Monkey Wrench Gang Summary
The Monkey Wrench Gang
By Edward Abbey
I read The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey. The book is 421 pages, and was published by Lippincott Williams &Wilkins in 1975. It is a fictional story about a group of four people who meet, and all want the same thing. To stop development on America’s southwest.
Edward Abbey’s purpose in writing this book was to raise awareness about what is happening to, quite literally, our back yard. This book takes place in the southern Utah and Arizona, and is told in 3rd person, but not following any one specific character. It switches which character you are following throughout the story. The main characters are George Hayduke, Bonnie Abbzug, Doc Sarvis, and “Seldom Seen” Smith.
The book starts off with a chapter dedicated to introducing each of the main characters. After all the characters are introduced, they all end up meeting each other on a rafting expedition down the Colorado River. They start talking about their hate of the Glen Canyon dam, and the development on the Colorado River, and they end up forming a plan to do everything they can to stop it. The gang’s first act is to try to stop, or at least slow, the construction of a new paved road. They pull all the survey stakes, and paralyze all the big machinery. The next big event took place at the Hite airstrip, Lake Powell, which was undergoing construction. Smith teaches Hayduke to operate a tractor, specifically a bull dozer, and Hayduke uses it to push another construction machine into the lake, followed by the dozer itself. This leads to the first encounter Bishop J. Dudley Love who is in charge of the San Juan County Search and Rescue team. Love and his team pursue Hayduke and Smith up a ragged trail. Hayduke uses a pry bar to push boulders onto the road to block Love and his team, and a large boulder ends up landing on Love’s Blazer, destroying it. The next major event in the story is when the team blows up a train bridge, taking a coal train
By Edward Abbey
I read The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey. The book is 421 pages, and was published by Lippincott Williams &Wilkins in 1975. It is a fictional story about a group of four people who meet, and all want the same thing. To stop development on America’s southwest.
Edward Abbey’s purpose in writing this book was to raise awareness about what is happening to, quite literally, our back yard. This book takes place in the southern Utah and Arizona, and is told in 3rd person, but not following any one specific character. It switches which character you are following throughout the story. The main characters are George Hayduke, Bonnie Abbzug, Doc Sarvis, and “Seldom Seen” Smith.
The book starts off with a chapter dedicated to introducing each of the main characters. After all the characters are introduced, they all end up meeting each other on a rafting expedition down the Colorado River. They start talking about their hate of the Glen Canyon dam, and the development on the Colorado River, and they end up forming a plan to do everything they can to stop it. The gang’s first act is to try to stop, or at least slow, the construction of a new paved road. They pull all the survey stakes, and paralyze all the big machinery. The next big event took place at the Hite airstrip, Lake Powell, which was undergoing construction. Smith teaches Hayduke to operate a tractor, specifically a bull dozer, and Hayduke uses it to push another construction machine into the lake, followed by the dozer itself. This leads to the first encounter Bishop J. Dudley Love who is in charge of the San Juan County Search and Rescue team. Love and his team pursue Hayduke and Smith up a ragged trail. Hayduke uses a pry bar to push boulders onto the road to block Love and his team, and a large boulder ends up landing on Love’s Blazer, destroying it. The next major event in the story is when the team blows up a train bridge, taking a coal train