Edward Abbey: Musings to Meanings

Preface

I selected an essay from Desert Solitaire that we have not discussed yet in class. Nor have I discussed this essay with anyone else at all. My primary reason for doing this was to give me an opportunity to think entirely for myself in analyzing and dissecting a seemingly unstructured, irrelevant essay. It could be argued that had I consulted others for a different point of view, my arguments and interpretations would be more sound. This may be true, but I would not have had the benefit of thinking through it myself. I would be reluctant to admit that there are flaws in my reasoning, but I could admit it if necessary. As this is not intended to be my personal biased opinion of the subject, I shall avoid a disclaimer like Abbey's: I admit that this paper does have certain faults, and that serious professors may dislike it intensely. The only disclaimer I can attach to this paper is that I was slightly influenced by Abbey in writing this, as anyone is by anything he reads. And, in an appropriate conclusion to the introduction, I can only say that you're holding a paper in your hands. Don't drop it in a trashcan -- read it. What do you have to lose?

Edward Abbey: Musings to Meanings

Edward Abbey maintains throughout his book Desert Solitaire he is describing mainly the surfaces of things, as he is "pleased enough with the surfaces… What else do we need?" This, after reading even a small portion of the novel, is shown to be a mere ruse. Consider the essay "Cowboys and Indians Part II": his writing, if taken on the surface, is just a random thought progression, shifting abruptly from a discussion of owls and rabbits to a social observance on Indians. But he has a definite point. He's getting at something. In certain points the sarcasm (which is by its nature not on the surface) is thick: "Shackled by such primitive attitudes [hospitality and dislike of selfishness], is it any wonder that the Navajos have not yet been able to get in step with the rest of us?" This is not something to be taken at face value.

What is his point? If read carefully enough, it is possible to find an entire social commentary about Indians, even about poverty in general, hidden within a seemingly unstructured flow of thoughts. If, as Abbey would like us to believe, he was merely writing the essay in his journal as he thought it, he certainly had his thoughts well organized and thought out before he picked up his pen.

The first five pages appear disjointed from the rest of the essay. Abbey first notices that he is alone. "Solitaire becomes solitary" he mentions. "Alone-ness became loneliness". At that time, he found "the inside of the skull as confining and unbearable as the interior of a housetrailer on a hot day." The trailer he could escape by going outdoors, then Abbey shows us that escaping the "solitary confinement of the mind" was accomplished by that same action. The outdoors "invited [him] to contemplate a far larger world." He rejects solipsism, the idea that the self is the only existing thing, as mere philosophy; he sees the relationships between individuals and items everywhere. This is how he escaped the solitude of his mind; he thought. This gives us a context for the later discussion of Indian sociology, as does the link provided by the petroglyphs and pictographs. But before the Indians, he inserts a seemingly random discussion of rabbits and owls, which, as everyone knows, have nothing to do with Indians (on the surface).

What does it mean, this talk of rabbits and owls, of rabbits actually loving owls, of rabbits being grateful that they are being eaten? It seems absurd. (Incidentally, the verb "seem" is popping up quite a bit.) One may be inclined to believe that the solitude and sun has infected his mind with some psychological disorder. But this would be a hasty generalization based on initial appearances, and these cannot be trusted anywhere in Abbey's book.

Certainly, it could just be a lonely mind meandering through its own tractless expanse of thought. But it is more likely that there was a reason for including it. It does serve to remind us of a previous occurrence with a rabbit, the time the author killed a rabbit with a rock, thus feeling a part of the predator-prey world that nature presents. This time, however, the predator is not Abbey, but rather the owl, a natural enemy. Abbey is laying the groundwork again; certain laws govern nature and its "well-organized system of operations and procedures", laws that humans have long obscured with noise and technology. A particularly relevant sentence: "All the time, everywhere, something or someone is dying to please." This is nature, of which humans, though they may not realize it, are still a part.

This is our foundation going into the Indian discussion -- the premise that nature is right and that man has interfered with nature's laws. What is it that distinguishes "man" from "nature"? Man, it has been noted, is the only animal capable of self-sacrifice. Even dogs, commonly thought to be emotionally advanced and capable of selfless acts of love, will selfishly guard their food, preventing even a starving dog from eating any of it. Self-sacrifice simply is a foreign concept to nature. Still, Abbey is suggesting that nature is the simplistic way that things should be. This would explain his naturalistic explanations of the owl and the rabbit, and of nature in general. If Abbey meant to be sarcastic in this explanation of nature, he concealed his sarcasm so well that there is still no trace of it after the tenth reading.

One thing Abbey never approaches in this essay is what he believes about the origins of the universe. One can only infer from his naturalistic discussions on rabbits that he is assuming evolution. Assuming that evolution is truth and fact, Abbey's comments would seem to propose a backward evolution, or de-evolution. Man is considered the highest on the evolutionary ladder as far as intellectual development. We have several spoken and written languages, among other developments. As noted earlier, self-sacrifice is a character trait unique to mankind, and since man is currently on the highest rung of the evolutionary ladder, this would mean that this trait evolved. But Abbey is a proponent of nature's law, and he does not observe self-sacrifice in nature. On the contrary, he finds the opposite. His essays come close to idolizing nature, but denigrate mankind and its advances, particularly technology. This would mean that evolution has made a mistake. Life would be much simpler had man not evolved the capability for self-sacrifice.

Perhaps Abbey is not lamenting man's development of kindness, but the miserliness with which he dispenses it. This may, in fact, be one of the main points of the entire Indian commentary. The white man remains largely disinterested in the Indians' plight, remaining innocently ignorant and perhaps choosing to remain so.

Still another possibility is that Abbey set the owls and rabbits up as an analogy; the rabbits representing the Indians, the owls representing the white man. It could be reading too much into Abbey's words, or it may be Abbey's intentional thought. Abbey contradicts himself in the first paragraph of the owl story. "From the vicinity of Balanced Rock" the owl cries. But then he digresses from an observance of nature to a story complete with emotional involvement. Later in the same paragraph, he says the owl is always calling from the same place, but with a voice that "seems to come from not one spot alone, but -- anywhere." It may seem sketchy, but white men do seem to be everywhere around the Indians, leaving them safe only in their "thickets," or reservations. Later on, when discussing the Indians, he points out several times how rapidly the Indians are multiplying. This so happens to be a stereotypical characteristic of rabbits. He even made a possible reference to the age-old example of geometric

sequences: "tribal population continues to grow in geometric progression: 2 . . . 4 . . . 8 . . . 16 . . . 32 . . . 64, etc." He may or may not have known this, but this is a standard example used to explain nonlinear sequences in math curriculum: a pair of rabbits reproducing, and their offspring reproducing, and their offspring reproducing, and so on.

Another interpretation of this analogy, and the better of the two, would be that while the rabbits are Indians, the owls are cowboys. The cowboys did historically chase the Indians out of their home territory, often utilizing fear. One need only read an account of U. S. history to discover this. And Abbey made this interpretation more probable by extending the analogy: owls and rabbits are natural enemies, but he took pains to somehow arrive at the conclusion that they are not enemies: "For the one a consummation, for the other fulfillment. How can we speak of enemies in such a…system…? " This was at the end of his owl and rabbit story. Likewise, cowboys and Indians are traditional enemies. Then, following the segments on Indians and cowboys and how they are both gone, the link appears: "Legendary enemies, their ghosts ride away together -- buddies at last -- into the mythic sunset of the West."

If this is actually his intent, then one can only speculate whether he intended the analogy to show that the relationships between the owls and rabbits represents life as it is, or life as it should be. But this is not the point. The point is that Abbey's essays are not to be taken as they seem. The point is that Abbey's essays have a point.