Defining Space in the West in Tropic of Orange

This semester we have wrestled with the idea of defining space in the West. Until now the West has still been something raw; there has been an untamed element for man to conquer and that made man good somehow. In the Tropic of Orange, however, we see a western space that has been so rigorously defined (rigorously) that there is nothing left which is unknown. Man has total dominance over nature to the point where he can literally move the equator by his actions. The West is sort of like the meeting of two or more tectonic plates, representing the many cultures and peoples which sought their futures there, and now that they have met they are crashing together and changing the literal lay of the land. It's reminiscent of the "Terra forming" in Firefly. This story therefore is almost like an anti-western, or a distopian western. we see the fulfillment of the ultimate gal of all western, the taming of the West, and instead of happiness it has brought only misery and travesty. The destruction that Archangel saw in the opening of the western frontier by the great European explorers is now complete and there is going to be apocalyptic consequences for our defiling of nature. To that end, Archangel's death is almost a necessity, a martyr to stay the hand of humanity's demise. Only by relinquishing this control over nature can we be saved, as Bobby ultimately is when he lets go of the "lines".