Question

How does "People In Hell Just Want A Drink Of Water" by Annie Proulxs demonstrate that "violence, the land, and hopeless love are the fundamentals of Western myth"? Please give a summary with quotes that illustrate this point.

Accepted Answer

This story is about two families, the Dunmires and the Tinsleys, who live in the Laramie plains. They both have sons, Jax and Ras respectively, around the same age, but are otherwise very different. Jax stays and becomes successful, while Ras leaves and becomes disabled. Ras returns and behaves in socially strange ways, eventually being castrated by Jax due to his outsider status. These events show the themes of attachment to land, violence, and, to an extent, love.

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Here is a brief summary of this story with some relevant quotes.
This story by Annie Proulx is told by a third-person omniscient narrator. The story is set in the Laramie plain in the early 20th century and focuses on two families: the Dunmires and the Tinsleys. The Dunmires are a family of hard men. Father “Ice” and his eight sons live in a small homestead since Naomi, Ice’s wife, leaves them after being “ridden hard and put away dirty.” (p. 4) The Dunmires work livestock, and have “a somber arrogance about them, a rigidity of attitude that said theirs was the only way.” (p. 9) By contrast, the Tinsleys moved to the Laramie plain from St Louis. They are “a different kind.” (p. 9) Mrs. Tinsley is described as “crazy” and “coddled.” Her husband, Horm, is a “failure as a stockman” but is “liked for his kindly manner” (all p. 10).
The action of the story focusses on the Tinsleys’s son Ras who was “smart with numbers” and “yearned for books” (p. 12) and Ice Dunmire’s son Jax, who was a “top bronc buster” and one of the “brass-nutted boys” who liked nothing better than to “kick the frost out of a horse in early morning.” (all p. 4) Ras had run away, seeking adventure and “the distant sea” (p. 11) while Jax stayed in Laramie to run his family’s ranch. Ras was injured in an accident and returns, disfigured and nonverbal. Jax builds wealth and solidifies his family’s superiority over the land as a traveling windmill salesman. Ras, due to his injury, has been exposing himself to women all over the Laramie plain and going out for days at a time. His parents fret over his wellbeing and receive threatening calls and visits from locals. The climax comes as Horm realizes—immediately after a pushy sales visit from Jax—that the Dunmire boys had cut off Ras’s genitals and left him to die of gangrene.
At the end of the story, the narrator reflects on the story: it was “all sixty years ago and more.” (p. 34) Both families are dead, their land has been divided up and changed hands many times. The narrator wryly reflects that “such desperate things no longer happen. If you believe that you’ll believe anything.” (p. 34)

Annie Proulx

How does "People In Hell Just Want A Drink Of Water" by Annie Proulxs demonstrate that "violence, the land, and hopeless love are the fundamentals of Western myth"? Please give a summary with quotes that illustrate this point.

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