Americanisms in The Day the Cowboys Quit
The novel The Day the Cowboys Quit is about cowboys and the days of the old Texas cattle drives. The date in which this novel takes place is in 1883 in the Texas Panhandle. The cowboys had always been stereotyped as drinkers, and now, they refused to be stigmatized as drinkers and exploited by the wealthy cattle owners who have plenty of money, but don’t even pay livable wages to the cowboys. Those very same wealthy ranchers want to take away the right for cowboys to own their own cattle because they feel that the cowboys can’t be trusted. The ranchers believe that if the cowboys have the right to own their own cattle, it may lead to the cowboys steeling the rancher’s cattle. So, in 1883, the new dictum is set: If you’re a cowboy, you can’t own a cow. When the news of such legislation travel from wagon to wagon, the cowboys decide to rally and fight for their rights--they gather together and fight. The novel also boasts many Americanisms, which I will name a few of in the following paragraphs. The first Americanism that I located in this novel was that of Yankee ingenuity. In the novel, one of the cowboys has started owning his own cattle, and he needed a brand to brand his cattl
The eighth and final Americanism I found in the novel was underdog. The example of underdog that I found was when Hitch won the election. He wasn’t supposed to win, but he did. This is an example of underdog because it means to root or cheer for the person that is not supposed to win or succeed. After I found the free enterprise Americanism, I found a good example of the Americanism protest. The example is that many of the cowboys leave their wagons to go on a strike against ranchers because of the new dictum saying that cowboys cannot own cattle for themselves. This angered the cowboys and it made many of them decide to go on a strike against the ranchers that made this new law. This is an example of protest because the cowboys are expressing their disagreement with the ranchers that came up with this new law. enterprise means that there is no limit on how a person can make money. e so that they didn’t get mixed up with all of the other cattle. Well, the owner of this new cattle group could not afford to buy his own brand so he borrowed another cowboy’s brand and made a different shape out of it on his cattle. The brand that he borrowed was in the shape of a “W”, so he burned it on the cattle once right side up, then flipped it and burned it as an upside down “W”. This resulted in a 2-diamond pattern, so his new cattle brand was 2 diamonds. Thi
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Approximate Word count = 933
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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