A seemingly traditional approach towards the Western frontier is the reason for John Cawelti’s assessment from The Six-Gun Mystique. His description of the Western formula being “far easier to define than that of the detective story” may clearly be a paradigm for many authors, but not particularly for Stephen Crane. The standards Cawelti has set forth for a successful Western is quite minimal by thought, but at the same time relevant. Crane signifies a …showed first 75 words of 1335 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1335 total…of righteous ecstasy, the moment when you know you have the moral advantage of your adversary, the moment of murderousness. It’s a moment when there’s still time top stop. There’s still time to reflect, there’s still time to recall what happened in High Noon, there’s still time to say: “I don’t care who’s right or who’s wrong. There has to be some better way to live” (Tompkins 239).