46 pages • 1 hour read
Be Not Far from Me
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Themes
The Human Impact on Nature
Throughout the novel, McGinnis highlights the unavoidable impact humans have on nature. She uses Ashley’s observations, experiences, and flashbacks to develop this theme.
Ashley loves to be immersed in nature. She grew up spending time outdoors and learning survival skills and wilderness facts from Davey Beet. Because of her love for nature, she notices ways humans damage their environment. Observations of human presence in nature used to make Ashley angry. For instance, she hated seeing litter on trails and longed to find places to hike where no trace of other people could be found. Ashley would yell and curse at the oil company trucks that passed by her trailer on its rural road. She hated that industrialization could be felt out in the country where she lived. Through these and other examples, McGinnis points out the negative impact humans have on natural areas.
However, Ashley’s experience in the woods offers another perspective of human presence in nature. Ashley finds herself in a section of the Smoky Mountains where few examples of human presence can be found. Animals are unafraid of Ashley, which tells her that they have never seen a human before. Furthermore, Ashley hopes to find litter, an oil well, or any sign of a person’s presence, thinking she’s bound to come across something because of the way people have “obliterated…our natural habitat” (158). However, Ashley does not find any such sign for several days. Ashley’s experience shows that natural areas free of human presence still exist even though they are not necessarily plentiful. It also shows that urban expansion is not always bad. Ashley is overjoyed to find electrical lines and a service road in the woods because she knows she is finally nearing civilization. As much as Ashley loves nature, she loves her home, her dad, her friends, and the modern comforts that help her thrive rather than simply survive. Ashley’s experience shows that a balance between progress and preservation is needed. While time spent in nature can be enjoyable and healing, humans have a need to be in relationships with others. Furthermore, leaving nature untouched can be good for the environment, but advancements that make life better for humans may sometimes need to encroach on natural areas. Finally, people should enjoy nature, and while people should take care to leave no trace, some changes to the natural environment must be made to accommodate human presence, such as the addition of trails, trail markers, and parking lots at trailheads. McGinnis shows that the human impact on nature has two sides, and balance is key for both protecting and enjoying nature.
Nature’s Wildness
The novel opens with the sentence “The world is not tame” (3). Ashley repeats these words on a few occasions, including upon her rescue when speaking with paramedics. Ashley knows that nature is wild and unpredictable when she hikes with her friends toward the party campsite in the novel’s beginning, but, by the end, she understands nature’s wildness in a new way from firsthand experience.
Ashley has more wilderness survival skills and experience than most people. She knows how to build a shelter, start a fire, identify edible plants, and find hard-to-spot trails. However, even with her survival know-how, Ashley’s period of survival in the woods is filled with constant struggle. Nature does not make survival easy, and McGinnis highlights the unforgiving side of nature throughout Ashley’s experiences. First, when Ashley is separated from her friends, a boulder crushes her bare foot. This injury creates mounting problems for Ashley as the days pass. She is weakened and vulnerable to natural elements such as weather, animals, and terrain. Frequent storms make it difficult for her to stay dry, and clouds overhead prevent her from checking to verify her westerly course. Nature presents Ashley with one obstacle after another that she must overcome, and Ashley must renew her resolve to survive at several of her low points in the woods.
Another example of nature’s wildness is the need for one living thing to die so another can survive. Ashley identifies this trade-off at the novel’s opening and experiences it herself while in the woods. Ashley knows she needs to eat more than plants to have the energy to keep walking, so she lures a possum with the rotting portion of her foot. After initially striking the possum, Ashley realizes it has babies nearby watching. Even though Ashley doesn’t want to kill the possum in front of its young, she knows that she must do so to save her own life. In killing the possum, Ashley proves that humans are a part of nature and operate within its rules.
Most readers have likely never been in a survival situation like Ashley’s. Instead, most readers are probably used to noticing and experiencing the beautiful aspects of nature. While McGinnis does acknowledge nature’s beauty as a motif in the novel, she reminds readers that nature is more than flowers, sunny skies, and furry animals. Nature is untamable, unpredictable, and brutal. It is simultaneously powerful and splendid, and it deserves respect and caution from humans.
The Will to Survive
Both humans and animals possess the will to survive. This theme complements the theme of Nature’s Wildness, as McGinnis shows that living things will fight fiercely to stay alive.
As Ashley faces pain, fatigue, infection, cold, and starvation, she flashes back to seeing a dying raccoon followed by a buzzard in her yard. She remembers recognizing that the raccoon was close to death, and the buzzard was standing by waiting for its prey to die. Even though the raccoon seemed to know death was close, it stumbled onward, propelled by its survival instinct. Ashley possesses a similar will to survive. She knows that she is slowly dying as she wastes away from hunger and infection, yet she does not give up.
Ashley’s determination and toughness are most evident when she amputates a portion of her foot to keep infection from killing her. Even though the act of performing an amputation on oneself sounds mentally and physically unbearable, Ashley recognizes what needs to be done and has the mental fortitude to carry it out. She isn’t immune to despair, though; when Ashley finds Davey’s body curled up inside his tent, she is tempted to give up and simply let death take her. However, as she considers this option, she realizes that she does not want her friends and family to believe she let her pain over Duke’s infidelity break her spirit. She decides to keep moving, showing that her will to survive is stronger than her despair and exhaustion.
Finally, Ashley’s will to survive is made stronger through her process of self-discovery over the course of the novel. She realizes she needs to make some things right with her friends and her father. She also identifies ways she wants to become a better person. These realizations strengthen her resolve to make it back home or to die trying. The final scene of Part 2, in which Ashley forces herself to get up and then runs screaming toward the utility workers, illustrates her unbreakable will to survive. Even after her 15-day ordeal, Ashley still has the willpower to make herself known and ensure rescue.
McGinnis highlights the survival instinct that every living thing possesses. Ashley suggests that determination and willpower are necessary traits for surviving in adversity.
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