History, Myth, and Time in Robert Kroetsch's Badlands

Abstract

The field notes of the character of Dawe in Robert Kroetsch's Badlands are not, properly, field notes at all, but rather are a way to mythologize himself as a hero. Kroetsch's suggestion is that the real maker and keeper of history is the artist, not the scientist (or, at least, not this particular scientist). The two principal settings -- river and desert -- imply the continuity of time, as well as constantly inverted notions of life and death: the river and the desert both sustain as well as kill.