Rebecca Solnit , "The Solitary Stroller and the City "
Questions for Making Connections within the Reading:
1. “The Solitary Stroller and the City” comes from a book entitled, Wanderlust. On first reading, the goal of Solnit’s itinerary is likely to appear to be unclear: she pauses over details; she moves from section to section without obvious transitions; she catalogues authors, friends, and locations that can’t all be familiar to her readers. As you reread the piece, number the five sections that Solnit creates through the use of white space and summarize the work she does in each section. Does an order emerge? What is Solnit’s organizational strategy? Where is she trying to take her reader?
2. Solnit contrasts urban and rural walking, walks in European cities and walks in American cities, walks taken 200 years ago and walks taken today, walks taken by men and walks taken by women. Are there separate mindsets associated with each kind of walking? Catalogue the places where you walk: has Solnit left anything out of her study that you feel is important?
3. Solnit’s essay concludes with a vignette about a Sunday morning walk, one that illustrates “the communal solitude of urban walkers.” Is this “communal solitude” something that is learned or is it natural to city dwellers? Is it available to urban drivers? Does Solnit offer this vision to her readers in hopes of fostering this state of mind or is she describing something that is endangered?
Questions for Writing:
1. Following Solnit’s example, describe one of your walks through an urban landscape. Does your description serve to illustrate her assertion that “urban walking seems in many ways more like primordial hunting and gathering than walking in the country”? Does following Solnit’s example bring to light anything about your way of moving through the world that would otherwise go unnoticed? Are you led to the same conclusions? Does this way of writing carry within it the same thesis for all writers?
2. Solnit finds something liberating in the mental state that urban walking produces—“cool, withdrawn, with senses sharpened, a good state for anybody who needs to reflect or create.” Can you identify passages in “The Solitary Stroller and the City” that are the result of Solnit achieving this state of mind? Why does walking generate this state, but not other forms of travel? Is this personal or is it biological? How does one distinguish this state of mind from indifference? Discuss the relationship between physical movement, state of mind, and social engagement.
Questions for Making Connections Between Readings:
1. In “The Ecology of Magic,” David Abram describes how his travels made him “a student of subtle differences.” Solnit is also concerned with the relationship between travel and states of mind. It is no surprise that the person traveling through rural Bali both sees and thinks about different things than the person traveling through New York City, San Francisco, and London. If we push this observation to the furthest extreme, though, we might be driven to conclude that thought, location, and movement are fundamentally intertwined, so that the person traveling in Bali can think in ways not available to the urban stroller and vice versa. Drawing on Abram and Solnit, discuss the degrees to which thought, location, and movement are connected.
2. In “The Power of Context,” Malcolm Gladwell argues that the rundown condition of New York City in 1984 played a significant role in leading Bernhard Goetz to shot four young men on the subway. Does this argument extend, contradict, or reinforce Solnit’s observations about the effects of urban walking? Can Gladwell’s argument be used to explain Solnit’s experience? If context is so powerful, can any experience be said to be personal?
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