The Frontier Myth” on Stage: From the Nineteenth Century to Sam Shepard’s True West

Abstract

R I C H A R D W A T T E N B E R G University of California, Riverside "The Frontier Myth”on Stage: Fromthe Nineteenth Century to SamShepard’s True West Throughout his playwriting career, Sam Shepard has challenged the presuppositions and myths that underlie the modern American self-image. Bonnie Marranca (16-19) and Ruby Cohn (Dramatists 172-3, “Passion­ ate” 164-65) have pointed out that Shepard is especially fascinated by the hold that the myth of the western cowboy has had on the contemporary American imagination. In Cowboys #2 (1967), Action (1974), Curse of the Starving Class (1976), True West (1981), and Fool for Love (1983), Shepard focuses on protagonists embodying the rough-hewn independence of the untamed West as they struggle to find a place in modern America. Of these plays, True West, as its name implies, represents Shepard’s most direct attempt to deal with the incompatibility of so-called “old western” ideals with new technological and bureaucratic values. Although the title lacks a question mark, it suggests a question: Which is the “true West”— the frontier legend or the settled, suburban present?1While confronting the ambiguous nature of the “true West,” Shepard also explores a more funda­ mental question: How has the frontier, western experience contributed to the development of distinctly American traits or what might be called the “American character”? In True West, Shepard explores ideas that have intrigued Americans since Frederick Jackson Turner claimed that the frontier furnished “the forces dominating American character” (3). In fact, Ronald Mottram (136, 137) and Lynda Hart (97-98) use some of Turner’s ideas to expli­ cate Shepard’s True West. Relating Shepard’s play to Turner’s notion of the frontier, both Mottram and Hart cite the historian’s description of the 226 Western American Literature frontier as “the outer edge of the wave—the meeting point between savag­ ery and civilization” (3). Both critics, however, view Turner’s frontier as a general state of being, capturing the eternal tension between savagery and civilization. Neither Mottram nor Hart views Turner’s frontier for what it really is: a particular process of Americanization in which the confrontation between eastern civilization and western savagery produced a distinctly American entity.2 As the description of a process of Americanization, Turner’s frontier thesis has taken on major cultural significance. While there is controversy among historians over the validity ofhis thesis, Turner’sideas have assumed the dimensions of myth in their power to explain American history for non-historians (Smith 3-4, 250-60). Indeed, if a function of “myth” is to relate stories that clarify the patterns underlying experience, then Turner’s thesis becomes myth because it provides a story that suggests an underlying pattern for American history. Moreover, the roots of this myth in popular culture are made clear by the fact that a story pattern similar to Turner’s serves as a structural device controlling the selection and arrangement of incidents in various works of popular drama, especially successful late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century frontier plays like Bartley Camp­ bell’s M y Partner (1879) and William Vaughn Moody’s The Great Divide (1906). In the mid and late twentieth century, the historical pattern—or frontier myth—described by Turner has lost much of its luster. In fact, Shepard’sTrue West represents a revised version of this myth. An examina­ tion of the frontier myth and its interpretation on the American stage can clarify the place of Shepard’s True West within the larger context of Ameri­ can drama. Such an examination not only can illuminate the connections between Shepard’s play and earlier American plays like My Partner, The Great Divide, and even—perhaps surprisingly—Death of a Salesman, but can indicate changing popular attitudes about the significance of the fron­ tier western experience for American development. I Noting that the Superintendent of the Census had reported in 1890 that a frontier line no longer existed in the West, Frederick Jackson Turner sought to draw conclusions about a stage of American history which had come to an end (1). He may or may not have been the father of the...