24 Hours In Nowhere

Gus’s pocket watch appears frequently in the novel, especially as the group ventures further into the cave. The watch carries its own kind of legend: According to Gus, his great-grandfather found it in the desert, not long before he succumbed to a rattlesnake bite. Then, “[his] grandma had given the watch to [his] father, and [his] father had given the watch to [him]” (18). Mysteriously, the watch is engraved with “W.D.A,” and Gus admits that “no one kn[ows] what the initials st[an]d for” (18). As Gus narrates this chain of ownership, he emphasizes that the watch has survived multiple generations, linking him to the great-grandfather he never knew. Gus brings the watch into the cave, and its many appearances evoke the power of history and its bearing on the characters’ experience—a fitting association for a device literally intended to record the passage of time. For instance, when the group first notices Gus’s watch, Rossi asks to inspect it and quickly realizes that the initials read “W.A.D,” for William André Dufort. Predictably, Matthew claims the watch, and he and Gus rehash their family history; Gus maintains that it belonged to his great-grandfather, while Matthew alleges that “[his] dad had a belt buckle with this same thing on it” (120).