Roy Scobie Character Analysis

Scobie is a middle-aged cattle rancher who employs Edward Abbey as a cow wrangler from time to time, alongside Scobie’s assistant Viviano Jacquez. Scobie’s main character trait is his obsession with mortality: he’s terrified that he will die of a random heart attack. As Scobie, Jacquez, and Abbey ride in search of stray cattle, Abbey often catches Scobie deep in thought about his impending death or muttering about the friends he’s lost prematurely. Abbey disapproves of Scobie’s obsession, and he thinks of all the philosophers he could invoke to dispel Scobie’s fear. However, Abbey concludes that this would be no use, so other than some small talk, the men tend to ride together in silence. Abbey’s frustration with Scobie illustrates two of his main arguments: the first is that death (especially out in the open desert, under the sun) is a natural part of life. Dying simply means a return of the human life force to the natural landscape—it’s nothing to be scared of. The second argument is that rational philosophy, even from heavy-hitting thinkers like Plato and Sophocles, is ultimately useless against an experience as deeply lived as Scobie’s phobia. As a cowboy, Scobie is also significant as a casualty of an increasingly mechanized and alienating economy. Thanks to industrial cow farming, Abbey argues, authentic cowhands are disappearing all over the West. Scobie is the prime example of this endangered way of life: he’s hard-working and autonomous (Abbey can barely ride along at his pace) but also frail, paranoid, and a little delusional. Scobie’s extreme stinginess (he barely feeds or pays his employees, and he uses half-broken equipment) illustrates the sunken state of the once-thriving Western lifestyle. Scobie seems as needlessly obsessed with money—the very thing that threatens his way of life—as he is with death. In retrospect, Abbey reflects that Scobie ironically did die of a heart attack.