The Half-Skinned Steer Presentation

Introduction:

• Impact of the western genre upon the story, how it includes some of the traditional aspects of the west including the seminal theme of the wilderness and civilization, the importance of space and place, and the presentation of gender in the story, looking at the all-American hero and subjection of women.

Summary:

• Narrative is told retrospectively, recalled in the third person with flashbacks – this heightens the story in comparison to a ‘tale’ traditional narrative of a Western genre.
• The story has various internal and external stories within the overall story – creates a different perception, different approach to a western genre story.
• Mero the main character – tells the story of him and his brother Rollo growing up on a ranch in Wyoming, although Mero left to go to war and later settled in Massachusetts whilst his family stayed on the ranch.
• The story then reverts to 83 year old Mero who receives the news his brother had passed away and makes his return back to Wyoming for the memorial.
• Throughout his tremulous journey, Mero flashbacks to his childhood and recalls a significant story about a man named Tin Head who whilst butchering a steer, pauses half way and goes in his house for dinner but when he goes back to the steer, it disappears. Tin Head eventually finds the half-skinned steer alive who stares back at his butcher. When Mero arrives in Wyoming trying to find his old home after a tough journey through bad weather, broken down car, he arrives during a bad snowstorm and not having been to his childhood home, he struggles to remember the road. As Mero becomes increasingly confused and disorientated as well as hungry and tired and stuck in the middle of nowhere, he tries to walk the last few miles but as he walks in the snow, a steer follows him and its until Mero dies in the snow due to the destructive conditions, it is the half-skinned steer who looks upon him with its red eyes.

Main Ideas:

• Showcase the importance of the space and place in the story – conventional attribute of the Western genre – American West has always been represented as a space of individuality, freedom and a new, fresh start, especially for settlers, often compared as a ‘New Eden’. So easily disregarded as a space so isolated and savage, yet it is the interior of America – has so much symbolic meaning and the main infrastructure for a western story.
• Description of the ranch that can no longer can be used or let alone to make a living off of – repetition of emphasis of the land, the physical landscape. “They called it a ranch and it had been, but one day the old man said it was impossible to run cows in such tough country where they fell off cliffs, disappeared into sink-holes, gave up large numbers of calves to marauding lions, where hay couldn’t grow but leafy spurge and Canada thistle throve, and the wind packed enough sand to scour windshields opaque.” P. 19 The description outlines the more negative aspects of the land, which reinforces the idea of this text redefining and interpreting the west and western genre by connoting the more savage, lack of rules and behaviour of the land and space, rather than its traditional depiction of the wilderness which encourages the individual with freedom and liberty to live in the traditional ‘frontier’
• In terms of the description of the land, the significance of this emanates the traditional western oppositions, however it can be argued that Proulx challenges this: “The sky to the west hulked sullen, behind him smears of tinselly orange shot through with blinding streaks.” P. 30 – This subverts the binary that is presented in terms of the space of the wilderness versus civilization. Conventionally, the sky to the west exudes the land of liberty, purity, new experiences, and referring back to the original idea of a new Eden, however the description and imagery of the weather juxtaposes this, due to the bright impact of civilization shining (behind him) which purports the traditional narrative and representation of the west and settlement.
• Ellen Boyd: “Oral History and Revenge in Annie Proulx’s The Half-Skinned Steer” - significance of the ranch in the story which is most important in analysing the symbols which are traditionally associated with the west. On Mero’s journey back to Wyoming, the narration describes how he is “Thirty miles out of Cheyenne he saw the first billboard, Down Under Wyoming, Western Fun the Western Way, over a blown-up photograph of kangaroos hopping through the sagebrush and a blond child grinning in a manic imitation of pleasure.” P. 31
• In response to this, Boyd states: “The ranch has become an invented version of the American West, known as “Down Under Wyoming” – invoking an Australian theme, a continent which is half-way around the world from this location.” – p.5
• Boyd stresses the significance of the term ‘half’ which is presented in the title of the story as well as specific junctures in the story. She discusses how: “… further evidenced by the fact that he [Tin Head] only skins the steer halfway before going inside to eat. Proulx repeats the word “half” or forms thereof several times: Tin Head quit ‘halfway’ through a job (26), and he only eats ‘half’ his meal before returning to skinning the steer (35). Tin Head’s problems, therefore, are not only caused by bad luck brought on by a mythical steer, but by his own behaviour.” – p.2
• Boyd reinforces the mythological element of the story, in terms of how Proulx describes the incident of the steer and its eerie impact upon the story, adding to the idea of a folklore tale-like story, highlighting the theme of the mythic and the epic, as traditionally viewed in the western genre re-establishing the quest narrative and the opposition between the wilderness and civilization.
• Presence of women in the story and western genre in general – not prevalent, genre highlights the American hero not heroine stereotypically – except it’s ironic since the only woman in the story is the narrator who narrates the main, important and significant, symbolic story of the half-skinned steer. ‘The old-man’s girlfriend’ – she is not named which reinforces the element of the subjection of women. The presence of the woman in the story highlights the connections between the land and women, perhaps wilderness versus civilization, the two spheres.
• Erin Walker: “Place Matters: An Evolutionary Approach to Annie Proulx’s The Half-Skinned Steer and Wamsutter Wolf”, the presence and representation of the only woman in the story, the old man’s girlfriend and how she fits into the paradigm of the west as an epic space and gender.
• “The old man’s girlfriend’s connection to the place is also expressed in the girlfriend’s horse likeness: “If you admired horses, you'd go for her with her arched neck and horsy buttocks, so high and haunchy you'd want to clap her on the rear”. More importantly, horses are animals of our Western landscape and imagination. The cowboys, Indians, and ranchers all ride horses. In popular culture, we often see images of wild horses running across valleys or through the dusty Western terrain. Wild horses are captured and tamed, but the old man’s girlfriend has not suffered that fate (yet). The old man’s girlfriend represents not only the physical environment of the ranch and Wyoming but also the meaning Mero attaches to those places, and neither the land or woman was available to him.” Pp. 22-23
• Interesting to note from Walker’s analysis - old man’s girlfriend represents the environment of Wyoming and the ranch since it is often stated that women belong to the domestic sphere of civilization, hence Proulx subverts this in her revisionist account of a western story or tale.
• Presence of the female – theme in Proulx’s work, specifically in Close Range, reinterpreting from her point of view, her discussion, her narrative, her recollection, herstory/his story.
• Katie Arosteguy: “’It was all a hard, fast ride that ended in the mud’: Deconstructing the Myth of the Cowboy in Annie Proulx’s Close Range: Wyoming Stories” establishes how: “Proulx rewrites the genre of the Western from a feminist perspective that deconstructs the figure of the cowboy – an iconic image of US masculinity.” P. 177
• The openness connotes the masculine figure which is associated with the west as a place/space signifying individualism, romanticising the image of a cowboy, an iconic hero.
• Gene Autry discusses in his ‘Cowboy Code or Cowboy Commandments’ that cowboys must be gentle, be a good worker, keep himself clean in thought, speech, action and personal habits, must respect women, the laws etc’ in turn, women represent the opposite – closed space/civilization – the restrictions and social responsibility. Erin Walker also establishes the difference in portrayal of traditional western characters, particularly the cowboy, stating “Proulx creates an alternate value system. For example, the Wyoming ranchers, who are often depicted in literature as noble, sympathetic, simple victims of encroaching change, Proulx depicts as complex, often stubborn, selfish and xenophobic.” P. 7
• Significance of the binary in terms of how Proulx subverts this which is evident in the original title of the collection of the stories, ‘Close Range’. Wordplay, emphasis on ‘close’ – poses the question is this a revisionist account of the western genre focussing on the underlying presence of the woman instead of the conventional presentation of masculinity and the all-American hero?
• Walker also explains how “Proulx is not interested in romanticizing Wyoming. Her narrative point of view does not glorify the dusty cowboy or noble rancher; she does not paint pretty pictures of big skies.” – p. 6 This reinstates Proulx’s purpose perhaps in reinventing the genre which ignores the conventional attributes of the West, perhaps inventing a more realistic account instead mythologizing the west.

Conclusion:

• Proulx’s representation and interpretation of the west in the story exemplifies how important the land and the space is which is conventional of the traditional western scene and settlement. 
• In the story, Mero outlines how: “Nothing had changed, not a goddamn thing, the empty pale place and its roaring wind, the distant antelope as tiny as mice, landforms shaped true to the past.” P. 31 This suggests how the west will continue to retain the sense of its individualistic qualities as the great frontier where people searched and settled to in the hope of a new beginning, although the east and civilization represents the future in advancement and technology, the west holds on to the freedom and experience which is communicated throughout the genre. 
• Erin Walker concludes in her article that “In Proulx’s Wyoming, the land always prevails.” – p. 24 this signifies Wyoming as perhaps a metaphor which reinterprets the ideological meaning of the west and its mythology, as it follows the quest narrative, because the flawed sense of the wilderness which ends up taking over the impact of the civilised i.e. Tin head and the steer, Mero losing to nature and its brutality (the snow) and ends up passing away.
• From Erin Walker’s article P. 14, she reveals Johnson’s analysis how: “The personal isolation and emptiness of the Western landscape permeates most of Proulx’s descriptions…In their attempts to replicate the lives of their ancestors, many of her rancher characters find that the core identity they hold in common with those who lived before them comes crashing down as the land does not provide, does not support” (Johnson 28). – This can be investigated in the story when: “…Mero had kicked down thoughts of the place where he began, a so-called ranch on strange ground at the south hinge of the Big Horns.” P. 19 this conveys how ultimately the west provides a space for people to reinvent themselves, but Proulx acknowledges the reality, therefore creating a revisionist account of the traditional western story.

Critics:

· Boyd, Ellen. “Oral History and Revenge in Annie Proulx’s The Half-Skinned Steer”, University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts, 13 (2011): 1-8.

http://www.forumjournal.org/article/view/672/954

· Walker, Erin. “Place Matters: An Evolutionary Approach to Annie Proulx’s The Half-Skinned Steer and Wamsutter Wolf”. University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations, (2010): 1-39.

· Arosteguy, Katie. “’It was all a hard, fast ride that ended in the mud’: Deconstructing the Myth of the Cowboy in Annie Proulx’s Close Range: Wyoming Stories”, Western American Literature 45, no. 2 (2010): 116-136.

· Gene Autry, ‘Cowboy Code’.