1_DEATH 20s 44
Core Argument of the Chapter
Death is not just a common element but a central, defining feature of the
Western genre, shaping its landscape, characters, plots, and underlying values .
Tompkins argues that the Western's obsession with death, particularly violent
death faced stoically, is a direct rejection of the dominant 19th-century
Christian and female-centered culture that emphasized spiritual salvation,
domesticity, and the avoidance of sin over the confrontation with physical
annihilation . The genre arose, in her view, specifically to eject these values and
establish a new, masculinized, secular worldview where facing death becomes
the ultimate test of heroism and manhood .
What Tompkins Says (Key Points)
Death's Pervasiveness and Nature:
o Death is everywhere in Westerns, not just in shootouts but
symbolized by the harsh, barren landscape ("west of everything"
means death) .
o Unlike death in other genres, Western death is often presented
under the aspect of nature, beauty, and even a kind of
spiritual transcendence, making the dead almost enviable in their
finality .
o The constant imminence of death gives the genre its tension,
sharpens sensory details, and leads to its ritualistic and predictable
structures (plots, characters, settings) . Familiarity mixed with
danger is part of the appeal.
o Later Westerns (like The Shootist) make death their explicit focus,
accepting it rather than treating it solely as tragedy .
Critique of Standard Historical Explanations:
o Tompkins finds standard explanations for the Western's rise
(nostalgia, the "strenuous age," interest in the West) inadequate
because they use the very secular, male-centric, conflict-focused
terms that the Western itself popularized .
o These explanations ignore the most salient fact: the Western as a
narrative of male violence reacting against something .
Contrast with 19th-Century Religious Culture:
o She contrasts the Western with hugely popular late-19th-century
religious novels like Charles Sheldon's In His Steps .
o In these novels, the main fear is sin and spiritual death, not
physical death. Heroism involves moral courage and social sacrifice,
not facing annihilation .
o The Western plot replaces the struggle against sin with external
conflicts where men prove courage by facing death. This focus
makes everyday life seem trivial .
Rejection of Christianity:
o The Western had to forcibly eject Christianity's cultural weight .
o Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage is used as a prime example,
where the gunman Lassiter (an "emanation of the desert") replaces
God as the savior, arriving from the west instead of the heavens .
o This shift involves reclaiming "manhood" (equated with the
phallic gun and the willingness to die violently) from
feminized Christianity (represented by Jane Withersteen), which
preached mercy and forgiveness .
o This entails a cultural shift from the spiritual ("My help cometh from
the Lord") to the material ("Give me my guns"), privileging
physical facts and force.
o Westerns wage a guerrilla war against the church as an
institution, marginalizing it in scenes (e.g., perfunctory funerals
without proper words, prioritizing shootouts over weddings) . They
substitute their own ethic based on competence (being "good... with
cattle"), work, and male comradeship .
Contrast with Sentimental/Domestic Novels:
o Tompkins argues the real antagonist is the mid-19th-century
female-dominated domestic novel (Stowe, Warner, etc.) .
o She draws a detailed point-by-point opposition: male vs. female
protagonist, public/outdoor vs. private/indoor space, physical vs.
interior struggle, violent death vs. natural death at home,
homoerotic male bonds vs. homosocial female bonds, stoicism vs.
free emotional expression, dominant nature vs. benign/absent
nature .
o The Western deliberately jettisons everything associated with the
domestic novel and the figure who stood for its ideals: the woman .
Women's Roles and Expulsion:
o Westerns push women out or marginalize them into roles serving
male needs.
o Female characters often act as "screens" or "alibis" for the more
central male-male relationships .
o While women sometimes motivate male action (revenge, rescue),
their values (love, peace, forgiveness, associated with Christianity)
are introduced only to be invalidated or crushed . Their
experience is ignored .
The Cause: Reaction to Female Power:
o Tompkins argues the Western's rise and character stem from the
dominance of women's culture in the 19th century and the
massive movement of women into the public sphere (reform
movements, suffrage, education, labor) between 1880 and 1920 .
o Men gravitated imaginatively to a womanless milieu (the West)
featuring physical combat and endurance, rejecting "feminine"
civilized features (often embodied in targets of women's reform like
saloons) .
o The Western takes place in the West not primarily because of
frontier myths, but because it was imagined as a place with
primitive technology, harsh conditions, and thus reduced female
presence and power.
o It's fundamentally about men's fear of losing mastery and
identity, which the genre tirelessly reinvents.
Author's Approach
Tompkins builds her argument through stark contrasts (Western vs. religious
novel, Western vs. domestic novel, male values vs. female values, secular vs.
Christian). She uses specific examples from novels (Hondo, Riders of the Purple
Sage, In His Steps) and films (The Shootist, Red River, Cowboy, Gunfight at the
OK Corral) to illustrate her points. Her interpretation is socio-historical and
psycho-cultural, seeing the genre not just as entertainment but as performing
significant cultural work related to gender anxiety and historical shifts in values.
Her tone is analytical but also carries a strong critical perspective on the values
the Western promotes.
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Core Argument
The central argument of this chapter is that the Western genre exhibits a
profound distrust and hostility towards language, which it associates with
femininity, culture, illusion, and weakness. In contrast, the genre elevates
action, physical reality, and a specific type of male silence as authentic,
powerful, and masculine . This "language of men," characterized by minimalism,
toughness, and emotional reserve, functions not only as a marker of the heroic
ideal but also as a tool of dominance, reflecting and reinforcing real-world
patterns of male linguistic behavior towards women .
What Tompkins Says (Key Points)
Fundamental Opposition: The Western operates on binaries where
"fancy words" and "pretty actions" (associated with women, parlors, the
East, illusion) are opposed to the perceived reality of "blood, death, a cold
wind blowing, and a gun in the hand" (associated with men, the mesa, the
West, truth) . The core opposition explored is words versus
things/actions.
Distrust of Language: Westerns repeatedly portray words as weak,
misleading, and immaterial compared to actions and objects . This distrust
is linked partly to class, as skillful language is often wielded by the
educated or powerful elite . The genre prefers abrupt commands or pithy,
often cynical, epigrams .
Action Over Talk: Talk is often depicted as ineffectual or false, canceled
out by decisive, violent action . The hero acts based on innate knowledge
or physical experience, not reflection or negotiation . Language is seen as
deceptive, potentially screening or betraying reality .
Language & Power = Male: Although Westerns sometimes present
articulate characters or value certain speech (like Shakespeare in My
Darling Clementine ), the position associated with language (women,
peace, culture) is ultimately shown to be wrong or powerless against male
force ("blood and death") . Power is equated with "not-language," which is
equated with being male .
The "Language of Men": Drawing on Peter Schwenger, Tompkins
describes a masculine linguistic style ("School of Virility") emphasizing
toughness, reserve, and control over emotions and physical boundaries .
Speaking is seen as opening oneself, becoming vulnerable or "feminized" .
Silence maintains integrity and demonstrates control.
Objectification & Landscape: This male silence stems from a desire for
"complete objectivization"—to attain the self-contained solidity of an
object, like a desert butte, thereby escaping self-consciousness and
relatedness . This connects the rejection of language to the emphasis on
landscape.
Real-World Parallel (Shere Hite): Tompkins directly links the Western
hero's silence to the real-world linguistic behavior of men towards women
in domestic situations, citing Shere Hite's research on women's
experiences of male emotional unavailability and non-communication .
Silence as Dominance: Male silence functions as a script for behavior,
establishing superiority, suggesting female verbal inadequacy, and
controlling relationships . Scenes from Red River and The Virginian are
analyzed to show female verbal collapse or subjugation in the face of male
reticence and mastery .
Root Causes & Consequences: Tompkins suggests the animus against
women's words might stem from viewing them as a weapon, a reminder of
men's own repressed pain , or a symbol of inner confusion and emotional
entanglements men wish to flee . This massive suppression of the inner
life, symbolized by silence, ultimately finds its equivalent in outward
violence .
Author's Approach
Tompkins builds her argument by:
1. Establishing core binary oppositions she sees as fundamental to the
genre.
2. Analyzing specific textual examples from novels (L'Amour, Wister) and
films.
3. Synthesizing observations into a theory of the Western's anti-
language stance.
4. Incorporating external theoretical frameworks (Schwenger on
masculine writing) and social research (Hite on male-female
communication).
5. Drawing direct parallels between fictional representations and
lived social realities, particularly regarding gender dynamics.
6. Exploring the psychological motivations behind the observed patterns
(e.g., desire for objectification, fear of vulnerability).
Critical Perspective 🤔
Let's question some aspects of Tompkins's argument in this chapter:
The Stability of Binaries: Tompkins herself notes that the oppositions
(parlor/mesa, words/things, etc.) tend to break down under pressure . Yet,
much of her analysis relies on reinforcing these very binaries to make her
points. Does this oversimplify the nuances within the genre? For instance,
isn't the Western epigram a form of highly valued language, albeit a
specific, masculinized one?
Is ALL Language Distrusted? While the type of language associated
with Eastern culture, women, or abstract intellectualism is clearly
devalued, the chapter also shows the effectiveness of laconic commands
and gritty aphorisms. Is it language per se, or specific kinds and uses of
language that are distrusted?
The Monolithic "Western Man": Does the model of the silent,
emotionally suppressed hero fit all protagonists across the genre's history?
Are there not variations, perhaps more talkative or emotionally expressive
heroes, that complicate this picture?
Causality (Fiction -> Reality): Tompkins strongly implies that the
Western "codified and sanctioned" real-world male silence. While plausible
that popular culture reinforces social norms, proving direct causation is
difficult. Could the Western be primarily reflecting pre-existing patterns of
male behavior as much as, or more than, creating them?
Interpretive Leaps: The connection made between the desire for object-
like self-containment, becoming the "desert butte," and escaping self-
consciousness is a compelling psychoanalytic interpretation, but how much
is it based on direct textual evidence versus theoretical inference?
Similarly, linking suppressed language directly to "orgasms of uncontained
murderousness" is a provocative but highly interpretive claim.
The Shere Hite Connection: Using Hite's work is effective for grounding
the analysis in social experience. However, is it possible that applying late-
20th-century feminist research on relationships retrospectively to explain a
genre popular decades earlier imposes a framework that might not
perfectly align with the historical context or the creators'/original
audience's conscious understanding?
Alternative Explanations for Silence: While dominance and fear of
vulnerability are presented as key reasons for male silence, are other
factors underplayed? For example, cultural norms valuing stoicism, the
pragmatic necessities of frontier life demanding action over talk, or simply
character archetypes emphasizing mystery?
In summary, Chapter 2 presents a powerful and influential argument about the
Western's complex relationship with language and its deep entanglement with
constructing 20th-century masculinity. However, a critical reading questions the
rigidity of its binary oppositions, the universality of its claims about male silence
across the genre, the strength of the causal link drawn between fiction and social
behavior, and the reliance on certain psychoanalytic interpretations.