in school; his older sister dropped out of the unhappy environment in her eleventh year and went to another school, but she seems not to have gotten over the neurotic difficulties the previous ostracism left.
The Statue of Liberty does not “lift her lamp beside the golden door” for all immigrants. The fear of ostracism is often present in the crowds of immigrants who moved into Minnesota and northern Wisconsin and Michigan. As children most of us—to our profound later regret—spoke of immigrants as Bohunks and Polocks, and in the cities they were Dagoes and Kikes. The romantic air with which we surround our Statue of Liberty covers up the fact that we generally hear of the successful immigrants like Andrew Carnegie and Edward Bok and other immigrants who became great.
LONELINESS IN AMERICA
Our most powerful and pervasive myth, which has had an amazingly widespread influence in this country and wherever radio is heard throughout the world, is that of the lone cowboy and the west. * We recall the Lone Ranger , introduced by the overture to William Tell (the hero of a similar myth in his owncountry of Switzerland). The program went into its nightly adventure, in which the Lone Ranger wore camouflage to show that he would continue to be unknown. With Tonto, his faithful helper, the Lone Ranger galloped ahead to redress some wrong. At the end of the program, his identity still unknown, the Lone Ranger galloped away into the lonely evening again. This myth merges loneliness and the myth of the west. The loneliness seems a kind of cultural inheritance, with our lone ancestors, the hunters, the trappers, the frontiersmen, all of whom lived a life of relative isolation and bragged about it.
Chronicled by an endless number of films, the myth of the lonely cowboy was made to order for Hollywood and the American mood. The background was the western mountains in their scarlet and purple against the endless ochre of the desert sand. In the films the courage of American frontier men and women dared all. The women who were saved—or saved themselves—from villains were delicate southern beauties or rugged frontier women who could chop wood and shoot with the best of the men. And there was the final lone shootout between the hero and the villain. Westerns illustrate the love for repetition that Freud mentions; we seemed to have an endless appetite for seeing the same theme over and over again as an authentic myth. *
When Henry Kissinger, then secretary of state, was asked by Oriani Fallaci how he explained “the incredible movie star status” he enjoyed, Kissinger replied that it came from “the fact that he had always acted alone.” Kissinger was referring to his role as a “lonely cowboy” in flying from Lebanon to Jerusalem to Cairo, not by horseback but by diplomatic jet. “Americans like that immensely,” he said.
Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into town … withhis horse and nothing else. Maybe even without a pistol…. This cowboy doesn’t have to be courageous. All he needs is to be alone to show others that he rides into town and does everything by himself. Americans like that. *
This early loneliness would seem to be connected, as a kind of cultural inheritance, with our lone ancestors, the hunters, the trappers, the frontiersmen, all of whom lived a life of relative isolation and bragged about it. But now it is not physical loneliness that we in the twentieth century are troubled with. In this age of radio and television no one is far from another person’s voice at every moment. We noted the loneliness of Deborah in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden; even though people were around her all the time she felt completely alone and had to construct her own gods. We are often considered a country of joiners; we join everything from Rotarians to Kiwanas clubs to fraternities and sororities and women’s societies of all
The Statue of Liberty does not “lift her lamp beside the golden door” for all immigrants. The fear of ostracism is often present in the crowds of immigrants who moved into Minnesota and northern Wisconsin and Michigan. As children most of us—to our profound later regret—spoke of immigrants as Bohunks and Polocks, and in the cities they were Dagoes and Kikes. The romantic air with which we surround our Statue of Liberty covers up the fact that we generally hear of the successful immigrants like Andrew Carnegie and Edward Bok and other immigrants who became great.
LONELINESS IN AMERICA
Our most powerful and pervasive myth, which has had an amazingly widespread influence in this country and wherever radio is heard throughout the world, is that of the lone cowboy and the west. * We recall the Lone Ranger , introduced by the overture to William Tell (the hero of a similar myth in his owncountry of Switzerland). The program went into its nightly adventure, in which the Lone Ranger wore camouflage to show that he would continue to be unknown. With Tonto, his faithful helper, the Lone Ranger galloped ahead to redress some wrong. At the end of the program, his identity still unknown, the Lone Ranger galloped away into the lonely evening again. This myth merges loneliness and the myth of the west. The loneliness seems a kind of cultural inheritance, with our lone ancestors, the hunters, the trappers, the frontiersmen, all of whom lived a life of relative isolation and bragged about it.
Chronicled by an endless number of films, the myth of the lonely cowboy was made to order for Hollywood and the American mood. The background was the western mountains in their scarlet and purple against the endless ochre of the desert sand. In the films the courage of American frontier men and women dared all. The women who were saved—or saved themselves—from villains were delicate southern beauties or rugged frontier women who could chop wood and shoot with the best of the men. And there was the final lone shootout between the hero and the villain. Westerns illustrate the love for repetition that Freud mentions; we seemed to have an endless appetite for seeing the same theme over and over again as an authentic myth. *
When Henry Kissinger, then secretary of state, was asked by Oriani Fallaci how he explained “the incredible movie star status” he enjoyed, Kissinger replied that it came from “the fact that he had always acted alone.” Kissinger was referring to his role as a “lonely cowboy” in flying from Lebanon to Jerusalem to Cairo, not by horseback but by diplomatic jet. “Americans like that immensely,” he said.
Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into town … withhis horse and nothing else. Maybe even without a pistol…. This cowboy doesn’t have to be courageous. All he needs is to be alone to show others that he rides into town and does everything by himself. Americans like that. *
This early loneliness would seem to be connected, as a kind of cultural inheritance, with our lone ancestors, the hunters, the trappers, the frontiersmen, all of whom lived a life of relative isolation and bragged about it. But now it is not physical loneliness that we in the twentieth century are troubled with. In this age of radio and television no one is far from another person’s voice at every moment. We noted the loneliness of Deborah in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden; even though people were around her all the time she felt completely alone and had to construct her own gods. We are often considered a country of joiners; we join everything from Rotarians to Kiwanas clubs to fraternities and sororities and women’s societies of all
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