Westerns have always been the backdrop for men with dark histories, of course. The cowboy rides into town, running from a secret or a shady past. Those stories were their stops on a redemption road, places to atone for one's sins.
But though today's craggier, crueler landscape finds its archetype in the Bible as well, the land is trod by men who are not strong and silent heroes, but wanderers: not characters in pursuit of redemption, but characters pursued by a presence, tortured and possessed souls sure only that the universe is out to get them and kept alive only by some dogged mission they didn't choose themselves. And if he exists at all, the God of today's West more often fits most people's idea of a vengeful, capricious Old Testament God than a benevolent bestower of gifts.
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