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Aridity In The Literature Of The American West: Water In Stegner's Angle Of Repose And Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang, Annie Frodeman

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

This thesis examines how Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose and Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang have been molded by water scarcity and in turn have shaped the discourse about water. Angle of Repose offers a reliable history of water in the West, showing how the myth of the garden permeated the lives of people who made the journey West at the end of the nineteenth century. Stegner’s narrative of the building of the West shows what comes of humanity’s desire to change the environment by making the desert bloom. The Monkey Wrench Gang complements Stegner’s Angle of Repose as …