The Cowboy Figure
The figure of the cowboy is prominent, not only in America’s history, but also in contemporary society. The cowboy has always been regarded as the epitome of freedom, machismo and individuality, and his character maintains a certain romantic quality about it. Riding the range with his trusty horse, forging the frontier, and exposing himself to the mercy of the wilderness, the cowboy lives for himself alone and yet he lives the life about which the rest of society can only fantasize. The cowboy, fearless hero of the West, has become a cultural icon. One literary critic, Sara Spurgeon, sums up the cowboy fantasy by saying that:
the figure of the cowboy personifies America’s most cherished myths--combining ideas of American exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, rugged individualism, frontier democracy, and communion with and conquest of the natural world…The icon of the sacred cowboy is one of our potent national fantasies, viable in everything from blue jeans to car commercials to popular films. (79)
The question that remains, then, is why the cowboy figure is so appealing. How has he survived in the age of industrialization and technology? Perhaps the cowboy represents what is pure and untamed, and is a model on which to base a longing for a purer time in history and a more authentic, animalistic, and natural existence in the world.
As Spurgeon points out, the cowboy figure is most often associated with freedom, self-reliance, and individualism. These virtues are the main components of the American dream; they are the things that every American supposedly aspires toward. The space of the cowboy is not defined by borders or fences, but in fact it is defined by the absence of them; he is lord of...
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...nt day. The public seems quite content to ignore the historical facts and focus on the fantasy, using the cowboy as a romantic foundation on which to project their longings and innermost desires.
Bibliography and Works Cited
Jarrett, Robert L. Cormac McCarthy. New York: Twayne, 1997.
Lambert, Neal E. “Freedom and the American Cowboy.” Brigham Young University Studies 8 (1967): 61-71.
McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian. New York: Vintage International, 1992.
Pearson, Demetrius W., & C. Allen Haney. “The Rodeo Cowboy as an American Icon: The Perceived Social and Cultural Significance.” Journal of American Culture. Bowling Green: Winter 22, 4 (1999): 17-21.
Spurgeon, Sara L. “‘Pledged in Blood’: Truth and Redemption in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses.” Cormac McCarthy. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2002. 79-94.
In “The Thematic Paradigm,” University of Florida professor of film studies, Robert Ray, defines two types of heroes pervading American films, the outlaw hero and the official hero. Often the two types are merged in a reconciliatory pattern, he argues. In fact, this
While the French and the American revolutions share some similarities, they differ in most areas involving the revolution. Enlightenment ideas would help shape politics, economics, and religion in the revolutionary nations. Although both found the importance of individual rights, they took different paths in establishing and operating their respective governments. The economic standpoints of the French would be in contrary with the American economics which roughly associate with enlightenment thinkers such as Adam Smith. Religion would closely be associated with principles in the United States while the French sought to secularize their nation.
"Relocating the Cowboy: American Privilege in "All the Pretty Horses"" Pepperdine University: Global Tides Seaver Journal of Arts and Sciences. Maia Y. Rodriguez, 2014. Web. 2 May 2016. . The Western typically illustrates the journey of a man, usually a horse riding cowboy, into the Western frontier where he must conquer nature "in the name of civilization or [confiscate] the territorial rights of the original inhabitants... Native Americans" (Newman 150). What this brand of mythology promotes is precisely the values of American culture: rugged individualism, achievement and success, activtity and work, democracy and enterprise, and--most importantly--
Because of the outlaw hero’s definitive elements, society more so identifies with this myth. Ray said, “…the scarcity of mature heroes in American...
According to the thesis of Fredrick Jackson Turner, the frontier changed America. Americans, from the earliest settlement, were always on the frontier, for they were always expanding to the west. It was Manifest Destiny; spreading American culture westward was so apparent and so powerful that it couldn’t be stopped. Turner’s Frontier Theory says that this continuous exposure to the frontier has shaped the American character. The frontier made the American settlers revert back to the primitive, stripping them from their European culture. They then created something brand new; it’s what we know today as the American character. Turner argues that we, as a culture, are a product of the frontier. The uniquely American personality includes such traits as individualism, futuristic, democratic, aggressiveness, inquisitiveness, materialistic, expedite, pragmatic, and optimistic. And perhaps what exemplifies this American personality the most is the story of the Donner Party.
In the introduction, Hämäläinen introduces how Plains Indians horse culture is so often romanticized in the image of the “mounted warrior,” and how this romanticized image is frequently juxtaposed with the hardships of disease, death, and destruction brought on by the Europeans. It is also mentioned that many historians depict Plains Indians equestrianism as a typical success story, usually because such a depiction is an appealing story to use in textbooks. However, Plains Indians equestrianism is far from a basic story of success. Plains equestrianism was a double-edged sword: it both helped tribes complete their quotidian tasks more efficiently, but also gave rise to social issues, weakened the customary political system, created problems between other tribes, and was detrimental to the environment.
In All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy reveals the limitations of a romantic ideology in the real world. Through his protagonist, John Grady Cole, the author offers three main examples of a man’s attempt to live a romantic life in the face of hostile reality: a failed relationship with an unattainable woman; a romantic and outdated relationship with nature; and an idealistic decision to live as an old-fashioned cowboy in an increasingly modern world. In his compassionate description of John Grady, McCarthy seems to endorse these romantic ideals. At the same time, the author makes clear the harsh reality and disappointments of John Grady’s chosen way of life.
Few events in history have impacted a culture as much as the introduction of the horse into plains Indian culture. The positive impact of the horse on North America's indigenous people has been romanticized forever in popular culture. The portrait of plains Indian horse created by the likes of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood is far from complete. While the horse did make nearly every aspect of Native American life more efficient, the spread of horses also contributed to the violence in the southwestern region of the United States in three ways. The trade of horses among the plains Indians created competition for resources, encouraged and contributed to raiding, and allowed the domination of the region by the Apache Indians.
...to Americans: if their prospects in the East were poor, then they could perhaps start over in the West as a farmer, rancher, or even miner. The frontier was also romanticized not only for its various opportunities but also for its greatly diverse landscape, seen in the work of different art schools, like the “Rocky Mountain School” and Hudson River School, and the literature of the Transcendentalists or those celebrating the cowboy. However, for all of this economic possibility and artistic growth, there was political turmoil that arose with the question of slavery in the West as seen with the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska Act. As Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in his paper “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” to the American Historical Association, “the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”
When looking at the vast lands of Texas after the Civil War, many different people came to the lands in search for new opportunities and new wealth. Many were lured by the large area that Texas occupied for they wanted to become ranchers and cattle herders, of which there was great need for due to the large population of cows and horses. In this essay there are three different people with three different goals in the adventures on the frontier lands of Texas in its earliest days. Here we have a woman's story as she travels from Austin to Fort Davis as we see the first impressions of West Texas. Secondly, there is a very young African American who is trying his hand at being a horse rancher, which he learned from his father. Lastly we have a Mexican cowboy who tries to fight his way at being a ranch hand of a large ranching outfit.
The cowboy hero, The Virginian, as portrayed in Owen Wister’s novel was the first of his kind and today is known as the stereotypical mythic cowboy figure which our view of the western frontier are based from. The Virginian was the first full length western novel apart from the short dime novels which marked the final stage in the evolution of the cowboy hero to a national icon. The Virginian was published in 1902 and at that time was wildly popular because of the settlement of the west. The story of the cowboy who had the skill and courage to take control of the untamed frontier enthralled people. The cowboy hero had a few distinguished qualities, he was a self-appointed vigilante, he had a very strict moral code, he had exceptional perception skills and he had the ability to adapt. Owen Wister’s The Virginian was the first to portray these qualities and really created a deeper cowboy character.
...pective of this the slaves did the best they could to maintain stability (Wiley and cliff notes, 2011).
Slotkin, R. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier 1600-1860. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973.
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.
The cowboys of the frontier have long captured the imagination of the American public. Americans, faced with the reality of an increasingly industrialized society, love the image of a man living out in the wilderness fending for himself against the dangers of the unknown. By the end of the 19th century there were few renegade Indians left in the country and the vast expanse of open land to the west of the Mississippi was rapidly filling with settlers.