OPINION
“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” – D.H. Lawrence
This quote came to mind last week as I considered the murder of Charlie Kirk. I thought, it is easy to blame algorithms, the internet, politics, and guns. Better that than to blame our own souls.
The English novelist and critic D.H. Lawrence is most famous for his controversial novel “Lady Chatterly’s Lover.”
Yet as a literary critic he is often credited with identifying what sets American literature apart from English literature. He brought American literature into its own with his work “Studies in Classic American Literature.“
In that book, while discussing William Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales, (think “The Last of the Mohicans“) he wrote the following:
“You have there the myth of the essential white America. All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”
These lines are little known outside of the field of literary criticism. In popular culture they did make a recent, but short, appearance in the 2017 movie “Hostiles” starring Christian Bale, West Studi and Rosamund Pike.
It is the archetype of the hunter, which Lawrence identified in Cooper’s stories, that is so prominent in our culture.
It is not the farmer, the husbandman, or even the cattleman that we honor — it is the hunter, and the hunter is a killer.
The cowboy, the great symbol of the American West is not often portrayed as the faithful shepherd of cattle, feeding the nation.
From “The Virginian,” to “Hostiles.” the American cowboy is first and foremost portrayed as a man of violence and a killer. American writers and the entertainment industry have built upon Cooper’s archetype. But they have never challenged or changed it.
“Moby Dick,” which some consider The Great American Novel, is the tale of a ship full of killers, and one killer in particular — Captain Ahab. The Pequod serves as a figure for America, and her “crew” follows their leader’s hate blindly to their ship’s complete and utter destruction.
Americans love a killer: from John Wesley Hardin and Wild Bill Hickock, to Chris Kyle and Seal Team 6.
It’s not the fault of the internet, social media or violent video games — they only provide us with what we ask for.
America celebrates the culture of death, hunting and killing far more than the culture of nourishing life to its fullest.
This explains why the militarization of the U.S. border, and of our cities and towns, is such a popular policy. Americans see violence, force and even killing as the answer to most of our problems. Our leaders even joke about it.
It is deep within the American soul to celebrate the warrior, the hero, the killer. So why should it surprise us when our young are inspired to imitate them?
