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 9-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Water”
Abbey notes that it seldom rains in the desert, the streambeds are usually dry, and that to go hiking or journeying in the desert can be perilous, as it’s easy to run out of water and die of thirst if one is not careful. There are only two streams in the Arches area, one of which contains salt water, the other of which is polluted by arsenic and other toxic chemicals. To drink from these streams, even in the most desperate of circumstances, is to hasten death, not delay it.
He offers sage advice regarding thirst and desert waterholes. Abbey states that those bodies of water that look the most pristine and clear are likely to be the most dangerous, because something in them has killed their marine life, probably chemicals that are also highly poisonous to humans. On the other hand, “If the water is scummed with algae, crawling with worms, grubs, larvae, spiders and liver flukes, be reassured, drink hearty, you’ll get nothing worse than dysentery” (146).
Abbey debunks the notion that one can save one’s life in the desert by cutting open a barrel cactus and imbibing the moisture to be found therein.
Abbey describes, in great visual detail, the majesty of a rare desert rainstorm.
Then he pivots to a discussion about the qualities of quicksand–it actually does not suck a person in, but rather holds a person stuck in place–and he recounts an incident wherein he saved the life of his friend Newcomb, who was stuck in quicksand.
He concludes the chapter with a discussion of the various creatures that visibly emerge after a desert rainstorm, drawn to the nourishment of the temporary pools. He mentions that the desert does have a few, rare perennial waterholes, where the various wild four-legged animals of the desert–predator and prey–come and drink at night, “each in his turn and in unvarying order under declaration of truce. They come to drink, not to kill or be killed” (158).
Finally, he offers a reverent nod to the “drilled well, its windmill and its storage tank,” (159) his first explicit expression of appreciation for human technology.
Chapter 10 Summary: “The Heat of Noon: Rock and Tree and Cloud”
Abbey makes a case that the wilderness may be necessary as a refuge from a future totalitarian government in the United States of America.
He also describes the pitiless noonday desert sun. He talks about all the animals that cannot be seen at this time of day: “The majority of living things retreat before the stunning glare and heat of midday. A snake or lizard exposed to the noon sun for more than ten minutes would die” (166). The only wild animals he sees at this hour are the “hawks, vultures and eagles” (167) soaring in the sky. He watches them and ponders what exactly they’re doing, as there is no visible prey below for them to swoop down and catch at this time.
Chapter 11 Summary: “The Moon-Eyed Horse”
Abbey is herding cattle with Mackie, a temporary fill-in for Viviano, who has disappeared again for some days. Abbey sees the hoof prints of a stray horse, or a wild horse. Mackie explains that these are the tracks of Moon-Eye, an old horse with an inflamed eye condition who’d been overworked by Roy Scobie and, though he’d seemed tame, had suddenly escaped alone into the canyon one day.
Intrigued by the story of the “moon-eyed” old horse, Abbey is inspired to go searching for him. Abbey encounters Moon Eye, enormous and fierce and still as a spirit. Abbey tries to “reason” with the horse at some length, imploring him to accompany Abbey back “home” to Scobie’s ranch, where the horse can be regularly fed and live in relative comfort compared to the canyon. Abbey hopes to approach Moon-Eye slowly and rope him in. Moon Eye then charges Abbey and, in scrambling out of the way, Abbey loses his canteen temporarily. When he spots his canteen, he sees it is next to where the unpredictable, semi-wild, weird-eyed, aloof and distrusting horse now stands.
For a period of hours, Abbey gingerly attempts to cajole Moon Eye to return to the ranch with him, telling him that he’ll otherwise be savaged by a coyote and suffer a horrible desert death. Abbey even describes the skeleton that the horse’s corpse will leave behind, as if the horse were a small child that can be terrified, by Abbey’s words, into obedience.
Abbey is getting dangerously thirsty as the time goes by. As the sun goes down, he makes one futile attempt at roping the horse. Then he finally retrieves his canteen, turns his back on the horse, and heads home to his trailer.
Chapters 9-11 Analysis
There is a palpable sense of the miraculous in this group of chapters, from the mysterious, spectral, moon-eyed horse, to the extraordinary midday desert sun, to the rare and refreshing phenomenon of a desert rainstorm and its effects. The rescue of Newcomb is miraculous as well; Abbey could not reach over the quicksand far enough to take hold of Newcomb’s outstretched arms, until Newcomb was willing to literally fall forward, which provided just the necessary distance for Abbey to grasp him by the wrists and save him.
In these chapters, we feel Abbey’s awe and reverence for nature’s myriad wonders.
Water is a symbol of life, and the paucity of drinkable water in the desert underscores its preciousness. All three of these chapters touch on the dangers and terrors of running out of water, or not finding it when it is needed. The middle chapter of this group, “In the Heat of Noon,” touches on it only by implication, but nonetheless, the craving for water is an unspoken theme. And in the chapter about Moon Eye the horse, Abbey himself is separated from his own water for a potentially life-threatening period of time.
Moon Eye is a symbol of things gone awry. He is an animal with a birth defect, he was gelded (castrated) and overworked, and something has gone wrong, or weird; the very fact of his existence is abnormal, a kind of aberration. And yet Moon Eye is also a symbol of resilience, of wild nature surviving against the odds. Moon Eye is as mysterious and remote from human understanding, in his way, as any creature in the book. Yet, in trying to wheedle him back to the ranch, Abbey utterly anthropomorphizes Moon Eye into some kind of creature that might not only understand human speech, but who would be susceptible to human persuasion. Perhaps Moon Eye also symbolizes a kind of meeting place between the human and animal worlds, as he was once wild, then domesticated, and now wild again.
