Lost in the Andes
Encyclopedia
Lost in the Andes! is a Donald Duck
story written by Carl Barks
in April 1949. Donald and his nephews go to South America to find the mythical chickens that lay "square eggs" (actually, they are cubic
eggs).
.
During the journey to South America
, the nephews use the square eggs to make an omelette
. This causes the members of the expedition to come down with food poisoning. By the time their boat reaches Peru, the only ones that have recovered enough to continue the expedition are the youngest in the group and the lowest in hierarchy: Donald and his nephews.
Their search for the square eggs in the Andes
seems hopeless as the local population sees them either as insane or as suckers to be fooled into buying artificial eggs. Finally they meet a very old man who tells them of how his father once came into possession of square stones similar to their own. The father had found them on the body of an American explorer who had emerged from a neighboring valley which is covered in perpetual mist. The explorer, who had wandered the valley to the point of exhaustion, died soon afterwards. The old man's father later sold some of the "stones" in a local village and these ended up as the square eggs in the museum.
The Ducks follow the dead man's path into the mists and after days of effort they find a populated valley in the Mountains, hidden by the mists. The inhabitants are entirely cubibal with square heads and noses. They speak with an old Southern American accent taught to them by their previous visitor, the dead man, Professor Rhutt Betlah (probably a play on Rhett Butler
) from Birmingham, Alabama
, who had discovered their valley during the late 19th century.
During their stay in the valley, which the professor has named "Plain Awful", Huey, Dewey and Louie produce some bubble gum balloons, which is against the law in Plain Awful. It's forbidden to produce any round objects in the valley. The only way to get out of the valley and avoid punishment, is for HD&L to produce square balloons. They manage to do that by teaching the square chickens to chew gum and blow balloons, and then hiding them under their shirts and pretending they make the balloons themselves.
The Ducks convince the very hospitable locals to let them go. The latter are sad to see them go because they were a source of information from the outside world to their small and isolated civilisation. They give the Ducks the compass that the professor had left in Plain Awful (and which was placed in a museum as a piece of art) and in turn, they teach them square dancing. When they leave the valley, in one of Barks' scarce moralizing moments, Donald remarks that the people in Plain Awful "had so little of anything, yet they were the happiest people we've ever known."
Bringing two square chickens and eggs with them the Ducks again struggle to escape from the mists. Finally, when they do manage it, they are nearly exhausted. The two chickens are still alive, but they had to eat the eggs. It is only when they return to Duckburg that they realise the entire expedition was a failure: both of the chickens are male and naturally can't reproduce. The story ends with Donald now giving an angry response to whoever mentions eggs and chicken to his face.
The story has been considered as representative of Barks' work in general and successful in its own right, and has often been declared Barks' best. References to this story are often in the works of Barks' "successors" and fans of his work in general. The author himself told in an interview in 1962 that "My best story, technically, is probably the square egg one."
Don Rosa
liked this story so much that he wrote two related stories - The Son of the Sun
and Return to Plain Awful
.
, the story gained a lot of attention when first published in the Norwegian language
. The translator chose an archaic and slightly garbled version of Nynorsk
for the mountain-dwellers, and this was widely seen as an insult. In later editions, the language was altered. Thus, through the Norwegian language struggle
, the story got quite a lot of attention in Norwegian media. It was later proclaimed as the best Donald Duck comic in all time by the Norwegian readers.
A scene from the Disney animated feature Dumbo
where Dumbo blows square bubbles of alcohol-tinted water might have inspired the part of the story where Huey, Dewey, and Louie blow square bubbles of chewing gum.
The Plain Awful's square egg is also featured in Don Rosa's The Buckaroo of the Badlands, part three of his famous The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.
Donald Duck
Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created in 1934 at Walt Disney Productions and licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor suit with a cap and a black or red bow tie. Donald is most...
story written by Carl Barks
Carl Barks
Carl Barks was an American Disney Studio illustrator and comic book creator, who invented Duckburg and many of its inhabitants, such as Scrooge McDuck , Gladstone Gander , the Beagle Boys , The Junior Woodchucks , Gyro Gearloose , Cornelius Coot , Flintheart Glomgold , John D...
in April 1949. Donald and his nephews go to South America to find the mythical chickens that lay "square eggs" (actually, they are cubic
Cube
In geometry, a cube is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces, facets or sides, with three meeting at each vertex. The cube can also be called a regular hexahedron and is one of the five Platonic solids. It is a special kind of square prism, of rectangular parallelepiped and...
eggs).
Plot
The story features Donald and his nephews as members of a museum sponsored expedition searching for the source of a number of square "artifacts" held in the Duckburg museum, recently revealed to be square eggs when Donald drops one and it cracks open. There is a rising interest, both scientific and financial, to find the source of these eggs and the chicken that gave birth to them. The only thing known about them though is that they came from somewhere in the AndesAndes
The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...
.
During the journey to South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
, the nephews use the square eggs to make an omelette
Omelette
In cuisine, an omelette or omelet is a dish made from beaten eggs quickly cooked with butter or oil in a frying pan, sometimes folded around a filling such as cheese, vegetables, meat , or some combination of the above...
. This causes the members of the expedition to come down with food poisoning. By the time their boat reaches Peru, the only ones that have recovered enough to continue the expedition are the youngest in the group and the lowest in hierarchy: Donald and his nephews.
Their search for the square eggs in the Andes
Andes
The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...
seems hopeless as the local population sees them either as insane or as suckers to be fooled into buying artificial eggs. Finally they meet a very old man who tells them of how his father once came into possession of square stones similar to their own. The father had found them on the body of an American explorer who had emerged from a neighboring valley which is covered in perpetual mist. The explorer, who had wandered the valley to the point of exhaustion, died soon afterwards. The old man's father later sold some of the "stones" in a local village and these ended up as the square eggs in the museum.
The Ducks follow the dead man's path into the mists and after days of effort they find a populated valley in the Mountains, hidden by the mists. The inhabitants are entirely cubibal with square heads and noses. They speak with an old Southern American accent taught to them by their previous visitor, the dead man, Professor Rhutt Betlah (probably a play on Rhett Butler
Rhett Butler
Rhett Butler is a fictional character and one of the main protagonists of Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.-Role:In the beginning of the novel, we first meet Rhett at the Twelve Oaks Plantation barbecue, the home of John Wilkes and his son Ashley and daughters Honey and India Wilkes...
) from Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
, who had discovered their valley during the late 19th century.
During their stay in the valley, which the professor has named "Plain Awful", Huey, Dewey and Louie produce some bubble gum balloons, which is against the law in Plain Awful. It's forbidden to produce any round objects in the valley. The only way to get out of the valley and avoid punishment, is for HD&L to produce square balloons. They manage to do that by teaching the square chickens to chew gum and blow balloons, and then hiding them under their shirts and pretending they make the balloons themselves.
The Ducks convince the very hospitable locals to let them go. The latter are sad to see them go because they were a source of information from the outside world to their small and isolated civilisation. They give the Ducks the compass that the professor had left in Plain Awful (and which was placed in a museum as a piece of art) and in turn, they teach them square dancing. When they leave the valley, in one of Barks' scarce moralizing moments, Donald remarks that the people in Plain Awful "had so little of anything, yet they were the happiest people we've ever known."
Bringing two square chickens and eggs with them the Ducks again struggle to escape from the mists. Finally, when they do manage it, they are nearly exhausted. The two chickens are still alive, but they had to eat the eggs. It is only when they return to Duckburg that they realise the entire expedition was a failure: both of the chickens are male and naturally can't reproduce. The story ends with Donald now giving an angry response to whoever mentions eggs and chicken to his face.
Analysis
Barks had heard jokes about square eggs and chickens since his childhood and decided to use them as an idea for a story. The plot combines themes and story elements that Barks often used in his stories. A mythical creature or legendary artifact that leads to an adventure expedition, the long search for information, often seeming futile, an isolated civilisation hidden from the outside world thanks to its natural environment, the Ducks bringing new ideas with them but sometimes faced as threats, and the characters ending up defeated and empty-handed are all such themes.The story has been considered as representative of Barks' work in general and successful in its own right, and has often been declared Barks' best. References to this story are often in the works of Barks' "successors" and fans of his work in general. The author himself told in an interview in 1962 that "My best story, technically, is probably the square egg one."
Don Rosa
Don Rosa
Keno Don Hugo Rosa, known simply as Don Rosa, is an American comic book writer and illustrator known for his stories about Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck and other characters created by Carl Barks for Disney comics, such as The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.-Early life:Don Rosa's grandfather,...
liked this story so much that he wrote two related stories - The Son of the Sun
The Son of the Sun
The Son of the Sun is the first Scrooge McDuck comic by Don Rosa, first published in 1986. It is a well-known comic book story that features Disney's Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck, and Huey, Dewey, and Louie, most notable for establishing Don Rosa as a major talent in the Disney comic book industry,...
and Return to Plain Awful
Return to Plain Awful
Return to Plain Awful is a Donald Duck storyline that was originally printed in Donald Duck Adventures Gladstone Series #12. It was written by Don Rosa as a sequel to Lost in the Andes! by Carl Barks.-Plot:...
.
Impact
In NorwayNorway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, the story gained a lot of attention when first published in the Norwegian language
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
. The translator chose an archaic and slightly garbled version of Nynorsk
Nynorsk
Nynorsk or New Norwegian is one of two official written standards for the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. The standard language was created by Ivar Aasen during the mid-19th century, to provide a Norwegian alternative to the Danish language which was commonly written in Norway at the...
for the mountain-dwellers, and this was widely seen as an insult. In later editions, the language was altered. Thus, through the Norwegian language struggle
Norwegian language struggle
The Norwegian language struggle is an ongoing controversy within Norwegian culture and politics related to spoken and written Norwegian. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Danish was the standard written language of Norway due to Danish rule...
, the story got quite a lot of attention in Norwegian media. It was later proclaimed as the best Donald Duck comic in all time by the Norwegian readers.
A scene from the Disney animated feature Dumbo
Dumbo
Dumbo is a 1941 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released on October 23, 1941, by RKO Radio Pictures.The fourth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, Dumbo is based upon the storyline written by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Pearl for the prototype of a...
where Dumbo blows square bubbles of alcohol-tinted water might have inspired the part of the story where Huey, Dewey, and Louie blow square bubbles of chewing gum.
The Plain Awful's square egg is also featured in Don Rosa's The Buckaroo of the Badlands, part three of his famous The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.
External links
- Lost in the Andes! in Carl Barks guidebook