The Kindness of Strangers Theme Analysis

As Cheryl embarks on the Pacific Crest Trail, she believes her journey will be a contemplative one of almost monastic solitude. Instead, what she finds is a thriving, exuberant community of hikers who spur one another on, lift each other up, and offer help, advice, money, and companionship in the toughest moments on the trail. With the exception of a few rare cranks and bad eggs, everyone Cheryl meets along her journey is warm, empathetic, and excited to extend a helping hand to a fellow person in need. Strayed ultimately suggests that people are innately and overwhelmingly good, and that one can find faith in the human spirit through the kindness of strangers.

When Cheryl begins planning for her journey along the PCT, she conceives of it as an entirely solo endeavor—something she will have to do entirely on her own as a kind of cleansing ritual to atone for her past sins and mistakes. She quickly learns, however, that the lesson of her journey will not be to confine herself to penitent solitude, but rather to draw strength from those she meets along the way. Early on in Cheryl’s journey, she nearly runs out of food when her stove, filled with the wrong kind of lighter fluid, refuses to start. Cheryl decides to get off the trail and head back towards civilization, hoping to be able to catch a ride into town and fix her stove. A miner named Frank and his wife take Cheryl in for the night and drive her to a camping supply store in the morning. Their kindness saves her life and enables her to start out on the PCT in earnest with everything she needs.

As Cheryl continues along the PCT, the people she meets help her in myriad ways, both practical and emotional. She receives advice on winnowing the supplies she’s carrying inside of her backpack from a man named Albert. She makes the difficult decision to bypass the Sierras due to heavy snowfall—and has a friend, Greg, who journeys by bus along the complicated Greyhound route north alongside her. She receives small gifts from her new friends, like when Doug gives her a raven feather, and receives emotional support from hikers like Brent. Stacy offers to spot Cheryl money when she realizes she’s packed one of her care packages wrong and forgotten to include cash for herself, while Rex gives Cheryl practical advice about REI’s return policy, helping her secure new boots to replace her too-small ones. Even off the trail, Cheryl meets strangers who demonstrate profound kindness, such as the hippie-ish Susanna, a woman who offers to massage Cheryl’s battered feet during a stopover in Ashland, and Lou, a tough-as-nails biker chick who tells Cheryl about the death of her son and helps Cheryl feel less alone in her grief over her mother.

All of these interactions with strangers—no matter how small or significant, profound or fleeting—teach Cheryl that there is goodness in the people of the world, and that she need only trust in order to find it. Cheryl’s closed-off, cynical demeanor in the early pages of the book melts as she encounters more and more simple acts of pure goodness along the trail. Soon, Cheryl is even dubbed “The Queen of the PCT” by her fellow hikers, a trail nickname which speaks to her ineffable ability to inspire goodwill, joy, and empathy in everyone she meets. Cheryl quickly realizes that her journey along the PCT doesn’t have to be a lonely one—in opening herself up to strangers, they open themselves to her in return, and at each and every stop along the trail, Cheryl finds at least one person who reaffirms her newfound, fledgling faith in the good of humanity.

At the end of Cheryl’s journey, she decides to hike the final few miles to Cascade Locks alone in order to reach the Bridge of the Gods by herself. She wants to be able to have the moment of her trek’s completion to herself. Standing in the middle of the bridge, however, looking down at the river, Cheryl doesn’t feel alone. She feels the weight of the history of the spot she’s standing in, and, after looking into the river for a moment, she begins thinking about something she heard “on the trail grapevine” about a great ice cream place in town. Cheryl’s moment of triumph isn’t one of solitude—it’s one in which all the people who have helped her reach it are, in a way, present alongside her. Cheryl feels and appreciates the moment as her own—but understands intimately that the kindness of strangers is what has gotten her to Cascade Locks.