Tennessee's Partner

“I do not think that we ever knew his real name. Our ignorance of it certainly never gave us any social inconvenience, for at Sandy Bar in 1854 most men were christened anew.”

These opening lines introduce Sandy Bar’s social convention of referring to townsfolk by nicknames. This establishes the story’s setting as legally and culturally distinct from the infrastructure of the rest of the United States. There’s an intrinsic irony in describing adult men, particularly the kind of rugged, self-sufficient frontier men who populate the story, as being “christened”—a word usually associated with infants. Harte therefore establishes his ironic tone while depicting Sandy Bar as a place where identities can be reinvented.

“I am aware that something more might be made of this episode, but I prefer to tell it as it was current at Sandy Bar,—in the gulches and barrooms,—where all sentiment was modified by a strong sense of humor.”

These lines emphasize the narrator’s point of view as he recounts town gossip and points out the irony that characterizes the anecdotes that have passed through Sandy Bar’s working-class gathering spaces. These lines also explicitly set up the dichotomy between sentiment and humor that runs through the story in conjunction with its exploration of The Utility of Humor. As in many other episodes, irony here downplays what would otherwise be a highly emotional narrative of the partner’s betrayal by both his friend and wife.