Themes
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
By July, the desert heat is overwhelming. Despite the temperature, 110ºF, and constant dehydration, Abbey weathers the discomfort by sitting under the juniper outside his trailer. He sticks his feet in the sand, achieving a relaxed, “animal” satisfaction. The sight of the distant mountains comforts him, as they remind him that he can escape the heat if he wanted, by taking refuge of their cold peaks. The mere knowledge that he can escape helps him go on.
As usual, Abbey’s favorite juniper helps him achieve an “animal” connection to the earth that would otherwise be unavailable to human beings. With the sight of a distant mountain, he introduces another important idea: that certain ideas (such as this snowy mountain’s mere existence) can have a material psychological relief from hardship (in Abbey’s case, heat and dehydration).
Themes
More broadly, all of America’s wilderness serves the same purpose for the country’s civilization as these mountains do for Abbey. Just to know that nature exists provides city dwellers with the hope they need to live their lives. For this reason, the wilderness must be preserved for the good of civilization.
By comparing a personal idea (a cold mountain refuge) to a universal idea (human hope), Abbey reveals a critical logical maneuver in his coming argument about democracy and wilderness. His example shows that people can make justifiable conclusions about all of humanity based on their private experiences. Just as Abbey feels relieved by the mere existence of a mountain, so, too, can all of humanity find hope in nature.
Themes
Abbey argues that there is another reason to preserve nature: in case American citizens need to escape an authoritarian government takeover, wild parks like Grand Canyon and Yellowstone are the perfect places to flee and stage a rebellion. Americans should take this warning seriously, as the whole world is slowly drifting toward totalitarianism. It’s no coincidence that tyranny thrives in the most industrialized societies—such as modern Germany—where governments can easily control their citizens. By contrast, rural insurrections in Cuba and Vietnam have recently been successful in fighting totalitarianism.
Aside from the conceptual benefit that nature affords to city dwellers, the possibility that wilderness could sustain populist rebellions against the government gives an immediate, global urgency to Abbey’s argument throughout the book that being in nature makes people feel free. In the face of tyranny, such as Hitler’s, this feeling of liberation—only achievable in nature—might very well be humanity’s only hope. From this perspective, preserving wilderness becomes an urgent civic duty. By invoking the Vietnam War—which was taking place when Desert Solitaire was published—Abbey strikes a nationwide nerve in his call to protect the country’s parks.
Themes
In order to overpower its citizens and become a dictatorship, America would need to accomplish eight things: pack people into cities, mechanize agriculture, restrict gun ownership, encourage population growth, continue the draft, wage war overseas to distract from conflicts at home, erect highways to connect the country, and destroy wilderness. These developments are already occurring. It may, in fact, be too late. Abbey quotes a Robinson Jeffers poem: “Shine, perishing republic.”
The poet Abbey quotes, Robinson Jeffers, is a formative influence on Abbey’s environmentalist thinking. The poem in question, “Shine, Perishing Republic,” posits that once America collapses in its own corruption, it will disperse back into the earth and regenerate. Though Abbey calls for protest against development, his tone in this scene, like the resigned sadness of Jeffers’s poem, takes some comfort in hope that Earth will outlive human corruption—a parallel to Abbey’s mystic bond with nature.
Themes
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Despite these thoughts on “my all-too-perishable republic,” Abbey’s solitude helps him cope as the sun “reigns” in his boiling summer landscape. Like him, the lizards and snakes seek shade to conserve energy. Even flowers and plants curl up in defense. Birds are scarce. Insects disappear—though the crickets, like a Bach partita, chirp their sad music. Rather than following these restful survival tactics, however, human beings are unique in that they slave away at work during such miserable heat, “chained” to the clock and denying the “elemental fire.”
By repurposing Jeffers’s line here, Abbey takes further comfort in Earth’s longevity. The Bach allusion furthers Abbeys preference for musical and poetic descriptions over straightforward prose. In admiring nature’s ability to cope with the heat, Abbey notes humanity’s defiance of the elements. The language he uses to illustrate this—“chained” and “elemental fire”—recalls the Greek hero Prometheus, who was chained to a rock in punishment for stealing fire from the gods. A convenient symbol of humanity’s arrogance, this is neither Abbey’s first nor last use of the mythological figure.
Themes
Abbey watches the circling buzzards against the “blue dome of heaven,” imagining that they dream of their former lives as other animals. In the powerful sunlight, the horizon shimmers and refracts as if viewed through a veil of water. Balanced Rock seems to bend in the heat, while the junipers and pines seem to wave. Though rare, mirages can occur in California, where optical illusions trick people into seeing lakes on the horizon—“Palestinian miracles.”
Having railed against humanity’s arrogance, Abbey turns back to Earth’s holiness. Nodding to the divinity of the afternoon clarity (“blue dome of heaven”), Abbey mediates on the sun’s visual tricks. Abbey blames this illusory water effect for the “Palestinian miracle,” the New Testament claim that Christ walked on water. By meditating on the shifting nature of objective reality, Abbey renews his argument that Earth—not the Bible—is divine.
Themes
In the bright sun, every detail of the landscape appears so clear that Abbey thinks there cannot be another realm beyond reality. He stares at the half-dead juniper and prays for a vision of truth, but he gets no response. He listens intently for sun signals, but its music is too pure for human ears. Abbey scrapes his feet against the sandy rock and feels comforted by its solidity.
Abbey is more intent than ever to find an underlying reality beneath the sensory realm. Despite his failure, it’s important to note that here—unlike previous scenes, where he was frustrated by his limited senses—he is finally okay with the merely visible. He’s arriving at his conclusion—voiced in the Introduction—that “surfaces” are all that human beings can know.
Themes
