I enjoyed The Virginian immensely. It’s the perfect book: it combines romance, humor, mystery and action all in one package – and to top it off, it is full of morals.
The narrator opens our minds to the big wide, wild world of the 19th Century American West, mainly through his interactions with the Virginian, an easterner who had come west as a teen to find his lot in life. And, we learn many lessons along the way.
I will discuss three of these lessons in this paper:
1) Treat others better than they are and they will become better
2) Treat others as your “brother” if you want them to listen to you
3) Choose acquaintances wisely and form your own opinions

The first comes when the narrator and the Virginian are discussing whether or not they would become parsons. They start to name some of the many Christian religions, and get up to fifteen. Then the Virginian asks, rhetorically “Do you think there ought to be fifteen varieties of good people?” and answers himself with, “[t]here ain’t fifteen. There ain’t two. There’s one kind. And when I meet it, I respect it. It is not praying nor preaching that has ever caught me and made me ashamed of myself, but one or two people I have knowed that never said a superior word to me. They thought more o’ me than I deserved, and that made me behave better than I naturally wanted to. … And if ever I was to have a son or somebody I set store by, I would wish their lot to be to know one or two good folks mighty well” (157).
This soliloquy struck me as something I needed to remember in how I treat others, especially my children. Instead of preaching to or nagging my children to improve themselves, I need to treat them like the kind of people I want them to be, and they will want to live up to what I expect of them.
The second lesson I learned from this book is like unto the first. It comes from the Virginian’s employer, Judge Henry. He is talking to the narrator and others about a missionary who has recently come to visit. The missionary’s aim is to give the heathen cowboys a piece of religion, but treats everyone as inferiors and only sees the bad in others.
Speaking of the missionary, Judge Henry says, “He doesn’t know what Christianity is yet. … The whole secret lies in the way you treat people. As soon as you treat men as your brothers, they are ready to acknowledge you--if you deserve it--as their superior. That’s the whole bottom of Christianity, and that’s what our missionary will never know” (169).
Again, more can be accomplished in teaching others when you first treat them as your “brothers.” This echos what I learned from Bonds that Make us Free, that our relationships are of foremost importance; I will never be able to teach my children effectively if I don’t first form a strong relationship with them.
The third lesson shows the importance of educating oneself, forming one’s own opinions, and choosing one’s acquaintances wisely.
The Virginian and several others are discussing the plight of another man who is being seduced into a life of crime by the antagonist of the book: Trampas. One man in the conversation wisely asserts: “When a man ain’t got no ideas of his own, he’d ought to be kind o’ careful who he borrows ‘em from” (199).
This statement made me realize how important it is for me to teach my children to have good morals, form their own opinions, and to stand fast to what they believe in, as well as to choose good friends.
The Virginian is truly a classic. It has something for everyone and teaches positive life lessons, only a few of which I have named here. This book definitely has its place among my family’s favorite books.