The one believed dead - a true story

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Believed to be dead - A true story is a novel by the American author Michael Punke, which was published in German by Malik Verlag in 2015 as a translation by Ulrike Wasel and Klaus Timmermann . The original book was published in 2002 under the title The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge by Carroll & Graf, New York.

action

The novel refers to the expedition of the legendary fur trading company Rocky Mountain Fur Company in the years 1823-24, during which from St. Louis , the area of ​​the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains should be opened up for the fur trade in order to trade with the Indians to become independent. Within this trapper expedition, the author deals in particular with the legend of Hugh Glass . Glass, who is portrayed as an experienced adventurer, was assigned to hunt food for the large group of men in the not harmless Indian area. During one of these hunting missions, Glass was attacked by a grizzly bear and seriously injured in the back, neck and face. Although he is receiving medical care from the head of the expedition group, Captain Andrew Henry , it is expected that he will not survive these injuries. Since the expedition group wants to reach a certain fort near the Rocky Mountains by the onset of winter , the seriously injured Glass is left behind under the supervision of the two expedition members, John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger . While Bridger tends to the injured, Fitzgerald seems to care only about the promised bonus and he wants to follow the expedition group as soon as possible. When they spot some warriors from the Indian tribe of the Arikaree , depicted in the book as very predatory , they flee, not without taking the gun and hunting knife of the seriously injured man with them and leaving him to his fate . The Arikaree discover the trail of a bear and follow it without discovering the injured person. First crawling and feeding on plants, Glass moves on. His plant-based diet is not enough to regain strength and so he tries to catch small animals such as mice with self-made traps . An opportunity to get nourishing food arises when he discovers a herd of bison . There a young bison is attacked by a group of wolves , which also kill the bison. Although it is life-threatening for him because the wolves could attack him too, he tries hard to get the meat of this bison that has been killed. He wants to drive away the wolves with a burning branch, which he succeeds. In the meantime, Glass can move around while leaning on a stick. On his way he discovers a burnt-out Indian village in which there is still an old, blind and sick Arikaree Indian woman. He kills a dog that is straying around the camp and cooks soup from the dog's meat. With this he also feeds the old Indian woman. The Indian woman died the next morning. At the moment he was building a grave for the dead , three Sioux Indians rode into the village and took Glass with them. When he arrived in the Sioux hometown, a medicine man treated his back, which had been infected by the purulent wounds of worms . After he is well again, one of the Sioux takes him to Fort Kiowa on the Missouri.

When a group of men come together in the fort for an expedition who want to take a boat on the Missouri towards the Rocky Mountains to establish trade contacts with the Mandan , Glass joins them again as a hunter. He's not interested in the trade, he wants to reach out to Captain Henry's group to get revenge on Fitzgerald and Bridger . Before they even reach the Mandan's location, the group is attacked by Arikaree. Glass is able to escape during the attack and tries to get to the Fort of the Captain Henry group on his own. Although winter has now come and he is exposed to a massive snow storm, he can reach the fort with the last of his strength. Here Glass meets Bridger again, whom he beats up, which Bridger lets happen to him without resistance. When other men want to intervene, Captain Henry prevents this because he regards it as a matter for these two trappers. Fitzgerald had already separated from the expedition group and stole from them in the process.

Overall, it turns out that the whole expedition is not going as expected. The fort that one wanted to reach could hardly take care of itself and did not want to accommodate the expedition group. So the group around Captain Henry moved on and built their own fort as protection against winter - the fort on the Big Horn. But even with the actual aim of hunting fur animals, no positive results have yet been achieved. Captain Henry wishes to send a notice of the Company's situation to the founder of the organization to William Henry Ashley in St. Louis. A group of four is supposed to convey this message to Ashley, and Glass is called to join this group because he hopes to meet Fitzgerald in the process. On the way to St. Louis, however, this group's horses are stolen one night by the Shoshone and the guard is also killed. The remaining 3 encounter a herd of bison, can kill some of these animals and build a boat out of the fur of these animals and try to reach their destination via the Missouri. But also on the river they are attacked again by Arikaree Indians and only Glass can escape this attack alive. A little later he is then by a patrol of the US Army discovered by Fort Atkinson. John Fitzgerald is also staying at this fort, who also came to this place on his escape from the expedition group. He had played there with members of the army and had to sign up as a soldier after his defeat. Glass attacks Fitzgerald directly, but is arrested by members of the army who want to bring the case to a military tribunal at the fort. At the trial, Fitzgerald puts all the blame on Bridger and is only sentenced to withhold his pay for 3 months. Glass can not do anything about this, of course, completely inadequate judgment and moves on to St. Louis.

background

The novel is based on real events and people, so that the author also provides the documented information on the people involved in the appendix. You learn that Jim Bridger was a famous trapper who died in 1881. Hugh Glass continued to work as a hunter and was killed in an Arikaree attack in 1833. There is little verifiable information about the life of John Fitzgerald.

The author Michael Punke, born in 1964, studied law and was a lecturer at the University of Montana at the time the novel was published in 2002 . Later he became a member of the Democratic Party in the policy . For example, he was US ambassador to the World Trade Organization when the film adaptation of his novel was published in 2015 for the Obama administration .

main characters

The following people play a crucial role in the novel:

Hugh Glass

Was especially engaged as a hunter for the Rocky Mountains expedition for Company. In Philadelphia born Glass was supposed to be a lawyer according to the will of his father. But this was too boring for Glass and he joined a trading company which, among other things, also traded with Cuba . On one of these boat trips to the Caribbean island, his ship was attacked by the legendary pirate Jean Laffite . To avoid the death sentence, Glass joins the pirates, but soon escapes and tries to get back to Philadelphia from Texas . On the way he is captured by Pawnee and barely escapes execution by the Indians. He will stay with the Indian tribe for a year and learn a lot from them about the struggle for survival in the wilderness. When he happens to come to St. Louis, he learns that his lover at the time has died of an illness in Philadelphia. So he decides not to go back and follow the Rocky Mountains' call for an expedition for Company.

John Fitzgerald

Is described in the novel as an unscrupulous criminal who came from New Orleans and kills a prostitute there because of jealousy . He then fled to other cities in the United States, where he continued through embezzlement noticed money and hence repeatedly changed his place of residence. By participating in the company's expedition, he tried to escape his creditors .

Jim Bridger

At the time of the expedition, the trapper, still very young at the age of 19, was born in Virginia , but soon moved with his parents to the vicinity of St. Louis. His parents died when he was 12 years old, so that at that age he had to worry about a living for himself and his sister. He takes on various jobs and sees the expedition as a good opportunity to escape the hard work in a forge .

Andrew Henry

He was the expedition leader and, together with Wilhelm Henry Ashley, the founder of the Rocky Mountains fur Company. Henry had previously led several expeditions of this type and was also active in the British-American War from 1812 to 1814 for the United States Army .

reception

After its publication by Carroll & Graf in 2002, about 15,000 books of the adventure novel were sold in the USA. After it was republished as a template for the film The Revenant in 2015 by the Picador publishing house (part of the Holtzbrinck publishing group ), the novel sold more than 500,000 times and was ranked third in The New York Times in early 2016 Place the best seller list .

In the reviews of the book , Britta Bode finds the motivation of the men who face the dangers of advancing into the Wild West shown in the Berliner Morgenpost and for Klaas Mucke in the Weser-Kurier the values ​​of living together and surviving in the pioneering days of America are shown described. In rating portals , the novel is certified to be authentic, true to detail, and is referred to as sophisticated American western literature. The differences in the film adaptation and their violent imagery compared to the factual style of the novel are pointed out.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Revenant - why you haven't heard much about the book's author. The Telegraph , February 27, 2016, accessed February 24, 2020 .
  2. ↑ The Revenant is now a best-selling book. USA Today , January 6, 2016, accessed February 24, 2020 .
  3. ^ The New York Times Best Sellers. The New York Times , January 31, 2016, accessed February 24, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Britta Bode: The original Rambo of American cultural history. Berliner Morgenpost , December 11, 2015, accessed on February 24, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Klaas Mucke: Wild West. Weser-Kurier , August 16, 2015, accessed on February 24, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Treason and vengeance in the Wild West. www.histo-couch.de, August 1, 2015, accessed on February 24, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Vengeance and Justice. www.buecherrezensions.org, November 14, 2015, accessed on February 24, 2020 .
  8. ↑ The Believed Dead by Michael Punke. Dennis Schütze Blog, May 20, 2016, accessed on February 24, 2020 .