Term Paper on ‘The Virginian’ by Owen Wisters

 

Owen Wister was the leading figure in the literary upgrading of the West and its denizens in the taste making magazines. This is the classic story by Wister, of a ranch foreman, known as the Virginian. The story depicts Virginian’s courtship of Molly Starkwood, and his strife with Trampas. The West comprised of both virtuous and wicked men, just as today. Wister based his characters on real people he reciprocated with in the West a few years earlier. Still exciting today, as it was written in 1902, Owen Wister's epic tale of one man's journey into the untamed region of Wyoming, where he is caught between his love for a woman and his search for justice, has represented one of the most notable and standing themes in all of American culture.
The Virginian is a classic by reason of its superb characters in the novel. The protagonist known as the Virginian personifies a code of manly values. He is matchless. With Mary's civilized purity or the Virginian's wild perfection, the book is an interesting Western myth, full of stereotypical cowboys bragging around with their pistols on their hips.

This one is the tale of a tall, silent and perfectly capable cowboy in old Wyoming, who hails from the South. In the story he as a young fellow run away from his kin at the age of fourteen, and living in a variety of places out on the Great Plains of the American West. The novel chronicles this cowboy's growth, from rootless 25-year-old cowhand to ranch foreman and, finally, mastery in his own right via the cultural predominance of his passion.

 

If Wister’s romanticisation of the west, and simplification of conflicts such as the range wars of the 1880s, mean that the novel has its limitations, then Wister was still efficient enough for awakening a consciousness of the region in a vast number of readers who had never yet gone to the Western frontier. Wister did not proposed to create a documentary account of life in the west, which he knew was in a state of flux. But he did show how a real man could come to terms with it.

“The Virginian (1902) is Owen Wister's classic popular romance, and the most significant shaping influence on the Western genre. This edition includes Wister's neglected essay, The Evolution of the Cow-Puncher (1895) and an introduction highlighting the social, gender, and political implications of Wister's mythic West in the context of its actual economic history and Wister's patrician career.” (Brothersjudd.com, 2001)

In the middle of the story is an impending strife with wicked Trampas, which culminates in a battle with rustlers and a final showdown that, happened swiftly. The tale rises above the noble hero and conflicted school marm at its core to give us a look at how the West really was just as it was losing its frontier flavor. A West that transcends its genre to give us a real sense and flavor of another time and place, one that lives on in our American mythology. The characters were strongly drawn and Virginian, himself, came through quite clearly to value this lonely ideal of the American frontier type, which became a standard in the Western myth.

Throughout the entire book Virginian remains an enigma. With a persona that screams Mad Max "The Road Warrior" he is a modest person who goes for the fervor in his adventures all through the story. He depicts his love in the craziness of the west when he makes up with a schoolteacher by the name of Molly Stark. Yet never once did he lose his patience and his gentle, slow voice, and plainly lazy manner continued the same, whether he was sitting at lunch, or up in the mountain during a hunt.
Whatever he did, he did with his might. The bread that he earned was earned hard, the wages that he squandered were squandered hard, half a year's pay sometimes gone in a night, --"blown in," as he stated it, or "blowed in," to be quite precise. His wild kind has been amongst us always, a young man with his fascination, a hero without wings.

Conclusion
Wister's Western classic, first popular at the turn of the century, entrenched the stereotypes for the cowboy hero, heroine, shoot-outs at sundown, and rustlers. Recorded many times, the story never falls short to fascinate. The flavor of the Wild West in early days comes through this book. In 1977, the Western Writers of America elected this novel as the top western novel of all time.

“It was through the Declaration of Independence that we Americans acknowledged the ETERNAL EQUALITY of man. For by it we abolished a cut-and-dried aristocracy. We had seen little mere artificially held up in high places, and great men artificially held down in low places, and our own justice-loving hearts abhorred this violence to human nature. Therefore, we decreed that every man should thenceforth have equal liberty to find his own level. By this very decree we acknowledged and gave freedom to true aristocracy, saying, "Let the best man win, whoever he is." Let the best man win! That is America's word. That is true democracy. And true democracy and true aristocracy are one and the same thing. If anybody cannot see this, so much the worse for his eyesight. (Shulman, Robert, 31-Oct-2002)