Reading+the+Myth+of+the+West

Title:  Reading the Myth of the West Author(s):   [|Helen Lojek] Publication Details:    South Dakota   Review. (Spring 1990):  p46-61. Source:  [|//Literature Resource Center.//] Gale, Cengage Learning, p46-61. Document Type:  Critical essay Bookmark:  [|Bookmark this Document] Full Text :  COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning [In the following essay, Lojek discusses Medoff's //The Majestic Kid// Frank South's //Rattlesnake in a Cooler//.] Frank South's 1981 //Rattlesnake in a Cooler// and Mark Medoff's 1984 // The Majestic Kid // are that rarity on the contemporary American  stage, plays which deal with the “  myth  ” and the “reality” of the  American   West. The works face directly what have become central problems for many western writers: what to make of the myth  and its relation to reality, and whether literature and life demand choosing one over the other. South's play rejects myth  so determinedly that his  myth  -accepting protagonist seems doomed from the start. Medoff's play works out a more complex response which, without fully affirming the myth , allows his protagonist to look to it for guidelines and make a healthy transition to a new age. In large part, the very different fates of these protagonists are a product of the very different ways in which they, and their creators, “read” popular western myth. Not //what// the myth  is, but the //function// assigned to  myth  determines the ultimate shape of the reconciliation of  myth  and reality in these plays. Realistic suspicions that snowmobiles and hydroelectric dams and the tourist trade have more to do with life in the West  than do Lone Rangers and Cisco Kids have long been forced to yield before the simplistic popular culture image of the  West  as a country of cattle drives and gleaming six shooters and unstainable white hats—an image which retains as apparently unshakable a grip on the  American  imagination as does that which links the South with Miss Scarlet and Ashley. There are, of course, other (often related) mythic Wests: the frontier which was Deerslayer's dominion; the vast plains where a homesteader could pit himself against nature to carve out a Little House on the Prairie; the mountains where luck and determination could yield the fabulous Treasure of the Sierra Madre. But the cowboy legend, as Robert Athearn has pointed out, “is the most enduring of western folklore.” Mention the West  and you are most likely to conjure up for listeners images of cowboys in chaps who tip outsized hats to women and use lightning draws and deadeye marksmanship in the service of justice. Athearn, borrowing a term Joseph Hergesheimer first used in //The Saturday Evening Post// in 1922, calls this “the perpetual west  ,” where “nothing would ever change” and “Americans could place their hopes for the future.” As Archibald MacLeish put it, the  West  is a country of the mind and therefore eternal. As Athearn's and MacLeish's terminology suggests, of course, both past and present western realities are absorbed by this myth  of the perpetual  West. That perpetual West  —nurtured by generations of dime novels, silver screen images, country western ballads, and television series—often persists most vigorously in the imaginations of Easterners who have never crossed the Mississippi River, much less the one hundredth meridian, and may therefore retain a notion that the  West  remains another chance, an escape hatch from the problems besetting the over-populated urban East, a frontier of opportunity unclosed despite Turner's best efforts.

Both of these plays deal with such Easterners. The protagonists—South's from Kentucky ; Medoff's from Chicago by way of New York —are professionals who have, as children, absorbed images of the West  from the songs and movies of popular culture. And it is the myth  of the perpetual  West  to which they adhere: neither protagonist pauses to reflect that a  myth  based on a brief nineteenth century phenomenon is unlikely to match the twentieth century reality. Instead, both move West  hoping to find the mythic world of country western music and cowboy films. Neither, of course, finds that world, and therein lie both tales. South and Medoff begin their plays by emphasizing the vehicles of popular culture through which their characters have absorbed the myth. At the start of //Rattlesnake//, audience and protagonist listen to five country western songs, lasting almost ten minutes. And Medoff suggests that as the audience enters // The Majestic Kid // “an old cowboy movie should be showing.” Audiences for both plays, then, begin by reacting directly to the powerful, simple images of popular culture myth. And so, in a sense, the audiences begin where the protagonists begin—with their minds set by images gleaned from popular culture. The ends of the plays remind us of these pop culture influences by returning to the opening references. South ends with one final country western song; Medoff parodies the stock conclusion of western films in which the hero rides off into the sunset. South's Rattlesnake is a one character play, but the unnamed protagonist, who is waiting to be hanged for murdering a patrolman, replays scenes from his past, so we hear the words of others, even if we do not see them on stage. As a pre-schooler in Lexi ngton, Kentucky , “while Mom baked oatmeal bread and Daddy finished Dentistry school,” he absorbs a steady diet of country western music, which he and his mother use as an escape from life in a Kentucky apartment. One day the radio announcer makes an offer: if you'd like to hear those heifers on the open range, if you'd like to see that sunset over those mountains, or feel those reins in your hands, you either go out west , or buy this album. “ Tex Ritter, Singin' For You.”

His mother buys the album. And gradually an image of the Great Southwest, where he “was due,” develops in his mind. There's something stark and solid about the west. It's [sic] cleanliness. There's something washed out, removed. There is something in day to day living elsewhere that doesn't exist in Colorado, Utah , or New Mexico. Whatever it is that's missing, it's [sic] absence makes things better for me. What is missing in this mythic West  is, pretty clearly, family, responsibility, order, regularity—but it takes him a while to realize this. First he grows up (after a fashion), goes to medical school, and begins Family Practice. One day in the supermarket a woman accidentally hits him while reaching for a copy of //Family Circle//, and he ends by marrying her. They settle in Boonsborough, its very name an echo of the western tradition for which he yearns, and it is not long before he is oppressed by the family circle he has begun to create: his wife criticizes his fondness for “sentimental ballads,” and he suddenly balks at having children and begins to neglect his family practice. The circle is too confining. my road was all planned out and smoothed for me, had been for as long as I could remember, all I had to do was keep walking, stay married, have kids, get wealthy, start to twitch, and get palsy as the walls closed in. Instead, he opts to leave his wife and practice and light out for the territory, the West , where less is more. The doctor aspires to become the familiar figure of the free, rootless Westerner, wandering unfettered by women. His attraction to the mythic West  is part of a general tendency described by Ray Billington. In the “ West  that they created in their imagination ... each individual could carve out his own destiny.... All who glorified the pioneering past shared ... an urge to escape the pressures of modern society.” The country western songs with which the play begins suggest that the principal modern incarnations of the unfettered Westerner the doctor admires are truckers and rodeo cowboys. The doctor, who gives no hint he has ever been within smelling distance of a horse, aims to be a rodeo cowboy. Sure enough, he finds work on a ranch in Greeley, Colorado , the first place he gets off the bus. True, it's a dude ranch. True, his job is not to ride and wrangle, but to glue tips back on pool cues and clean the pool. Equally true, he is pleased with his appearance—with how “authentic” he looks in his faded torn up jeans, beat-up boots, and cowboy hat. From this point on, it is as though the doctor has been reading Richard Slotkin's //Regeneration Through Violence//. Wishing to begin anew, to get off the “greased track” he has been on since the womb, to re-form his life, he (apparently unconsciously) links regeneration with violence so tightly that he cannot separate the two. Sent out to shoot skunks in the dump, he imagines the skunk who appears at the burrow hole as a “poor provider” who has been thrust out from his “home” by others willing to sacrifice him for the greater good. Frenziedly, the doctor blasts away, and then turns his gun on “a flock of magpies all heading for church.” Having exterminated these reminders of Kentucky family life, he offers to spare the “witnesses”—three rabbits—if they run. They do not run, so he kills them too and concludes this parody of a western movie with a rousing “Ride'm cowboy.” At the suggestion of Jim, the wrangler and rodeo cowboy who has gotten him his job, the doctor leaves Greeley and heads with Jim to Cheyenne, for Frontier Days. Westerners from Buffalo Bill Cody to the current residents of Jackson Hole have worked hard to exploit the myth  of the  West , marketing versions of it to Eastern tourists and to themselves. Frontier Days is a classic example of that tendency to “wild up” the contemporary West , and the doctor loves it. It is another example of the extent to which the myth , based on the past, can subsume present realities. As one of the play's opening songs puts it,  A hundred years ago he was a hero Born when he was needed by someone His way of life had reason and a meanin' And the world had a place for restless men Unlike the song writer, however, the doctor fails to realize that the world has changed. Loner heroes no longer have a clear “place,” and Frontier Days celebrations are not reality but play. The doctor admires Jim for the barely submerged violence in his nature. Jim pounds the steering wheel as he drives, rescues the doctor from a bar fight, and pitches a sugar jar through a restaurant window when the eggs don't suit him. It is the last episode which leads to real trouble. When a New Mexico highway patrolman tries to arrest Jim for the sugar jar episode, the doctor “rescues” his pal by hitting the patrolman on the head with a tire iron and killing him. For the doctor, the myth  is attractive not only because it allows escape from conventional Kentucky life, but also because it converts complex realities into simple patterns of right and wrong, patterns which reveal an appropriate course of action. Western myth  dictates absolute loyalty to his partner, and so he “defends” Jim by killing the patrolman. Jim, however, is not pleased by this demonstration of the doctor's commitment to the primal frontier bonding between partners, recognizing in it an oversimplified view of the world, a view which is essentially childlike, appealing only to a “kid.”

that dead weight back in New Mexico is your first big ol notch in your fucking gun isn't it? Who the fuck are you anyway? Some fucking clerk on vacation? ... you're just a trigger happy kid, no matter how old you say you are. No but you were going to save my life, how were you to know that he was just a cop who was going to bruise me up some screw me for about a hundred dollars and send us on our way? Jim, who lives in the real West  (also sometimes known as the New  West  ), understands that a cowboy's image //is//, in fact, an image and need not entail ultimate, irreversable acts of violence against authority. He knows “there's still no more elbow room than before,” and makes adjustments. But the doctor, fleeing domesticity, seeking manly independence, cannot separate his need for a new life—a regeneration—from violence. Remembering the killing, he observes, At least once I moved under my own steam and felt the pressure of one life pushing against another. I guess I just always wanted to feel definite, unforgiving, and male. Or maybe I just always wanted to be a killer. Realist Jim objects to movies such as //The Misfits//, Arthur Miller's archetypal Easterner's view of the West. That film features Clark Gable's definitive, romantic refusal to work for wages because he is “some kind of last of the cowboys.” Jim regards such sentiments as “shit.” The romanticist doctor, on the other hand, is fond of describing things as “just like in the movies,” and finds Jim's reaction to the tire iron killing bewildering. The pop culture descriptions of cowboy-dom have failed the doctor. He is not sure what Jim regards as appropriate, and he concludes that “They should issue cowboy guide books, like driver's manuals.”

After the murder, Jim and the doctor are picked up by three drunken cowboys who enlist Jim in a kind of league against the doctor. Parodying the traditional western tormenting of the tender-foot, they “jocularly” threaten the Eastern doctor with a rattlesnake curled up on the dashboard, and with another stored in a cooler in the trunk. The doctor, no doubt unconsciously recognizing here an opportunity to demonstrate that the West  has made a Man of him, responds with a second outburst of violence, flinging the cooler in the faces of his tormentors, before they subdue him and turn him in for murder. He accepts his fate with equanimity, never challenging Jim's false report of how the murder happened, pleased that they have left him his hat, the definitive symbol of the figure into which he has tried to make himself. By the end, of course, it is the doctor who is the rattlesnake in the cooler—a coiled, confined creature, perpetually threatening violence and with no further human connections. And he has become that because of the way in which he read the myth  of the  West. Seduced by images of manly independence and rootless lack of confinement, he goes West  to pursue those images. Though the myth  does not match the reality of the  West  he finds, he never adjusts his aim. He has wanted a guidebook to being a cowboy, and he treats the myth  as that guidebook, believing that if he mimics its image of the cowboy he will become the thing itself. His attitude is reminiscent of that of Faulkner's Sutpen, who believes he can become a southern gentleman by following a “recipe.” For the doctor, the myth  is not a  myth  at all, but an alternative to the life he has and despises in Kentucky. Seeking escape from the family circle, he selects the cowboy guidebook provided by Tex Ritter songs and attempts to follow it. Conceiving (or, I am arguing, misconceiving) myth  as a guidebook to an alternative reality, the doctor opens the way to confusing violence with manliness and clothes with the man. He never really notices that reality fails to match the myth , and continues to behave in ways he imagines can be set to a Tex Ritter tune. A healthier notion of the nature and function of myth  might have saved him from the rope he dangles from at the end of this play—as a healthier understanding of  myth  does indeed save Medoff's central character in // The Majestic Kid //. Medoff's play is longer and more complex than South's, the humor is lighter, the conclusion is not bleak but hopeful, the pattern is not ironic but comic. But the central situation is parallel indeed. Aaron Weiss has come to New Mexico with his childhood friend and fellow attorney AJ. Their idealistic efforts to improve the administration of justice in the Bronx have not yielded much success, and they have come West  to help the Apaches re-gain some of their tribal lands. As children AJ and Aaron had played cowboys, and the shaping influence of the myth  of the  West  is apparent. AJ describes their case as a “last stand,” and Aaron acknowledges that I came ... “out west  ,” because I imagined I could still somehow become who I've wanted to be since I was nine years old, could climb out of the Saturday matinee of my childhood and become at twenty-nine who I was then: The Majestic Kid. Who knew it was possible to help people without hurting other people; a hero who bloodlessly snuffed out injustice wherever it lurked; who could commit his very life, against whatever obstacles, to fulfilling precious ideals. And who inevitably, in the end, preserved and returned to its rightful owner the land ... The elements of the western  myth  which inspire Aaron, of course, are considerably more benevolent and less violent than those which inspire the doctor in //Rattlesnake//—are, in fact, often both positive and valuable. But the broad outlines of the cowboy myth  are the same. Aaron too absorbed this myth  from popular culture—from the Laredo Kid, the silver screen cowboy who made nine year old Aaron think of himself as the Majestic Kid. A rootless, womanless hero who sings love songs to his horse, has a draw like quicksilver, and never deserts a “saddle partner,” Laredo comes to New Mexico with Aaron. He is a figure of memory and imagination, but one who actually appears on stage, slightly paunchier than he was once, still singing his outdated cowboy songs, bewildered at the world (and the women) of the 80s, but there nonetheless as guide for Aaron. In New Mexico Aaron too encounters violence, especially in the person of Judge William S. Hart Finlay, whose reactions to Aaron range from a threat to “whip your undies down and tie your ding-dong in a knot,” to physical attack, to threatened death by gunshot. In fact, Aaron must more than once be rescued from the unspeakable judge by Lisa, the “gal” who according to Laredo's code is there to //be// rescued. And Aaron, like South's doctor, finds a world more complicated than the one promised by the pop culture myth. In New Mexico good and evil are very difficult to separate. The judge with the silver screen name is cruel, crooked, exploitative, and violent—but he can also quote Benjamin Franklin and John Dryden, and he genuinely loves Lisa (even if he //is// fond of quoting from property rights law to justify his attempts to control her). The Apaches, whom Aaron believes must be mystically united to their land, want to re-gain it primarily to build a resort hotel on it. They wear polyester, serve Sara Lee cheesecake, and prefer watching Bob Hope and Sammy Davis to doing tribal dances. Aaron's notion of the Code of the West  (“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”) collides directly with the judge's Code of the  West  (“You piss in my trough, I poison your well”)—which Laredo renders as “You wee-wee in my trough, I poison yore well”. Both South and Medoff specifically associate the myth  of the  West  with youth. Jim calls South's doctor a “kid, no matter how old you say you are.” And Aaron refers to himself as an “aging boy.” The difference, of course, lies in who recognizes this link between myth  and youth. Unlike South's doctor, Medoff's lawyer himself recognizes that the myths of his childhood do not match the reality of his adulthood. His initial reaction to the disparity is to drop out of the contest altogether, to quit trying to save the world and go to computer school. It seems clear that the Laredo Kid, who stands baffled in the background, searching vainly for the script which controls the action, will offer no real help. A lovable, comic buffoon, bewildered by this New West , Laredo continues to say //dukey// for //shit, caboose// for //ass//, and //redskins// for //Indians//; the meanings of words like //toxic waste// and //fornicate// elude him completely; and he (like Aaron) thinks //Fanny Hill// is a tale of pioneer adventure. Aaron, however, does not fall into the trap of attempting to force reality to match the silver screen myth. From the start he realizes that Laredo //is// a myth. When Laredo teaches Aaron to fight, for example, what he teaches him is a series of movie “thocks” which involve no actual physical contact and so prevent any serious injury. And Aaron practices his quick draw not with a six shooter but with his forefinger. Further, Aaron has absolutely no desire to duplicate Laredo's rootless wandering. What Aaron wants is precisely that family circle which neither Laredo nor South's doctor could handle—and he wants it with Lisa, a modern woman of the West  who sings “Home on the Range” with new meaning, cooks, ropes, and has a mystical, spiritual sympathy with the land and the people of New Mexico. The one significant variation between the myth  as the doctor absorbs it from Tex Ritter and the  myth  as Aaron absorbs it from Laredo is the attitude toward the land. Laredo loves the land, and the feel for western geography which Aaron has absorbed from him is reinforced by Lisa. In fact, it is reverence for the land which links past and present in Aaron's perpetual West  : “we came  west , hand carrying our remaining faith in the future of the species, to work for the Apaches who were trying to reacquire ancestral lands.” No one in //Rattlesnake// demonstrates such awareness of the land. This spiritual, “almost religious” response to the land is one quality which John R. Milton cites when distinguishing between the western (an inferior, formulaic exploitation of the West  ) and the Western (a higher literary product, capable of dealing with character and “several kinds of reality”) (xiii). The existence of love of the land in Laredo's mythology indicates both the range of elements possible in popular culture images of the West  and Aaron's instinct for adhering to life-affirming rather than to violent elements of the  myth. Aaron's relationship with Lisa provides two other clear examples of the way in which—instead of attempting to shape his life to the myth  —he preserves only those portions of the  myth  which match his own priorities. For decades now, commentators have noted that the myth  of the Old  West , in which “space and isolation become basic themes ... is especially damaging to writing about ordinary women's lives, since community rather than individualism was basic to them”. Blanche Gelfant points out that Just as the West  held the promise of innocence, so also it promised manhood. It defined the terms for manhood by its ritual, which, in the American  novel, might be modified in its details, but never in its exclusion of women. The young hero going West  was to leave all women behind. Females are not only an encumbrance, but a reminder of the feminine side of men's natures, a side they can no longer endure as they grow up. Aaron's ability to deal with this myth  of the  West , which he has absorbed from movie after movie, depends in large part on his ability to analyze it in terms very close to those used by such recent commentators. In describing the Laredo Kid's “other identity”—the protective identity Laredo assumes when he is //not// wearing a mask and saving gals—Aaron notes You always played a mild-mannered drifter who was ineffectual and damned with a sensitivity we now associate with femininity. You just didn't address the fact that that was your female side. “That was just //pretend//,” protests Laredo. “That wasn't me. Me was the guy who put on the black duds and mask and rode a white horse to the gal's rescue.” Aaron is not convinced.

I lurched into adolescence steeped in the male-male and the male-horse relationship.... And shallow dipstick that I was, I failed to comprehend the obdurate indifference all you guys displayed toward women.... they scared the crap out of you. All you “kids.” The Durango Kid, Ringo Kid. Cisco, Sundance, Billy //the// Kid. The Laredo and Majestic Kids. Little boys scared to death of having to meet a woman face to face and deal with her not as a //gal//, but as a woman, and protected from her by a hundred and nine scripts with the same plot. “I'm not a man. I'm just an aging boy adapting badly to a world run amok,” Aaron realizes. Realizing this, however, he moves to change. Lisa has pointed out the limits of the myth  perpetuated by western films: The movie makes the woman capable as the dickens ... but too dumb to recognize that the mild-mannered drifter is really the hero in the mask and black duds.... That way they won't have to get married.... what would be a tad more useful today would be: They get married and have children, and you have a series of movies about a family facing the challenges of ranch life together. And gradually Aaron is brought to realize that he wants neither to rescue Lisa nor to be rescued //by// her, but to develop a shared relationship. From this shared relationship, he hopes, will develop a family, and from that “A sense of community, of something larger than any of us.” Thus he specifically rejects two major elements of the myth , womanlessness and individualism, opting instead for family and community. Battered against the limits of what he has learned from Laredo, bewildered by the failure of the myth  to match the reality, Aaron loses his temper and yells his most serious charge against his old mentor: “Stop talking to me about cowboy movies! This is my real life!” Laredo and his values, however, are not defeated. // What I stand fer ain't important no more—that whut yore sayin? Cuz yore gonna be thirty years old, preservation a the land, right'n wrong, doin unto others what you'd have them do unto you ain't important no more? THAT WHUT YORE SAYIN TO LAREDO // ? ... No. Course it ain't. Cain't be. Was, there wouldn't be no hope fer no one nowhere in this public. In the end Aaron decides that Laredo is just as correct about basic values as he is incorrect about language and women. When Aaron makes his final—non-violent—stand, he makes it because of his commitment to the basic values of Laredo's world. “I'm just not interested in living in a world where people behave like this,” he says firmly, and goes from there. Thus Aaron never really abandons the Laredo Kid. He can hang onto the mentor of his youth because he recognizes Laredo's mythic, fictional character. For Aaron, Laredo is not a guide to achieving manhood, but a myth  which posits an ideal shape for the world. The separation of myth  and reality are emphasized by Laredo's constant reading of scripts, and by his advocacy of movie “thocks” and quick finger draws rather than actual violence. This myth  is not a reflection of reality (past or present), then, but a wish that reality were as simple as white hats and black hats. Because he recognizes Laredo as myth , rather than guidebook, Aaron can learn from him and adapt what is valuable in the  myth  to guide his life in the New  West. Early in the play, Aaron confesses to Laredo that he has “grown so far away from the example you set.” “Grown away from faith in justice and redemption, from love of the land?” replies Laredo. “Ut-yore teasin' your Laredo, you l'il dickens, you.” And, of course, eventually Aaron discovers that Laredo is correct. Aaron may have grown away from love of horses and independence and toward love of Lisa and the family circle. He may have been forced to abandon his conviction that the hero always rescues the gal and that good and evil are easily distinguishable. But he has not lost his commitment to justice and redemption and love of the land. Those values may be difficult to pursue; the world may be so complicated that he cannot even be sure particular actions will yield the desired goals; but Aaron still believes in the bedrock of Laredo's commitment to shaping a better world. It is that basic commitment which finally gives Aaron the confidence to “wing it” in a world ungoverned by script writers. Aaron learns from a great many factors in this play. He learns from Lisa, and from the judge, and from the experience of New Mexico itself, and from his own instincts. What he learns from the forces of the New West , however, though it will modify the lessons of the silver screen  myth  , will not totally destroy that  myth. Finally, it is because Aaron recognizes that it is a myth  that he can preserve what he continues to value about the shape it attempts to impose on the world, letting the rest go. At the end of the play, as Laredo heads off into the sunset, Aaron—repeating an old game of theirs—beats Laredo to the draw for the first time, getting his shooting finger in the air before Laredo gets his six-shooter out of the holster. It is Aaron's final coming of age, of course, but it is also clearly a coming of age which would have been far more difficult had he not learned much of value from Laredo. What Aaron recognizes and South's doctor does not is that myths do not reflect reality. As Richard Slotkin explains it, “Myths are stories, drawn from history ... and through periodic retellings those narratives become traditionalized ... increasingly conventionalized and abstracted.” Myths project “models of good or heroic behavior that reinforce the values of ideology.” Rather than realism, then, the goal of myth  is didacticism—the embodiment of values and modelling of ideal behavior. An attempt to “read” myths realistically is doomed to failure, since they lack the ambiguity of real life. An attempt to follow their pattern precisely leads only to disaster, since the pattern lacks the flexibility necessary for modification in response to changing circumstances. His vision shaped by the myth , South's doctor cannot see the real  West  and does not understand why the guidebook will not work. He accepts without question the ideology embodied in the western myth's  metaphors, using an abstract vision of the past to guide his present concrete behavior. Aaron, on the other hand, with Lisa's help, analyzes the myth  and its ideology, occasionally arguing with both. To use the currently popular term, Aaron “rehistoricizes” the myth  and is thus able to abandon those portions which do not fit him or the New  West , and pursue the values he continues to respect. Further, he understands that—the world being more complicated than the myth  —there is no guarantee he will succeed in achieving his goals, even if he adopts more flexible methods than Laredo's. Without commitment to good over evil, and to the land, however, life seems worth little to Aaron, and so the  myth  has served its purpose and provided a clearer sense of direction than he would otherwise have had. Like Robert Athearn, he recognizes that “though the legend can bring out many of our weaknesses, it more often speaks to the best in us and reminds us that we can be better than we are.” Medoff himself has defined the function of myth  —which he sees as one means for providing continuity, linking past, present, and future—in terms which closely parallel Athearn's.  I want [my children] to have what I had—the luxury of bearing a mythology out of the past into the present which they can respect, a tradition of heroism to which they can aspire, from which they can take hope in the present and conjure a future worth living.... What Laredo taught Aaron has to be discarded, but adapted for a new age, a new manhood. (“Adios, Old West  ”) Aaron's success in making the transition to a new age and manhood is not without ironies. If Leslie Fiedler is correct that “The Western story in archetypal form is ... a fiction dealing with the confrontation in the wilderness of a transplanted WASP and a radically alien other, an Indian,” then Aaron's jewishness separates him from an archetype which he otherwise matches quite nicely. But if we remember that an important characteristic of this mythic western hero is his ability “to solve ... problems in an innovative manner, while never surrendering an uncritical faith in a better tomorrow,” then there are ways in which Aaron adheres //more//, not //less//, closely to the myth  than does South's doctor, who is so locked within the patterns projected by popular culture that he cannot free himself to innovate. Primarily, however, Aaron succeeds (not as a hero, but as a person) because he is a better reader of myth. He can deal with the conflict of myth  and reality because he recognizes that the purpose of  myth  is not to reflect reality but to model behavior. He balances emotional attraction to the myth  with intelligent analysis of it and so—like all good readers everywhere—he comes to fuller understanding and appreciation of both the fiction and the reality. ** Source Citation:  **     Lojek, Helen. "Reading the Myth of the West." __South Dakota Review__. 46-61. **Rpt. in** __Literature Resource Center__. Gale, Cengage Learning. 46-61. __Literature Resource Center__. Gale. ARAPAHOE HIGH SCHOOL. 30 Apr. 2008 . <span