Work record

In Patagonia

Bruce Chatwin

1977 · Postwar Contemporary · Travel · English

Summary

In Patagonia is an account of Chatwin's journey through the southern tip of South America in the mid-1970s, told in 97 short, numbered chapters that mix travel, history, legend and portraits of people met along the way. The book begins in childhood: in his grandmother's cabinet in England lay a piece of skin with coarse reddish hair, which he was told came from a 'brontosaurus' and had been sent by his grandmother's cousin, Charley Milward, a sailor who settled in Patagonia. Chatwin later learned it came from a mylodon, a giant ground sloth, found in a cave near Last Hope Sound, and his quest to find a piece of his own gives the book its thread. He sets out from Buenos Aires and travels south through Argentine and Chilean Patagonia, by bus, truck and on foot. Along the way he tells the stories of the region's exiles, dreamers and misfits. He follows the trail of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who ranched near Cholila before returning to robbery. He visits descendants of the Welsh colonists of the Chubut valley, who came in 1865 to preserve their language and faith. He recounts the career of Orélie-Antoine de Tounens, a French lawyer who proclaimed himself King of Araucania and Patagonia, and the bloody suppression of the anarchist-led rural strikes of the early 1920s. He meets Boer settlers, Scots sheep-farmers, a lonely German schoolteacher and other émigrés, and reflects on the theory that restlessness is fundamental to human nature. He tells the story of the Fuegians taken to England by Captain FitzRoy of the Beagle, including Jemmy Button, and of the destruction of the native peoples of Tierra del Fuego. The later chapters reconstruct Charley Milward's adventurous and unlucky life as a ship's captain, wreck survivor, dentist's partner and foundry owner in Punta Arenas. At last Chatwin reaches the mylodon cave, where he finds some dung and a few hairs of the beast, and the book closes with the end of Charley's story and a sense of the journey's open circle. The book's blend of fact, anecdote and invention was later challenged by some of the people it portrayed.

Plot or Argument

The piece of skin (Ch. 1)
Childhood memory of the 'brontosaurus' skin and the decision to go to Patagonia.
Northern Patagonia
Journey south from Buenos Aires: the Welsh of Chubut, Butch Cassidy and Sundance at Cholila, and the anarchist strikes.
Kings, exiles and natives
Orélie-Antoine, King of Araucania; FitzRoy and the Fuegians; settlers of many nations.
Charley Milward and the mylodon cave
Reconstruction of Charley's life in Punta Arenas and the visit to the cave at Last Hope Sound.

Characters

Bruce Chatwin, narrator
Restless young English traveller in search of a story and a piece of prehistoric skin.
Charley Milward, grandmother's cousin
Sailor and adventurer in Punta Arenas who sent the skin to England.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, outlaws
American bank robbers who settled in Patagonia for a time.
Orélie-Antoine de Tounens, self-proclaimed king
French adventurer who declared himself King of Araucania and Patagonia.
Jemmy Button, Fuegian
Yaghan man taken to England by FitzRoy and returned to Tierra del Fuego.

Lessons

Restlessness as human nature
Chatwin believed that humans are naturally wanderers. The book tests this idea through the lives of exiles, adventurers and settlers.
- Why do so many people in the book end up in Patagonia?
- Is restlessness a virtue, a curse, or neither?
Related across the library
- Persuasion, Lesson: Constancy and the story women are allowed to tell
  Constancy and the story women are allowed to tell. Anne's debate with Harville questions whose experience literature records. She argues that books written by men cannot prove women's inconstancy.
- An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, Chapter IV
  An assertion respecting facts or events their mutual connexion and dependence is for the same ends generally equivalent to the assertion that such and such propositions concern- ing those events have a certain relation to each other as respects their mutual truth or falsehood The former class of propositions relating to things I call Primary the latter class relating to propositions I call Secondary The distinction is in practice nearly but not quite co-extensive with the common logical distinction of propositio...
- Candide: Or Optimism, Introduction
  hand by his thin fingers Many propagandist satirical books have been written with Candide in mind but not too many To-day especially when new faiths are changing the structure of the world faiths which are still plastic enough to be deformed by every disciple each disciple for himself and which have not yet received the final deformation known as universal acceptance to-day Candide is an inspiration to every narrative satirist who hates one of these new faiths or hates every interpretation of it but his own Eith...
- The Cost of Discipleship, Lesson: The plain sense of the Sermon on the Mount
  The plain sense of the Sermon on the Mount. Bonhoeffer resists every interpretation that turns turning the other cheek or loving enemies into inner attitudes or ideals for another age. The commands are to be done, which makes the book a challenge to Christian support for violence and revenge.
- Thoughts on Government and Selected Letters, To John Penn
  and if found guilty after having an opportunity to make then defence they should be removed from then offices and subjected to such other punishment as their offences deserve ON GOVERNMENT A rotation of offices in the legislative and executive depart- ments has many advocates and if practicable might have many good effects A law may be made that no man shall be governor lieutenant-governor secretary treasurer counsellor or representative more than three years at a time nor be again eligible until after an interv...
Truth in travel writing
Chatwin's mixture of fact and invention raises questions about the ethics of writing about real people. The book invites readers to ask what they expect from non-fiction.
- Does it matter if some episodes were embellished?
- How should travel writers represent the people they meet?
- What makes a story 'true'?
Related across the library
- The Warden, Hiram'S Hospital
  they could expect no more In this manner the income of the warden had increased the picturesque house attached to the hospital had been enlarged and adorned and the office had become one of the most coveted of the snug clerical sinecures attached to our church It was now wholly in the bishop's gift and though the dean and chapter in former days made a stand on the subject they had thought it more conducive to their honour to have a rich precentor appointed by the bishop than a poor one appointed by themselves Th...
- The Warden, Hiram'S Hospital
  had earned a good name in Barchester they had lived respected by bishops deans canons and precentors they had been buried in the precincts of the cathedral they had never been known as griping hard men but had always lived comfortably maintained a good house and held a high position in Barchester society The present Mr Chadwick was a worthy scion of a worthy stock and the tenants living on the butts and patches as well as those on the wide episcopal domains of the see were well pleased to have to do with so wort...
- The Agricola and the Germania, Source
  senator he felt that he was not entirely guiltless of the crimes which were committed and in his Agricola we find him giving expression to this feeling in the following words Our own hands dragged Helvidius to prison ourselves were tortured with the spectacle of Mauricus and Rusticus and sprinkled with the innocent blood of Senecio In he was elected to the consulship as successor to Virginius Rufus who died during his term of office and at whose funeral Tacitus delivered an oration in such a manner to cause Plin...
- The Cost of Discipleship, Lesson: Community as a visible alternative
  Community as a visible alternative. The last part insists that the church must take up physical space in the world, with its own order and discipline, rather than being an inward association. Finkenwalde was Bonhoeffer's experiment in that visibility.
- Heart of Darkness, Lesson: The lie that saves
  The lie that saves. Marlow, who hates lies, tells the Intended a comforting falsehood. The ending asks whether some truths are too dark to deliver.
The fragment as form
The book's 97 short chapters move like a journey, each a fragment. It shows how structure can mirror experience.
- What does the fragmented form achieve?
- How does the mylodon skin hold the book together?
Related across the library
- Selected Sermons, Sermon Ix
  he otherwise holdeth himself afar off If these things were observed as they ought to be we should see more reverence for the doctrine of the word of God In these days we can hardly tell what the word church meaneth It is true men boast that the gospel is preached and that there is a reformation according to the word of God but while they use this word church they know not what it means Some say they beheve there is a universal church y but they speak in language which they do not under- stand Such are the papist...
- White Nights, Fourth night and morning
  The dreamer's sudden hope and loss form a compact study of attachment, disappointment and depressive return.
- Troilus and Criseyde, Book I, opening lines
  The double sorwe of Troilus to tellen Chaucer opens by announcing the double movement of Troilus’s story from woe to joy and back to sorrow.
- White Nights, Lesson: Brief connection can matter
  Brief connection can matter. The encounter does not rescue the dreamer permanently, yet it gives him a memory of having been needed. Dostoyevsky honors transient intimacy without pretending it solves loneliness.
- Summa Theologica, Summary
  The Summa Theologiae, traditionally called the Summa Theologica, is Aquinas's unfinished synthesis of Christian theology, written, as its prologue says, for beginners who were confused by the disorder and repetition of existing textbooks. It contains some 512 questions divided into about 2,600 articles, each built on the same disciplined form inherited from university disputation. An article asks a yes-or-no question, lists objections to the view Aquinas will defend, cites an authority on the contrary, gives Aqu...

Context

Patagonia's colonisation in the 19th and early 20th centuries brought Welsh, Scottish, English, German and Boer settlers, outlaws and adventurers, and led to the destruction of indigenous peoples. Chatwin travelled there in 1974–1975, shortly before and during the political turmoil that preceded Argentina's 1976 military coup.

Composition

Chatwin reportedly sent a telegram to The Sunday Times announcing he had gone to Patagonia. The book was published by Jonathan Cape in 1977.

Reception

It won the Hawthornden Prize and the E. M. Forster Award and reinvented travel writing for a generation. Some people portrayed objected to inaccuracies, and Chatwin's mixing of fact and fiction remains debated.

Travel Journey Home Exile Language / Storytelling Nature / Landscape Colonialism Empire Memory / Time

Comparisons

the-histories
Herodotus, like Chatwin, mixes travel, ethnography, legend and digression to explore far-off peoples.
on-the-road
Both are books of compulsive travel; Kerouac's road is American and ecstatic, Chatwin's southern and anecdotal.
the-narrative-of-arthur-gordon-pym-of-nantucket
Poe's voyage to the far south, and Chatwin's journey toward the bottom of the world, both draw on the allure of the antipodes.
heart-of-darkness
Both are journeys to the edge of the 'civilised' world that reveal imperial violence against native peoples.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

The piece of hairy skin in his grandmother's cabinet in Chapter 1, which the child believed came from a brontosaurus. Watch how it becomes the thread that ties the 97 chapters together.
The short numbered chapters themselves. Notice how Chatwin moves without transition from a conversation in a bar to a nineteenth-century history to a legend, and what the fragments add up to.
The stories of exiles and dreamers: the Welsh of the Chubut valley, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at Cholila, and Orélie-Antoine de Tounens, the French lawyer who made himself king of Araucania.
The story of Jemmy Button and the other Fuegians taken to England by Captain FitzRoy of the Beagle and brought home again.
The final chapters on Charley Milward's unlucky life in Punta Arenas, and the visit to the mylodon cave at Last Hope Sound.

Key terms and names

Mylodon: A giant ground sloth whose skin and dung were found preserved in a cave near Last Hope Sound. A scrap of its skin sent home by Charley Milward started Chatwin's journey.
Charley Milward: Chatwin's grandmother's cousin, a sea captain who was wrecked near the Strait of Magellan and settled in Punta Arenas. The last part of the book reconstructs his adventurous and unlucky life.
Chubut: The river valley in Argentine Patagonia where Welsh emigrants arrived in 1865, hoping to preserve their language and chapel life far from Britain.
Orélie-Antoine de Tounens: A French lawyer who proclaimed himself King of Araucania and Patagonia, was arrested, and spent the rest of his life trying to return to his imagined kingdom.
Jemmy Button: The Yaghan man whom FitzRoy took to England, dressed and taught as an Englishman, and returned to Tierra del Fuego. Chatwin tells his story as one of the book's saddest.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: The American outlaws who ranched for a time near Cholila before returning to robbery. Chatwin follows the stories local people still told about them.
Last Hope Sound: The inlet in Chilean Patagonia near the cave where the mylodon remains were found. Chatwin's arrival there closes the circle the book opened in Chapter 1.

Seminar Questions

Comprehension What was the object in his grandmother's cabinet that Chatwin remembers in Chapter 1, and what did it turn out to be?
Comprehension Who was Orélie-Antoine de Tounens, and what happened to his kingdom?
Comprehension What happened to Jemmy Button after FitzRoy took him to England and later returned him to Tierra del Fuego?
Interpretation Why does Chatwin tell his journey in 97 short chapters rather than a continuous narrative? What does the fragmented form say about travel or about memory?
Interpretation Chatwin's Patagonia is full of people who ended up there by accident, flight or fantasy. What do the Welsh of Chubut, the outlaws, and Orélie-Antoine have in common, and how do they differ?
Interpretation Why does Chatwin end with Charley Milward's story and the mylodon cave rather than with his own feelings about the journey?
Big Question Chatwin believed that restlessness is part of human nature. Are human beings made for wandering or for settling, and what does the book's gallery of exiles suggest?

Faith Connections

Hebrews 11:13-16 (Scripture)
The patriarchs confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth, seeking a better country. Chatwin's exiles, from the Welsh of Chubut to Charley Milward, are seeking a country too, and the book asks whether any of them found it.
Genesis 4:12-16 (Scripture)
Cain is condemned to be a fugitive and wanderer and goes to live in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Several of Chatwin's outlaws and fugitives in Patagonia carry the same mark of the wanderer who cannot return.
Augustine, Confessions I.1 (Church Fathers)
Augustine says that God made us for himself and our heart is restless until it rests in him. It offers a different account of the restlessness Chatwin found in himself and in nearly everyone he met in Patagonia.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Human beings are drawn to the ends of the earth by restlessness, dreams and flight, and Patagonia, as the uttermost south, collects such people. By following a single object, a scrap of mylodon skin, to its source, and gathering the stories of exiles, outlaws and visionaries along the way, a traveller can map that restlessness. Therefore the journey, told in fragments, becomes both a search for a family relic and a portrait of the wandering impulse itself.

Rhetorical device: ring composition. The book opens in Chapter 1 with the skin in the grandmother's cabinet and closes at the mylodon cave where that skin was found, with Charley Milward's story framing the end as the relic framed the start. The circle gives shape to 97 otherwise loosely joined chapters.

Debate: Resolved: A travel writer may embellish real people's stories if doing so tells a deeper truth about a place.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Using the Welsh of Chubut, Orélie-Antoine de Tounens, and Charley Milward, argue what Chatwin thinks drives people to the ends of the earth, and whether the book presents restlessness as a gift, a curse, or both.

Comparison with The Histories: Herodotus and Chatwin both travel among distant peoples, collect stories they cannot always verify, and move by digression. Compare how each handles the line between what he saw and what he was told, and argue which writer is more honest about that line.

Medical Lens

No medical lens has been added.

Creative Prompts

Fiction
Write a 300-word 'Chatwin chapter' about one person you met while travelling.
Essay
Compare In Patagonia with Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle on the Fuegians. How have perspectives changed?
Classroom
Pick three chapters and decide which details might be invented. What evidence would you need?