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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
Recalling the benefits of nature and his decent pay, Abbey declares that he likes his job. Best of all is the kind of self-discovery that comes with remoteness, a feeling that is impossible to name. He notes his simple ranger duties, his easy schedule (having days off in the middle of the week), and his predictable banter with the few tourists that show up. He especially likes Monday, a day that promises no tourists and plenty of solitude.
Abbey enjoys what he learns about himself in solitude, and he especially enjoys it when others aren’t around to bug him. By placing the ideas of self-discovery and isolation from people side by side, Abbey suggests that they go together: to discover oneself, one needs to distance oneself from others.
Themes
On Abbey’s two days off, he goes into town for food and recreation. Compared to the silent desert, the tiny town of Moab (population 5,500) seems bustling and impressive to him. He tends to meet friendly uranium miners in Moab’s bars, not depressed businessmen like one would meet in bars in big cities. The locals here are friendly for several reasons: physical labor makes people happier, mining pays well and requires self-confidence, the alcohol in Utah is too weak to allow drunken fighting, and solitary work makes people more eager for company on their days off. Abbey sometimes plays pool with Viviano Jacquez, a cowboy.
Immediately after insulting tourists, Abbey stresses that he does need others’ company. But he’s careful to stress the necessary ratio of isolation to company: five days alone, two days with others. It’s a ratio that more or less holds up as he polishes this into a political argument about the social benefit of wilderness. It’s also notable that the Moabites are easier to get along with than city dwellers, which Abbey attributes to the hard work and self-reliance inherent to solitary life in the desert.
Themes
One could live this way forever, but something threatens this happy routine of desert solitude and occasional socializing: progress. Though the unpaved roads have kept the desert serene until now, as Merle McRae and Floyd Bence warned, development is coming. One evening, while watching the dusk from his stoop and enjoying a “ritual” juniper fire, Abbey watches a jeep pull up to his trailer. Excited to fine for unauthorized motoring, Abbey is dismayed to learn the passengers are engineers with the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads. They approach him for fresh water and describe the new road to the Arches they’ve been hired to survey. It might cost a million dollars, enough to fund 10 park rangers for 10 years. To Abbey’s horror, the men assure him the new road could increase tourism thirtyfold.
This passage is the fateful encounter with industrial development that was foreshadowed in Abbey’s introduction. The instrument of the engineer’s disruption is a paved highway, Abbey’s symbol of artificial, lazy, capitalist America. It’s also significant that the exact moment when these men intrudes upon Abbey’s peace—during his “ritual” burning of juniper. Here, the juniper tree continues to help Abbey illustrate nature’s religious aspect. This symbol also clashes significantly with the road’s symbolism. The fact that capitalism (the highway) interrupts a sacred religious rite (the juniper) shows Abbey’s belief that the only proper way to worship nature’s divinity is to do so in isolation. Roads, built to make transportation easy for large groups of people, will make such rituals impossible.
Themes
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Abbey jumps ahead in time, 10 years after these events, to confirm that the planned road indeed appeared and overpopulated the desert with tourists. Cars, motorcycles, house trailers, pavement, and electricity are now regular staples of the Arches National Monument. Obsessed with electric toothbrushes, Coke machines, and modern bathrooms, the hordes of new tourists comprise a wave of “Industrial Tourism.”
Throughout the book, the 1967 Abbey is able to make political arguments based on both the experiences of 1956 Abbey and on the sad development that’s occurred in the intervening decade. Because the 1956 Abbey learned so much about himself in isolation, the 1967 Abbey feels justified in protesting Industrial Tourism, which he believes is the strongest threat to future generations’ experience of this solitary introspection.
Themes
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The industrial development of Arches is only one example of a larger disappearance of America’s national parks. For instance, the major natural attractions of Canyonlands National Park are accessible by foot, but the Park Service plans to connect them with paved highways. The rim of the Grand Canyon has been defaced with asphalt parking lots. At Navajo National Monument, the “old magic” has been destroyed by pavement. Zion and Capitol National Parks and Lee’s Ferry, where tourists are “herded” into asphalt campgrounds, have all suffered new highways, roads, and industrial development. The Wilderness Preservation Act, enacted to prevent this damage, has done nothing to stop the spoilage of these natural landscapes. Only citizens, through protest, can halt the progress of industry.
The loss of “old magic” furthers Abbey’s argument that industrialization and overpopulation threaten the religious experience of nature. Each of these cases of park spoilage involves pavement, Abbey’s symbolic enemy. Since pavement’s purpose is to transport people, it spoils humanity’s chance at solitary escape, thereby crowding them together and depriving them of their liberties. Abbey’s specific complaint about the Wilderness Preservation Act (1964), signed by President Johnson, is also significant. The pedantic debates of government officials, as Abbey will soon point out, have neutered the act’s wording—yet another way in which language has separated people from nature.
Themes
Though some may argue that accessibility increases the value of national parks, Abbey thinks that untouched natural wilderness is actually more important to civilization. He believes that it’s a government duty to preserve what’s left. Though Park Service vows to “provide for the enjoyment” and leave nature “unimpaired for future generations,” it’s comprised of two main factions: Developers (those who want to add highways and electricity to the parks) and Preservers (those who argue that nature can only be enjoyed away from modern technology). Developers (the majority) focus on the “enjoyment” part of the Park Service’s vow, while the minority Preservers fixate on the “unimpaired” part.
Abbey explicates the exact wording of the doomed Wilderness Preservation Act. Opposing governmental factions—environmentalists on one side, and capitalists on the other—quibble over exactly what the document says. A word as harmless as “enjoyment” is gravely abused by capitalists (Developers) in order to abuse the parks and make quick money. Though the act (which Abbey quotes, for proof) is famously clear-worded, language fails to communicate its meaning even here. This brings Abbey’s personal struggle with words into a broader political context.
Themes
The major contention between the two factions is accessibility: roads, highways, and so on. Developers say that roads will ensure future enjoyment, while Preservers argue that cars ruin the effect of untouched nature. Plenty of monuments—even Mt. Everest—are perfectly accessible by foot or horse, so more roads aren’t needed in the parks.
Abbey sides decisively with the Preservers, believing that if one is determined enough, roads are irrelevant to transportation. Earlier, with the rangers Merle McRae and Floyd Bence, Abbey made a point of noting that the dirt paths of Arches were passable. Here, by defeating the Developers’ argument with his comparison to Everest, Abbey further highlights their abuse of the Wilderness Preservation Act’s simple wording.
Themes
But this logic doesn’t work in real life, as Abbey notes that most tourists are too lazy to leave their cars. This laziness allows Industrial Tourism to prey on their dependence: because tourists think they need cars, people will say that parks need roads. And because roads require lots of money, commerce, in turn, thrives on the exploitation of parks. Developing a park generates so much money that the government protects the urge to develop more than it protects the wilderness itself. At the end of this chain, the Park Service—though it exists to protect wilderness—allows industry to ravage its own land under the false impression that roads will improve tourists’ experience and generate attendance.
In keeping with the symbol of roads as an irrelevant excess, Abbey turns to cars. From this scene, cars will function as a kind of bubble—a miniature replica of industrialized society that separates people from nature. In attacking cars, Abbey argues that it’s not good enough to drive to the parks. One must get out, hike, and feel the elements. Only then can one feel the true isolation that he deems necessary to society.
Themes
Abbey believes that the tourists themselves are complicit in this tragedy, working hard to endure traffic jams, parking fees, discomfort in their sweaty cars, maintenance fees, and unimaginable crowds. Abbey thinks that the solution to the tragedy of park development is to start at the beginning of this chain: to separate tourists from their beloved automobiles. Only then they will discover the actual value of “Mother Earth.”
Pushing this comparison of cars with industrialized society, Abbey highlights the many difficulties that come with driving a car cross-country to see the parks. Nature, the obvious choice, is removed from annoyances like parking tickets and traffic. His use of the phrase “Mother Earth,” a classic term of the Hippie era, stresses the life-giving and religious aspects of nature.
Themes
Population growth, which leads to increased tourism, is the major, long-term obstacle to this goal. Aside from solving this, Abbey lists three short-term solutions: first, ban cars in national parks. Since cars aren’t allowed into cathedrals, art museums, and other protected locations, why are they allowed in the “holy places” of parks? Instead, the Park Service should build parking lots on the outskirts of natural wilderness, where tourists will be made to leave their vehicles. From there, have them hike, bicycle, or ride horseback into nature, while government shuttles transport their stuff. As for children, the elderly, and the disabled: let them take the baggage shuttles. On foot, tourists will see and feel more in one mile than a driver can in a hundred.
Abbey continues the conflict of capitalism and religion into his proposed solutions to the problem of park development. In his view, the automobile, which separates humanity from nature even if the vehicle is driven into a park, and he urges mandatory hiking in the parks to combat this separation. He also believes that the holiness of nature is endangered by roads, cars, and the crowds they bring. To stress the urgency of protecting nature, Abbey compares the desert to a cathedral, to the typical “holy places” recognized by society. If people wouldn’t drive cars there, Abbey reasons, why would they drive cars in a sacred desert?
Themes
Second, Abbey believes there should be no new construction of highways into national parks. The Park Service should repurpose existing paved roads for the proposed bicycles and preserve the unpaved roads for hikers. If needed, install emergency shelters and water supplies along these paths. Once “liberated” from cars and uncrowded, tourists will feel that the parks are larger than they really are. This is one cheap and easy way for the government to maximize the size of its wilderness.
This is Abbey’s strongest argument about human rights, and “liberated” is the key verb. Cars—like cities and all industrialized societies—separate people from nature and ultimately oppress them. To renounce cities—even temporarily—restores a fundamental sense of freedom. This renunciation, represented symbolically by a tourist stepping out of a car and into the park, is a crucial step in Abbey’s broader argument that nature’s liberating qualities are essential to society.
Themes
Third, Abbey thinks that the Park Service should employ more rangers in the field. Once freed from indoor desk work, rangers will become happier, be less jealous of each other, and be kinder to their bosses. With the proposed ban on cars, tourists on foot will need more leaders in the wilderness—a job for which rangers should be fully qualified.
Just as Abbey’s hypothetical tourists become liberated once they leave their cars, these imaginary rangers find a new kindness toward one another once they’re forced out of their sterile offices into the sun. This imaginary transformation brings home the idea that solitary time in nature makes people fundamentally better in society.
Themes
Some will argue that it’s too late to divorce Americans from their commercial lifestyles, but Abbey questions how can they be sure unless they try. Millions of Americans secretly want such an adventure, and the money saved on roads could finance this. Since banning cars would violently clash with the current addiction to technology and commerce, why not erect an enormous neon Smokey the Bear billboard at the entrance to each park? Such signs would could feature fireworks, Byzantine phallic symbols, and prayer wheels, announcing the new prohibition on cars.
Abbey’s goofy imagination is on full display with this cartoon billboard. But the religious icons—the Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheel and what is likely the Christogram (an early Byzantine cross)—bring a real-life element of inclusion to Abbey’s parody. By welcoming all human beings from every culture to his utopian dream park, Abbey stresses that his prescriptions against cars and technology are global, not necessarily limited to Utah or America. This makes his argument against roads a more urgently political matter.
Themes
Jumping back in time to the thirsty engineers, Abbey contemplates whether human beings are “herd animal[s].” He refuses to believe it. He wishes that modern people respected space as much as time, musing that people ought to build their houses as far apart as they can reasonably travel. Abbey quotes a Proverb on keeping distance from one’s neighbor, “lest he grow weary of thee.” Turning back to the quiet evening and the full moon, he describes the distant rocks with a quote from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound: “pinnacled dim in the intense inane.” After a while, Abbey retraces the path of the departed jeep, pulling up and hiding the surveyors’ stakes as he goes.
“Herd animals” is a phrase worth noting: Abbey uses it to argue that human beings, unlike cattle, need solitude from one another in order to thrive. He’s just argued how capitalism threatens this solitude, and here he drives it home by concluding the chapter with his quiet moment in the desert. Despite his disdain for Christianity, Abbey opens this argument to all humanity—not just like-minded environmentalists—by quoting the Bible. The Shelley quote comes from a play about Prometheus, the Greek hero who stole fire from the gods, which deals with the conflicting forces of pride and freedom. Those two ideas that through Abbey’s contemplation here, on the arrogance of developers and the sense of individual empowerment they seek to destroy. Prometheus will appear again in Abbey’s book, in a later commentary on human arrogance.
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