Ralph Newcomb Character Analysis

Newcomb is a friend of Edward Abbey’s; he’s a former cowboy who now studies Eastern philosophy. Despite being disabled in one leg, Newcomb accompanies Abbey on a life-affirming, week-long boat trip through Glen Canyon—the central adventure of Desert Solitaire. As the character who spends the most time with Abbey, Newcomb cements the book’s main social lesson: that prolonged, solitary exposure to nature can rejuvenate people’s respect for one another. This is exactly what Abbey discovers when, after months alone in his desert post, he embarks on his trip with a heart full of affection and trust. Abbey and Newcomb yoke their rafts together, symbolically making the journey as one entity. From this pivotal moment, readers understand Abbey’s wider argument that escaping alone into nature conversely enables people to coexist happily in society. Newcomb is notably stoic and level-headed, facing each obstacle the men come up against with a calm resourcefulness rather than panicking. This imperturbable behavior reinforces three of Abbey’s arguments: first, it gives readers a living example of Abbey’s conviction that wilderness—rather than the corrosive excess of city life—can calm people, make them more reasonable, and support their basic needs. Second, Newcomb’s calmness also helps suggest that humans are one with Earth. That he is “tranquil as the sky overhead” suggests Newcomb and the earth share an equal attitude—an idea that Abbey echoes during their trip in Glen Canyon and elaborates upon throughout the book. Third, the fact that Newcomb studies the Indian mystic thinker Sri Aurobindo suggests that Newcomb’s happy stoicism comes from his rejection of Western, capitalist ways of thinking. This is exactly the rejection that Abbey, the enemy of commercial ambition and American politics, wants his readers to partake in.