"My first plan of escape having failed, I now determined upon another"
About this Quote
Failure barely registers here as tragedy; it reads like a plot beat. “My first plan of escape having failed” is calm, almost managerial, the kind of phrasing that turns danger into logistics. That’s the tell. In Buffalo Bill’s world, peril is raw material, and composure is the product he sells. The sentence keeps emotion offstage, not because none exists, but because the brand demands competence. Panic doesn’t travel well on posters.
The pivot - “I now determined upon another” - is pure frontier self-mythology: setback, quick recalibration, forward motion. It’s also a performance of agency. The passive “having failed” cordons off the failure as an event that happened, while “determined” centers the hero as the engine of the next chapter. The subtext is less “I survived” than “I can’t be stopped,” a useful message for a man who made his life legible as entertainment.
Context matters: Cody’s celebrity was built in the ecosystem of dime novels, newspaper exaggeration, and the Wild West show, where narrative clarity beat nuance every time. This line sounds like memoir, but it’s also copy: a promise that the story will keep delivering. Escape isn’t only physical; it’s reputational. A public figure can’t linger in defeat. He has to pivot fast, convert failure into momentum, and reassert the central American fantasy he embodies: reinvention under pressure, with the camera (or the crowd) always watching.
The pivot - “I now determined upon another” - is pure frontier self-mythology: setback, quick recalibration, forward motion. It’s also a performance of agency. The passive “having failed” cordons off the failure as an event that happened, while “determined” centers the hero as the engine of the next chapter. The subtext is less “I survived” than “I can’t be stopped,” a useful message for a man who made his life legible as entertainment.
Context matters: Cody’s celebrity was built in the ecosystem of dime novels, newspaper exaggeration, and the Wild West show, where narrative clarity beat nuance every time. This line sounds like memoir, but it’s also copy: a promise that the story will keep delivering. Escape isn’t only physical; it’s reputational. A public figure can’t linger in defeat. He has to pivot fast, convert failure into momentum, and reassert the central American fantasy he embodies: reinvention under pressure, with the camera (or the crowd) always watching.
Quote Details
| Topic | Never Give Up |
|---|
More Quotes by Buffalo
Add to List






