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As I look back on all the books I've profiled here in 2025, the one I'd most like to revisit is The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven, which I blogged about in February.
Here's how that post began:
The only thing I knew about this book was that I liked the movie that John Huston made out of it in 1948. The movie has a different feel than most of what comes out of Hollywood, then and now: grittier, and a little subversive. Humphrey Bogart plays a delightful Dobbs -- a man who is neither hero nor villain, someone worth rooting for and against, a man who gets both a raw deal and what’s coming to him.
Little did I realize how subversive the movie’s source material actually was. And the mystery surrounding it and the identity of its author -- B. Traven, evidently a pseudonym for an author who managed to remain hidden for his entire career and, seemingly, to this day.
The book, like the movie, is, at its core, a parable on the moral disintegration that accompanies greed. In its chosen idiom, the moral action of the narrative manifests in three people and their quest for gold in the mountains of the Sierra Madre.
It is, in my opinion, one of those rare books where plot and metaphor become one -- each serving the other in ways that are both recognizable and sublime. More than just greed, its parable on moral disintegration extends to market capitalism itself, and its final judgments indict more the system than the rugged individual.
Howard meditated for a while; then he said: “Come to think of it, you can’t blame him.”
“Meaning what?” Curtin asked, as though he had not heard right.
“Meaning that I think he’s not a real killer and robber, as killers go. It’s rather difficult to explain it to you, with the slugs in you. You see, I think at bottom he’s as honest as you and me. The mistake was that you two were left alone in the depths of the wilderness with almost fifty thousand clean cash between you two. That is a goddamned temptation, believe me, partner. Being day and night on lonely trails without ever meeting a human soul -- that gets on your mind, brother. That eats you up. I know it. Perhaps you felt it, too. Don’t deny it. You may have only forgotten how you felt at certain times. The wilderness, the desolate mountains, cry day and night in your ears: ‘We don’t talk. It will never come out. Do it. Do it right now. At that winding of the trail do it. Here’s the chance of your lifetime. Don’t miss it. You only have to grasp it and it is yours. No one will ever know. No one can ever find out. Take it, it’s yours for the taking. Don’t mind a life, the world is crowded with mugs like him.’ If you ask me, partner, I’d like to know the man on earth who could resist trying it without nearly going mad. If I were still young and I had been alone with you or with him, to tell you the truth, Curty, I might have been tempted too. And I wonder, if you search your mind very carefully, if you won’t find that you had similar ideas on this lonely march. That you didn’t act on them doesn’t mean that you felt no temptation. You may have got hold of yourself just before the most dangerous moment.”
“But he had no scruples, no conscience, I know. I knew it long before.”
“He had as much conscience as we would have had under similar circumstances. Where there is no prosecutor, there is no defendant. Don’t forget that. All we have to do now is to find that cheat and get our money.
Dobbs is not really to blame, for he is not the moral agent in this tragedy. He acts the way the system designed him to act; no more, no less.
As you enjoy your holiday break, I hope you find some time to curl up with a good book. I know I will.
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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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