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Graham is a smooth-talking and charming businessman in Moab. He meets the overeager Alfred T. Husk, a greedy and foolish recent transplant from Texas, and gains the Husk family’s trust by flashing his impressive pilot’s license. Graham lures Husk into a partnership: he will supply some promising, remote canyon land and Husk will comb it for valuable uranium, splitting any profits. In Husk’s absence, however, Graham steals his wife, Mrs. Husk. After breaking the news to Husk, Graham kills him—but he ends up dying too, while trying to send Husk’s body off a cliff. Graham is the straightforward villain of a morality tale at the center of Desert Solitaire, in which Husk’s desire to exploit the earth ends up killing him and confirming Abbey’s hatred of industrial greed. As the instigator of Husk’s fatal project, and as the person who steals Mrs. Husk, Graham personifies two things: the self-destructive force of greed and the social alienation that results from the arrogant misuse of nature. The fact that Graham’s pilot license—a symbol of modernity—charms Husk and his son Billy-Joe illustrates the hollow attraction of modern technology, which Abbey deplores throughout the book as a wedge driven between humans and their natural environment.
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Charles Graham Character Timeline in Desert Solitaire
The timeline below shows where the character Charles Graham appears in Desert Solitaire. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Rocks
...Setting up his trailer home in Moab, he immediately goes into town and meets Charles Graham, a businessman who impresses him with his pilot’s license.
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After a talk about Husk’s ambitions, Graham sells him a share of some promising territory he owns in the distant canyons surrounding...
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In Husk’s absence, Graham visits his trailer, spies on the half-dressed Mrs. Husk, and waits to meet her. Meanwhile,...
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One afternoon, after examining his pistol in his office, Graham pockets the gun and takes a helicopter into the wilds to find Husk. He chances...
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Terrified, Billy-Joe flees down into the canyon, pursued by Graham until the boy trips and rolls out of sight, breaking a shoulder. Having lost Billy-Joe,...
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...He passes the destroyed truck at the foot of the cliff, with his father and Graham’s charred corpses, but he doesn’t notice them. The ravens watch him with satisfaction.
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