Final

The American West and the Historical Imagination Final
Spring 2010
Dennis Kuhnel

Instructions: Answer all four questions below in essay-format. Be sure not to exceed the page limit denoted for each question. This is an open book exam. You may consult all books assigned this semester and your notes, but you may NOT use the internet for reference. Your response to each individual question should be no longer than 1 typed page, Times New Roman font, double-spaced. Do not spend more than 3 hours completing this exam. The exam is due Friday May 14th at noon via email. Late exams will not be accepted.

1) The American Film Institute recently ranked Shane as one of the Top 100 films in the last 100 years of American cinema (in total six westerns made the list: The Searchers, High Noon, Shane, Unforgiven, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Wild Bunch). Analyze the major themes of Shane in the historical context of the Johnson County War and other events in the history of the American West. Do you think the film Shane was intended to speak to political realities in 1950s America? If so, why? Finally, how does Shane thematically compare with other creative imaginings of the American West, pre-1950s and afterwards?

2) Willa Cather’s novel, The Professor’s House (1925), presents the United States as a dangerously morally corrupt and money-fixated society. A complicated novel, Cather’s novel interweaves tales of modern suburban life in Chicago with the lives of cowboys and railroaders in New Mexico and the existence of a lost Indian civilization. How is the American West imagined and represented in the novel in contrast to these other settings? What are Cather’s views on indigenous America and why does she believe that their history is crucial to American cultural identity? Some critics have said that Cather’s novel lays out a vision of “Americanness.” Do you agree? If so, explain and comment on how history and the actual historical American West plays a role in this idea.

3) Sam Peckinpah’s film The Wild Bunch (1969) is often described as one of the most important westerns ever made. Cormac McCathy’s No Country for Old Men (2005), was widely acclaimed as a novel when it came out and quickly transformed by the Coen Brothers into an a film that was nominated for eight Academy Awards in 2008, winning four, including the most prestigious award of Best Picture. Book and movie critics of No Country for Old Men often noted the similarity between it and westerns made by Peckinpah. Do you agree with this comparison? Is the book, No Country for Old Men and the film, The Wild Bunch thematically and historically similar? Do they imagine the American West in similar ways, especially in how they differ in their view with earlier westerns? In your answer be sure to include historical analyses of the plot and specific discussions of the themes in each work.

4) Think back to the beginning of this semester in frigid January. Identify what, in your opinion, are the three most important and interesting ways, in which, the history of the American West has been imagined. Be sure to include in your answer books and films from the first and second half of the semester.