Rock Candy Mountain is a mythic hobo tale. I can only assume it’s not named The Big Rock Candy Mountain due to copywrite reasons. It is the story of how far a man will go to be with his family. (Oh, it’s also a two volume graphic novel. Did I mention it’s a comic?)
I don’t know if mythic hobo is actually a real term but you know what I mean. The story of men (it almost always seems to be men) who may be homeless but still have pride and integrity and independence. It’s not exclusive to the United States but it does seem to click here.
While Brother Where Art Thou is one of the quintessential mythic hobo movies (despite not actually being about hobos) and uses the song The Big Rock Candy Mountain, the work that immediately sprang to my mind was Emperor of the North Pole. A movie that it sometimes feels like only three other people have seen lol
In it, Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine play a hobo and a conductor who basically try to murder the Hell out of each other. It’s not perfect but it left an impression on me.
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Rock Candy Mountain is the story of a hobo named Jackson who sold his soul to the devil to make sure he would make it back to his family when he gets drafted into WWII. A family that dies on their way to meet him when he gets back to the states.
Now, he is searching for Rock Candy Mountain, a heaven for sinners, hoping there he can be reunited with his wife and daughter.
The gift that the devil gave him was the power to defeat any man in combat. A power with a lot of loopholes (more than one man or a woman negates it, for instance) but one that the book has a lot of fun playing with. (He was able to use it to kill Hitler and take the spear of destiny. Which is why the book isn’t set in the 1930s and isn’t very hobo but is pretty mythic)
By the time the story starts, Jackson has the FBI and the Hobo Mafia after him but they pale compared to the devil. The devil looks like a pantomime devil with horns and goatee but literally rips people apart. The book is a comedy horror and the devil is the horror part.
And our point of view character is the perpetually unlucky Pomona Slim, who wasn’t looking to be a hobo or caught up in a fight with the devil. However, he turns out to be one of the most decent characters in the book, to the point that the devil tells him he has no claim on his soul. (He is willing to make a deal with Pomona though)
Rock Candy Mountain is a fun story with undertones of tragedy and redemption. I didn’t know I needed a mythic hobo but I guess I did.
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