Thesis (tentative): Thoreau uses personal anecdotes, manipulation of tone and mood, and personification to highlight the importance of nature and decry the evils of corporate, selfish America.
Introduction:
“We need the tonic of wildness…we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” – Henry David Thoreau in Walden
“Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear-the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break….I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.”
These words, written by the staunch environmentalist Edward Abbey speak to his conviction that the natural world must be protected at any cost, and his condemnation of the economic avarice of modern society.
Body Paragraph 1: Personal anecdotes (Imagery + allusion)
Claim: Edward Abbey uses Personal anecdotes made stronger by imagery and allusion to convey his personal attachment to the natural world around him and to provide evidence and ethos for his condemnation of society.
Evidence:
“My God! I am thinking, what incredible shit we put up with most of our lives—the domestic routine (same old wife every night), the stupid and useless degrading jobs, the insufferable arrogance of elected officials, the crafty cheating and the slimy advertising of the business men, the tedious wars in which we kill our buddies instead of our real enemies back in the capital, the foul diseased and hideous cities and towns we live in, the constant petty tyranny of automatic washers and automobiles and TV machines and telephone!” (155).
Analysis: Edward Abbey in his anecdote explains his personal views on the modern American world, and expresses his conflicting emotions as he enjoys a respite from the mundane existence he so despises. Through the massive difference in expression between his description of the natural world and the human corporate one, he highlights his love of the former and distaste of the latter. Abbey uses pathos in his condemnation of the many flaws of modern society describing the victims of war as “buddies” and the 20th century city as “hideous.” He extends this harrowing description to items as mundane as the household washing machine, painting a truly dystopian picture for the reader.
Claim:
Evidence:
“The night flows back, the mighty stillness embraces and includes me; I can see the stars again and the world of starlight. I am twenty miles or more from the nearest fellow human, but instead of loneliness I feel loveliness. Loveliness and a quiet exultation.” (14).
Analysis: Edward Abbey in his anecdote tells about his tranquillity in the desert. He expresses his positive feelings about being totally alone in the desert during the night. He doesn’t feel lonely, he feels loveliness all due to the beauty of the nature and how it comforts him. He sees starts which is rare to see in towns or cities because of all the lights and all the smoke from the streets which blocks the beautiful view.
Claim:
Evidence:
“I was accused of being against civilization, against science, against humanity… I discovered that I was not opposed to mankind but only to man-centeredness, anthropocentricity, the opinion that the world exists solely for the sake of man; not to science, which means simply knowledge, but to science misapplied, to the worship of technique and technology, and to that perversion of science properly called scientism; and not to civilization but to culture.”(244)
Analysis: In this passage, Edward Abbey defends himself against accusations of being “against civilization, against science, against humanity.” He provides counterexamples of society’s poor understanding of what it takes to be part of the greater world. He uses the anecdote to explain his personal opinion that existence is not about doing only what is “good” for humanity. Edward Abbey uses this personal narrative to condemn man-centeredness and warn against the destruction of the natural world.
Claim:
Evidence:
“Alone in the silence, I understand for a moment the dread which many feel in the presence of primeval desert, the unconscious fear which compels them to tame, alter or destroy what they cannot understand, to reduce the wild and prehuman to human dimensions. Anything rather than confront directly the ante-human, that other world which frightens not through danger or hostility but in something far worse–its implacable difference.” (191)
Analysis:
Edward Abbey points out that fear of the majesty of the desert is a completely natural one, as the desert world is the antithesis of the industrialized human one. He explains that humanity’s response to this ancient fear is the destruction of the natural world.. Humans are destroying them just to make it more industrialized and available for humans. Abbey uses the phrase other world to characterize the power of the world of nature and just how different it is from the human world.
Allusion p 12:
“The odor of burning juniper is the sweetest fragrance on the face of the earth, in my honest judgment; I doubt if all the smoking censers of Dante’s paradise could equal it” (12)
Anecdote p 13
Body Paragraph 2: manipulation of tone and mood (Imagery)
Throughout the book, Edward Abbey, with his manipulation of tone and mood aided by the use of imagery, vividly shows the reader the magnificence and gorgeousness of the nature, thus condemning those whose character has been warped by society and are unable to appreciate the natural beauty of desert. He describes these depraved interlopers, and the government’s acquiescence to them saying: “this being the case, why is the Park Service generally so anxious to accommodate that other crowd, the indolent millions born on wheels and suckled on gasoline, who expect and demand paved highways to lead them in comfort, ease and safety into every nook and corner of the national parks?” (49). By referring to his successive generation as “the indolent millions born on wheels and suckled on gasoline” Abbey criticizes people’s increasing dependence on automobiles and the character-decaying convenience of modern society. He makes it clear to the reader how much he abhors the idea of a highway in the park, as he believes that those who don’t even want to step out of their cars do not deserves to experience the true beauty of nature.
Abbey’s word choice is impeccable, with phrases such as “indolent millions” and “suckled on gasoline” creating a truly perturbing atmosphere. Through this manipulation of mood, Abbey enables the reader to experience the distaste and fear he feels about the future of the National Parks. The passage mirrors the sentiment of a statement made by Henry David Thoreau 123 years earlier, who reflected on his contemporary mechanical enemy, the railroad, stating: “We do not ride on the railroad, it rides upon us” (Walden 60). Although more than a century apart, both men recognized the perils of mechanization, and the false ease it bears.
Desert Solitaire is not solely a reflection on the harrowing future of the National Park, Abbey expends significant energy and narrative space to convince the reader of the value and beauty of the place he feels privileged to call home. In one such moment, Abbey, with his descriptive language, vividly describes the morning sunrise, stating: “At first I think it is still night but looking east I see a premonition of day in the greenish streaks of light spreading out along the rim” (208). His use of imagery, gives life to the scene, highlighting the natural beauty of the canyon, transporting his audience with him into the desolate and uninhabited desert. His tone is one of deference and worship, and the power of his language is such that the image of the desert sunrise becomes firmly entrenched in his reader’s mind. Abbey need not explicitly analyze such a moment, the power of the emotions he invokes in his reader is strong enough to convince of the worthiness of such a place, and the verity of his experience.
Body Paragraph 3: symbolism + Personification
(He uses simile and metaphor to compliment symbolism)
Topic Sentence: Through his use of symbolism Edward Abbey clearly defines the contrast between the purity and majesty of nature and the mechanical sickliness of the modern world. His use of this literary device is clear as early in the book as the title of the second chapter
Evidence + Analysis:
“THE SERPENTS OF PARADISE” is the name of the second chapter in the novel. The title invokes biblical symbolism, setting Arches National Park as Eden and the snake that is Abbey’s companion as the serpent. However, Abbey subverts the story of Genesis, with several of the serpents of Paradise diverting from their sinister biblical roles just as Abbey himself diverts from the norms and traditions of society. In the bible, the serpent of Eden is Asmodeus, a form of the devil, but in Desert Solitaire, the serpents are not evil or good: they are simply aspects of nature. One species of serpent in the novel, the gopher snake, shares kinship with Abbey, protecting him from rodent interlopers, while another species, the rattlesnake, places him in mortal peril. In Abbey’s eyes, neither organism is evil, it is simply the circumstances that define their character. True to form, he extends the same sentiment to humanity, just as it is the snakes’ characters and habitat that defines them, Abbey believes that humans can craft their own character by where they choose to live their lives: in the purity of nature, or in the constriction of society.
Evidence:
“Standing by the inert and helpless engine, I hear its last vibrations die like ripples on a pool somewhere far out on the tranquil sea of desert, somewhere beyond Delicate Arch, beyond the Yellow Cat badlands, beyond the shadow line”(14).
In this line where he uses the dying ripples of a pool to describe the final actions of his dying generator. He symbolically gives the generator an attribute that only a person can have. When he uses helpless he applies a double meaning, the generator and the desert. As much as the generator is helpless from dying so is the desert without proper conservation.
Evidence:
“Lavender clouds sail like a fleet of ships across the pale green dawn; each cloud, planed flat on the wind, has a base of fiery gold”(4).
In this simile Abbey adress the beauty of the nature that the national parks provide. In latter chapters of the novel he addresses his true hatred of current society in America’s lacking abilities to keep nature pure and preserved. Not preserved for American society, pure and preserved for nature itself.
Evidence:
“A veil of dust floats above the sneaky snaky old road from here to the highway, drifting gently downwind to settle upon the blades of the yucca, the mustard yellow rabbitbush, the petals of the asters and the autumn flowers, the umbrella shaped clumps of blooming wild buckwheat” (pg 232).
As Abbey describes the floating dust he also gives the nature life and shape describing the beauty of nature and the attributes that the desert can provide. His love of nature becomes apparent through his mention of each plant he sees daily.
Conclusion:
Evidence:
“Even after years of intimate contact and search this quality of strangeness in the desert remains undiminished. Transparent and intangible as sunlight, yet always and everywhere present, it lures a man on and on, from the red-walled canyons to the smoke-blue ranges beyond, in a futile but fascinating quest for the great, unimaginable treasure which the desert seems to promise.” (242)
Analysis: Again, Abbey, with his extensive use of imagery, pictures the scene of sunshine evenly sprinkles on the rims, delineating the harmonious relationship between human and nature, thus strengthening his claim that the desert in invulnerable to human development and exploitation towards national park service.