AI ToolsNew
Tools to make learning and teaching easier
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
After gathering supplies for their trip, Abbey and Bob Waterman visit Bundy, a garage mechanic, to get directions to The Maze. In their jeep, they follow Bundy’s directions, turning off the highway onto a dirt road and camping overnight in the Green River Desert. The next day, admiring the distant La Sal Mountains, they bounce down the path past red dunes and clusters of sunflower.
Like Abbey’s arrival at Arches, the men’s journey to The Maze reiterates the unpaved road as a symbol for personal discovery and spiritual exploration. Because they’ve turned off the paved highway, readers can expect examples of the freedom and divinity of nature once Abbey and Waterman reach their destination.
Themes
As the terrain slowly rises, it starts looking like the Grand Canyon. Junipers appear, first as individuals then in small clusters. The females grow berries that taste of gin. At a fork in the road, Abbey and Waterman take the older path, figuring that the newer is an oil exploration road. Stopping to explore an abandoned granary, Abbey spies a pornographic photo on the wall of the cabin next door.
Abbey’s detail about juniper berries being used to flavor gin adds to the symbol’s religious function. Just as wine is used in Catholic communion, the fact that the juniper, Abbey’s devotional incense of choice, can also make alcohol highlights its religious role in the book.
Themes
At another fork near the Flint Trail, the path becomes more drastically disused. It was once a horse trail, later enlarged by uranium prospectors. Now, all the soil has eroded, exposing bare rock. Not worrying about how to drive back up such an obstacle, Abbey and Waterman push onward, excited to get to The Maze. Finally, Abbey gladly leaves their gasoline-reeking jeep to lead on foot while Waterman slowly drives behind. Descending the four-mile slope, Abbey clears brush for the jeep.
Abbey pushes his road metaphor even further by choosing the overgrown side of the fork—the path less travelled—hinting to readers that the men’s experience will provide an authentic connection to the earth. The fact that Abbey this difficult path—the more engaging mode of transport—while Waterman drives highlights Abbey’s role as the principal seeker of this connection.
Themes
Upgrade to unlock the analysis and theme tracking for all of Desert SolitaireDesert Solitaire!
Get LitCharts A+
Abbey and Waterman stop to admire some petrified wood and the musical sound of the trees’ leaves overhead. Music is an apt descriptor for the desert: if Bach is the sea, Debussy the forest, and Beethoven the mountains, then which composer captures the desert? Abbey thinks that Mozart is too agreeable, and that jazz is too reminiscent of indoor clubs. Instead, the bleak work of Berg, Webern, and Schoenberg fit nicely. These composers are atonal, emotionless, and inhuman—like the desert.
Elsewhere, Abbey has shown his preference for music over words—but here, he delves into exactly why music suits his subject matter. By choosing the sparsest, bleakest classical music available, Abbey asks readers to imagine that the desert is strange and mysterious beyond what words could convey.
Themes
Get the entire Desert Solitaire LitChart as a printable PDF.
Like Ralph Newman back in Glen Canyon, Waterman confesses that he doesn’t want to return to civilization. America is engaged in another war—Abbey forgets exactly where—and Waterman has been drafted. Abbey encourages him to stay and hide out—he’ll bring him supplies and news regularly.
Earlier, Abbey advocated wilderness as a refuge from government tyranny—the most radical means to individual liberty. Here, he shows that refuge in action. As the Vietnam draft protests raged at the time of Desert Solitaire’s publication, Abbey likely expected a loud outcry of support for Waterman’s political retreat into nature.
Themes
Abbey and Waterman drive on along a ridge, peering at their destination: the tangled Maze of rock canyons below. The sandstone is striped like Neapolitan ice cream. Building a juniper fire at sundown, the men watch the colors change on the canyon walls and on the four distant spires on the horizon. Abbey asks what they should name these formations, but Waterman protests that they need no name—to name things is a greedy thing to do. Abbey agrees but wonders, like Rainer Maria Rilke, whether things can truly exist for people unless they are named. As Abbey ruminates on the relationship of reality to language, Waterman drifts off to sleep.
In his mountain excursion, Abbey gave comic sexual names to various canyons below. But here, he explains why arbitrary naming of the earth (which he believes all naming to be) is not only silly but arrogant. The universal urge to name things, as Rilke believed, comes from humanity’s quest to understand the world. Abbey finds this reasonable. But Waterman’s objection—that to name something is a possessive impulse—wins out in this scene. This is yet another reason for Abbey to disdain the artificiality of language.
Themes
After readying their supplies in the morning, Abbey and Waterman hook up their rope and rappel down a steep rock face to the first canyon entrance of The Maze. Abbey is scared the rope will snap, but Waterman reassures him. After a three-hour descent, they both make it down safely. They must find water before they do anything else, so they hike toward the Colorado River. Soon spotting some trees and wild cane, Abbey digs and finds drinkable water. Hydrated and relieved, Abbey sings a verse of Burns about green rashes. Then, he whittles a reed into a flute, which he plays in a strange scale that he thinks has never been heard before.
This scene combines Abbey’s suspicion of language with his advocacy of the freedom that nature gives people. Abbey devoted a whole previous chapter to finding water in the desert, but only here does he really show his skills in action. The empowerment he gains by being able to hydrate himself in the wild leads to his overwhelming relief—a feeling that, as readers have seen, defies standard prose. Thus, Abbey reverts to poetry in order to express it. Additionally, his makeshift flute communicates exactly what’s so strange about the desert in a way that words never could.
Themes
As Waterman naps, Abbey explores the labyrinth of canyons and bathes in a refreshing pool. Waterman finds him, and they explore a ledge together. When dusk comes, they decide to leave The Maze in order to return tomorrow. They spot a Native American petroglyph on a canyon wall, concluding that, other than this relic, the place has been completely untouched. But they have yet to reach the heart of The Maze, where they’ll find out for sure.
The petroglyph here—though a sign of other human beings—is so old that it indicates this place’s immense solitude. In this image, the theme of nature’s ancientness (a divine quality) combines with the theme of freedom arising from solitude.
Themes
In the morning, the sky seems to forecast rain or even snow—an uncommon but not impossible phenomenon in the desert. Abbey panics, since the rocky path they took to get here will become impassable if wet. Since they both have to return in a day—Abbey to his ranger duties, Waterman to Colorado University—they agree to abandon their exploration after a hearty breakfast. After packing their things, they hike back to the jeep, and Abbey daydreams of festooning one of the lonely junipers in Christmas tree ornaments.
Abbey panics when the wet road threatens to trap them in. In this passage, roads—a symbol for an authentic connection with nature—take on a surprisingly threatening quality. Abbey illustrates this in order to show that the kind of solitude he advocates doesn’t come without risk. Risk in nature, however, leads to the worthwhile rewards of personal empowerment and freedom.
Themes
Luckily, they make it back up the Flint Trail before the snow picks up. They stop at the park “shrine” to sign the register. Abbey scribbles a plea to leave the land alone, “for God’s sake,” signing his name. Waterman writes the same plea but “for Abbey’s sake,” signing it “God.” They race back through the 40 miles of unpaved desert road to the highway, which they follow back to Arches National Monument in time for cocktails.
“Shrine” is Abbey’s joke—the visitor’s register is hardly an altar. But calling it one helps illustrate how he interprets nature as sacred, even when Park Service tourist features threaten the purity of this nature. Waterman’s inversion of Abbey’s “God’s sake” message is a comic illustration of Abbey’s belief that humanity and Earth should have a reciprocal relationship.
Themes
