Belief Changes from One Generation to Another in John Sayles’s Lone Star
In a scene in John Sayles’s Lone Star, a side character Otis Payne, known as “Big O” and
the bartender, is talking about his son, Colonel Delmar Payne, with his grandson, Chet
Payne, in his Black Seminole Exhibit. Chet, however, mentions the belief of his father,
“my father says the day you’re born you start from scratch, no breaks and no excuses, and
you got to pull yourself up on your own” (94-95). Delmar is a demanding and
meticulous commander who follows the army discipline and is considered a
“spit-and-polish man,” and his father moves from him and the family since he is eight
years old, which leaves him a broken childhood. What his belief means is that, since the
day of birth, people should try to get rid of the status of dependence, and there is nothing
ones can blame on for ones’ failure. People who “start from scratch”, are making judge on
what they should abandon, either history or heritage. Therefore, Delmar chooses to join the
army, serve his country, and form his own belief. In short, the belief of Delmar clarifies
one of the major arguments of John Sayles’s Lone Star, that instead of letting history and
heritage become their burdens or live under the shadow of the older generation throughout
their lives, people should work hard and strive for their own successes while getting rid of
the control of the older generation.
In the film, Pilar, a history teacher, explain her breakthrough in her love life and view on
the new generation. Because her mother, Mercedes, a successful businesswoman and a
tough widow, has deep prejudice on Mexicans and Anglo men, Pilar repeatedly faces
setbacks and rejection in her pursuit of love. Eventually, she finds out Sheriff Sam Deeds
is still in love with her for the last twenty-three years. Pilar decides to abandon traditional
view and social morality, and identifies herself as a new freedom of love. When Mercedes
defines marriage as living with “some chulo with grease under his nails to drink up the
profit” (54), Pilar recalls how rude and ruthless her mother is at the first time she brings
her Mexican husband home. Based on the prejudice on Mexican, within Mercedes’s point
of view, falling in love with a Mexican is only interpreted as being trapped into a fraud of
property. Furthermore, Mercedes still dissatisfies with Pilar’s choices on love.
