The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge

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E assim foi -- apoderaram-se das poucas armas e parcos pertences de Glass, semi enterraram-no numa cova aberta, e puseram-se ao fresco!... Would have liked some more conflict between the Indians. Whenever the story turned to them I would get a little bit bored. They had none of the inter-personal interactions that the soldiers had. No one can know exactly what happened on that bloody day — or why it happened the way that it did — but Punke’s combination of historical fact and logical speculation is certainly plausible. The basic facts are these:

Han, Angie (June 4, 2014). "Tom Hardy in Talks for Alejandro González Iñárritu's 'The Revenant' ". /Film . Retrieved August 29, 2014.The Revenant is a remarkable tale of obsession and the lengths that one man will go to for retribution. Glass eventually makes his way to another town, after being at the fort with Henry and Bridger and them. He leaves with two other men, both of whom also are killed by Arikara.

The problem – at least for me – is that The Revenant also wants to be a revenge thriller. This is a very different kind of beast, with its own unique imperatives. A good thriller thrives on indelible characters, intense motivations, the occasional twist and turn, and a powerful ending where all the driving forces collide at once. That said, the scene where it is Hugh Glass against the blizzard will give you frostbite. It’s late December. You may remember stories about men in the Klondike killing and gutting a bear and climbing inside it for the night. This scene is kind of like that but no animals were harmed.Grummond, for example, spends the entire book spouting nonsense about “thieves” and “savages” while paraphrasing Alexander the Great. The real life Grummond certainly seems like an ass, but I doubt that any person – especially a sociopath who was living a double life, with two different wives – could be so mono-focused and repetitive and still expect others to take him seriously).

If you start from the 2002 novel, you’ll get a dry but fascinating read, big on detail about the trapping way of life, that feels on the factual side. Punke’s novel starts with a map, and the path that Glass crawled is marked upon it with a dotted line, to compare to the journey of the two men who abandoned him. Each chapter starts with a date. There is little in the way of description of the natural world; it’s not seen as beautiful, or as an emotive experience, to travel through such difficult lands. In fact, the only thing that really gets described lovingly is Glass’s rifle: When Bridger is traveling with Fitzgerald, they don’t exactly get along, as is also shown in the movie. There is a line in the book that says, “The boy looked away, hating Fitzgerald for his bloodhound ability to sense weakness. Fitzgerald absorbed Bridger’s discomfort like the nourishment of raw meat.” Both actors really convey this in the movie. Pawnee and Arikara A superb revenge story . . . Punke has added considerably to our understanding of human endurance and of the men who pushed west in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark--a significant feat.” — The Washington Post Book World

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The book is a great story, but I think for me personally, it just worked better in film. There were times when I kind of spaces out while reading some sections; whereas the movie, even though it’s about the same thing, captivated me the whole time. Even though the movie wins here, I would still recommend the book. There is a section at the end where he talks about the real history of these people and what happened to them. (In real life Henry wasn’t killed by the way).