Echoes In The City Of The Angels Analysis

According to Merriam Webster’s dictionary, frontier as an adjective means “a new field for exploitative or developmental activity”. In Helen Hunt Jackson’s “Echoes in the City of the Angels”, Stewart Edward White’s “The Rules of the Game”, Upton Sinclair’s “Oil!”, and Louis Adamic’s “Laughing in the Jungle” Los Angeles is described as a frontier town. Los Angeles, long ago, used to be the Wild West. This is the basis of reasoning behind labeling Los Angeles as a frontier town. Jackson, White, Adamic, and Sinclair all establish Los Angeles as a frontier town after depicting its plethora of Wild West imagery, its developmental activity, and its exploitative activity.

The Wild West is also referred to as the American frontier due to the numerous

frontier towns occupying the Wild West. Los Angeles is one of the frontier towns in the American frontier. In Helent Hunt Jackson’s “Echoes in the City of the Angels,” Los Angeles is illustrated as frontier town due to its Wild West imagery.

The setting of the essay is Los Angeles in the 1800’s during the Wild West era, and the protagonist of the story is the brave Don Antonio. One example of LA’s Wild West portrayal is that LA has “soft, rolling, treeless hills and valleys, between which the Los Angeles River now takes its shilly-shallying course seaward, were forest slopes and meadows, with lakes great and small. This abundance of trees, with shining waters playing among them, added to the limitless bloom of the plains and the splendor of the snow-topped mountains, must have made the whole region indeed a paradise” (Jackson 2). In the 1800’s, LA is not the same developed city as today. LA is an undeveloped land with impressive scenery that provides Wild West imagery. One characteristic of the Wild West is the sheer commotion and imagery of this is provided on “the first breaking out of hostilities between California and the United States, Don Antonio took command of a company of Los Angeles volunteers to repel the intruders” (15). This sheer commotion is one of methods of Wild West imagery Jackson

uses to display LA as a frontier town. Another characteristic of the Wild West is the lawlessness associated with it. Jackson uses this characteristic to delineate LA as a frontier town using Wild West imagery when an Indian “proceeded to tell [Don Antonio] that the Americans had offered a reward for his head, and that some of the Indians in the Rancheria were ready to betray or kill him” (16). Jackson displays the lawlessness in the Wild West with this imagery of clash between Don Antonio and the United States. The bounty for Don Antonio’s head represents the vivid lawlessness that the Wild West imagery provides for which Jackson uses to depict LA as a frontier town.
Another component of establishing a frontier town is the developmental activity associated with the town. The frontier town of LA has a plethora of developmental activity. In Stewart Edward White’s “The Rules of the Game,” Los Angeles is painted as a frontier town due to its abundance of developmental activity. This essay explains life in Los Angeles in the early 1900’s. One example that shows the portrayal of Los Angeles as a frontier is when Baker tells Bob “Most of these fellows are just bunks or optimists. All hands are surprised when things turn out right. But if all the lots are ever sold, Los Angeles will have a population of five million” (White 28). Los Angeles is not developed yet, and it’s a frontier town because it’s in its developmental stages. There is a lot of hope for Los Angeles to succeed if the lots can be sold, causing population to increase dramatically. Los Angeles continues to have developmental activity because “for all its big buildings and its electric lights, and trolleys, and police and size, it’s nothing more nor less than a frontier town” (39). This is clear proof that Los Angeles is delineated as a frontier town. Similar to White’s portrayal of developmental activity to establish LA as a frontier town, Louis Adamic’s “Laughing in the Jungle” depicts LA as a frontier town because “one sees huge electric signs—‘2,000,000 population by 1930’” (Adamic 51). These electric signs symbolize hope for the developmental activity associated with a frontier town. Compared to the 21st century LA, LA is in its developmental stages and it is portrayed as a frontier town.
In Stewart Edward White’s “The Rules of the Game,” Los Angeles is delineated as a frontier town due to its vast array of exploitative activity.

One example to depict Los Angeles as a frontier town is how “Other sidewalk booths, like those ordinarily used as dispensaries of hot doughnuts and coffee, offered wild-cat mining shares, oil stock and real estate in some highly speculative suburb” (29). This shows the developmental activity in Los Angeles due to the real estate, the oil stock, and the wild-cat mining shares. Many people come to Los Angeles hoping to become rich and strike gold. Los Angeles is a frontier town that has a plethora of oil. In Adamic’s “Laughing in the Jungle,” he characterizes some of LA’s citizens as seeing “a tremendous opportunity to enrich themselves beyond anything they could have hoped for ten or even five years ago, and they mean to make the most of it” (52). This characterization of LA’s citizens is another way of Adamic depicting LA as a frontier town due to the exploitative activity that he describes. Another example of how Adamic portrays LA as a frontier town is because “Los Angeles is America. A jungle. Los Angeles grew up, suddenly, planlessly, under the stimuli of the adventurous spirit of millions of people and the profit motive” (54). Adamic clearly depicts the exploitative activity associated with LA as a frontier town. Another author who illustrates the exploitative activity to establish LA as a frontier town is Upton Sinclair. In

Upton Sinclair’s “Oil!,” LA is described as having an ocean of oil to exploit. Sinclair highlights the exploitative activity of Bunny and his father. During the oil boom, in LA scattered “here and there over the hill were derricks, and the drilling crews were racing to be the first to tap the precious treasure” (Sinclair 72). Drilling crews are racing to exploit as much oil as LA has to offer. This exploitative activity is one of the key components for Sinclair to use to establish LA as a frontier town. The frontier town of LA is filled with exploitative activity because people are hoping to earn wealth like Bunny and his father who are “in possession of an income of something over twenty thousand dollars every twenty-four hours” (77) because of their oil well.
Therefore, Los Angeles is established as a frontier town due to the depictions of its plethora of Wild West imagery, its developmental activity, and its exploitative activity. LA is settled in the American frontier, which is the Wild West. The imagery of the Wild West is used to depict LA as a frontier town. LA is also abundantly filled with developmental and exploitive activity. The exploitative and developmental activities are paramount in establishing LA as a frontier town. In the end, Jackson, White, Adamic, and Sinclair’s depictions of LA as a frontier town allow readers to appreciate the roots that established the wonderful Los Angeles of the 21st century.