Post # 6

Voices of the West
Reading

The Way to the West by Elliot West

In The Way to the West by Elliot West, the reader is once again challenged with the elusive subject of what exactly is the “West”. Thus far we have analyzed the “West” from various angles such as Turner’s frontier and Limerick’s distinct place. In this work, the reader is challenged to look at the “West” as a place that is made up of the inextricable players land, animals, humans, and the stories that portray those human understandings of the place.

I found West’s look at what the stories say about the West to be particularly challenging. One of the themes that came up throughout the book, the desire to view the West as the empty land of “there”, while at the very same time trying to change the land so that it conforms to the comforts and understandings of “here”, is one of the issues that comes out in this debate. West argues that the “West” of the American mindset is more of an idea from the outside that his been imposed upon the “West”. He calls this a “narrative colonialism” and argues that it is, “one of America’s pre-eminent examples of stories as power.” (West 165) This power of the myth is clearly an aspect that colors the picture of the “West” for many.

West looks to another direction, one that caused me to cautiously pause as a historian, in hopes of finding the true “West”. He looks to Walter Prescott Webb for this example. He summarizes Webb's viewpoint into this statement; “everything genuinely important he had to say had come, not from received scholarly truth, but from looking inside his own experience as a westerner.” (West160-161) I agree strongly with West’s argument that one must have an understanding of the real place within one’s study. However, through Webb, Worster, and the many narratives coming from those from the “West”, it would be very easy to take one more step and say that only the subject can truly understand itself based on lived experience. There is a very real danger in such an approach. I know that as an individual, others around me, with a little distance and insight, can often understand me better than I understand myself. On the other hand, every historian does hold vital insights based upon experience that do truly strengthen his or her work. Though West is correct in trying to find the real “West”, a place of connections between the land and the various human and animal inhabitants, we must be careful in limiting the voices that we listen to for the historical record. In short, just as we must be wary of the biases inherent in a vision of the “West” imposed from the outside, we must also be cautious of the biases unintentionally carried within.

I do not believe that West actually goes this far in his analysis, but it did cause me to pause. However, on the whole, I found his analysis to be very insightful. His look at the often overlooked connections and realities of relationship between the land, animals, and human inhabitants provides a much needed insight into unperceived factors that play into western history. In particular, his confrontation of the imposed idea that the “West” was an empty space untouched by human influence is very challenging and necessary.