2 pages essay

Lin PAGE 5

The Shadow of Frontiers

Two men are facing opposite direction, each one of them have his own dark jacket, boots, and their loaded gun. As the other man counting down “10…9…8…”, they take each step forward . When the man says “1”, “Bamm!” A man is down after a gun shot! This might be the most familiar scene from a movie that has background of frontier period. At the early years of frontier period, most of the people that came to the west were occupied on developing the area. First, they have to build a house for them and their family. Then, they have to find a way for food supply. After that, frontiers had to start to build some basic infrastructure, such as hospital, road, and school. Meanwhile, they also fighting wild animals and some Indians that came to attack them. After frontiers had settled down from the nature and Indians, new challenge had appeared. At this time, frontiers needed to protect their properties from other people, because there might be some other people trying to take it away, so it started the “man against man”.The “man against man” scene always associate with the principal of good against evil, it became the stereotype of the last phase of the frontier period. The frontier image of heroism has negatively influence Americans’ idea of bravery and individualism, it make Americans more aggressive， overstate the importance of individualism, and worsen the gun violence.

The image of western “cowboy” had turn Americans more aggressive. In old movie, cowboy was presented as a brave and smart man. He always stand against a group of people, and he can still defeat his enemies. Even the modern movie presents different thing than “cowboy”, it still based the same principal: the physical prowess form a single person. For instant, the movie “Superman”, the protagonist is fighting a group of his enemies that is more stronger than him and he still defeat his enemies in the end. In the book American Ways, Maryanne Datesman notices on the article “The Impact of the American Frontier” that heroism of cowboy is “strong enough to defeat two or three more ordinary men at once”(82). The basic idea is that one single man is so powerful that have ability to do so many thing at once. This heroism has influence the US government’s policy toward other country. When Libya and Syria have their own political problem, the US government chose to interfere their politics by sending troops because they think is their responsibility to help them. More recently, when Ukraine’s Crimea have civil war that separate them from Ukraine. The US government also chose to “help” by supporting Ukraine. The US government has such a high frequency on interfere other countries politic.

The heroism of frontier had exaggerated the power of a single man. The movie always presents the scene that a man fighting with his fist and he is good at using different kind of weapon against a whole group of enemies. However, in reality, it is not possible for a single man to fight that much people. One of the most important rule in military is team work. In daily military training, soldiers are always trained with their parters, so that they could know each other and how to co-operate with each other. Because they know when they went to war, they have to look after each other’s back, and they relies on each other. In the article “The Impact of the America Frontier”, Datesman emphasizes, “the rugged individualist image overstates the importance of complete self-reliance”(83). One of the most important idea of frontier heroism is to do everything by their own. However, most of jobs in society required the ability to work with other people with different skills. For example, in car industry, it require more than one department to build a new car. First, the company need to design a car. Then, they need to build a prototype of the car, and test the car. Next, they need to hire workers on factory for the assembly line of the car. And, they also need to make advertisement and let people know they have new car. Finally, they could start to do their business. In order to really start doing business, there are different people with different skills worked together. In modern society, people have to co-operate with other people, because many jobs can’t be dane with one person.

The frontier’s image had led to raise the amount of guns in the United States. The gun control had always been a controversial topic that Americans talk about. After 9/11, when the World Trade Center was attacked by terrorists, as the result of such a huge fear and anger. The US government had lost their credit on people, became they couldn’t prevent the attack. According to the article “The Impact of the American Frontier”, Datesman writes that the gun sell in America was “Estimates are that anywhere from 25 percent to 45 percent of US households now have at least one gun”(84). When people’s life was threaten, many people are seeking for a gun to fight back. Part of the reason is they had lost their faith on government, another reason was because of of the frontier heroism. The most scene that was present of a frontier movie is gun fight. In the movie, the gun were used to solve most of the problems. That had form a idea in people mind that gun can be used in any where. Even people aren’t use gun to attack other people, many people have their loaded to protect themselves. It had cause some unnecessary alertness, that sometime they shoot innocent people.

The “Frontier” shaped the idea that had led American to be more aggressive, over-relied on themselves, and worsen the gun violence. Even the Frontier represents the culture of the United States, should limit the amount of some certain scene that might cause bad influences. On the other hand, people shouldn’t imitate from the movie scene, because it’s only made for entertain. Instead, people should make their decision more rational and reasonable, so that they won’t regret for it in the future.

Work cited

Datesman, Maryanne Kearny. American Ways. Fourth ed. NY: Pearson Education, 2014. Print.