The Virginian American Shadow

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Nevertheless, the shadow cast by the Western hero upon American culture has been significant. And if the mountains of the American West loom as large as Fiedler and others have observed in Hemingway's fictional world, they seem to have cast a technical as well as thematic shadow. In The Virginian, Wister used the mountains as a sundial of sorts, returning to them in his fictional descriptions as a way of heightening pre-showdown tension. As the shadow creeps closer to town, where the Virginian and Trampas must "slap leather" on Main Street, the reader experiences what it must feel like for the participants, sensing the magnitude of the moment drawing closer. Perhaps not so coincidentally, repetition of select descriptive elements is a technique

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