A Beautiful Place: Stay Away!
The greatest underlying irony of the text is that so very much of it takes the form of travel literature that describes these wonderful things to see in wonderfully enticing language. Abbey brings the majesty of the wilderness to life through prose rich in imagery. And then he basically says to his readers—as he literally wrote in a guest register—“For God’s sake, leave this country alone.”
Catch-22
At times the irony employed by Abbey reads like something straight of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (which was popular around the time the book was published) in which a buildup leads to a sudden reversal of expectations:
“He was a pleasant-mannered, soft-spoke civil engineer with an unquestioning dedication to his work. A very dangerous man.”
Political Irony
Abbey has some political points to make and he uses irony to score them in recollection of conversations which may have taken place, but tend to sound more like fictions invented for the express purpose of scoring:
“This would be some good country,” a tourist says to me, “if only you had some water.”
“If we had water here,” I reply, “this country would not be what it is.”
Vehicular Ironicide
There is a definite irony in the chapter in which Abbey engages a friend to explore a particularly tough big of topographical area known as the Maze. This is the kind of geographical expedition not built for the casual tourist, it must be admitted, but in light of the multiple screeds and harangues against automotive-based tourism which populates the rest of the book, one cannot help but gulp at the big ironic elephant in the room when it is revealed that this friend has been enlisted to explore the Maze primarily for just one reason: his ownership of miraculous machine called the Jeep Land Rover.
Mythic Irony
Abbey often engages the mythology of the west to make points as well. He briefly relates a quick story about some Indians in a Plymouth driving too fast who ended up as broken bodies amid the twisted metal wreckage of the car and the scattered remnants of the extent of their worldly possessions: socks, underwear, magazines, cowboy shirts and cigarettes. Then the observation that nowhere among these possessions could be found bird feathers, ponchos, drums, tobacco pouches and neither bows nor arrows. He concludes with the ironic kick in the gut:
“Some Indians.”
