In the novella, westerners are not seen as people that are capable to have much knowledge. They are frowned upon and also classified to be a low status person. For example, “The hotel, for all its sober state, was no longer fashionable. No one, in my memory, had ever known anyone who went there; it was frequented by “politicians” and “Westerners” two classes of citizens whom my mother’s intonation always seemed to deprive of their vote by ranking them with illiterates and criminals.” (240). Like stated here, westerners were a type of citizen who could be classified as an illiterate or a criminal. When thinking on a westerner they were new people to America who many came for work purposes. When coming to this land a westerner came in with no family and was typically always a male figure coming to work to feed their families. Many of these people were good people but there are also those who are the bad ones. In New Year’s Day, westerners can be classified as an illiterate due to the lack of knowledge which is seen as someone who does not have the capability to read, write, etc. These types of people, westerners, were immediately thrown into the low-class families who were not valued like ones of a high-status family. They were the ones who had to do the hard work labor and struggled to get money to maintain themselves and their families.

Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. “First boat built on the Western waters, 1812.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1856. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-fb8d-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

In Wallace Stegnars writing, Who are the Westerners? A westerner is seen as a hardworking person who would get the farming done, who would move the animals, and would get a farm running. A westerner is seen as the one to create and get jobs done and this is something not seen by people of a country. As time goes on a westerner is viewed like an immigrant in our time now. Stegnar states, “It was supposed to be a democracy, and at least in the sense that it was often every man for himself, it was. Though some of its phases—the fur trade, the gold rushes, the open-range cattle industry—lasted hardly longer than the blink of an eye, other phases—logging, irrigation farming, the stock farm with cattle or sheep—have lasted by now for a century or more and have formed the basis for relatively stable communities with some of the attributes of place, some identity as subcultures of the prevailing postfrontier culture of America.” Although these peoples came to work and find a better a place to live in, they were the ones who were actually creating these lands and working them. Like in, New Years Day, when it stated that westerners were looked as illiterates or criminals, they were frowned upon but instead they were the ones doing the work that someone of a high class status could not.

In the reading “Round the World in Strange Company,” a young man is moving to New York from Europe. He talks about his ride to New York and the sickness in the ship, he mentions how he sees that this is the land of opportunity but has been warned against it. This is something that happens many time when people come in from different parts of the world and assume everything is great and pretty colors. It is stated, “New York, the city of superlatives. The paradise of the new world. The greatest town on earth. The one and only New York in existence… I had always been warned against visiting America, particularly the United States. It had been described to me again and again by men of education, wide travel, and experience, as an uncivilised region of comfortless towns; as a country overrun with robbers and freebooters. Its inhabitants had been depicted to me as uncouth, uneducated, brusque, uncivil, discourteous, boastful, and rude in the extreme.” (40). Here we see the way a person from the outside who is making this trip to this new place to make a living sees this place. We get the understanding that New York is seen as a beautiful land but from the older people with experience and knowledge this New York is not see and something great. We have the point of view from three different people. Westerners are seen as ones to not have any knowledge, but from a westerners view point we see dedication and wanting to work in a beautiful place, and finally an outsider who has traveled and experienced a lot to know that New York is not all that pretty.

Everitt, Nicholas. Round the world in strange company: America, British Columbia, and the West section. [London, T. Werner Laurie Ltd, 1915] Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <https://www.loc.gov/item/15016320/>

Stegner, Wallace, Who are the westerners? American Heritage. Vol. 38, no. 8. 1986. <https://www.americanheritage.com/content/who-are-westerners>

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