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Richard Slotkin’s The Fatal Environment is a study of the myth of the American frontier, as Slotkin analyzes the myth extensively using 19th century literature, setting the frontier up as a divider between Metropolises and the native wilderness. The study is convincing enough, but Slotkin runs into the same issue that any historian has when studying a cultural myth: how to prove that the myth had an impact over an entire culture rather than specific sections of society.
This is a problem I encountered while writing my thesis last semester. I attempted to argue that the collapse of the mythological aspect of baseball with the reveal that the Yankee hero Mickey Mantle was an alcoholic and a womanizer, that that helped propel the festering cynicism in the 1960s that began with the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations as well as the Vietnam War. As I began researching, I immediately regretted my undertaking, as proving the cultural impact that a myth has over society is not easy. Relative to my study, I tried to argue that because of baseball’s place in American culture, the collapse of the mythology affected the greater American public, yet clearly there were Americans who could care less about baseball, or who could care less about the mythological aspects of the game. For Slotkin, his argument is solid and easy to accept as fact, yet it is also easily contestable because of how he uses literature as representative of American culture. This undertaking is impossible to do completely, as there were sections of society who had no interest in what was happening in the west (and as Henry pointed out, who could not read), yet Slotkin claims that with the literature, the frontier mythology is encompassing of American culture.
This point is reaffirmed in Henry’s below post, as he concurs that just a snapshot of a culture cannot interpret the national consciousness of America. I also did not consider the era, as Henry smartly points out the illiteracy in America made the novels and stories of the time even less influential, further weakening Slotkin’s contention.
Unfortunately for Slotkin, if he lessened his claim and stated instead that the literature had some influence, his argument becomes weak, yet because his claim is encompassing, it is currently flawed. Slotkin does a good job of providing as much evidence as possible, but regardless of how many stories supported his argument, someone could still say that assuming that the frontier mythology represented the whole nation’s consciousness is an over-the-top claim.
While flawed in its methodology, looking past these concerns I found the work rather convincing, and its approach as an environmental history intriguing. Slotkin adds an interesting wrinkle to the definition of nature, as he creates a polarizing distinction between the wilderness full of savage Indians and the metropolis expanding into the wilderness. While creating the distinction, as Ian states below it allows for male heroics within nature, therefore allowing humans as actors within nature.