Someone who is about to be murdered doesn't write a pseudo-moralistic manifest about justice to his family.He writes that he loves them.That was the only thing that ruined it for me and from what I read this scene was not in the book...
THE WORLD IS YOURS
No, it was not in the book. The filmmakers (a) thought they had to ram the citizenship message home and (b) saw a chance to include some dialogue they had otherwise had to leave out: in the book it's the character Davies, the storekeeper, near the beginning, who holds forth about law being the conscience of humanity, etc.
In the book all we hear about what was in the letter is this, from Davies, who had read it: 'He worked so hard to ease it for her, to keep her from breaking herself on grief, or hating us. And he reminded her of things they had done together.'
IMO, it was a mistake to quote the letter in the film.
Yeah specially if you consider he may not even have been able to read or write that much since he was a cowboy.
I agree that the letter was a bit much. For starters, it couldn't have been very lengthy or legible, being scratched out by an unsharpened pencil on a scrap of paper with nothing hard beneath it to allow for normal writing. Plus, the limited time allowed to him could have been cut short without notice; so, rather than wax philosophically, he would have gotten right to the point - briefly explaining his fate, expressing his love, and giving brief instructions as to how to see to his affairs.
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