Desert Solitaire - Anthropomorphism And Personifi

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Anthropomorphism and Personification In Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey is in a pursuit of seeing nature as it is, without “humanly ascribed qualities” (7). Although Abbey does not want to use anthropomorphism or personification, he finds that it is impossible to avoid because he sees life in the desert and writes “all living things on earth are kindred” (25). And if we are all kindred, then we share many of the same attributes. At first, the author defends his position by stating that it is possible for wild animals to have feelings even though we humans do not believe they (animals) are capable (25). But in the first chapter, he writes that he “descend[s] to such anthropomorphism” and refers to such descriptions as absurd and ludicrous (24). The author makes no further excuses or explanations for using anthropomorphism. Mammalian qualities are given to the yellow flowers “shivering in the wind” (37). There’s the “puzzled and suspicious” doe with her fawn who are exalted to a god-like status when they are also described as “madonna and child” (39), which is an obvious reference to the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. The author makes a small, involuntary movement as he exhales. This unintentionally alarms the deer and they quickly “vanished into the wind” (39), giving the deer a supernatural-like quality. Abbey desires to speak to the deer but they are “not talking” (39). Their hurried disappearance references the supernatural. He then questions why he should even “lead them to believe that anything manlike can be trusted” (39) in the first place. Once more Abbey seems to be reaching beyond deification into the supernatural when he describes the colorful, “luminous aura” (95) of the bush as it is writhing, dancing, and growing and the aura increases in brightness. Personification and surrealism are apparent through the eyes of Billy-Joe as is hallucinating after
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