Communist By Richard Ford Sparknotes

Richard Ford’s short story “Communist” is a commentary on the many ways American culture has evolved since the time of the American West. Ford primarily alludes to the West and its influence on modern American culture through the setting, themes of family, manhood, and hunting, and various symbols, including geese, olive trees, and Glen’s car. By juxtaposing Western storytelling elements with modern social problems, Ford analyzes how Americans have perverted and misapplied traditional cowboy masculinity and how that misapplication has negatively impacted modern society. Several themes Ford examines through a modern lens were social issues that Americans were concerned with during the time of the American West. For example, Ford portrays stereotypes of hunting as a masculine activity and contrasts Les’ mother’s emotional reactions as a feminine experience. In his speech “On American Motherhood,” Roosevelt also presents a strict binary of men and women’s roles in American society, with men as the

When he and Les go hunting, Glen drives his car into the middle of the field, akin to how cowboys would have ridden their horses into the Western landscape to hunt or drive cattle. Ford includes Glen driving a car into the field, contrasting him with his more self-sufficient, hardworking forefathers. There is not much honor or discipline involved in driving a car. In contrast, to ride horses, a cowboy had to learn how to care for them, build trust, and teach them to be ridden. Glen’s fixation on hunting as a masculine activity while ignoring the discipline needed to be a successful outdoorsman directly results from an oversimplification of the cowboy persona. Historically, Americans have glamorized the shootouts and lawlessness of the West while ignoring the moral fortitude cowboys needed to