The Nature of Trauma in American Novels

Four: Wilderness, Loss, and Cultural Contexts in Edward Abbey’s Black Sun

69 Chapter four Wilderness, Loss, and Cultural Contexts in Edward Abbey’s Black Sun Edward Abbey’s novel Black Sun (1971) takes place in the American Southwest high desert region where the protagonist experiences and remembers trauma, demonstrating that the reframing of subjectivity occurs through an exploration of the self in relation to the process of remembering and inhabitation of the wilderness. Black Sun is one of the most structurally unusual novels of Abbey’s career, and perhaps for this reason it has been overlooked by critics, who tend to focus on more popular texts such as the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang or the environmental treatise Desert Solitaire. The achronological plot with its allusions and parodies of Renaissance poetry, especially sonnets by Thomas Wyatt, shows a reliance upon cultural models of love and loss found within a Renaissance humanistic discourse in order to explore how trauma alters subjectivity. Similar to the novels discussed earlier, Black Sun examines the transformation of consciousness caused by a traumatic experience. This novel suggests that trauma reorganizes previous formulations of the self by contextualizing this perceptual reorientation in terms of English literary traditions as well as an American southwestern landscape. In the novel, the protagonist Will Gatlin is a forest fire ranger near the Grand Canyon during the 1960s whose girlfriend, Sandy, disappears one day never to return. The protagonist suspects that she died on a solo hike into the canyon, but there is never a definitive answer to her disappearance even six years later when the novel begins. The narrator explains the protagonist’s despair: “He felt the pang of loss, the bewil- 70 chApter four dering pain of something precious, beautiful, irreplaceable swept away forever” (144). The traumatic loss is unresolved, and memories that in the past were pleasant now return to create a painful existence. Will, referred to mostly in the narrative as Gatlin, ruminates after Sandy’s disappearance as he paces his “catwalk” or balcony around the tower: “What is this thing that haunts my soul night after night and day after day, week after month after year? . . . I see her dancing again in the candlelight . . . her black skirt twirling around her. Hair flying, eyes shining, arm outstretched” (98). Remembering Sandy is a burden because he is unable to accept her death, labeling his seemingly illogical feelings as absurd because the feeling of loss is consuming. The achronological plot is composed of the protagonist’s memories of first meeting Sandy, their romance, her disappearance, his descent into the canyon in search of her where he comes close to death, his departure from the fire lookout tower, and his return back to an urban center. The first and last chapters end with Gatlin looking out over the forest in silence: “Each time he looks out upon this world, it seems to him more alien and dreamlike than before. And, all of it, utterly empty” (15). The external world is unfamiliar and foreboding for the protagonist in his current state of suffering where he is confronted with a sense of empty meaning. The last chapter ends with Gatlin staring “out the window , into the forest,” unresponsive to questions from his friend, Ballantine (157). Remembering his relationship with Sandy is juxtaposed to contemporary solitary musings in his wilderness fire lookout tower and interactions with Ballantine. The unexpected loss of his beloved forces the protagonist into a state of silence that involves a profound listening to the external world. The narrative disruption of time and the emphasis on the character’s silence are formal devices to represent the process of remembering and its influence on consciousness. The interruptive experience of time represents the action of remembering as a creation of knowledge that produces a specific value about the experience and the self in each moment of remembrance. The value attributed to the experience is drawn from the contextual factors of internally composed literary referents and externally constituted landscape markers. The image of the protagonist, unable to speak but who stares silently at the forest due to traumatic loss, is maintained throughout the 71 wilderness, loss, and cultural contexts novel. This suggests a chosen silence by the individual that is paired with a transcendent listening to the nonhuman natural environment. One chapter closes with Ballantine unsuccessfully communicating with Gatlin as both men walk down a wilderness trail from the fire tower. Ballantine asks his friend what he wants to do with his life...