Desert Solitaire

1. The author experience tension between his need to return to civilization and his love for the solitude of being in the wilderness. Describe the characteristics of this tension and how he reconciles it.

Edward Abbey is, for the most part, alone, throughout the book. Every once and a while he will go off on a story that confuses the reader about how the story is told. He fills the book with these reminiscent stories and tales that vary from quicksand scenarios (and what to do in them) to burn victims. These memories could be a characteristic of loneliness, reconciled by retelling memories and stories of his past.

Early in the book he mentions how he often wishes for society to accompany him in his life of solitude. He quickly corrects himself, mentioning how, by society, he means the companionship of a woman. This society is different from that originally mentioned in the book, but eventually he wishes for that companionship also. He compares his wish to return to society to the Zia Indians, who sung about how they would weep when remembering their home. From this, I take that the Industrial Society that we all know well today is Edward Abbey's original home, which he feels agony over.

Throughout the book he communicates with the wildlife, whether it be "braining little bastards" (killing rabbits) or speaking to plants and reptiles. This is how he keeps himself from going insane in the solitude of the desert. This, and the constant reminding that society is bad and trying to ruin this "perfect" little solitude that he lives in. It seemed almost forced, I can say as a reader, how he could only think bad things about the world's current industrial state. This tension contrasts with his hidden want for life back in society, and is only reconciled by the ineludable fact that his contract as a park ranger had run out and he had to return to his home in this industrial world.

The fact that he must return upsets him, and he contemplates turning the car around when heading to a train station for a train destined to home. He talks of how his life would be greater in the great outdoors, in the loneliness, away from everybody he's ever known and in a world that he doesn't quite know himself. He speaks of his return to this wildlife in the future, how grand it will be, that is: if he ever chooses to return to this desolate land. IF.