LE3 .A278 2011

2011

La Rocque, Lance

Acadia University

Bachelor of Arts

Honours

English

English & Theatre Studies

In my thesis I investigate the complex symbolism of the horse in three western novels and the paradoxical discourse of masculinity it creates. My primary texts are John Steinbeck‟s The Red Pony (1933), Mary O‟Hara‟s My Friend Flicka (1940), and Cormac McCarthy‟s All the Pretty Horses (1992), all set in the mythic cowboy landscapes of the 1930s and 40s. Each novel tells a coming-of-age narrative of a young male protagonist where the figure of the horse functions as a crucial element in the rite of passage to manhood. My thesis explores the highly symbolic processes of selecting, taming, and ultimately dominating a wild horse; as well, it explores the protagonists‟ fantasies of containing and possessing the „wild‟ attributes of their chosen animal. The imposition of modernization threatens wilderness in each text and so it also threatens the boys‟ masculinity because their opportunity to master nature diminishes. I argue that built into the cowboy ritual is a problematic structure of masculinity based on an attitude of domination towards nature. Perpetuating the attitude of domination is an ironic situation wherein mastery („taming‟ the horse) leads to domestication, undermining the desired possession of the „wild.‟ I apply psychoanalytic theory to reveal how the horse functions as a phallus, and thus becomes a representation of each boy‟s profound desire for wilderness. These desires manifest themselves in a structural opposition that undermines each boy‟s transition into manhood. A culture/nature binary produces the struggles experienced by the protagonists as they attempt to reconcile these conceptual contradictions. Ultimately, culture and nature cannot unite and thus the paradoxical mastery of the horse. The myth of the cowboy is still extremely popular in American culture today, perpetuating a construction of masculinity that equates manhood with domination of nature.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:809