To The Graduate School:
The members of the Committee approve the thesis of Dixie S. Thoman
presented on April 30, 2009.
Christopher Caskey Russell, Chairperson
Robert Mcgreggor Cawley, Graduate Faculty Representative
W Robert L. Torry
PREVIECaroline E. McCracken-Flesher
APPROVED:
Peter Parolin, Department Head/Chair, Department of English
Don Roth, Dean, The Graduate School
Thoman, Dixie S. Deconstructing the Myth of the American West: McMurtry, Violence,
Ecopsychology and National Identity, M.A., Department of English,
May, 2009.
The myth of the American frontier developed from exaggerated or fictionalized
performances and literature about the West, and violence became a celebrated and
traditional element of the metanarrative of the West. Expectations for violence in the
Western novel continue as the metanarrative of the West enables a violent national
mythology and identity. Western literature from Louis L’Amour, Cormac McCarthy and
Larry McMurtry carries on American origin myths of violence as they pit evil Indians
against civilization-seeking whites. This myth of a demonized and ‘othered’ Indian
distinctly separates a national imagined community by race. Such selective and biased
W myths of the American West are unhealthy. It is important to interrogate the
IE metanarrative (myths) of the West in order to see their social construction and to
counterbalance those stories with different modes of understanding that promote healthier
PREV ecopsychological attitudes towards the environment and humanity.
1
DECONSTRUCTING THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN WEST:
McMURTRY, VIOLENCE, ECOPSYCHOLOGY AND NATIONAL IDENTITY
By Dixie S. Thoman
A thesis submitted to the Department of English
W and The Graduate School of the University of Wyoming
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
IE for the degree of
EVMASTER OF ARTS
in
PR ENGLISH
Laramie, Wyoming
May 2009
UMI Number: 1470714
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Table of Contents
Introduction – The Metanarrative of the American Frontier……………………...…1
Chapter One – The Mythmaking of the West: Manifest Destiny, Authenticity, and
Social Constructions of the American Frontier………………………………………..7
Myth Creation and the American Origin Story……………………………………7
A Definition of Frontier: Turner’s Thesis and an Imagined Frontier……………..9
Revealing the Untold West: Manifest Destiny, Media, and Historical Reality….10
Race and Violence in L’Amour’s Sackett Series………………………………...13
McMurtry and Authenticity……………………………………………………...15
Violence and the Metanarrative: Feminine Power in the Berrybender
Narratives………………………………………………………………………...19
Chapter Two - Violence and the American Psyche: Shadows of Torture,
Ecopsychology, and Renewal…………………………………………………………..22
W The Function of American Violence……………………………………………..22
IE The Purpose of Stories through Jung’s Theory…………………………………..24
McMurtry’s Use of Violence: The White-man’s Pursuit of Justice……………..25
V McMurtry’s Indian Half-breeds: A Ruthless and Demonized Savage…………..29
Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian: Regeneration vs. Degeneration………….34
E Ecopsychology and Alienation from Nature……………………………………..38
Ecopsychological Renewal and Assertion of Common Identity………………...42
R Chapter Three –National Identity: Degeneration through Violence in an Imagined
P Community of America………………………………………………………………...45
Socio-historical Degeneration through Violence………………………………...45
Nationalism and Nation Theory………………………………………………….46
Social Constructionism and Ecopsychology……………………………………..49
McMurtry’s Contribution to a Non-violent Western…………………………….50
Conclusion – Moving Toward a Healthy National Myth…………………………….56
Notes……………………………………………………………………………………..60
Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………...61
ii
Introduction – The Metanarrative of the American Frontier
The European race to conquer, settle, and expand into the New World sparked a
public interest in the adventures and violence associated with savage yet virgin American
lands. The myth of the American frontier begins with the journal accounts and media
hype of naval exploration as early as the 15th century. From the post-Gutenberg pages of
history, the adventure/quest stories of the American frontier captured the attention of a
world-wide audience. People who had never even seen America formed an ideal, and an
ideology, about the place. Even before the Declaration of Independence was signed in
1776, an identity of the New World was projected through various print media. Advanced
printing presses and rising literacy enabled mass production of written entertainment and
W print culture, including accounts and stories of New World exploration. James Fenimore
IE Cooper’s The Leatherstocking Tales, published between 1827 and 1841, are recognized
by many as the quintessence of a savage-ridden America struggling toward civilization.
V This theme seems to be the basis of the popular Western genre and has become a thread
E that unites a metanarrative of the myth of the American frontier.
R The metanarrative of the west (the cumulative story) began during the 19th
P century because of an affordable print and entertainment culture. The dime novel
Western, a catch-all term for several forms of late 19th century and early 20th century U.S.
popular fiction, enabled the myth-making of the American frontier. Stories featured
cowboy heroes battling savage and threatening Indians, daring rescues of endangered
female beauties, and the quest to establish civilization. A public fascination with the
‘wild’ America continued in other modes of entertainment like the World’s Fair and
theatre performances. Between 1872 and 1917 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show traveled the
1
world as a living spectacle of frontier life. Paul Fees, curator at the Buffalo Bill Historical
Society in Cody, Wyoming, has commented that "the myth of the West was first of all a
myth of accomplishment shared by all Americans, hence a myth of unity."1 Buffalo Bill
Cody’s show enacted this myth in performances from California to New York, and from
London to Rome. Many historians and Buffalo Bill aficionados would agree that he did
not merely represent the west, but he became the west, in his own mind and in the minds
of others. Cody's portrayal of his beloved region is nonetheless a troubling one.
The presentation of the west in the features of the show and in the
proliferation of marketing and advertising surrounding it demonstrates
difficulties in accurately rendering the history and culture of the west,
sorting out the complicated relationship between the settlers and the
Native Americans, and making distinctions between the fact and fiction of
W Buffalo Bill himself. (Smith, 12)
IE Cody’s legacy is his presentation and advertisement of the American frontier. Yet, a close
look at his Wild West show, especially as it was a key player in the myth-making of
V America, reveals it is well-advertised fiction – a show of demonized Indians that
E proliferates violence. While Buffalo Bill’s rendition of the west does present some
historical reality, its exaggeration of frontier violence leads viewers to expect and
PR demand such violence in the narrative of the west.
Even with a base component of violence, a romanticized version of the Western
grew in the 20th century with Owen Wister’s The Virginian, Zane Grey’s Riders of the
Purple Sage, and a mass production of novels from Louis L’Amour. Television and film
also contributed to the revival of the Western and were romanticized insofar as they
created a rose-tinted and idealized reflection of societal expectations – the white male
hero always wins in the end as he conquers and saves weak females and/or Indians.
Iconic actors like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood embodied the stereotypical and
2
romanticized Western hero. Both film and literature feature a gendered storyline.
Unfaltering white men favoring solitude and freedom campaign for justice and
civilization; they face dangerous Indians, survive nature’s forces with ingenuity, engage
in violence, save the weak and vulnerable female, and provide order and stability. This
popular version of the Western grew from societal expectations of a pre-civil rights
America – when the ‘other’ was always the enemy and the female was restricted to the
home. As the Western reflected the popular ideology of America, a national identity in
that ideology was formed. Reader and viewer beliefs were reassured with the repeated
concepts of heroic white males and successful democracy.
Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
W startled the world of Western literature in 1985 with its graphic and relentless
IE presentation of frontier violence. McCarthy continued the Western’s tradition of a
storyline that enables civilization and democracy, yet violence is stressed as the only
V means to that end. Some praise McCarthy’s work as it shows regeneration through
E violence – the story of necessary evil that enabled the west to be won. Yet, it is this
R approach toward historical violence – and the American myth rooted in violence – that
P justifies an unhealthy contemporary support of violence.
Working from the premise that popular perceptions and reproductions of the
American frontier are socially constructed representations that embody a national
mythology and identity, it is necessary to understand that the American myth of itself
may not be accurate or healthy. It is important to interrogate the metanarrative (myths) of
the West in order to see their social construction and to counterbalance those stories with
3
different modes of understanding that promote healthier attitudes towards the
environment and humanity.
Larry McMurtry, a prominent author of Western fiction has taken an active role to
challenge the traditional myth of the American frontier. The arch of McMurtry’s writing
shows a continued questioning of traditional Western myths with independent and strong
female and Indian protagonists, fallible white men and new plots and perspectives of
frontier life. His 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove put him on the map
of canonical Western writers. While it does include some traditional elements of the
Western, the Lonesome Dove series provides a contemporary readjustment of the
American origin myth as it resituates western heroes and adds complexity to women and
W Indians in the frontier. McMurtry’s recent tetralogy, The Berrybender Narratives,
IE published 2002-2003, continues to reinvent the frontier story, especially since it seems to
serve as a revision of The Leatherstocking Tales. The frontiersman half-breed Sin Killer
V is confronted with encroaching civilization and falls in love with the English beauty
E Tasmin Berrybender. McMurtry challenges the traditional Natty Bumppo plot by making
R Tasmin the powerful protagonist. Tasmin’s character is sexually aware and intelligent yet
P aggressively violent. Her physical and verbal rage intimidates all other characters and
enables her to gain her every whim. While McMurtry seems to incorporate a new spin to
the traditional metanarrative of the West by changing the feminine role, he cannot escape
or exclude violence.
Even though McMurtry provides a revision with strong female and Indian
characters, the Western continues to perpetuate an exaggerated violence in the frontier.
While his gender changes to the traditional Western story may simply be a response to
4
changing societal expectations – the American woman is now a physically powerful and
self-sustaining part of the workforce and intellectual community – McMurtry continues
to fulfill the metanarrative expectation of violence.
The problem with such perpetuation of violence through myth and metanarrative
is its ability to desensitize a vulnerable public. Through Western literature (and film)
Americans understand the origin of the nation to be deeply rooted in violence which may
serve to justify continued national violence. McMurtry makes good strides to provide a
holistic and untold perspective of race and gender in the American frontier; however, his
realistic writing style includes incredibly graphic presentations of violence.
This thesis will examine the myth of the west with a specific interest in
W representations of violence. I will consider McMurtry’s recent inclusion of graphic
IE violence and torture scenes as a response to a social construction and desire for such
violence. I will briefly outline the psychological craving for and social construction of
V such narratives with ecopsychology theories. I will also preview the social creation (and
E re-creation) of myths and the literary responses to a social psyche from a national
R consciousness (and unconscious) that asserts a dangerous national identity because of its
P root in violence. I will be drawing on Theodore Roszak’s Voice of the Earth, Rinda
West’s Out of the Shadow, Carl Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Benedict
Anderson’s Imagined Communities, Ernest Gellner’s Nations and Nationalism, and Homi
Bhabha’s ‘Nation and Narration’, as primary theoretical sources to show the accepted
violence in the metanarrative of the American frontier and the potential negative impact it
may have. The overarching goal of my thesis is to confront Western stories of violence
5
and understand their socio-historical place in order to approach an ecopsychological
renewal and healthier, myth-conscious America.
PREVIEW
6
Chapter One – The Mythmaking of the West:
Manifest Destiny, Authenticity, and Social Constructions of the American Frontier
Myth Creation and the American Origin Story
The frontier myth is significant in American history because it is both shaped by a
social understanding of our past while acting as a shaping force of our future. Richard
Slotkin’s Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America
addresses the impact the myth of the American frontier has had on the development of
America. He begins by explaining that “the myth of the frontier is the triumph of
civilization over savagery” (15). He also points out that “the work of myth-making exists
for the culture it serves, and we therefore speak of it as if it were somehow the property
W or production of the culture as a whole. But the actual work of making and transmitting
IE myths is done by particular classes of persons” (8). White America, the expansionists,
politicians and supporters of Northeastern progressivism, were the myth-makers during
V the era of Western migration. Their myths created an ostensible national support of
E civilization over savagery and enabled further expansion into Western America.
R Slotkin’s work of examining the Frontier myth presents a premise of myth and its
P function that equally applies to the study in this thesis. “Myths are stories drawn from a
society’s history that have acquired through persistent usage the power of symbolizing
that society’s ideology and of dramatizing its moral consciousness” (5). Thus, the myth-
makers set in motion a national ideology and morale. Slotkin further defines the essential
terms “ideology,” “myth,” and “genre”: which will be relevant later in my investigation.
The concepts of ideology, myth, and genre highlight three different but
closely related aspects of the culture-making process. Ideology is the basic
system of concepts, beliefs, and values that defines a society’s history. As
used by anthropologists and social historians the term refers to the
7
dominant conceptual categories that inform the society’s words and
practices, abstracted by analysis as a set of propositions, formulas, or
rules. In any given society certain expressive forms or genres –like the
credo, sermon, or manifesto – provide ways of articulating ideological
concepts directly and explicitly. But most of the time the assumptions of
value inherent in a culture’s ideology are tacitly accepted as ‘givens.’
Their meaning is expressed in the symbolic narrative of mythology and is
transmitted to the society through various genres of mythic expression. (5)
The stories and myths of the American frontier, as expressed in the Western genre of
literature, are a means through which American values are expressed and taught. The
fight of good vs. evil, savagery vs. civilization, acceptance of change, respect for elders,
ingenuity and bravery have all found a home in the Western novel. Yet, the mythic
aspects of a Western story seem to be descriptions of open spaces or wilderness lands and
W the people who struggle to survive in them without established civilization. The human
IE spirit for good deeds and perseverance is attractively epitomized in many Western fiction
stories; the wide audience for such stories is likely due to the non-existence of frontier
V areas. The essayist Frank Norris summarizes his sadness of a degenerated American West
E in his 1986 essay “The Frontier Gone at Last”:
Lament it though we may, the frontier is gone, an idiosyncrasy that has
R been with us for thousands of years, the one peculiar picturesqueness of
our life is no more. We may keep alive for many years yet the idea of a
P Wild West, but the hired cowboys and paid rough riders of Mr. William
Cody are more like the ‘real thing’ than can be found today in Arizona,
New Mexico or Idaho. The frontier has become conscious of itself, acts
the part for the Eastern visitor; and this self-consciousness is a sign, surer
than all others, of the decadence of a type, the passing of an epoch.2
The nation’s understanding of the West exists as a frontier myth, as a creation by a
specific class of privileged white America. Norris’s allusion to the frontier’s
consciousness is not far from fact. Ideas about the American west and unconquered lands
seem to generate strength and significance only when considered in the broader context
8
of their current non-existence; perceptions and ideas of the Frontier, in this sense, do have
a self-consciousness that propels the existence of their metanarrative.
A Definition of Frontier: Turner’s Thesis and an Imagined Frontier
In 1893, historian Fredrick Jackson Turner presented his thesis, “The Significance
of the Frontier in American History,” at the Chicago World’s Fair. According to Turner,
“American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the great
west. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of
American settlement westward explain American development” (par. 1). While Turner’s
thesis acknowledges continuing American development of “free” land, he quotes the
W 1890 Superintendent of the Census to show the nation’s official stance toward a
IE disappeared frontier.
Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at
V present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of
settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line...it cannot,
therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports.
E Turner further points out that the frontier, as it was pre-1890s, was considered a “line
PR between settled and Indian lands” and explains that a Census consideration of a fully
settled America leaves no room for “free” and wild lands or people. He also points out
that the process of becoming a fully civilized America leaves little room for original
landscapes and people to maintain in unchanged state.
The peculiarity of American institutions is the fact that they have been
compelled to adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding people, the
changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a wilderness, and in
developing at each area of this progress out of the primitive economic and
political conditions of the frontier into the complexity of city life. (par. 2)
9