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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
On May 1, Abbey admires a colorful sunrise and a wind storm. He pins a red bandana to the pole from which he’s hung Chinese bells, and then he raises the American flag at the nearby entrance station he’s supposed to man. He declares himself impartial and notes that he wishes either good fortune or damnation on both America and China, depending upon his mood.
Red symbolizes the People’s Republic of China, a longstanding Cold War enemy of the U.S. By mixing a symbol of communism (the bandana) with the American flag, Abbey exempts himself from allegiance with either side. Instead, he stands apart from both, hinting that the tensions between them are arrogant, silly, and hopelessly irrelevant to a life in nature.
Themes
Abbey steps out around his trailer and surveys the plant life: first, he notes the cliffrose, a prickly shrub with yellow, rose-like blooms. Struck by them, he alters a couplet of A. E. Houseman to praise the plant. To justify doing so, he quotes Robinson Jeffers, who complained that “poets lie too much.” Though the cliffrose flowers are pretty, Abbey thinks that the cactus blossom is the most beautiful in the desert because of its rarity and the contrasting harshness of the cactus’s needles. Beauty is not a competition, however; all flowers are equal as long as they are wild rather than domesticated.
Here, Abbey addresses his outspoken preference for poetry but adds a cautionary note. By quoting A. E. Housman’s poem on cherry trees, he suggests that poetry is an ideal expression of reality. But poets often fabricate truth—as Jeffers admits. So by altering Housman’s poem so that it describes the cliffrose bush, Abbey implies that he’s committed to the facts of his own experience. In this way, Abbey straddles two seemingly conflicted modes of language: evocative communication and factual reporting.
Themes
Next, Abbey thinks that the yucca—a “solitaire” native to New Mexico and the Grand Canyon—is worth noting for the dangerous bayonet quality of its leaves and the dramatic appearance of its tall flower. It’s a special blossom because it’s pollinated by moth. The desert is especially wondrous because its plants are spaced so far apart, giving the impression of infinite vastness. Abbey studies more flowers on his belly, in the sand, “as a snake.” Walking back to the trailer, he passes a colony of ants, selfish little creatures which he hates.
The world “solitaire” is telling here: originally French for “solitary,” when used as a noun in English the word becomes “loner.” As the title of his book, the term “desert solitaire” describes Abbey himself—a loner in the wilderness. So, by using this same word to describe the spiky yucca, Abbey connects himself to this plant, suggesting that they share something in common. This sly wordplay contributes to the sense that Abbey is deepening his bond to nature—not just to animals (Abbey crawls “like a snake” here) but to plants and the landscape as well. (Though a yucca is a succulent, not a cactus, its spikiness makes it worth noting that Abbey’s friends in real life called him “Cactus Ed,” an homage to his temper and political outrage.)
Themes
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A 300-year-old juniper near Abbey’s trailer, an “ancient grandmother,” is his favorite. Abbey has been watching it for a month, hoping—though failing—to connect to the tree’s essence, to “whatever falls beyond.” He and the tree are “[t]wo living things on the same earth,” and they contact each other without language. Its unchanging posture frustrates Abbey, who thinks it might be insane and desperate for liberation.
Here, Abbey singles out the juniper tree, his foremost symbol in the book: first he humanizes it, calling it a grandmother and suggesting that he and it are just “two living things” coexisting and communicating. In this way, the juniper—like the yucca just before it—illustrates that human beings are equal to their environment. In another way, by trying to use the tree as a portal to the “beyond,” Abbey illustrates his hopeless desire to penetrate the surfaces of lived experience into an underlying reality. It’s also significant that the tree seems to want liberation. Abbey’s attunement here to imagined feelings in the earth suggests that human beings—also in need of liberation—are inseparable from their environment.
Themes
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The sand sage is also nearby, and the pinion pine, a victim of porcupine infestation. Abbey lists a variety of thistles and shrubs and notes the datura flower, in which Native Americans have discovered a hallucinatory chemical, a discovery that leads Abbey to conclude that modern science is inferior to “empirical logic.”
The phrase “empirical logic” means basic, everyday observation. Abbey’s preference for this method over science as a means to learn about the world echoes the conclusion that he’ll soon reach about reality: although one can’t access a deeper realm than sight and touch, the five senses are a good enough measure of the world.
Themes
After his breakfast of bacon and eggs, Abbey begins his ranger duties. No tourists show up during his shift at the welcome station, so he embarks on his daily rounds, beginning with Balanced Rock, a huge, dangling, 3,500-ton formation that may fall onto the road at any time. Passing deer tracks, Abbey laments the fact that human endangerment of the deer’s natural predators has allowed the deer population to multiply unnaturally. While cleaning public bathrooms at the Double Arch campground, Abbey notes black widow spiders and other lethal creatures. The spiders and deer prompt his reflections on the benefits of natural predators. He concludes that humanity needs more coyotes and mountain lions, not more domesticated cattle. A fawn appears during these thoughts; Abbey demands to “talk” with it, but it runs away.
Abbey’s first encounter with the area’s famous rock formations is impressive. Three thousand five hundred tons is unimaginably heavy—a fact that’s meant to instill readers with a sense of awe. It’s this feeling of wonder that will soon lead Abbey—and, he hopes, his readers as well—into the belief that nature is worth worshipping. Additionally, Abbey’s desire to “talk” to the deer is a comically useless engagement between a human and an animal, but “talk” is nonetheless a word that suggests Abbey’s deep desire to commune with his environment.
Themes
While returning to the campground, Abbey spots a hare. In an experiment, he hurls a rock at it. To his astonishment, his aim is true, and the “little bastard” lies dead. Abbey ruminates on what he’s done, deciding that killing a rabbit mean’s he’s no longer isolated from nature. Having participated in the desert’s unforgiving cycle of life and death, he now feels “kindred” with the animals around him. He continues on, feeling overjoyed with himself and innocent of wrongdoing.
By entering the timeless animal cycle of life and death, Abbey argues here that he’s won a deeper connection to the environment—though killing a rabbit (and especially calling it a “little bastard”) is certainly an odd way to prove it. Whether or not readers are convinced, Abbey feels an undeniable transference of energy from his victim to himself. The deed paradoxically confirms his feeling that animals are his “kindred”—a word he uses elsewhere to express the same concept.
Themes
The next stop on his rounds is Turnbow Cabin, the former hideaway of a consumptive outcast from the city. The cabin, long out of use, is a strange human ruin in an otherwise unpopulated landscape, now infested with black widows. Abbey examines its crude construction: uneven juniper logs, wide foundation cracks, and a sagging thatch roof.
Turnbow’s cabin introduces the idea of city dwellers becoming refugees with the desert. Although Abbey sympathizes with Turnbow’s instinct, the ruined cabin strikes him as totally out of place in nature. For Abbey, any human-made structure in the wilderness is a form of development, even if it’s made of his beloved juniper—he believes that the wilderness ought to stay untouched. In building even a modest cabin, Turnbow brought with him a vestige of the very city he sought to escape.
Themes
After Turnbow Cabin, Abbey drives on to Delicate Arch, an impressive rock formation that attracts many tourists. The pathway to the Arch is noticeably worn by foot traffic. Once he arrives at the formation, he ruminates on the various ways one can look at it: the rock itself looks like a pair of cowboy chaps, or a fish’s fin, or an engagement ring. More than appearing differently, it will hold different significance for different people: Midwesterners find God in it, while geologists see only nature’s uniformity. For Abbey personally, Delicate Arch is important for its startling rarity—a monument as strange and huge as this must awaken one’s sense of wonder. It reminds him that “out there is a different world,” and that to admire “things-in-themselves” is a marvelous and adventurous activity.
As with the juniper, the strangeness of the rock arches lead Abbey into a conflict about the nature of reality. On one hand, the fact that Delicate Arch appears different to everyone proves that its objective appearance (i.e., what the rock really looks like) is impossible to discover. On the other hand, the rock’s obvious strangeness and majesty suggest to Abbey that one might be able to access this “out there” reality through prolonged meditation. “Things-in-themselves” is a term from the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who believed that people can only see the surfaces of things, not the essence of things themselves. Abbey uses this term to suggest that even if we can’t access this elusive, underlying reality, the surfaces of things like Delicate Arch are wonderful enough.
Themes
Abbey continues on his rounds to less impressive features: Salt Valley, the sculptural Devil’s Garden, and Skyline Arch, a massive hole in a rock wall. In 1940, a chunk fell out, creating the current formation—though only animals were around to witness the event. Abbey removes some litter, laments some graffiti on a stone wall, and reminds himself that he has been entirely alone today. Back at the trailer, he watches colors change in the sky at dusk and notes his “private” juniper standing alone. The yucca’s bayonet leaves change color and lose definition. Checking wind gauges at the weather station, Abbey realizes that the harsh wind is dying down, a sure sign of summer.
The fact that colors change so quickly in the desert light—changing the appearances of rocks and plants in minutes—is another piece of evidence that the underlying reality behind the visible realm is difficult—maybe impossible—to access. The graffiti is a symbol for the presence of others, though the artists may be long gone. The sight of graffiti makes Abbey both lonesome and frustrated with people’s desire to vandalize. This is an early sign that extended isolation makes people contend with conflicting feelings toward humanity.
Themes
