The unbridled desire for freedom that characterizes American identity emanates from the symbol of the frontier. Calling upon notions of unboundedness, valiant individualism, and limitless acquisition, the frontier substantiates itself in the mind of the contemporary American with the same force as it did during early westward expansion. In his book The End of the Myth, historian Greg Grandin explores this persisting symbol of the frontier that seems to outlast the waning myth of American exceptionalism. Grandin emphasizes how America’s constant expansion of the frontier allowed the United States to turn its gaze outward towards “the other” and away from reckoning with its own domestic conflicts or its culpability in international conflicts. It is crucial then, to examine the impulse behind the American desire to propel the energy behind frontierism despite the consequences. In the underbelly of American ideals of freedom festers the American proclivity towards violence to keep the symbol of the frontier alive.  

The conditions of the frontier shaped the creation of American nationalism on the precipice of untouched wilderness. The more and more terrain they traversed, the more separated they were from England and the more ground they were covering in defining the nation. Grandin invokes Frederick Jackson Turner, the theorist who generated much of the early rhetoric surrounding the frontier, to examine how the frontier became such a symbol of freedom. Citing Turner, Grandin writes that the frontier is the line where Europeans craving freedom and imbued with a sense of buoyant and exuberant energy confront this free land of wilderness. The image of untouched wilderness liberates primitive notions of the individual versus nature, the wild curiosity of what lies beyond. Therefore, within the earliest notions of American identity lies this individualistic compulsion to move forward, conquer the unknown, and elude the limits of what is humanly capable. Grandin continues that “facing west meant facing the Promised Land, an Edenic utopia where the American as the new Adam could imagine himself free from nature’s limits, society’s burdens, and history’s ambiguities” (Grandin 3). Grandin captures the way in which any American—first on the frontier and now across America—could step into the character of “Adam” and realize their fantasies of cavalier exploration. Using the metaphor of the “Promised Land” aptly rewrites American expansionism as a messianic journey anointed under the divine promise Americans reign sovereign over whomever else they may encounter. The thing about a frontier butting up against “free land,” is that it glosses over the fact that there were indigenous people already on the other side that stood in the way of freedom, positing brutality as the only answer. 

As the early Americans expanded the frontier, they committed acts of violence and genocide against the Native American people. To understand these horrible yet glorified acts,  Grandin advances the symbol of the frontier beyond explaining the endless forward movement of America, arguing that the symbol also justifies the brutality of this forward movement. He writes, “[the frontier] not only conveyed the idea that the country was moving forward but promised that the brutality involved in moving forward would be transformed into something noble” (Grandin 41). The idea of nobility traces back to the sort of messianic sovereignty that powers American exceptionalism. Early frontierism laid a veil of innocence over acts of violence, glorifying brutality for the sake of a budding nation pursuing freedom. And even as the frontier has closed and the threat of the ending myth looms over America, border brutality continues in the name of protecting American sovereignty. The “promise” that Grandin refers to channels into the repeated reassurance of contemporary political leaders that expansion would solve all of the problems of the state—racism, war, poverty—and justify the terrors the nation-state commits. The brutality itself, therefore, becomes this sustaining display of American freedom in action. When brutality was first employed to create the nation, it now serves to reinforce the nation. 

Walls, then, do specific work in this reinforcement of the bordered nation. As the possibility of free land declined and the frontier closed, the notion of unbounded freedom came under threat of reality. This threat did not come with a reckoning with the issues that were being deflected out of the “safety valve,” however; at least not within the hegemony. It came, rather, with Trump constructing a wall on the US-Mexico border and inflaming nativist sentiment across the country. Grandin asserts that like the frontier, this wall invigorates its own illusions that  “simultaneously recognizes and refuses limits” (Grandin 44). In other words, by recognizing that access to wealth and opportunity are not limitless for everyone, the wall works to ensure that at least those anointed as “American” will have access. Therefore, the work that walls do goes far beyond creating a physical barrier that impedes movement. Walls do the most work in the mind, assuaging anxieties produced in the dissonance between fantasy and reality by materializing nationalistic desires. It is a way of making good on the original promise of frontier expansionism. Walls make the nation real again for those still hanging on to the myth. 

There remains much to be explored about those who live outside of this myth and are watching it end. What are ways that frontierism has affected US international matters? How did the closing of the frontier map a new frontier onto communities that have been “othered” in America? How have Americans passed down secondary symbols of the frontier from one generation to the next? How does the frontier live on in the collective American unconscious? How did hegemonic media and film contribute to the formation of the nation, and, conversely, how do counterhegemonic narratives work against that formation? How do notions of freedom and violence remain tethered in America today?

Grandin, Greg. The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. Reprint, Metropolitan Books, 2020.