American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West

“It would be so lovely to not have to follow the scents of the politics, the laws, the cattle, the humans, the hunters, the roads. It would be so lovely to just stay in the dark woods and concentrate only on pure unencumbered biology: foot sizes and body weights, diets, range and distribution. It would also be fiction.” — Rick Bass, The Ninemile Wolves

This epigraph helps establish one of Blakeslee’s key themes, namely the inevitable political dimension of his story. It implies that as soon as humans become involved in even a naturalist story, they bring with them their inevitable differences and clashes. This story is no different, and Blakeslee does not hesitate to situate the issue of Yellowstone’s wolves as another front in the emerging culture wars.

“No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.

But I know none, and am therefore am no beast.” — Richard III

Shakespeare’s Richard III acknowledges that men are baser than beasts. Why? Because even beasts (according to Richard) possess the capacity for pity. Though Blakeslee draws careful parallels between wolves and humans in his work, this quotation hints at where his loyalties lie—with the wolves, not with the story’s often cruel and self-interested humans.

.“All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that it. Anything else is sentimental drivel…Think about it. There’s escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.” — Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

Atwood taps into the mythological nature of humankind’s relationship to wolves. By including this quotation as an epigraph, Blakeslee shows his sympathies for the idea that humans’ animus against wolves lies in a realm beyond the purely rational. Western culture has often portrayed wolves as evil, and while Blakeslee tips his hat here at their traditional symbolic value, he endeavors to write a story that shows them as quite the opposite, as a character the reader can root for.