Natalie Youssef

The Monkey Wrench Gang Seminar Reflection:

Throughout the seminar I was constantly intrigued by all of the new ideas
that were discussed. As a group we came to a mutual agreement that this book was
similar to the Wall Street movement. In the Wall Street movement people protested
for what they believe. The difference between the two is that the Wall Street was
very unorganized, whereas in the Monkey Wrench Gang the characters had a
specific plan for their actions. This discussion lead to the question, Do you think
that Abbey wanted people to read this book and then perform these acts? I did not
feel as if Abbey ever had any intension of hurting anyone. This act of blowing up
dams could kill many people. However, Abbeys extreme hatred towards dams show
that he would find it humorous and would be pleased to see some one take his book
seriously and perform these acts. A connection I made in the seminar is that the
characters in the book seem to represent Abbeys internal conflict between how he
feels about helping the environment. His types of personalities seem to be revealed
through each character.

One question that was asked was in the seminar was, What types of
characters, if not all, represent Abbeys characteristics the best? As a group we all
collaborated and came up with an agreement that Smith and Hayduke most
accurately reflect Abbys characteristics. Hayduke has an interesting personality. He
has had a rough history as a veteran in the Vietnam War and has internal affects
from that. Although he swears a lot, drinks a lot, and seems as a violent character, he
is passionate and cares. He does not agree with modern society. Hayduke despises
and wants to destroy things such as the Grand Canyon Dam and paved roads. He is
determined to stop people from ruining what he calls home. Hayduke strongly
believes that until people can figure out how to not effect nature, to simply get out.
Smith has a hatred for what is happening in Utah because of his ambitions. Smith is
aware of what Utah used to look like so he is determined to destroy everything that
is ruining it. He wants it to go back to the beautiful place it used to be. Smith uses his
reason and experience to guide him in what he believes is the right thing to do.

Similar to Hayduke and Smith, Abbey hates establishment of any industrial
harming of the environment. Abbey expresses his feelings through the characters
and the story, The wilderness once offered men a plausible way of life...now it
functions as a psychiatric refuge. Soon there will be no wilderness....Soon there will
be no place to go. Then the madness becomes universal...and the universe goes
mad." Chap. 5, p. 63. Throughout the book Abbey reveals his own internal conflict
about the topic of wanting to help the environment but at the same time wanting to
destroy all that has affected the environment. Through the process of destroying
things the characters are not cautious of how much petroleum they use as well as
how much they are hurting the environment. It is clear to me that this is lead from
all of the pain and hatred towards these creations from modern society.

After reading this book it made me start to think about my own actions
towards our environment. As much as I would love to contribute to helping the
environment, I drive a car to school every day and use resources such as technology
in order to get a good education. There are so many things that I do daily that I
would normally not think about as hurting and affecting our environment. I am
conflicted with this issue myself because in order to be able to successfully help our
environment I need an education. This is almost impossible to do so without using
any types of resources that affect the environment in a bad way. For example, I
would not be able to buy myself nice clothing for interviews. If I wanted to help the
environment and make an impact on our environment I would have to go through
years of using resources that I should not be using in order to get an education to
help out in the end.
Some questions that we did not answer in the seminar:
Think about the time that Edward abbey wrote monkey wrench gang: What
is new about this type of environmental discourse and what has changed
since environmental discourse in America in the past/ since the creation of
national parks?
What types of beliefs did the four main characters have in the book? What led
them to believe that the industrialization of the southwest should stop?
Why are they so destructive? What are they trying to destroy? What does
that say about their outlook? What are their goals?
In order to answer these questions myself I am going to research and learn about
the creation of national parks and about other environmentalists and their goals.
After doing this research I will have a better understanding of our history and what
lead to peoples strong opinions about our environment. In addition it will provide
me with more information in order to create my own opinions on the matter.