…

I absolutely hate the character of Yancey. It infuriates me that he abandons the family he dragged out to the frontier. His poor family sacrifices to make his dream a reality, and he just finds another dream and leaves them to pursue it. On the other hand, Yancey’s flaws allow Sabra to find herself and to discover that she is capable of more than what her society usually tolerates in women. The frontier of Oklahoma—the wild land, cimarron country—molds Sabra into a powerful individual on the frontier of women’s rights. Through Yancey’s newspaper which Sabra continues for him, Sabra places herself in the role of providing information and knowledge to the inhabitants of Osage. She commands what they learn of the outside world and what they feel is important. The prestige of this position of information-possessor and distributor cannot be understated.

Unfortunately, the one person constantly holding Sabra back from completely realizing her potential is always Yancey, in my opinion. Every moment of her life is oriented in expectation of his return—at which event she will relinquish her command of information in the dissemination of the newspaper. While this admirably demonstrates faithfulness and loyalty to her husband, it is frustrating to witness Sabra’s potential and know that the degree to which she exercises her voice depends on the presence or absence of a man.

And, for me, here’s the clincher (spoiler alert!). At the close of the film, Yancey dies in Sabra’s arms, having been fatally injured saving some workers in the new oil fields. His final words to her praise her being a wife and mother, both roles dependent on his being her husband. After Yancey’s death, the city of Osage unveils a commemorative statue of a pioneer in recognition of the settlers’ influence on the great development of Oklahoma. The statue is a spitting image of Yancey, not of Sabra. His daring and optimism doubtlessly drove the progress of Oklahoma from wild land to American state, but the statue in his image unavoidably also exalts his negligence of his duties to his own family. And in that respect, I think it a travesty that the statue isn’t in Sabra’s image, the woman who both stood by her family (including her absent husband) and strove to advance her land and her sex.

However a viewer of the film approaches the characters of Yancey and Sabra, it cannot be denied that the film captures the spirit of adventure and the challenge of the unknown that pioneers experienced, which makes it a commentary in part on the American spirit. For me, having driven through Oklahoma on another emblem of the American spirit, Route 66, this movie helps to define the foundations of both the state of Oklahoma and of the United States as a whole. Not always pretty, the history of the United States can still teach us something about ourselves—and we ourselves can work, like Sabra, to make the current history of our land better.

I just can’t resist, so in closing, here’s a plug for my friends at Lucille’s Roadhouse in Weatherford, Oklahoma. You’re the best! To anyone who wants to strike out on an adventure along Steinbeck’s Mother Road, for a legit Route 66 eatery experience, opt for the diner at Lucille’s. In case of storms, choose the steak house. Either way, the cheese sticks are to die for.

Sunset on the Sidewalk Highway, a glorious (but rough!) section of Route 66 near Miami, Oklahoma. Kudos to my sister for snapping this beauty as we were bouncing along!