41 pages • 1 hour read
Edward AbbeyDesert Solitaire
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1968A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 15-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary: “Tukuhnikivats, the Island in the Desert”
This chapter is devoted to Abbey’s hike up Tukuhnikivats Mountain in late August, when it becomes “irresistible” not to do so.
This is a leisurely if challenging trek, in contrast to the life-threatening journeys alluded to in recent chapters. Abbey is never in any real danger, though of course he experiences hunger and thirst and even some fatigue, as he normally does on all his adventures.
In loving detail, Abbey describes the trees, the birds, the cooling air as he ascends the mountain and reaches icy snowmelt pools. At the top of the mountain, he comes to a snowfield, and selects a large flat rock to use as a sled for sliding most of the way back down. At a certain point, he tumbles off and ahead of his rock, which poses some danger, as the rock could hit him, but he regains his purchase and never seems to be truly afraid. He notes with some irony that it took him half the day to climb the mountain but less than half an hour to descend it.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Episodes and Visions”
It’s Labor Day and the final tourists of the season drive into Arches National Monument. Abbey contemplates them with some wry sympathy, feeling helpless to convey the exhilarating, liberating experience that might be theirs if they would only stray from the artificial comforts of their vehicles and campsites. He provides a sample of a dialogue with a tourist to illustrate the daunting distance between the tourist’s frame of mind and his own. He describes his routine of lecturing the tourists on the geology of the Arches, orienting the tourists to the park facilities, and occasionally keeping company with some of them at night.
Of the tourist populations that typically visit the Arches, Abbey particularly appreciates the Mormons. He asserts that their religion is no more “whimsical on points of doctrine” (294) than the more mainstream American denominations of Christianity, or of Judaism. What he admires about the Mormons is their pioneering history, their tradition of fortitude in the face of unforgiving nature, their self-reliance, and their communitarian ethic, which he discusses in detail. He seems saddened by the fact that “the old Mormon communities are now disappearing” (296), though many remnants of them remain, culturally and architecturally.
Much of this chapter is given over to contemplating the unique charms of the desert, in contrast to (for example) the ocean and mountains. Abbey ponders “the peculiar quality or character of the desert that distinguishes it, in spiritual appeal, from other forms of landscape” (300). In the end, he determines that it is a mystery, that “there is something about the desert that the human sensibility cannot assimilate” (302). He states, “I am convinced now that the desert has no heart, that it presents a riddle which has no answer” (304).
Abbey encounters a tourist one evening who challenges Abbey’s worldview, deeming it anti-human. The two men debate long into the night and Abbey admits to learning some new (for him) fine distinctions: “With his help I discovered that I was not opposed to mankind but only to man-centeredness […] not to science […]but to science misapplied” (305). Most importantly, Abbey comes to the realization that he is not opposed to civilization, though he is opposed to culture:“Civilization is the vital force in human history; culture is that inert mass of institutions and organizations which accumulate around and tend to drag down the advance of life […] civilization flows; culture thickens and coagulates” (308). Apparently humbled and stimulated by this far-reaching conversation, Abbey goes looking again for this particular visitor the following morning, but he is already gone. Abbey sees that the visitor has signed his name in the camp registration book as “J. Prometheus Birdsong” (309).
Chapters 15-16 Analysis
It’s noteworthy that in the chapter following Abbey’s solo ascent and precipitous descent from the mountain, he lands (so to speak) in a very human situation, wherein he interacts both with the tourists he vaguely scorns and with one in particular who has a thing or two to tell him, which actually changes Abbey’s mind about certain important concepts that preoccupy his inner life. In these two chapters, we are brought from one of Abbey’s most solitary experiences into the most social one he has yet described in the book.
This is actually the first instance, at a very late stage in the book, in which we see some significant character development in Abbey, some fundamental change. Previous to his conversation with the unnamed visitor, Abbey has never questioned his own view of things, or his own conceptual framework. We have never seen him humble in his interactions with other people, or be curious about anything other than the workings of nature. We have never seen him soften to a point of view that is different from his own. Nor have we known him to actively seek out any particular person’s company, as he did in the morning after his conversation with this unique stranger, whom he actually compares–albeit ironically–to Jesus Christ: “He won’t be back. But don’t get discouraged, comrades–Christ failed too” (309).
Abbey’s appreciation of Mormon culture illustrates a certain open-mindedness and tolerance on his part, as Mormon politics are largely antithetical to his own, and he would never entertain their religious beliefs. Yet most of the qualities he appreciates in the Mormons–their toughness, fortitude, and industriousness–are not so different from the qualities he values in any of the characters he’s introduced us to thus far in the book. Abbey respects hard physical work, self-reliance, and unflinching, hands-on contact with nature.
