The Monkey Wrench Gang

"Someone or something was changing things." 

Hayduke, upon returning to the Southwest for the first time in years, notices drastic changes to the landscape. Like Doc, Hayduke seems to characterize the forces of industrialization not as individual humans but as a machine.

"Though still a lover of chipmunks, robins and girls, he had also learned like others to acquire a taste for methodical, comprehensive and precisely gauged destruction." 

Whether Hayduke had a choice in acquiring his taste for the kind of  firearms- and explosives-based destruction he learned in Vietnam is unclear. His appetite for these things stands at odds with the less-violent tendencies of the rest of the gang.

"The real trouble is that the Indians are just as stupid and greedy and cowardly and dull as us white folks." 

Hayduke has this reflection while driving through a reservation near Glen   Canyon Dam. Hayduke, like Abbey, seems to blame the Native Americans for the destruction and commodification of their native land at the hands of white settlers. 

"My way, he thought, they're going my way; they can't do that." 

Hayduke expresses this about the other motorists on the highway with him. Though the land doesn't belong to Hayduke, he feels a connectedness with the Southwest to the point of possessiveness, a sentiment also carried by Doc, Smith, and Bonnie. 

"The area had been turned over to the administration of the National Park Service in order to protect it from vandalism and commercial exploitation." 

Smith and the other gang members feel that the areas designated national   parks are not free from commercial exploitation at the hands of tourists or the logging industry. As far as vandalism, the gang considers their actions to be “constructive vandalism,” liberating the land from oppressive industrialists and thereby exempting them from criminal status.

"She preferred (she said) the relative independence (she thought) of female bachelorhood." 

Abbey's characterization of the novel's only female character, Bonnie, often swings towards the one-dimensional, with Bonnie serving mostly as a love interest for Doc and then Hayduke. The parentheticals here undercut even Bonnie's innermost thoughts, making her appear both frivolous and unsure of herself.

"The river, the canyon, the desert world was always changing, from moment to moment, from miracle to miracle, within the firm reality of mother earth." 

 Although Smith, who spends the most time of any gang member in the outdoors, admits that the natural world always undergoes change, it's manmade change that upsets him. For Smith and the others, there's no   miracle in deforestation or mining, only exploitation.

"Any road that I wasn't consulted about that I don't like, I litter. It's my religion." 

When drinking and driving, which is always, Hayduke throws his empty beer cans out onto the side of the road. He feels entitled to do so, just as he feels entitled to possession of the desert; the changes made to the desert haven't been agreeable to him. 

"It's to help out the poor fellas that own the uranium mines and the truck fleets and the marinas on Lake Powell, that's what it's for. They gotta eat too." 

Smith says this in jest regarding the new road being built to replace the generally less-drivable “old road.” The new road is built for ease of transportation for employees of the mining and trucking industries, along With tourists—demographics that are all scourges to Smith. 

"It's steady work, and their only natural enemies, they believe, are mechanical breakdown or 'down time' for the equipment, and labor troubles, and bad weather, and sometimes faulty preparation by the geologists and surveyors." 

Abbey offers the perspective of the developers here to contrast with the vision of the Southwest the gang has. The developers and their engineers envision a world of "perfect sphericity" (80) in which they can work efficiently and in peace. The gang, however, knows the developer's ideas are merely dreams if their equipment cannot function properly. 

"When the cities are gone, he thought, and all the ruckus has died away, when sunflowers push up through the concrete and asphalt of the forgotten interstate freeways, when the Kremlin and the Pentagon are turned into nursing homes for generals, presidents and other such shitheads […] then by God maybe free men and wild women on horses, free women and wild men, can roam the sagebrush canyonlands in freedom—goddammit!"

Hayduke's vision of the Southwest includes a return to a state both pre-industrial and pre-organized-agricultural, where people can roam the land  and hunt at will. Hayduke recognizes that the “natural enemies” to his vision are government entities and developers.

"Out there in the cold at four in the morning slaving away to provide us with oil and gas for this here truck so we can help sabotage the world planetary maggotmachine." 

While gazing out at the drill-rig towers, Smith tells Hayduke that the very machines Hayduke wants to sabotage provide the fuel they need to carry  out their plans. Whether Smith has an awareness of this irony, or cares, is unclear throughout the novel. Neither he nor any of the others makes a serious effort to stop relying on gas-powered vehicles to do their work.

"We are going to be heroes and live in fame." 

Doc says this sincerely, to reassure the gang at a moment of doubt and fear, just before doing their work on the railroad. The other members agree halfheartedly, as they weigh the potential consequences of their actions. 

"We're up against a mad machine, Seldom, which mangles mountains and devours men." 

Doc often uses the term “machine” to refer to the agglomeration of  industrialists, developers, and federal agencies he feels threaten the Southwest. He often anthropomorphizes the machine, giving it predatory characteristics and implying that it has a will of its own.

"The intoxication of absolute power, the power of life and death, was getting to him all right." 

With each act of sabotage, Hayduke's “intoxication” leads him to become more impulsive and bolder. Like the generals in Vietnam and the oil  company people, Hayduke is not immune to the appeal of wielding power over others. 

"'Female companion' indeed." 

This aside by Bonnie shows her reaction to the local newspaper's characterization of her as Hayduke's “female companion,” rather than accomplice and equal. This upsets Bonnie as she constantly feels left out or sidelined in the gang's actions because of her gender.

"Whose side is God on?" 

Smith says that all the gang needs is a little crack in the dam so that “nature  and God” can take care of the rest. Until this point, the gang has assumed that nature would be on their side; Doc's question brings this assumption to light for Smith. He expresses uncertainty about whether God is truly on their side.

"If death is truly the worst that can happen to a man there is nothing to fear. But death is not the worst." 

Finally feeling close to capture, Doc realizes that his maxims about life and death may not apply to his situation. He considers the possible consequences the gang's actions could have and, in the end, surrenders himself rather than sticking to his beliefs and going out in a gunfight, like Hayduke.

“‘No need for panic,’ Doc says, sweating already, ‘no need for panic.’” 

As the gang's activities escalate, they all become—with the exception of Hayduke—nervous and doubtful about continuing on with their plans. Doc tries to hold things together, but he begins to come undone and can't hide his fear. 

"They hadn't planned on real owls." 

Early in the novel, Smith helps the gang establish a code for communication using a series of owl hoots. This code, however, becomes useless when Smith's owl hoots are met with the hoots of an actual owl. This conundrum shows how truly human-centric the gang's thinking is, and how little the gang considered how their actions would be received in the natural world. 

"They'd sell their own mothers to Exxon and Peabody Coal if they thought there was money in it; have the old ladies rendered down for the oil." 

This is how Smith characterizes Bishop Love, the governor, and the oil companies. By taking away their humanity and making them into demons, Smith and the others can approach their work against Bishop Love and the others with a sense of righteousness. However, as it turns out, Smith is  wrong about Bishop Love's attitude towards the land. 

"Anyhow, when I finally got free of those jail-hospitals and found out they were trying to do the same thing to the West that they did to that little country over there, I got mad all over again." 

Hayduke sees a direct connection between the violence and destruction he witnessed in Vietnam and the conditions of the industrialized Southwest. The “they” Hayduke refers to seems to be the same anonymous glob of corporations and federal officials against whom the gang rails. It's unclear whether Hayduke sided with the Vietnamese people, as he was kept as a POW by Vietcong troops, or if he is just against the American military machine.

"A true autochthonic patriot, Smith swears allegiance only to the land he knows, not to that swollen bulge of real estate, industry, and swarming populations of displaced British Islanders and Europeans and misplaced Africans known collectively as the United States; his loyalties phase out toward the borders of the Colorado Plateau." 

Abbey uses the word “autochthonic” here, meaning indigenous, to describe Smith. While Smith may feel indigenous to Utah, his family likely settled in the region from elsewhere, possibly displacing people truly indigenous to the region. Additionally, Smith feels alienated from what he perceives to be interests at odds with his vision of how the Southwest should be. These things drive Smith's activism.