George Hayduke

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George Washington Hayduke is an ex-Green Beret, one-time explosives expert and medical assistant to the Viet Cong, American environmentalist hero, and fictional character in Edward Abbey's successful novels The Monkey Wrench Gang and Hayduke Lives!

The character of Hayduke was loosely based on Doug Peacock who was a close personal friend of Abbey's. He is most likely named after the Haiduks, rebels in the Ottoman Empire.

Hayduke is Abbey's codification of the wants, longings, and desires of the average male environmentalist awash in the frustrations of corporate greed and corruption where the voice of the little people remain unheard -- until the little people rise up and take direct action because, as Abbey's Monkey Wrench Gang puts it, "somebody has to do it."

Though a fictional character, contemporary environmentalists around the world have adopted Hayduke as a symbolic representation of the spirit of the semi-crazed activist who does right in the eyes of Nature while doing wrong in the eyes of the Law. Speak the name Hayduke in nature camps along America's -- and a great many European -- byways, and many will smile and know what you mean and what you feel when it comes to the despoiling of our once-great pristine lands.

One of the most relevant aspect of Hayduke as a symbol -- as an archetype, in fact -- is the fact that for all the destruction dished out at the hands of Hayduke during his efforts with Earth First! and The Monkey Wrench Gang, despite the explosions, the tractors ruined in hot, screaming death, the survey stakes pulled up from mile after seemingly endless mile of soon-to-be-raped countryside, Hayduke never hurt, maimed, or killed anyone -- except for the occasional red-neck cowboy in the occasional dank bar, and even then only when they really, really needed it.

In this respect Hayduke strikes a chord with contemporary environmental activists who overwhelmingly consider harming another human to be wrong -- unless it's a matter of saving one's own life. In Abbey's book The Monkey Wrench Gang, Hayduke totes numerous sidearms and his trusty knife, shooting into the dark to convince despoilers to keep their distance, but never actually shooting at someone unless they tried to kill him -- and in the sole case in the book, that was a helicopter pilot, a reminder of the napalming American pilots that indiscriminately and often joyfully killed Vietnamese women and children. (Hayduke misses.)

In Hayduke, contemporary environmentalist activists also see an idealized mirror image of what they themselves wish they could be: Respected among enemy and friend alike, competent though not too bright, loved by women who also despise him as a massively hair covered, vulgar primate just barely civilized, and someone capable of surviving for long periods of time on his own, in the desert, able to travel long distances over difficult lands with confidence and relatively safely.

George Washington Hayduke's first set of adventures outlined in The Monkey Wrench Gang leave him stranded at the top of a 700 foot cliff after a raging storm, surrounded by law enforcement officers in helicopters dropping grenades on his position. Hayduke's body is seen shredded by gunfire as he topples into the maelstrom of the raging canyon waters 700 feet below, thus ending the last of the Monkey Wrench Gang's heroic work in America's besieged Southwest.

But lo! Who's the masked, thin stranger come on horseback in the night four years later to arrive at the door of our three surviving heroes? Nobody knows -- the man himself hardly seems to know who he is anymore. Regardless, he brings news that nobody is surprised to hear: Hayduke lives!

Edward Abbey's first work covering Hayduke hit the world in 1975. In 1989 -- the year of Abbey's death -- Hayduke Lives! was released. The adventures of Hayduke and the original Monkey Wrench Gang become tied with the activities of more legitimate environmental organizations like Earth First! (The Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front did not exist at the time Abbey wrote The Monkeywrench Gang.)

Hayduke returns and brings with him a message that the rest of the Monkey Wrench gang already knows: It's time to get back to work.