Fonda's character is not exactly rational when it comes to making decisions, as we soon find out. He is resentful of the fact that he's shipped from mediocre place to mediocre place; never is he satisfied with where he is going. Typically, the reason he feels this way is because he has delusions of grandeur - he thinks he is destined for something great, something that would make him a hero. Well, he does try something in Fort Apache - a really stupid something.
An Indian tribe protests against the government's brute insistence that they remain on a government-granted reservation. Wayne knows that the Indians are fighting a losing battle as long as the government keeps repressing them (mainly in the form of a man selling weapons and moonshine to the Natives, who is clearly secretly employed by the government), but Fonda, being an elitist, says that the government is in the right, and orders the Indians to do as they are told, or suffer the consequences. It probably will become pretty obvious that war is a real possibility.
Fonda is equally unyielding when it comes to his daughter, who falls in love with a young solider. Fonda attempts to forbid the girl from seeing the young man, and goes so far as to use his military authority over the young man as proof enough that the man has no right to see the colonel's daughter if he does not allow it. A great moment is when Fonda, upon discovering his daughter's unwillingness to follow orders, waltzes right into the young man's family's house to tell him that he is forbidden to see her, and many issues of proper citizen and military etiquette clash.
Go To Page: 1 2
