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The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

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If you have seen and enjoyed the John Huston film of the same name, and believe it to be one of the greatest films ever produced, then it is mandatory to procure and read this book.

This review is written from the perspective of someone who has seen the film at least a half dozen times before reading the novel for the first time. The film is mostly faithful to the novel, so no nasty surprises await those weaned on the film. While less dramatic in some ways, the book provides a better explanation for the motivations of the characters. This necessarily leads to significant, though not unpleasant, changes in some of their fates compared to the film (or perhaps, better said, vice-versa). Some of the more interesting scenes also are expanded, such as the encounter with the bandits at the camp, and more background is provided about the bandits themselves and the efficient and clever way that they are ultimately dealt with by the local people.

Though a little slow going at first, once accustomed to Traven's writing style and well into the meat of the story, the feeling of the realization that a very special experience is in store for you simply builds and builds and continues doing so until the satisfying conclusion of the book is reached. This is a masterpiece, a gourmet treat for the soul, a book to relish during a lazy morning spent in a soft bed, or sitting by a cozy fireplace.

As in many screen adaptations, seemingly ancillary elements were culled for the film. However, those elements, namely the description of the factors which led to the oppression of the native peoples of Mexico, provides a pervasive, unifying theme throughout the novel. This lends an enriching, interesting counterpoint to the story of the central characters.

There is a tiny bit of information given about the mysterious B. Traven, just enough to make you want to learn more. A speculative look at his identity is presented in the extras which are included with the newly-released reissue of the film on DVD.

I read this book when I was in the 7th grade. I did so primarily because I was a real Bogart fan way back then. I hadn't seen this particular movie at the time so the book was a whole new adventure for me. And an adventure it was. For years I was convinced that I, too, would eventually go gold mining in Mexico. I would spend hours trying to think about how I would sneak all my gold back into the country. Mind you, I don't believe I missed the point of the story even in my youth. It is a brilliantly told tale of how greed can destroy a man. Sounds simple enough but the beauty of the book lies in our being able to witness the gradual transformation of Fred C. Dobbs from a likeable, down-on-his-luck vagabond to a despicable, paranoid SOB who is obsessed with his gold. It wasn't until years later that I came to appreciate the politics of the book. As a social (not political) commentary it can stand alone. It worked fine for me that way until I had read his Jungle Books and others novels. Traven is an anarchist first and foremost and he articulates his case in all of his books; often in ways that may not seem readily apparent. Looking back at "Treasure" with this perspective, the images of anachism suddenly seem clear. We see three men down on their luck (read that to mean victims of industrialized society-two of the men were just cheated out of their pay after working, indirectly, for an oil company). They form a pact among themselves and go away from society to make their fortune. While away from society all is idyllic as the men work in harmony with each other, obeying the rules that they agreed on for themselves. A crisis arises when one briefly returns to society for supplies. When he returns, he is followed by others who corrupt the idyllic state. Soon after, there are some indications of changes in Dobbs character but the true changes occur when the decision to return to society is made.

Well, I'm no anarchist and you don't have to be either to enjoy this masterpiece. That, by the way, is true about all of Traven's works.

This was a exceptional novel written by a brilliant author. B. Traven captivated the readers mind in this exciting tale about a man with no sense of direction in life and finding two companions to travel along with while finding gold; and what greed can do to a persons psychological thinking. Traven sets the scene in Mexico in the early 1930's right about the time of the oil boom. Dobbs is an a American nobody looking for work in Mexico. He finds work but decides not to stay because he was getting cheated. He met the other main character Curtin while working. Dobbs was in his hotel one night and heard a story about a gold hunt from an old man. He told this story to Curtin and their quest began. They took the old man (Howard) with them because of the fact that he had great knowledge of prospecting. Traven does a magnificent job in describing the trials and tribulations the group of 3 had to go through and what they endured. I loved this book because it had so many captivating stages in the story. Some parts could drag on a little bit but when getting past that it was hard to stop reading. I first saw the movie a couple of years ago and was infatuated with the adventure. My father told me we had the book in our dusty book case. I tried reading it but I just couldn't get into it. Probably because I was to young to understand Traven's perspective. This past couple of months I decided to pick it up and I couldn't put it down. I highly recommend this daring book about adventure and discovery to anybody who loves adventures.

Though it was written more than 70 years ago, Traven's Treasure of Sierra Madre holds up beautifully. Traven was a superlative storyteller--unpretentious, forceful, and possessed of a sophisticated political awareness that puts most contemporary writers to shame. John Huston's '48 film version is extremely good but leaves out Traven's bitter anti-clericism, a key element in the novel. More than a great adventure story, Sierra Madre is a powerful allegory about greed and its deadly allure.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a great story from mysterious author, B. Traven, that was later turned into a movie that was as good as the novel. Treasure begins by introducing Dobbs, a WWI veteran now trying to make a living in Mexico doing oddjobs. After countless failed attempts at keeping a job, Dobbs decides to team up with another wayward American, Curtin, and go mining for gold in the mountains of the Sierra Madre. The two men team up with a grizzled old prospector, Howard, and begin mining. This is an excellent novel about the power gold can have over someone. It has the ability to turn a normal man into a greedy, murderous, violent creature who will do anything for money, gold, and power. Highly recommended.

What makes this novel so appealing is B. Traven's writing style. He is very straightforward in telling the story of three men hoping to hit it big. Also, Traven tells several stories about the history of gold in Mexico through the grizzled old prospector, Howard. These asides help to support the idea of the effect of gold and its power over anyone who comes across it. And if you enjoy this book, I highly recommend seeing the John Huston movie starring Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, and Tim Holt. For a great read that brings the reader into a completely different world, check out The Treasure of the Sierra Madre!

After reading this book, I was amazed at the drift and contrasting focus of this book. At first, I could not figure out whether the first passages are meant to introduce us to our heroic protagonist so as to have him remain a hero. Did he mean for the main character, Dobbs, to be a hero? While in South America, a victim of oil company greed, Dobbs is somewhat likeable and is an everyman as a bum. Then Traven carries the story into the gold mines of Mexico and gradually allows him to deteriorate into a greed driven paranoid maniac. Was this a drift in the writer's original intention? We are left wondering whether he meant to take the character of Dobb, a vagabond American, and transform him from a relatively hopeful bum struggling to survive in Latin American into a greed possessed and self destructive monstrosity. The ugly male dialogue is full of nasty testosterone and competition. Males on the margin communicate very directly with each other, as evidenced by Traven's colorful insults. Whereas some critiques point out that his male to male stuggles are similar to Earnest Hemingway; others indicate he has developed the social consciousness and economic context surrounding his characters like Upton Sinclair. I would like to point out that his talent for embedding stories within stories is similar to the English writer, A.S. Byatt. His embedded stories are swift tangents, totally relevant to the movement of the main theme, and yet a distanced commentary. For example, one story is about a hard scrappy widow women gold miner who brings her gold to the capital fighting every kind of low class riff raft and thieves as she makes her way out of the jungle and into civilization. Yet, the upper class steal her fortune and cause her to disappear. A cautionary tale that greed is far beyond class lines and in fact may even be less openly evident in the wealthy, but surely just as deadly. The character of Howard, the man who has learned through trail and error to control his greed so as to keep his life was developed beautifully by Traven. He seems too mature and wise to be true and yet he remains true. The novel can be taken at various levels. A structural approach would see all the characters as victims of economic oppression, fighting each other like rats in a jar. Yet the individual character development would argue against this interpretation. Dobbs became evil, Howard remained sane. I found the book to be excellent. Tension filled, strong dialogue, unexpected character development, socially conscious, culturally reflective, rough, and elegant in its time honored message.

As a boy and man, I've probably seen on ten separate occasions the memorable motion picture derived from this book. It is a remarkable movie - but it is not as memorable as this book, which I read for the first time the summer of 2009. Well, few works of modern literature are in the same rank as this book, in my opinion. I think it stands up with the best writings of Victor Hugo, and in fact does so without the overt moralizing tendencies of Hugo - which by the way I rather like in Hugo - Traven instead crafts an intense moral story in which the actions of the characters speak for themselves.

Several things seem to me to be far more movingly and convincingly expressed in the book than in the movie: detailed portrayal of Mexican society at the time - I don't know whether it is accurate, but it is minute and moving; the essentially American national character of the main protagonists, which ranks with the portrayals of Mark Twain - however distant the time and locale of the story, I felt that the characters could ONLY be my fellow Americans, for good and for ill; and throughout - this is entirely missing in the movie - the parallels between the gold prospectors and the workers in the Mexican oil fields.

The movie is a gripping adventure tale, I think in large part because some of what I say about the book in the next sentence, shines through. In the book, from the very beginning, the characters must seem, to an American reader, to be drawn from many examples of friends, neighbors, and oneself - their actions and motivations are completely understandable, even though they are down-and-outers in Mexico, as they are first introduced in the movie, and indeed in the book - but somehow, in the book, one gets an instinctive understanding of how they came to be there.

And, yes, the most-quoted line in the movie is printed in the book: "We got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!"

The movie is of course famous, and deservedly so. It is one of one of the very best films made during perhaps the peak period of the Hollywood studio system. The direction, cinematography and peformances are all flawless. But sadly, very few people seem to even realize that it was adapted from a novel. Even fewer have read it. And this is truly a remarkable novel. The mysterious B. Traven (there were two nonfiction books published about trying to uncover his true identity) writes with passion and power. His portrayal of Dobbs' descent into madness is one of the great psychological character studies in all of fiction. His descriptions of the Mexican people and landscape all have the ring of truth. (Probably no author has ever so successfully immersed himself in a foreign culture. It is hard to believe that he is not himself a native of this land.) He makes the minute details of prospecting into something fascinating. And even through extended discourses on a range of subjects from desert topography to the Mexican lottery system to the horrific treatment of the indiginous people by the Spanish colonists, he never loses the thread of the story. And he is above all else a master storyteller. Comparisons to Steinbeck, Jack London, Dickens come to mind. Add to that the psychological depth of a Dostoyevsky and the crusading spirit of an Upton Sinclair. So even if you've seen the movie, don't miss out on this novel. It is one of probably only a few cases in which a great novel was made into a great film, and each stands on its own as a masterpiece. (I can think of "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Wuthering Heights" but not too many others.) And then go on to read the rest of Traven. The grim realities of which he writes may be strong medicine for some, but there is an underlying love of the underdog and faith in a better future that shines through.

Traven deserves recognition as one of the great social novelists, right next to Stienbeck and Orwell-anyone who wonders why need only to read this, his most well-known work (thanks to the film by John Huston). Traven's story is a simple enough tale of how greed can corrupt men, but his intimate portrait of the social conditions which brings this about is what makes the book special. Set in Mexico between the two World Wars, it starts with a destitute American vagabond who's reduced to begging for his meals. He joins up with another American to work at oil camps, only to be exploited and cheated out of their pay. Eventually the duo team up with an old prospector and head to the hills to seek gold.

When they do find some gold, it gradually begins to corrupt them like some cursed treasure from myth. Even though the old prospector warns the two younger men at length of what gold can do to men's minds, paranoia and obsession slowly infiltrate the men's heads. While the men's encounter with bandits is one of film's most famous moments ("Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges!"), many other predators lurk in the dusty Mexican landscape. Traven's familiarity with the area is one of the elements that makes the book so strong, as he is able to capture the textures and smells of the mountains and bring them to life. As the story plays out, Traven seems to reveal a strong belief in karma or cosmic justice of sorts and in the end, only the indigenous Huichol Indians emerge as wholly admirable people.

This is a classic story set in the mountains of Mexico during the goldrush era. This book speaks to all who covet 'riches' in life and give up pieces of themselves in their eternal quest for monetary gain--- never stopping to realize the true price of thier quest. Well written. After reading it, I suggest one rents the Humphrey Bogaert Movie of the same name for a wonderful adaptation to film.
Mary