5. The Revenant
Rating: ☆☆☆1/2
Recommended by: Lisa Goldberg
Author: Michael Punke
Genre: Non-Fiction, History, Western
Info: 272 pages, published June 10, 2002
Format: Audio Book on Hoopla
Summary
Based on a true incident of heroism in the history of the American West, The Revenant tells the story of Hugh Glass, a Philadelphia-born adventurer and frontiersman. Glass goes to sea at age 16 and enjoys a charmed life, including several years under the flag of the pirate Jean Lafitte and almost a year as a prisoner of the Loup Pawnee Indians on the plains between the Platte and the Arkansas rivers.
In 1822, at age 36, Glass escapes, finds his way to St. Louis and enters the employ of Capt. Andrew Henry, trapping along tributaries of the Missouri River. After surviving months of hardship and Indian attack, he falls victim to a grizzly bear. His throat nearly ripped out, scalp hanging loose and deep slashing wounds to his back, shoulder and thigh, Glass appears to be mortally wounded.
Initially, Captain Henry refuses to abandon him and has him carried along the Grand River. Unfortunately, the terrain soon makes transporting Glass impossible. Even though his death seems certain, Henry details two men, a fugitive mercenary, John Fitzgerald, and young Jim Bridger (who lived to become a frontier hero) to stand watch and bury him.
After several days, Fitzgerald sights hostile Indians. Taking Glass’s rifle and tossing Bridger his knife, Fitzgerald flees with Bridget, leaving Glass. Enraged at being left alone and defenseless, Glass survives against all odds and embarks on a 3,000-mile-long vengeful pursuit of his betrayers.
Quotes
“Of course it’s not simple. Who said it was simple? But you know what? Lots of loose ends don’t ever get tied up. Play the hand you’re dealt. Move on.”
“He would crawl until his body could support a crutch. If he only made three miles a day, so be it. Better to have those three miles behind him than ahead.”
“Though no law was written, there was a crude rule of law, adherence to a covenant that transcended their selfish interests. It was biblical in its depth, and its importance grew with each step into wilderness. When the need arose, a man extended a helping hand to his friends, to his partners, to strangers. In so doing, each knew that his own survival might one day depend upon the reaching grasp of another.”
“Glass shot an irritated glance at Red, who had an uncanny knack for spotting problems and an utter inability for crafting solutions.”
“No mystery surrounded his nickname: he was enormous and he was filthy. Pig smelled so bad it confused people. When they encountered his reek, they looked around him for the source, so implausible did it seem that the odor could emanate from a human.”
“His awe of the mountains grew in the days that followed, as the Yellowstone River led him nearer and nearer. Their great mass was a marker, a benchmark fixed against time itself. Others might feel disquiet at the notion of something so much larger than themselves. But for Glass, there was a sense of sacrament that flowed from the mountains like a font, an immortality that made his quotidian pains seem inconsequential.”
My Take
I read The Revenant after seeing the movie and liked, but did not love, both forms of the story and thought that the changes made by the movie to heighten the revenge motive for the protagonist Hugh Glass improved the narrative.
My response to both the book and the movie was immense gratitude that I live in the 21st Century and not the 19th. The fur trappers, soldiers and Native Americans depicted in The Revenant desperately try to eke out a living while being constantly bombarded by unrelenting natural forces in the form of a grizzly bear and a brutal winter and also have to contend with the vicissitudes of their fellow man.
While The Revenant held my interest throughout, I was happy to finish this bleak tale. A bit of a shame that so much of the Glass’s motivation to survive was fueled by an unquenchable thirst for revenge.
