ABSTRACT
This chapter looks into how the end of the American frontier and the transition towards a different cultural, political, and legal scenario are hinted at in the influential novel sequence. The intrinsic diversity of frontier life and its inclusiveness were instrumental in shaping the American spirit around individualistic and democratic values. One of the main achievements of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove is to depict a web of complex interactions on both sides of the US–Mexican border, with the legacy of ‘European’ and ‘Eastern’ culture and institutions being deeply shaped and transformed by this entirely different setting. Relative calm is the typical condition of the two leading characters in Lonesome Dove, Captain Woodrow Call and Captain Augustus ‘Gus’ McCrae. Critics have signalled that McMurtry’s literary world, in which irony and relative calm play a significant role, is hardly exempt from violent acts, even extreme ones.
