Questions

1. How does the opening scene characterize the Virginian? Consider the way he is described (physical appearance and personality traits) and his interaction with other characters. What is so alluring about him?

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   Questions: - How does the opening scene characterize the Virginian? Consider the way he is described (physical appearance and personality traits) and his interaction with other characters. What is so alluring about him?
2. In the second chapter, how does Owen Wister portray the Medicine Bow community? How does the dialogue contribute to this portrayal?

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   Questions: - In the second chapter, how does Owen Wister portray the Medicine Bow community? How does the dialogue contribute to this portrayal?
3. Wister is said to have based the scene in Chapter 2 on a remark he actually overheard in a similar setting. Why do you think the remark made such an impression on him? What values do you see revealed in the way the Virginian responds to the same “epithet” in the two different contexts? What insight does the narrator gain from the two incidents?

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   Questions: - Wister is said to have based the scene in Chapter 2 on a remark he actually overheard in a similar setting. Why do you think the remark made such an impression on him? What values do you see revealed in the way the Virginian responds to the same “epithet” in the two different contexts? What insight does the narrator gain from the two incidents?
4. The Virginian is from the South and of an age that he could have fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. What does Wister achieve by giving him this background rather than making him a New Englander?

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   Questions: - The Virginian is from the South and of an age that he could have fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. What does Wister achieve by giving him this background rather than making him a New Englander?
5. The narrator is an easterner, a city person unfamiliar with the customs and culture of the West. What evidence does Wister give to emphasize the narrator’s outsider status? Why might Wister have chosen a narrator with this background rather than use a Westerner or an omniscient narrator?

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   Questions: - The narrator is an easterner, a city person unfamiliar with the customs and culture of the West. What evidence does Wister give to emphasize the narrator’s outsider status? Why might Wister have chosen a narrator with this background rather than use a Westerner or an omniscient narrator?
6. In his introduction to the novel, Wister writes of the “vanished world” of the West during the last quarter of the nineteenth century:

   What is become of the horseman, the cow-puncher, the last romantic figure upon our soil? For he was romantic. Whatever he did, he did with his might. The bread that he earned was earned hard, the wages that he squandered were squandered hard,—half a year’s pay sometimes gone in a night,—“blown in,” as he expressed it, or “blowed in,” to be perfectly accurate. Well, he will be here among us always, invisible, waiting his chance to live and play as he would like. His wild kind has been among us, since the beginning: a young man with his temptations, a hero without wings.

   What does Wister mean in his answer to the question he poses at the start of this paragraph? How do the society of Medicine Bow in general and the Virginian in particular illustrate the point(s) he is making?

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   Questions: - In his introduction to the novel, Wister writes of the “vanished world” of the West during the last quarter of the nineteenth century:What is become of the horseman, the cow-puncher, the last romantic figure upon our soil? For he was romantic. Whatever he did, he did with his might. The bread that he earned was earned hard, the wages that he squandered were squandered hard,—half a year’s pay sometimes gone in a night,—“blown in,” as he expressed it, or “blowed in,” to be perfectly accurate. Well, he will be here among us always, invisible, waiting his chance to live and play as he would like. His wild kind has been among us, since the beginning: a young man with his temptations, a hero without wings.What does Wister mean in his answer to the question he poses at the start of this paragraph? How do the society of Medicine Bow in general and the Virginian in particular illustrate the point(s) he is making?
7. Writing in Harvard Magazine, Castle Freeman Jr. calls The Virginian “the template on which every Western since has been cut”—a viewpoint echoed by numerous readers and critics as well as filmmakers. Why? What characteristics of the cowboy and the American Western genre do you see in this selection that make this novel a “template”?

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   Questions: - Writing in Harvard Magazine, Castle Freeman Jr. calls The Virginian “the template on which every Western since has been cut”—a viewpoint echoed by numerous readers and critics as well as filmmakers. Why? What characteristics of the cowboy and the American Western genre do you see in this selection that make this novel a “template”?