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Unit 10: The Right to Arms by Edward Abbey

a master’s degree in philosophy in 1956. During his time in college, Abbey supported himself Notes
by working at a variety of odd jobs, including being a newspaper reporter and bartending in
Taos, New Mexico. During this time he had few male friends but had intimate relationships
with a number of women. Shortly before getting his bachelors degree, Abbey married his first
wife, Jean Schmechal (another UNM student). While an undergraduate, Abbey was the editor
of a student newspaper in which he published an article titled “Some Implications of Anarchy”.
A cover quotation of the article, “ironically attributed to Louisa May Alcott” stated “Man will
never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” University
officials seized all of the copies of the issue, and removed Abbey from the editorship of the
paper. Abbey had an FBI file opened on him in 1947, after he posted a letter while in college
urging people to rid themselves of their draft cards.
After graduating, Schmechal and Abbey travelled together to Edinburgh, Scotland, where
Abbey spent a year at Edinburgh University as a Fulbright scholar. During this time, Abbey
and Schmechal separated and ended their marriage. In 1951 Abbey began having an affair
with Rita Deanin, who in 1952 would become his second wife after he and Schmechal divorced.
Deanin and Abbey had two children, Joshua N. Abbey and Aaron Paul Abbey.
Abbey’s master’s thesis explored anarchism and the morality of violence, asking the two
questions: “To what extent is the current association between anarchism and violence warranted?”
and “In so far as the association is a valid one, what arguments have the anarchists presented,
explicitly or implicitly, to justify the use of violence?”. After receiving his masters degree,
Abbey spent 1957 at Stanford University on a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship.
Abbey’s voluminous writings, mostly about or set in the Western deserts, ranged from intensely
detailed descriptions of the natural world to angry or satirical commentaries on effects of
modern civilization on American wildlands. One of Abbey’s most widely quoted aphorisms,
first appearing in the essay collection Desert Solitaire , held that “Growth for the sake of
growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Abbey held anarchist convictions, and he viewed
government and industry as collaborators in the destruction of the natural environment. Desert
Solitaire and Abbey’s comic novel The Monkey Wrench Gang achieved mass success, winning
Abbey a strong following among members of the counterculture of the 1970s and beyond. The
overarching emphasis of Abbey’s writing, however, was personal and philosophical; like the
19th-century New England essayist Henry David Thoreau, to whom he has sometimes been
compared, Abbey viewed the natural world in almost mystical terms.

Family Suffered Hard Times

The oldest of five children, Abbey sometimes suggested that he had been born in a farmhouse
in a tiny community with the idyllic name of Home, Pennsylvania. In fact his birth occurred
on January 29, 1927, in a hospital in Indiana, Pennsylvania, a considerably larger town nearby.
His tendency toward unconventional attitudes was partly shaped by his father, Paul Revere
Abbey, a committed socialist who subscribed to Soviet Life magazine for many years. A rootless,
searching quality in Edward Abbey’s life may also have had its beginnings in his childhood:
the family was hard hit by the economic depression of the early 1930s, moving from place to
place as Paul Abbey searched for work as a real estate agent and camping out during several
stretches when money was at its tightest.
Abbey’s family made the best of their situation; his mother, Mildred Postlewaite Abbey, instilled
in him an appreciation of nature. In 1941 the family moved to a farm, located near Home, that
Abbey dubbed the Old Lonesome Briar Patch. His creative energy began to show itself early
on when he began to write and draw little comic books for which he would demand series
subscriptions from siblings and friends. In high school he did well in English classes and was
thought of as highly intelligent but as something of an intimidating loner.

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