Literature that Prompts Action: Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang and the Formation of Earth First!

Abstract

Edward Abbey’s 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang traces the illegal environmentalist adventures of an activist foursome. They vandalize construction equipment, remove survey stakes, bomb a construction site, and blow up a bridge over the Glen Canyon dam, a federal project that angered environmentalists for damming the Colorado River and replacing a precious desert ecosystem with a man-made lake. Writing in a cinematic style that highlighted the victorious heroics of his protagonists, Abbey portrayed environmentalism as a daring anti-establishment adventure. On March 21, 1981, the founding members of Earth First! donned Abbey’s environmentalist superhero capes when they symbolically repeated the book’s most dramatic action, the bombing of the Glen Canyon dam. Instead of dynamite, they brought an enormous length of black vinyl and positioned it to symbolically “crack” the dam (Roselle and Mahan 58). Although they did not know Abbey personally, they invited him to the protest, and he gave a speech for the occasion (57).