Final Post

Nora Mertz
Due: Wednesday, October 14th
Romano Per. 4

Book: The Monkey Wrench Gang
Author: Edward Abbey

I think that there are a few different themes, or messages of The Monkey Wrench Gang, by Edward Abbey. The first theme that I picked up on was the conflicting traits of the characters. They were so passionate about the environment, and wanting to protest the destruction of it, which was good. However, they also acted extremely recklessly, endangered many people, and broke an incredible amount of laws. This balance between wanting to do good, but still doing bad in some people’s eyes is something that I touched on in my third reading post as well. I talked about how the list of the charges towards the main characters in the epilogue served as a reality check, and showed readers that although these four characters are our protagonists who we are rooting for throughout the book, they are still radical criminals.
The second theme, or message is the negative effects humans have on the environment, especially in the southwest. This is the entire plot of the book! There are many references in the book about how corporate America is corrupt because of their destruction of the environment for the soul purpose of profits. One of the main things that the four of them are protesting are the nuclear power plants.
You can also infer that the environmental messages make up the main theme of the text because this book actually influenced a real life environmentalist group. Many people view this book not only as an adventure novel, but also as a sort of call to action. An environmental group called “Earth First!” has listed Edward Abbey as an inspiration, and they also undermine authority in order to work to protect the environment, like a less radical version of the characters in the book (although the groups logo does seem to be an imitation of the communist symbol except made out of a wrench and mallet of some sort). In my opinion, if a book has this sort of effect on a group of people, it is clear that the message of the book is the preservation of the environment, specifically in the southwest.
In addition to coming to understand this theme from the plot, I can also infer that this is the message that the author wanted to convey by taking into account the authors background. Edward Abbey was a forest ranger, who spent most of his life in the southwest. He also had previously published a novel that, “established Abbey as one of the country’s foremost defenders of the natural environment”. I mean just look at the picture of the guy on the back of the book, he looks like Burt from Burt’s Bees. He was obviously passionate about the environment and the protection of the southwest desert was definitely one of the themes he was trying to convey throughout the novel.
I think that the main aspect of reading talked about by both Nabokov, Foster that I thought about while reading was the idea of “not reading with your own eyes”, as Foster says. Nabokov talks about this when he says that you first need to interpret the text for what it literally means, and only after that can you start to read into it and make connections to it. Because of the recklessness of the characters, I often found myself thinking that the stunts they were trying to pull were dumb, and that they were being too risky. However, I read trying to keep in mind what Nabokov and Foster said by trying to ignore my own instinct, and just read the book for what it is.
I would definitely recommend this book, but I think that not everyone would enjoy it as much as I did. I think that I really liked the book for two reasons, 1) I love the outdoors and learning about the environment, so reading about people who were so radically passionate about the environment was cool, and 2) I think that reading about badass criminal characters is super interesting. One of the other main reasons I enjoyed it so much was that unlike many books, it was engaging right from the beginning. It did not take 200 pages to get to the exciting parts of the plot (like Hummingbird’s daughter. Ugh!) It immediately pulled the reader in and established the four main characters very early in the book. Overall, yes I think that this was a good book and if it’s a topic that interests you then you should totally read it! (Sorry if I spoiled the ending in my third post :/ ).