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Quick Answer: Set during the American Civil War, Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales presents a world in which disloyalty, lawlessness and deceit are at the forefront. Throughout the film, Eastwood shows how war can ravage society and create a topsy-turvy world. It makes men—both Union and Confederate soldiers alike—violent and self-interested. Additionally, it causes the protagonist to lose his reverence for God and adopt a life of lawlessness.

From the onset of The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Clint Eastwood makes it clear that the themes of disloyalty and lawlessness will be at the forefront. The film’s central conflict is the American Civil War, which by its very nature pits citizen against citizen. Furthermore, the title of the movie lets the audience know that the protagonist lives outside of the law. These characteristics make for a setting that exists separate from the realm of conventional society. Throughout the film, Eastwood shows how war can ravage society and create a disloyal, topsy-turvy world.

Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

Josey Wales (Eastwood), a Missouri farmer, seeks revenge after a band of renegade Union militants led by Captain Terrill (Bill McKinney) murders his wife and son and burns down his house. After grieving and burying his family, Josey joins a group of Confederate guerillas. Fletcher (John Vernon), the Confederate captain, proves to be a traitor when he persuades his men to surrender to the Union in exchange for money. Josey, who is steadfast in his hatred of the Union soldiers, refuses. When Terrill double crosses the Confederate soldiers and has them executed anyway, Josey is one of the sole survivors. He guns down some of Terrill’s men and flees to Texas with a bounty on his head.

The deceit that Josey experiences as a soldier invalidates the audience’s normal presumptions about the Civil War. Although the Union army has been colored as a benevolent, slave-freeing force, we see these supposedly “good” soldiers committing atrocious acts. Similarly, we see that the Confederate soldiers have no loyalty to their own cause; they’re willing to dismiss their beliefs in order to make a buck. Josey emphasizes the dismissal of values when he confronts Union soldiers and says, “Are you going to pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?” – not a tune Union men would sing. The subtext points to a deeper, more pointed question: Are you going to defend yourself honorably or lie about where your loyalties lie to save your own life?

Bill McKinney and Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

Perhaps more than any other character, the ferryman encapsulates the idea of undermining loyalty for personal gain. Rather than choosing a side in the war, he transports Union and Confederate soldiers alternately for money. In this way, the ferryman is similar to the title character in Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children (1939), another anti-war text. In the play, Mother Courage switches regimental flags depending on which side of the conflict benefits her at the moment. Like the soldiers in The Outlaw Josey Wales, her actions are self-interested and disloyal to the greater cause.

Other moments throughout the film illustrate how the tenets of normal society have become disordered. For example, we see how war and violence make Josey more cynical of religion. Instead of respecting the idea of the deceased resting in peace, Josey starts to angrily slam the cross adorning his wife’s grave into the ground. As he defiantly knocks over the religious symbol, we see Josey’s loss of reverence for God. At one point he talks about being dragged “all over hell’s creation” instead of using the accepted phrase, “God’s creation.” Again, this subversion of religious mores undermines the acceptance that the world was made by a benevolent deity.

Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

The idea of a proper, conventional “civilization” is also contested and subverted. In classical John Wayne westerns, Native Americans are often poorly represented, antagnostic outliers who sneak up on the White “heroes.” When Josey encounters a Cherokee named Lone Watie (Chief Dan George), it is he who gets the drop on his new companion—not the other way around. The two soon become friends. When Lone Watie is shown dressed in Western garb, he says sarcastically that he looks like a “civilzed man,” ironically pointing to the notion that white man—who has thus far been characterized as exceedingly violent and deceitful—is “civilized.”

Left without a family, Josey resolves to make his own supportive community, one that exists outside the framework of a conventional nuclear family. He adopts a new renegade family made up of Native Americans, displaced Kansans, and townspeople who have been left behind by raiders. Cornered in a ranch house by the Union soldiers, the “family” is forced to defend their new home together, shooting rifles through cross-shaped windows. Josey makes peace with the Native Americans, saying that the government took everything from both of them. He even comes to an unspoken reconciliation with Fletcher at the end of the film.

Clint Eastwood and Will Sampson in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

Throughout The Outlaw Josey Wales, we see many examples of the ways in which war causes society to fall into disarray. It makes men—regardless of their stance in the Civil War—violent, disloyal and self-interested. Additionally, it causes the protagonist to lose his reverence for God and adopt a life of lawlessness. The reconciliations at the end of the film imply that the inverted world of The Outlaw Josey Wales can only be righted again outside the influence of warring factions. Peace can only be achieved, the films suggests, between people and not through government intervention.