The Myth of Adam and the Myth of the Frontier

R.W.B. Lewis, in his work, The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century, describes the Adam of this myth as, “a [hopeful] individual emancipated from history, happily bereft of ancestry, untouched by the usual inheritance of family and race; an individual standing alone, self-reliant and self-propelling ... fundamentally innocent.”

Malick arguably ascribes these Adamic attributes to The Thin Red Lines’ main protagonist, Witt, and in doing so attempts to a convey a message regarding the myth of the frontier and the myth of Adam.

The film begins with Witt isolated from his battalion on an island, reifying the notion of self-reliance. He does not align himself with the destruction of war, highlighted with the way he interacts with the villagers; wholly innocent, unassuming, and seemingly virtuous, we see Witt as Adam in the Garden of Eden, unencumbered by the knowledge of evil. This element, alongside the ubiquitous panoramic shots of nature depicted as vast and vibrant, intimate an Edenic quality to the setting.

In the American myth of the frontier, nature is shown as limitless and expansive, full of amazement and wonder. Within the myth exists the belief that at the edge of this terrain lies opportunity and potential for a new civilization (i.e., New World as the West when compared with the Old World as Europe). To conquer this landscape is to reaffirm Western individualism and an internal locus of control, unrestrained by external influence.

The figurative Garden of Eden in the film is lush, vibrant, and organic. We see nature as idyllic, and despite the backdrop of war, there is a visceral yearning to breathe and swim in the turquoise waters where Witt appears so free and uninhibited.

Yet towards the film’s climax, as Witt lures the Japanese soldiers away from his unit, he is met by a nature that is no longer boundless and everlasting, but confined and finite. Like Tall, Staros, and Welsh, who are respectively driven by love, success, and nihilism, Witt is propelled by the belief in a greater good. His death belies the American myth of the frontier hero whose success is a product of initiative, aggressiveness, and forcefulness, and suggests that outcomes are influenced just as much by external forces as they are by personal agency.

"[....] qualities of evil and fear and destructiveness have entered; self-sufficiency is questioned through terrible trials; and the stage is set for tragedy. The solitary hero and the alien tribe; 'the simple genuine self against the whole world'--this is still the given,... The variable is this: the novelist's sense of the initial tension--whether it is comforting, or whether it is potentially tragic; whether the tribe promises love, or whether it promises death" (Lewis, 1955).