Comment on one or both:
1. How can you relate the above picture with Jackson Turner's "thesis of the frontier"?
2. Find and discusss keywords in Jackson Turner's essay.
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Final HW: Walt Whitman and Derek Walcott (pp. 279-283)
1. Do some research on D. Walcott and try to account for the different perspectives of the ocean (and sea-crossings) in Walcott's "...
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Explain and give examples illustrating one or more of the following sentences: "Appreciating the character of colonialism in North A...
The American frontier-The outer edge of "society". "The meeting point between savagery and civilization."(226)
ReplyDeleteAmerican-the final product of the battle between a European and the nature of the new world. The more the frontier moved to the west, the more American it became.
Social evolution-The development of "our" (European) society. Some believed that through living in the wild (on the frontier), the people will revert to the behavior of their ancestors (who lived in Europe hundreds of years ago), and eventually evolve "back into civilized people" once they conquer the continent. This will allow them to see how the European society developed in the first place.
For Jackson Turner’s “thesis of the frontier” to be understood is necessary to explain what Turner meant by frontier - “the frontier is the outer edge of the wave the meeting point between savagery and civilization”. This thesis is basically based on a notion of social evolution, where civilization has an orderly evolutionary cycle that starts in the savage state (the pioneers) , moves to pastoralism (what Turner called the emigrants), and ends with large cities and industry (men of capital).
ReplyDeleteWith this, the author, ultimately, meant that the demarcation of the frontier was continuously being moved farther west.
To fully grasp the relation between the “thesis of the frontier” and the picture of John Gast, is crucial to dive into the mindset of ‘Manifest Destiny’ that Americans used as a justification of the exploration of the West.
“American Progress” (1872) describe this exact notion of America’s destiny to expand, spread technology, and civilize the West.
Gast portrays Manifest Destiny using an angelic woman (‘Lady Liberty’) as its focus indicating this impression of a persistent force that led America to explore the West - Manifest Destiny meant that Americans were destined to rule the continent, regardless of / justifying the damage they did to the environment, animals, and even natives.
Jackson Turner, in his text “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”, ends up using this inherent condition of the Americans to explain the progression of the frontier and its developmental characteristic. As Americans where destined to conquer, the frontier would progressively change and move towards West.
In the 19th century, there was a common belief amongst Americans that the Americans settlers should expand across North America (this doctrine was called “manifest destiny"). They viewed this mission as an essential duty because God had destined them to it. During this time, John Gast paints “American Progress” (1872), which is essentially a love story to the advance of the American frontier. In the painting, farmers, livestock and technologies (such as railroads and telegraphy wires) are all heading West. Furthermore, the path to the West is painted in darker colours, therefore illustrating it as uncharted land and as a wild place, where, according to Frederick Jackson Turner, the environment was “too strong for the man”.
ReplyDeleteTurner’s Frontier thesis explained that the availability of unsettled land throughout much of American history was the most important factor determining national development. As he explains, such availability helped shape the American character with features that still remain to this day: individualism (which, in its turn, promoted democracy) and opposition to government control.