Two Views of The American West

J I M L . F I F E University of Utah Two Views of Tke American West The American frontier, from the time that word meant the upper Ohio valley until the frontier was pronounced closed by Pro­ fessor Turner in 1893, has continually held a particular fascination for Americans. It has, indeed, probably provided the primary sub­ ject matter for the entertainment of Americans for nearly 150 years. The fact that what has been called the West has moved from the Eastern forest land across the Mississippi, over the prairies, and into the mountains and desert, suggests that the word "West” does not describe a geographical entity so much as it names an idea. The idea has always resisted attempts to identify it precisely, but it is clear that it has something to do with the romantic ideal of Amer­ ica’s destiny which was so widespread in the nineteenth century and which, in fact, is by no means dead in the twentieth. What the West provided was a focal point for the romantic as­ pirations of America — and of American literature — particularly after about 1820. It was, of course, already evident in Franklin’s time that American expansion westward was inevitable, but the imaginative literature produced in the decades after the Revolu­ tionary War tended to look eastward across the Atlantic in a chauj vinistic or defiant posture toward England, rather than westward toward America’s future. If we do not count the novels of Charles Brockden Brown, one of which had its setting in that portion of Pennsylvania where the volcanoes were most active, it is fair to say that Emerson and Cooper were the first to see the American West in what we might call a modem light. Emerson said that the future of America lies in the “This paper was read at the Rocky Mountain Modem Language Association meeting at Phoenix, Arizona in October, 1964. Two Views of The American West 35 West; and Cooper found in the West the material for his most last­ ing literary work. It is interesting to see that in Emerson and Cooper, in fact, there are already suggested two attitudes about the West which are related, but mutually contradictory —a contradic­ tion which persisted throughout the nineteenth century, and one which bears on both views of the American West to be discussed. These ideas are Emerson s positive and enthusiastic affirmation of the future and the destiny of Western America on the one hand, and Cooper’s somewhat pessimistic suggestion that the main advan­ tage enjoyed by the frontier was that it was as yet unspoiled and un­ contaminated by the civilizing forces emanating from the East. Both of these ideas are, of course, thoroughly romantic; but the one — the one which Emerson suggested and which Whitman pro­ claimed— is primarily an affirmation of future triumph, whereas Cooper’s use of the West as a temporary refuge for the isolated indi­ vidualist suggests that there will someday be no refuge left. As the frontier filled up, it was, of course, Cooper’s idea which became more frequently expressed, particularly by those who had personally experienced life in the West, and who, after about 1910, came to look back at the West with increasing nostalgia or dismay. It is not unreasonable to assume that ijt is this fact —this sense of a loss of individuality and freedom, which accounts for the astonishing force today of the Western myth in popular fiction (including movies and television). The continuing power of this myth stems from the reluctance of Americans to give up this particular romantic idea. I emphasize this point for two reasons: One is that in recent years there has been published in the journals a considerable amount of solemn claptrap purporting to explain the persistence of the Western myth either in terms of an unconscious Puritanism among Americans or in terms of a sophomoric and jargonish Freudianism by means of which Matt Dillon becomes a father surrogate and the colt-45 be­ comes a phallus (or else the other way around). The second reason is much more important, and it needs emphasis particularly because it is apparently so difficult for...