cheetz0

He's tired himself, absorbing the anxiety and pain of people around him and fixing them for no reason other than that they need it. When John asks for help to bring back his son, or when any other mission feels too impossible, he clears the road through gritted teeth and for that, he's relied on. He's kind, and giving, even if it's shadowed by the harmful environment of a gang.

Playing as Arthur, was to embody many things: cowboy, outlaw, a tired man, a hero, a comedian, a bull with no brains. But the most important role he played in the whole game was a brother. Not because he was literally a brother in arms to John and the gang, but because he truly saw the gang as family. His story is one of belonging and earning that state. Everyone fights to keep the gang going, and each member plays a specific role, Arthur's role was being the man experienced in getting jobs done. He gains his place in the gang by giving and by soothing. Not exactly the same way Tilly or other girls soothed the camp with their femininity or how Pearson soothed them by filling up their bellies or how Uncle provided songs. Arthur was essential to the gang, not because anybody had forced him to be one, but because he was kind enough to reciprocate the favors done for him with being a shelter for them.

His way of sheltering people is through his body, through taking bullets and escorting and showing up whenever someone needs a hand. That is, in some way, the contrast to the way Hosea plays the role of the father. Hosea is a man with intellect and a sharp mind who now has lost his embodiment, so Dutch plays the role for him. Hosea’s tragedy is not merely aging, but the separation of intellect from agency. He can see clearly but cannot materially intervene anymore. That’s why Dutch fills the vacuum theatrically. Dutch performs masculinity through speeches and dreams and calling people "son". And as we all know, Arthur's story is one of a man learning to understand that actions have consequences. Although a bit late, Arthur learns to be more like Hosea and less like the tool Dutch expects him to be.

Arthur’s masculinity feels safe to inhabit precisely because it is not organized around humiliation, spectacle, or domination. His role within the camp is relational before it is hierarchical. He becomes dependable through labor rather than some role he is given. The gang, despite all its errors, is a place where acts as a soil for people's potentials, and helps them grow and really earn a role in this world, instead of being fitted through a box and having to somehow perform that. This was Dutch's dream. What drew people, Mexicans, women, thieves and aliens like Charles who do not fit neither category he was born into a place to live. The tragedy lies in the fact that Dutch had to have goals beyond what Hosea and Arthur and everybody in their own language had made: A mismatched, working and loving family.

This lands us where I need to think back on why this certain type of masculinity seems so memorable to me that I find myself remembering the same mundane camp scenes repeatedly in my head. My relationship with masculinity, and even femininity, is not one I could develop ethically and healthily from either of my parents. It is known that spiders symbolize maternity and I saw my father as a massive frail spider begging for death. He was never the one who was giving, nurturing, or seem safe. And my relationship with femininity is even more complicated than the former, for the simple fact that I am transmasculine. The figure I dreamt my father in is almost an opposite to Arthur in a sense that it is a body that creates anxiety instead of containing it.