Further Reading

Question 1

Cather’s article on the Mesa Verde (3)

Answer 1

Generations went on gravely and reverently repeating the past, rather than battling for anything new

They were absolutely unenterprising in the modern American sense. Their architecture and religion were their national purpose

A country without such record is dumb, no matter how beautiful

Question 2

Lionel Trilling (dangers faced by a pioneer) (1)

Answer 2

Disaster comes when an idea becomes an actuality

She implies that in our civilisation, even the best ideals are bound to corruption

Question 3

John Swift (3)

Answer 3

juxtaposing Godfrey St Peter’s claustrophobically material world of mean people and things against Tom Outland’s empty but redemptive Blue Mesa

Materialism and idealism blur at their points of contact

Tom also vanishes heroically but irretrievably into a collective dream of nation and culture

Question 4

Walter Benn Michaels (2)

Answer 4

(Citizenship act) - a cynical acknowledgment of the ultimate irrelevance of citizenship to the Indian’s predicament

(Tom’s happiness in the Mesa) - the recovery of Indian culture, which is to say, of the very idea of culture