Previous
Terra Incognita
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Desert Solitaire, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Wilderness, Society, and Liberty
Nature, Wonder, and Religion
Language and Reality
Humanity, the Environment, and Arrogance
Summary
Analysis
The tourists have left the desert, packing into their awful cars to repopulate their cities, leaving Abbey to enjoy his last day in the desert, where all the most important things happen. Tonight, he must board a plane to Denver, then on New York—but he will return next year. Unhappy and bitter, Abbey shaves his beard off. Looking like a bank clerk, he tries on a white collared shirt and a “garrote” tie in the mirror.
Equating his necktie with a “garrote” (a noose) symbolizes Abbey’s reluctance to return to society. Clearly, comparing city clothing to an execution or suicide shows the ultimate contrast between the freedom he’s been enjoying in nature and the cramped oppression he expects in New York.
Active
Themes
Abbey thinks that the secret to living both city and desert life is balance. Thoreau insisted on a full retreat into the wilderness, but this is inadvisable. After six months in the desert, Abbey longs to see people’s faces on 42nd Street and Atlantic Avenue. He’s sick of keeping himself company, and he wants to talk to train conductors, cab drivers, cops, and the millions of other New Yorkers.
Despite his noose imagery above, this scene marks perhaps the book’s strongest moral: that the wilderness can’t be a permanent escape from society. Echoing his realizations with Ralph Newcomb in Glen Canyon, Abbey argues that people need one another. By calling out Henry David Thoreau—whose Walden advocates a permanent retreat into wilderness—Abbey distinguishes his argument about freedom and society from an important literary predecessor.
Active
Themes
The desert has driven Abbey crazy, though he doesn’t mind. The desert invites crazies, such as a recent German visitor to his campsite, a toolmaker who drove a Porsche. Spotting Abbey’s trailer, the man invited himself over and started defending Hitler’s actions in World War II. America should have sided with the Germans, the Nazi says. Defending America—something he rarely does—Abbey grows angry enough to want to kill the man. But when he considers that the man hasn’t seen the Arches or the Grand Canyon, he wishes him well and lets him leave.
Active
Themes
In October, there’s lots of tumbleweed and aspen at Arches National Monument. The sunsets are so colorful that they are hard to believe—they are improvisatory, like God’s pizza pies. Abbey makes a final tour of the park, stopping at all the major rock formations: his children, his possessions by right of love—by divine right.
Active
Themes
Get the entire Desert Solitaire LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
The desert will be grateful for Abbey’s departure. But isn’t gratitude a human emotion that deserts can’t feel? The desert doesn’t feel one way or the other toward Abbey; it’s indifferent. Whether or not humanity extinguishes itself with nuclear weapons, people are equally irrelevant to the landscape. That might even be a good thing, allowing living things to start again from scratch. This is Abbey’s faith.
Abbey gathers all his spare juniper trunks into a bonfire—a signal to the world that goes unheeded. It doesn’t matter; all things are in motion, from the distant tumbleweeds to Abbey himself. After cleaning out the trailer, Abbey suddenly feels the urge to leave at once. He abandons his plan to give a ceremonial goodbye to the juniper by his trailer.
Active
Themes
At the ranger station, Abbey learns that his flight to Denver has been cancelled. A new ranger, Bob Ferris, drives him there instead. As they speed on the highway, the sight of the huge amber sunset possesses Abbey. He demands that Ferris turn the car around, but Ferris refuses, pressing on the gas—Abbey has a plane to catch. Calming down, Abbey consents, and the two men light cigars. The desert will still be the same when Abbey returns. But will he himself be the same?
Active
Themes
