Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Winter 2011
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 31:1 (Winter 2011).
Abstract
Megan Riley McGilchrist sees the Vietnam War and the cultural upheaval it represents as a watershed event in understanding how the western novel treats the theme of landscape. She constructs her analysis through the writings of Wallace Stegner and the western novels of Cormac McCarthy, the former retaining a belief in the innate goodness of the land and the latter rejecting the benevolence of the natural world. McGilchrist argues that, as the fulfillment of the frontier ethos, the Vietnam War-absent in Stegner but present in McCarthy-changed life in the mythimbued West. For McGilchrist, elements of the mythic West, both abhorrent and appealing, include boundless land, strong men, passive women, colonization of Indigenous peoples, hope, and grandeur.
Comments
Copyright © 2011 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.