Allusions In The Bride Comes To Yellow Sky - 1386 Words

In Stephen Crane’s â€Å"The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,† the classic western showdown comes to an anticlimatic end when the town marshal fails to produce a gun and the gunslinger walks away (not into a blazing sunset). With the disappointing showdown Crane illustrates the flat ending of the west when the town marshal’s bride comes unexpectedly to Yellow Sky. â€Å"The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky† demonstrates the complex dynamic of the West passing away as the East penetrates and fills the open desert plain. Jack Potter stands as the frontier hero who helps usher the East into the frontier. He acts as the classic American hero as depicted in the early nineteenth century captivity narratives that also encouraged expansion into the West. However,†¦show more content†¦Kolodny explains that the captivity narrative and Indian War narrative have â€Å"long been appreciated by Americanists as an ongoing literary vehicle through which successive generation s of Americans played out the symbolic dramas of westward migration† (330). Americans saw their fears of the wilderness conquered in captivity narratives and could then move into the West with their new knowledge. The captivity narrative can serve as a tale of westward expansion because, as Kolodny continues to explain, the captivity narrative represents â€Å"the mythopoetic prototype of the white man’s fantasied intimacy with the red...[where] Americans came to displace the Indian with the figure of the Indianized white man as the proper hero of the American wilderness† (330). The Indianized white man holds special knowledge of the wilderness and can straddle both civilization and the wilderness. Though captivity narratives may be somewhat different in their content from the classic Western tale popular while Crane wrote, they share an important figure: the rough frontier hero who understands and controls the land. Jack Potter in depicts the same kind of desire for westward migration as he comes to represent both Eastern and Western culture. Jack Potter serves as the tie that binds East and West together as the American hero of the frontier. Potter is described as â€Å"a man known, liked, and fearedShow MoreRelatedEudora Welty a Worn Path12166 Words   |  49 PagesThe attendant assumes Phoenix is a charity case. The nurse replies that it is just old Aunt Phoenix who has come to get medicine for her grandson. Phoenix remains silent as the nurse asks her questions. The nurse eventually loses patience and urges the old woman to tell us quickly about your grandson, and get it over. Phoenix snaps out of her daze when a flame of comprehension comes to her. She explains what the nurse already knows, that her grandson swallowed lye and now needs medicine periodicallyRead MoreEudora Welty a Worn Path12173 Words   |  49 PagesThe attendant assumes Phoenix is a charity case. The nurse replies that it is just old Aunt Phoenix who has come to g et medicine for her grandson. Phoenix remains silent as the nurse asks her questions. The nurse eventually loses patience and urges the old woman to tell us quickly about your grandson, and get it over. Phoenix snaps out of her daze when a flame of comprehension comes to her. She explains what the nurse already knows, that her grandson swallowed lye and now needs medicine periodicallyRead MoreLogical Reasoning189930 Words   |  760 Pagesjudgments─not snap judgments that occur in the blink of an eye, but those that require careful reasoning. You are not reasoning logically if, when you want a gorilla suit for a Halloween party, the first thing you do is search for the word Gorilla in the Yellow Pages of the telephone book, and the problem here is not that you used a telephone book instead of the Internet. High-quality reasoning is called logical reasoning or critical thinking. Logical reasoning skills can be learned and improved. It is