Wild

by

Cheryl Strayed

Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi Character Analysis

Cheryl’s mother—whose name is revealed very late in the book to be Bobbi—is a “forty-five-year-old vegetarian-ish […] natural-remedy-using nonsmoker” when she is diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer. Cheryl is devastated and perplexed by the news—and further destabilized when doctors give Bobbi only a year to live. Bobbi declines very quickly, however, and only lives for thirty-four days from the time of her diagnosis. Cheryl is not by Bobbi’s side when she dies (as she is off trying to coax her recalcitrant brother Leif to come say goodbye), and the fact that Cheryl was not with her mother in her final moments multiplies and exacerbates her grief, and is part of what sends Cheryl down a path of self-destruction in the years that follow. Cheryl’s memories of her mother as she sets out on the PCT in pursuit of a journey of healing and redemption vacillate between idyllic and angry. Cheryl is furious with her mother for dying—and though she tries to remember her mother’s optimism, her love of nature, her devotion to her family, and the “magical” way she kept everyone connected, she finds herself wrestling with how the decisions her mother made affected her throughout her own life. Though Bobbi is alive only in Cheryl’s memories, she is in many ways a main character in the book. Her presence is with Cheryl every step of the way along the PCT, and Cheryl’s potent memories of her mother planting marigolds, riding her beloved horse Lady, pursuing her bachelor’s degree alongside Cheryl herself, and trying to instill in her children a love of the natural world are some of the book’s most haunting, spellbinding sections.

Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi Quotes in Wild

The Wild quotes below are all either spoken by Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi or refer to Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Loss and Grief Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

Each night the black sky and the bright stars were my stunning companions; occasionally I’d see their beauty and solemnity so plainly that I’d realize in a piercing way that my mother was right. That someday I would be grateful and that in fact I was grateful now. […] It was the thing that had grown in me that I’d remember years later, when my life became unmoored by sorrow. The thing that would make me believe that hiking the Pacific Crest Trail was my way back to the person I used to be.

Related Characters: Cheryl Strayed (speaker), Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:

It took me years […] to be the woman my mother raised. […] I would suffer. […] I would want things to be different than they were. The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods.

Related Characters: Cheryl Strayed (speaker), Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

I stopped in my tracks when that thought came into my mind, that hiking the PCT was the hardest thing I’d ever done. […] Watching my mother die and having to live without her, that was the hardest thing I’d ever done. […] But hiking the PCT was hard in a different way. In a way that made the other hardest things the tiniest bit less hard. It was strange but true. And perhaps I’d known it in some way from the very beginning.

Related Characters: Cheryl Strayed (speaker), Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi
Page Number: 95
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“Come back,” I called lightly, and then suddenly shouted, “MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM!” I didn’t know the word was going to come out of my mouth until it did.

And then, just as suddenly, I went silent, spent.

Related Characters: Cheryl Strayed (speaker), Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi
Page Number: 144
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

There were so many […] amazing things in this world.

They opened up inside of me like a river. Like I didn’t know I could take a breath and then I breathed. I laughed with the joy of it, and the next moment I was crying my first tears on the PCT. I cried and I cried and I cried. I wasn’t crying because I was happy. I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I wasn’t crying because of my mother or my father or Paul. I was crying because I was full.

Related Characters: Cheryl Strayed (speaker), Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi , Paul
Page Number: 234
Explanation and Analysis:
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Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi Quotes in Wild

The Wild quotes below are all either spoken by Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi or refer to Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Loss and Grief Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

Each night the black sky and the bright stars were my stunning companions; occasionally I’d see their beauty and solemnity so plainly that I’d realize in a piercing way that my mother was right. That someday I would be grateful and that in fact I was grateful now. […] It was the thing that had grown in me that I’d remember years later, when my life became unmoored by sorrow. The thing that would make me believe that hiking the Pacific Crest Trail was my way back to the person I used to be.

Related Characters: Cheryl Strayed (speaker), Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:

It took me years […] to be the woman my mother raised. […] I would suffer. […] I would want things to be different than they were. The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods.

Related Characters: Cheryl Strayed (speaker), Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

I stopped in my tracks when that thought came into my mind, that hiking the PCT was the hardest thing I’d ever done. […] Watching my mother die and having to live without her, that was the hardest thing I’d ever done. […] But hiking the PCT was hard in a different way. In a way that made the other hardest things the tiniest bit less hard. It was strange but true. And perhaps I’d known it in some way from the very beginning.

Related Characters: Cheryl Strayed (speaker), Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi
Page Number: 95
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“Come back,” I called lightly, and then suddenly shouted, “MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM!” I didn’t know the word was going to come out of my mouth until it did.

And then, just as suddenly, I went silent, spent.

Related Characters: Cheryl Strayed (speaker), Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi
Page Number: 144
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

There were so many […] amazing things in this world.

They opened up inside of me like a river. Like I didn’t know I could take a breath and then I breathed. I laughed with the joy of it, and the next moment I was crying my first tears on the PCT. I cried and I cried and I cried. I wasn’t crying because I was happy. I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I wasn’t crying because of my mother or my father or Paul. I was crying because I was full.

Related Characters: Cheryl Strayed (speaker), Cheryl’s Mother/Bobbi , Paul
Page Number: 234
Explanation and Analysis: