The West as a Myth

From the reading for today, I interpreted it as the West as a myth. Myths are used in order to help visualize and understand the West better. For example, myths of heroes help to understand the types of people that lived in the West and how they should act. Myths are not true statements, but they are stories that help us to visualize the history and of how our country came to be. I also realized that the West has been mainly about masculinity and men making history. The section on women was interesting because the book states that women were symbols of the West and they were there for men's entertainment. Women did not have much influence on the West because they were seen as nurturers and the West was more about violence than nurturing. This leads me to my final topic on violence and social conflict. I thought that the violence that occurred in the West had to do mainly with class, race, gender, and money. The West was not about individualism but violence among different groups of people. For example, the Americans had problems with the Indians, Chinese, and because of these problems, vigilantes and banditos started to rise up. There were also social bandits that committed crimes such as stealing, but were considered good because they helped out the community. Even though they helped out the society, the social bandits may have committed the crimes for individual reasons.