Excerpts from the most fun paper I have written in a long time:

The only other image in any form of media that corresponds fully to the image of the Code Hero from Hemingway’s writing is the Cowboy of the Hollywood Western. The creation of the Cowboy can be attributed to popular adventure stories and comics produced at the start of the 20th Century. However, it was the Hollywood western which managed to maintain this popularity even after the Frontier that the Cowboy aimed to capture no longer existed.

This Frontier marked the sense of adventure of all Cowboys who traveled from town to town, killing bad-guys, rescuing beautiful women and fighting a duel once in a while just to spice things up. The setting remained the same for the most part—the small town with one bank, one store, one church, one Sheriff, one judge and one bar. Among all these uniquely mundane objects was the one bad-guy with his many henchmen and the one beautiful woman he coveted. The Cowboy was a stranger who rode into town on his faithful horse with his faithful sidekick and proceeded to enrage the villain by some atrocious act of chivalry or honor performed at the bar. Normally, this act also resulted in the woman falling in love with the Cowboy Stranger, further aggravating the situation between the Cowboy and the villain. The Cowboy then proceeded to alienate the villain further while endearing himself to the people of the town with his impish irreverence and his facetious disregard for the establishment.