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Twelve Days in the Grand Canyon. (Original writing)
Abstract
This novel is written in the first person voice of Wolfgang Christian, one of the guides on a three boat trip through the Grand Canyon in 1968. With the exception of the other two guides and one passenger, he knows the other people only as he interacts with them on the trip. The movement of the narrative through Wolfgang's mind might even suggest an unreliable narrator. Two of the guides and one passenger are veterans of three different wars. I fully intend the story to be a subtle indictment of war. One of the major themes of the work is the gender relationships. I have attempted to create primary characters of both sexes who explore some of the dynamics of issues that were coming to the forefront of human consciousness in the sixties. There are elements of comedy, adventure, geology, history, poetry, mythology, death, and romance in this work. The Grand Canyon setting provides a natural forum for free expression on these concerns as the characters travel along on the Colorado River and camp together at night. There are no heroes and no villains in this work. Each character has many weaknesses and many strengths. It was my intent to make them all into sympathetic characters. Some of the characters are well-developed and play a large part in the movement of the action. Others are introduced and hardly ever heard from again. This was an artistic decision on my part. I tried to achieve verisimilitude by creating characters as a whole in the way that I remember people from my own experience. Some stood out and will always be remembered while others remained in the background from the beginning. What each character has in common at the end is a float trip through the Grand Canyon. In that regard, each is changed in some way from when the trip began. I have attempted not to over-sensationalize the Grand Canyon experience nor to understate it. However, it is doubtful if language can ever come close to its heart. If any of the characters in this book resemble real people, it is coincidental. This is a work of fiction.
Subject Area
American literature|Literature
Recommended Citation
Quayle, Amil David, "Twelve Days in the Grand Canyon. (Original writing)" (1991). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9219382.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9219382