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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
Herding cattle one afternoon up by Salt Creek with Mackie, another of Roy Scobie’s cowhands, Abbey notices the tracks of a wild horse. Mackie tells him that they belong to Moon-Eye, a rogue mare that once belonged to Scobie but has been missing for 10 years. Inspired by the idea of a wild horse, Abbey decides that he wants to capture Moon-Eye, and he begs Mackie for the animal’s story.
Abbey’s obsession with the idea of a rogue horse in the wild isn’t a passing interest—he’s determined to find it. This gives readers a hint that Abbey’s interest in the animal world is as great (or greater) than his interest in the human world—and it also suggests that Abbey sees something of himself in this horse. Both facts further Abbey’s sense of belonging in nature.
Themes
In Scobie’s possession, Moon-Eye had had an eye problem called “moonblindness,” which made him irritable. Castration and overuse only worsened Moon-Eye’s mood: though he seemed placid, one day in the Arches he lost his temper and bucked the tourist who had rented him. Viviano Jacquez beat Moon-Eye for this, but the horse escaped into the canyons. Scobie and Jacquez searched for two weeks, giving up after finding his saddle. Since then, Moon-Eye has only rarely been seen, drinking from the creek.
Jacquez’s violence toward Moon-Eye is noteworthy. Given that Jacquez is a Spanish immigrant who’s been poisoned into self-hatred by his neighbors’ racism, it seems that his own belittlement leads him to needlessly beat an animal. Abbey uses this injustice to connect human beings’ false superiority one another to a damaging sense of superiority over animals.
Themes
Stopping for water and shade, Abbey grills Mackie about Moon-Eye’s motives and daily life. Mackie finds the question ridiculous, figuring that the horse only eats and sleeps. Abbey isn’t satisfied—the horse, a “herd animal” like humans, does not live alone. He must know what Moon-Eye is up to, and he vows to find the horse so he can ask him himself.
Once again, Abbey uses the phrase “herd animal.” Earlier, Abbey used this terms negatively, to assert humanity’s need for solitude. Here, he’s changed his tune, believing that human beings, like horses, need others to survive. This “paradox”—as Abbey likes to call his contradictions—helps illustrate his view that solitude and society are equally important for people.
Themes
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Mackie’s ironic role—a blue-collar worker who’s sick of the grind but who wouldn’t leave it if he could—illustrates the fact that hard work in nature gives people undeniable freedom and self-reliance.
Themes
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Before he even finds Moon-Eye, Abbey’s apology to his own horse illustrates the “sympathy and understanding” he will exercise with him. This is yet another sign that Abbey believes animals deserve human dignity.
Themes
As Abbey tethers his horse and traverses the canyon, he hears only silence and begins to chide himself for his poor search tactics. But soon, he hears breathing— gradually, he makes out the figure of a horse behind a tree. Abbey asks for the animal’s name, and as he inches forward, noticing the horse’s signature milky eye, he asks the animal why he’s out here all alone. Moon-Eye stares stock-still, as Abbey asks the “old man” how he’d like to come back home. Twenty feet away, pausing at every step, Abbey tempts him by describing tasty bran, grass, and alfalfa. Soon, only the branches of a juniper separate him from the horse, who stands so still and silent he could be a scarecrow. They watch each other, the horse from his “boiled egg” eye, until Moon-Eye suddenly jumps back and charges Abbey.
This is the crucial scene for Abbey’s argument that animals and human beings are equal. In Desert Solitaire, readers see Abbey engaging in a variety of conversations, but never is he so forthright, talkative, and eager as with Moon-Eye, a creature incapable of language. Though it’s silly to reason with a horse, Abbey’s point here is that people should at least think of animals as deserving of logic. That way, people will have a better sense of how their own species is just one element of a wider natural order. Notably, “old man” is a phrase that stresses this equality, and “boiled egg” is a poetically outlandish phrase that captures the strangeness of this animal’s appearance.
Themes
Unhurt, Abbey sits in wait as Moon-Eye resumes his position. An hour passes in perfect stillness. Abbey tries again to reason with Moon-Eye, finally getting back up and walking more directly. The horse trots slowly away as Abbey explains to him that a grown man can outrun a horse, but that they really shouldn’t make fools of themselves by putting it to the test. When this doesn’t work, Abbey starts insulting the stationary horse, warning that he’ll die alone and be eaten by buzzards. Moon-Eye is clearly listening as Abbey goes on to describe the coyotes that will slowly circle then lunge at his corpse. Last, the insects will finish him off, and only the universe will remember him.
Abbey takes his reasoning powers further here—not only tempting Moon-Eye to come with him but introducing the horse to one of his key beliefs, that for a creature to die in nature is merely a recirculation of the same energy. It’s an argument Abbey made earlier with respect to Roy Scobie, and the fact that he makes it now to a horse indicates the close relationship Abbey believes to exist among the human beings, horses, coyotes, and insects of the earth.
Themes
Like a Giacometti sculpture, Moon-Eye still hasn’t moved. Emaciated, he looks like the idea of a horse rather than a real-life one. Abbey, also utterly exhausted, can’t fathom the walk back down to his own steed, a journey he has no interest in anyway; his brain aches in the sunlight, and he’s able to breathe only with conscious effort. He crawls into the rotted trunk of a juniper and waits. Abbey and Moon-Eye keep staring in silence, with Abbey speaking a sentence every 10 minutes.
As with Abbey’s earlier use of Bach and Beethoven, the reference to Giacometti here (a modern Italian sculptor famous for his spindly, elongated human figures) gives Abbey yet another escape from straightforward prose description. The juniper is an ongoing symbol of a deeper connection to the earth, so the fact that Abbey crawls inside one for relief is important. In the most literal sense, it conveys the that humanity belongs inside of nature. Additionally, it’s a character parallel to Billy-Joe Husk, who earlier crawled into a cottonwood trunk after bonding with nature.
Themes
As the oppressive sun finally sets, with Abbey and Moon-Eye still deadlocked, Abbey finds some relief. He exits the tree trunk and tries again to reason with the horse, but he’s so parched that he can’t speak. After throwing the harness at Moon-Eye in desperation, Abbey gives up, draining his canteen and begin his walk back down the canyon. Several times, he thinks he hears footsteps, but he sees nothing.
Though Abbey’s dialogue in this chapter has narrowed the difference between human and horse, the fact that words finally fail the exhausted Abbey proves that language rarely accomplishes what it hopes to, and that despite Abbey’s connection to nature, there is a fundamental difference between human beings and animals. This second point suggests Abbey’s need for human society, which he addresses in the following chapter.
Themes
