Myth and Environment in Recent Southwestern Literature: Healing Narratives

Abstract

In Myth and Environment in Recent Southwestern Literature: Healing Narratives, Theda Wrede uses the “Myth of the Old West” to frame her discussion of the way that four texts, Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams, Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, and Denise Chávez's The Last of the Menu Girls, offer a corrective to the dominant narrative of exploitation and destruction inherent in Western cowboy mythology. Because myths play a significant role in shaping and guiding cultural attitudes, beliefs, and actions, embracing myths that model ethical and sustainable relationships to the land is essential to correcting exploitative behavior and ending environmental destruction. Wrede argues that not only does this outmoded myth damage the planet, but it also damages our psyches. In particular, Wrede examines the implications that creating an alternative mythology can have on our psyches, or collective unconscious, as they are revealed in narrative responses to the Southwestern landscape. In doing so, she suggests, not only can we heal the land, but we can heal ourselves.