Blood Meridian Analysis
“The Virginian” and “Blood Meridian” are novels about the Wild West and both aimed at deglamourising the frontier. For example, gunfights are very often depicted in Western films, but in fact “less than one third of victims died in exchanges of gunfire ”. The authors show that there is much more behind the idealised picture of cowboys, that it was a dark time when various means to achieve goals were used. Starting with the ideology of that time, when the Manifest Destiny was popular: the Americans were God’s chosen people and their destiny was “to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man - the immutable truth and beneficence of God ”. That is why other nations such as Mexicans or Indians were considered as something that does …show more content…
McCarthy gives negative answer, and the scene with Elrod and the man proves it. One can see here the analogy between the man when he was a kid and Elrod: he is without parents and travels with the gang of youngsters that remind of Glanton’s gang. The man tries to restrain the young boy, but he does not want to listen, and the man has to kill him in self defence, although he does not want to do it. Another angle would be to compare the conversation of Elrod and the man with the kid and the judge relationship but the other way round. The judge was trying to influence the kid and to breed the idea of eternal violence, and the scene with Elrod shows that he did not succeed completely, since the man is trying to avoid violence in first stance, but rather to calm him down. Unfortunately, it does not work out, and it seems that there is vicious circle, and to stop violence one need to posses this quality himself. A plotline that appears here again is the judge’s “sins of the fathers” story about the shopkeeper and the traveller. Dead father or the father who is not interested in his child harms in the same way as the father with evil intentions does: the man and Elrod are close to the traveller’s son and they try to live up the masculinity idea, but they will never reach the
Summary Of Cold Dish By Craig Johnson
1593 Words | 7 PagesThese cowboys would be the ones that would get rich and would have the business out west for a long time. They were the ones that you would want to be like if you were going to the west to be successful. For the women out near Durant, Wyoming, it was to protect a little girl from something she was sure to experience after getting raped. The woman had gone through a similar situation when she was younger and she didn’t want the young girl to go through it to. She was, however, murdering the boys who did the raping
Frederic Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis In Columbian Exposition
57 Words | 1 PagesIn 1893 Frederic Jackson Turner a historian, introduces the “Frontier Thesis” in Columbian Exposition, he explains from this thesis about the importance of American history. Frontier thesis remarks the end of a great historic society. Because Frederic Jackson argues that continuous western settlement had an extraordinary impact on American social, political and economic development throughout 20th
Summary Of Violence Over The Land By Rand Blackhawk
940 Words | 4 PagesNed Blackhawk, Violence over the Land does a great job at depicting how the Early american west was created and all of the violence that the native people endured over many years. For as long as I can remember the American west was all about shooting and gun fights due to how most people in history portray it. However Ned Blackhawk does a great job bringing many hard aspects of the Early American West to light. Blackhawk brings a unique perspective to light discussing how many different empires from the Spanish to American’s bringing hardships, death and diseases to the Indian groups living on the land hinting at the title “Violence over the Land”. He discussed how over time the native population has had a very pauperized life.
The Comanche Empire Summary
966 Words | 4 PagesIdentifying the common comparisons in the reviews allows the reader to analyze the structure and arguments in the monograph. A strength that three of the reviews recognize is the depth of research that Hamalainen provides on the Comanche. Recognizing the text’s detailed research, Flores states that its precise history makes it the leading text on the Comanche. Minor writes that Hamalainen’s thesis allows detailed research into the three eras of the Comanche. The rise, peak, and fall of the Comanche, Minor claims allow the readers with a comprehensive understanding of the expanse of the Comanche’s power in the southwest.
Stereotypes In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men
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Mary Rowlandson Captivity Summary
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The Day The Cowboys Quit Analysis
1186 Words | 5 PagesThe novel, The Day the Cowboys Quit, by Elmer Kelton is not a typical cowboy story filled with waving guns and violent fights. Instead, this story shows what the real life of a cowboy would have been like through the story of Hugh Hitchcock. The Day the Cowboys Quit is based on a cowboy strike that occurred in Tascosa, Texas in 1883. Kelton based his fictional story on the causes of the strike and what became as a result of the strike. This paper will explain historical events concerning the cowboys and depict their true lifestyle which contrasts the stereotypes normally associated with being a cowboy, as well as summarize the novel The Day the Cowboys Quit.
Cause And Effect Of Manifest Destiny
2016 Words | 9 Pages“Once we became an independent people it was as much a law of nature that this [control of all of North America] should become our pretension as that the Mississippi should flow to the sea” –John Quincy Adams (Henretta, p. 384). In the 1840s, Americans had a belief that God destined for them to expand their territory all the way westward to the Pacific Ocean. This idea was called Manifest Destiny. In the nineteenth century, Americans were recognized for coming together and building up one another for one cause: westward expansion.
Racism In Sherman Alexie's Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight In Heaven?
750 Words | 3 PagesOnce European men stepped foot onto what is now known as North America, the lives of the Native Americans were forever changed. The Indians suffered centuries of torment and ridicule from the settlers in America. Despite the reservations made for the Natives, there are still cultural issues occurring within America. In Sherman Alexie’s, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, the tragic lives of Native Americans in modern society are depicted in a collection of short stories taking place in the Spokane Reservation in Washington state. Throughout the collection, a prominent and reoccurring melancholic theme of racism against Native Americans and their struggle to cope with such behavior from their counterpart in this modern day and age is shown.
Henry Nash Smith Myth And Symbol School Analysis
1050 Words | 5 PagesBy opening Virgin Land with de Crévecouer’s question, “What is an American?,” (3) Smith demonstrated that the primary ambition was to answer that very question. Smith uses the frontier myth as his starting point because the most persistent “generalizations concerning American life and character has been shaped by the pull of a continent drawing population westward.” (Virgin Land 3) Where Turner had argued that the frontier had shaped the American identity, Smith shifted the attention “away from what ‘actually happened’ in time past to what people though was happening.” (Marks, 71) Focusing instead on the mythic and symbolic aspects of the West, Smith demonstrated that the image of the West was considered to be a reflection of American nationality, identity, and culture. The American identity was, according to Smith, not the result of the actual experience of living on the frontier as Turner had argued but the result of the utopian ideas used to describe the West and the myths that followed in its
The Trans-Mississippi West
784 Words | 4 PagesDuring the “Gilded Age” period of American history, development of the Trans-Mississippi west was crucial to fulfilling the American dream of manifest destiny and creating an identity which was distinctly American. Since the west is often associated with rugged pioneers and frontiersmen, there is an overarching idea of hardy American individualism. However, although these settlers were brave and helped to make America into what it is today, they heavily relied on federal support. It would not have been possible for white Americans to settle the Trans-Mississippi west without the US government removing Native Americans from their lands and placing them on reservations, offering land grants and incentives for people to move out west, and the
Bad Indians By Deborah Miranda Summary
1007 Words | 5 PagesThroughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.
Frontier Myth In American Culture
1594 Words | 7 PagesPerhaps the most significant myth in American culture is that of the American frontier generated by the European encounters with the American West. The most noticeable part of the frontier myth is the mythic struggle between modern civilization and wilderness. Frontier is defined as “the meeting point between savagery and civilization”. Turner believes that the American frontier is closely related to American civilization and that frontier
Analysis Of Columbus The Indians And Human Progress
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John Galtung's Theory Of Conflict Analysis
1038 Words | 5 PagesThe violent conflict approach is defined through coercion, threats, and destructive assaults. Galtung’s, model suggests that each of these components influence one another, and while each
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