Lord Grizzly, Second Edition Read Free Page B

he died, and the others proceeded on their way.
    From here on, until the actual death of Glass about ten years later, the story is vague, allowing the imagination of the novelist full play within the framework of a few facts. Because no one was with Glass for many weeks after the attack by the grizzly—the two men having abandoned him prematurely, thinking he was surely dead—we can only imagine what he went through. Nevertheless, accounts of his experience, presumably based upon the story Glass himself told when he reached Fort Kiowa, soon made their way into print and into legend. The first was by James Hall, in
Port Folio
in Philadelphia in March 1825. The second, by Philip St. George Cooke, was published under the pseudonym “Borderer” in the
St. Louis Beacon
, December 2 and 9, 1830. “Adventures at the Headwaters of the Missouri,” by Edmund Flagg, appeared in the Louisville
Literary News-Letter
on September 7, 1839. Many years later, additional—or confirming—information was located in the memoirs of George C. Young and James Clyman, mountain men. Not until 1963, with John Myers Myers’s
Pirate, Pawnee and Mountain Man: The Saga of Hugh Glass
, was all the available information collected and analyzed in a biography.
    Despite these accounts and the admirable work of Myers nine years after the publication of
Lord Grizzly
, the novelist still has enough mystery and disagreement to allow room for the imagination—in addition to the task of bringing a historical character to life through emotion and inner conflict. What was it like, being left for dead? How did Hugh Glass feel about the two men who left him? How did he manage to survive, alone in the wilderness? Why did he not get revenge on his deserters? What motivated him during each phase of his life in the West?
    John G. Neihardt was the first writer to recognize the literary potential of these questions. His response was an epic poem,
The Song of Hugh Glass
(1915). Manfred was the first novelist to become seriously interested, probably first learning of the incident of the grizzly in the South Dakota state guide compiled under the auspices of the WPA in the 1930s. His preparation for the writing of
Lord Grizzly
included extensive research (he has said that he read upwards of sixty books on mountain men and Indians), but just as important was a personal trek over the landscape of South Dakota from the Grand River site to Chamberlain, near which Fort Kiowa once stood. Not yet satisfied, Manfred attempted to recreate the crawl of Glass by fastening a board to one leg and squirming along the ground of the Minnesota River bluffs, observing the creatures and insects as Hugh would have seen them, tasting those within reach (as Hugh had to in order to eat enough to manufacture new blood), and thereby getting as close to Hugh’s consciousness and perceptions as possible. Partly because of this experience, Manfred was able in
Lord Grizzly
to project the story through the mind of his main character, in most cases keeping himself as writer out of the story. This method assists in the process of identification with the character, providing a point of view that puts the reader into the scenes with Hugh Glass, observing exactly the same things that Hugh sees, no more and no less. The scenes are therefore vivid with a strong feeling of immediacy and reality.
    Technically, the novel is built on two contrasting rhythms, the one an ebb and flow and the other a more linear progression. The interweaving of the two establishes a subtle tension that is important both to the theme of the novel and to the psychological reaction of the reader, yet each is significant in itself. The first is based on systematic repetitions of phrasing in groups of three, but operates in several ways. Early in the novel, during a battle with the Arikaras, as some of the mountain men died they “looked inward, then outward at the red dawn and their comrades, then