Roy Blakeley's roundabout hike — Key Ideas to Explore

A Narrator Who Won’t Stay on Trail

Roy’s first-person voice is the book’s central device. He interrupts himself constantly, offers mock arithmetic to prove a point (“If there are a lot of things and each one of them is crazier than the other, that shows they’re all the craziest”), and treats the hike as an excuse for wordplay. The proclamation he tacks up on the bulletin board is typical: “calling for volunteers absolutely positively for not more than one day’s service—maybe two days.” The humor depends on the reader accepting that Roy is both the organizer and the comic foil. He admits he cannot get rid of Pee-wee Harris, and the narrative becomes a duet of interruptions. Fitzhugh does not use a third-person omniscient voice; everything is filtered through Roy’s self-deprecating, hyperactive mind. This choice means the reader never gets a straight description of events—only Roy’s version, complete with tangents about spaghetti and the proper way to hold a fork.

The Spaghetti Scene as a Microcosm

A lunch scene in the chasm reveals Fitzhugh’s method of building comedy through physical detail and dialogue. Roy describes making spaghetti with canned tomatoes, then admits to flavoring it with chocolate (“it wasn’t any good”) and substituting licorice shoestrings for pasta. The dialogue is a rapid-fire exchange: Sandy jokes that spaghetti grows in Italy as “wop-weed,” Dub deadpans “we know where it goes to,” and Pee-wee struggles to keep the noodles from “wriggling away from his mouth.” Roy’s advice to “hold your mouth up in the air and eat it by the attraction of gravitation” is typical of his pseudo-scientific humor. The scene does not advance the plot—it is a set piece that establishes the group’s dynamic and Roy’s narrative style. Fitzhugh uses the meal to delay the hike’s next event, letting the characters banter while the reader waits for the promised visit to the movie crew.

Movie Heroes and Real Heroism

The hike’s destination is a movie set where a stunt actor named Bunko Bravado is filming. Roy proposes a scheme: “We’ll dare him to do something dangerous. And if he does, Pee-wee will save his life.” This plan sets up a contrast between staged heroism (movie stunts with rag dummies) and Scout-style bravery. Pee-wee objects that movie actors are “not regular heroes,” and Sandy suggests faking a rescue for a medal. The dialogue reveals the book’s interest in the gap between performance and genuine action. Fitzhugh does not resolve this tension in the excerpts; the reader only sees the setup. The movie crew’s presence allows Roy to comment on the artificiality of adventure stories—even as he tells one. The narrative voice remains aware that it is constructing a tale, and the movie subplot becomes a mirror for the book’s own status as a manufactured adventure.

Diction and the Sound of Chatter

Fitzhugh’s dialogue is distinguished by its rhythm and repetition. Characters interrupt each other, finish sentences with non sequiturs, and use exaggerated politeness (“Explain all that,” Roy says when Pee-wee insists spaghetti does not grow). The word choices are deliberately juvenile: “gee whiz,” “dandy,” “crazy,” “nut.” Roy’s narration includes meta-commentary on writing: “Even I wrote a proclamation,” and later, “he’ll write it up in a book and expect fellers to read it.” The prose mimics spoken language, with dashes and sentence fragments. Fitzhugh avoids formal description; the setting emerges through action and dialogue. The chasm, the camp, the movie location are sketched lightly. What matters is the sound of the boys talking. This choice gives the book a conversational immediacy but also means the reader must infer the physical world from offhand remarks.

Readers should pay attention to what Roy does not say. The narrative skips over practical details—how far they hike, what they carry, the landscape—in favor of banter and digression. Fitzhugh trusts the reader to enjoy the voice more than the plot. The book rewards those who listen to the rhythm of the chatter and the running jokes about arithmetic, spaghetti, and heroism. It is a comedy of narration, not a survival manual.

Reading Roy’s rambling detours, I remembered the summer I wandered off-trail myself, not for glory but just to see. Tonight, that feeling lingers in Hiking Westward Being the Story of Two Boys Whose Ambition Led Them to Face Privations and Hardships in Their Quest of a Home in the Great West — Key Ideas to Explore—both stories drift, unsure, yet somehow land exactly where they ought to be.