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  3. Both versions of the myth—the West as a place of escape from society and the West as a stage on which the moral conflicts confro

Both versions of the myth—the West as a place of escape from society and the West as a stage on which the moral conflicts confro

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问题     Both versions of the myth—the West as a place of escape from society and the West as a stage on which the moral conflicts confronting society could be played out—figured prominently in the histories and essays of young Theodore Roosevelt, the paintings and sculptures of artist Frederic Remington, and the short stories and novels of writer Owen Wister. These three young members of the eastern establishment spent much time in the West in the 1880s, and each was intensely affected by the adventure. All three had felt thwarted by the constraints and enervating influence of the genteel urban world in which they had grown up, and each went West to experience the physical challenges and moral simplicities extolled in the dime novels. When Roosevelt arrived in 1884 at the ranch he had purchased in the Dakota Badlands, he at once bought a leather scout’s uniform, complete with fringed sleeves and leggings.
    Each man also found in the West precisely what he was looking for. The frontier that Roosevelt glorified in such books as The Winning of the West(four volumes, 1889— 1896), and that the prolific Remington portrayed in his work, was a stark physical and moral environment that stripped away all social artifice and tested an individual’s true ability and character. Drawing on a popular version of English scientist Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory, which characterized life as a struggle in which only the fittest and best survived, Roosevelt and Remington exalted the disappearing frontier as the last outpost of an honest and true social order.
    This version of the frontier myth reached its apogee in Owen Wister’s enormously popular novel The Virginian(1902), later reincarnated as a 1929 Gary Cooper movie and a 1960s television series. In Wister’s tale, the elemental physical and social environment of the Great Plains produces individuals like his unnamed cowboy hero, "the Virginian," an honest, strong, and compassionate man, quick to help the weak and fight the wicked. The Virginian is one of nature’s aristocrats—ill-educated and unsophisticated but upright steady, and deeply moral. The Virginian sums up his own moral code in describing his view of God’s justice; "He plays a square game with us. " For Wister, as for Roosevelt and Remington, the cowboy was the Christian knight on the Plains, indifferent to material gain as he upheld virtue, pursued justice, and attacked evil.
    Needless to say, the western myth in all its forms was far removed from the actual reality of the West. Critics delighted in pointing out that no one scene in The Virginian actually showed the hard physical labor of the cattle range. The idealized version of the West also glossed over the darker underside of frontier expansion—the brutalities of Indian warfare, the forced removal of the Indians to reservations, the racist discrimination against Mexican-Americans and blacks, the risks and perils of commercial agriculture and cattle growing, and the boom-and-bust mentality rooted in the selfish exploitation of natural resources.
What is probably the reason for people to make up a legendary West?
选项 A、They liked to make up stories.
B、They believed what they portrayed were the actual reality.
C、They clung to the myth of the West as an uncomplicated, untainted Eden of social simplicity and moral clarity in an era of unsettling social transformation.
D、They wanted to make profit by luring people to the West.
答案C
解析 根据文中第二段的内容可知，人们还在西部找到了自己正在追寻的事物。罗斯福在诸如《西部的胜利》(四卷，1889—1896)这样的书中对西部边远地区给予了赞美，著述颇丰的雷明顿在他的作品中也对西部进行了描述。西部呈现出来的是荒凉的自然与道德环境。在这种环境下，社会上所有的虚伪行为都无法隐藏，同时也考验了一个人的真实能力和品质。英国科学家查尔斯·达尔文的进化论认为，人生就是一场优胜劣汰的战斗。据此理论，罗斯福和雷明顿将正在消失的西部赞为真诚和真正社会秩序最后的前哨。据此可知，在混乱的社会转型时代，人们坚定地认为西部传奇是简单且未受玷污的伊甸园，这是人们撰写西部传奇的原因。C项正确。
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