In the Opening Credits, A Burial scene the stage is set for the typical Western themed movie in which the image is supposed to reveal the challenges of the West’s landscape juxtaposing with the beauty of the land (Bandy and Stoehr xiv). The viewer witnesses a nondiegetic written narrative from the perspective of William’s mother-in-law followed by the diegesis including a shadow of him digging a grave for his deceased wife against the backdrop of a orange setting sun and a small prairie home. This exposition is important because through the narrative, which may be truth or fiction, sets up the violent American machismo stereotype of William. William takes on the role of the “hero” in a campbellian monomyth structure that is standard in Western
