t has stated in her prologue, these people have hung their dreams on the "facts" that they have about something living on the mountain, something they have named Megrimum.
Babbitt introduces and follows as the main character an outsider, one Egan, who has come to visit his aunt and uncle. He discovers that another uncle, Uncle Ott, has disappeared, and his cousin claims Ott has been eaten by the Megrimum. After this, the Megrimum becomes a central idea for Egan as well, but in his dreams he is the hero who slays the dragon and sets all the people free, whether they want to be free or not. He takes a dare from his cousin Ada and tries to accomplish just that by climbing Kneeknock Rise.
The structure and imagery of Kneeknock Rise to this point echoes traditional heroic fiction to a great degree and evokes certain responses in the reader, who will also dream of adventure and glory and who will see Egan as an apt substitute carrying their dreams into action. Egan is placed at the center of the novel before he arrives in Instep. We travel with him across the countryside the forty miles to Instep, and we know that this is taking place in an earlier time period because his transportation is a cart drawn by a mule. As soon as he arrives in Instep, he is inculcated into the Megrimum mystery by his cousin as she tells him about Kneeknock Rise, pointing upward at its peak:
You never saw that before, did you. I see it every day. It practically belongs to me. Uncle Ott ran off up there and the Megrimum ate him.
Egan hears the wailing that comes from the top of Kneeknock Rise and also believes that the Megrimum is calling, just as do the people of Instep. His decision to climb the mountain is a courageous one that is followed by the reader with close attention.
The outcome of the novel is not the traditional stuff of adventure fiction, however, for there is no Megrimum at all but only a rock formation around a hot spring...