Gilbert's Reason: Last American Man

I think that Elizabeth Gilbert wrote The Last American Man partially to spread the idea that being one with nature is the best way to live. However, she does not do this by glorifying Eustace Conway’s life. On pg 264, she records a conversation she had with Conway regarding building a snowman. Conway was unable to even consider making a snowman without taking a pragmatic approach. He spent a long time just weighing the worth of this seemingly trivial activity. He decided that the fun was not worth the cost of time or the carrot for its nose. She instead chooses to glorify the ideal that everyone cannot look past when considering Eustace Conway as a human being. On the next pg, Gilbert writes, "The best man that Eustace can be is the man he becomes when he's alone in the woods." Later, she even confronts him about it, asking him why he cannot just live in harmony in nature and not engage in the activities that cause him so much stress. Every time he has to try to convert multiple people to living his lifestyle, he becomes miserable. Social interaction (when with the average, or even above-average modern American) brings out the worst in Eustace. However, when he is truly communicating with nature, without having to care about how incompetent other human beings are, he experiences his own bliss.

Gilbert does not want everyone to abandon their homes and jobs for the sake of the woods, but I think she adamantly believes in the Pacos Bill/Paul Bunion/Daniel Boone stories of the rugged manhood that can only be experienced outside of the comfort of our boxes. I think that she believes that we would be living truer lives if we could better understand our reliance on the nature around us, and she wrote the book to try to communicate this to people.