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Analysis Of Bill O ' Neal 's ' The Johnson Sims Feud '

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In Bill O’Neal’s, The Johnson-Sims Feud: Romeo and Juliet, West Texas Style, O’Neal made the case that the feud between the Billy Johnson family and David Sims family was directly comparable to Shakespeare’s, Romeo and Juliet. The Johnson-Sims feud was, in all capacities, a blood bath. From .44 automatic pistols and rifles to duels, the feud was by far one of the deadliest in West Texas. There were doomed marriages, affairs, and secret alliances, all of which helped O’Neal’s case to tie the Johnson-Sims feud to the Capulet-Montague rivalry.
O’Neal began by describing the two heads of the families, Billy Johnson and David Sims. Both from cowboy backgrounds, the two men had grown up on the rough Texas frontier. They both managed over 25,000 …show more content…

O’Neal made sure to mention that the family was extremely close-knit. They shared everything with each other, and living in the prairie with an hour between themselves and civilization had forced them to become supportive of each other in many ways. The family loyalty that the Sims’ family shared was one of the main reasons why the feud was so deadly. O’Neal included the successes and loyalty of the families to further highlight the similarities between the Johnson-Sims and Capulet-Montague rivalries. O’Neal believed that there was a catalyst to the downfall of the two families. The catalyst came from Gladys, the Johnson ranch’s princess. Gladys had a hot temper, and would often get in squabbles with her mother, Nannie. When the intense arguments began, Billy would often step in between his two leading ladies and ask Gladys if she would like to go on a horseback ride in the field. During one of the times Gladys was riding alone in the pasture, two men aggressively approached her. Because of her closeness with her father, Gladys had learned to shoot a gun well, and she shot at the two men and either killed them both or wounded them both. Historians were unsure of the actual events that occurred because her father covered up the incident. Although it seemed as though it was a simple transaction, O’Neal believed that

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