The Western Formula

Part I of Essay
A seemingly traditional approach towards the Western frontier is the reason for John Cawelti’s assessment from The Six-Gun Mystique. His description of being “far easier to define than that of the detective story” may clearly be a paradigm for many autho ....

Part II of Essay
.... Western formula holds a strong assumption that men are assertive and women are insignificant. He is standardizing the black and white of the West. There is an unequivocal struggle between good and evil—and guns and violence can only solve that. Jane Tompkins standpoint on a Western seems to be a middle ground between Cawelti and Crane. She recognizes that violence is a central theme to a Western, but as well explains how we think of violence. In this day of age, we as a society have prohibited violence as a means of solving pr ....