The Last American Man

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote this book to pay homage to Eustace Conway’s lifestyle; a type of lifestyle that Gilbert argues once defined American manhood, but is quickly dying out. She wants us to take a long and hard look at our materialistic lifestyles, and potentially change them for the better. At the very least, she wants us to acknowledge the harmful nature of today’s pop culture. I believe that Gilbert wrote this book for very much the same reason that Eustace founded Turtle Island. Eustace was able to purchase Turtle Island bit by bit, salvaging land that would otherwise have been torn apart and turned into parking garages, strip malls, and urban sprawl. Conway sets aside this bit of land initially for the very simple reason that he loves the land and wants to preserve a piece of it, if only for himself. He quickly comes to realize the value of what he possesses, and seeks to use it to educate people about the harmfulness of their lifestyle. Gilbert’s portrait of Eustace came to exist in a manner quite similar to Turtle Island – it was cobbled together from bits and pieces she emerged with from interviews and journal entries. Her initial interest in the project itself was motivated simply by the fact that she is enamored by Eustace Conway. She finds him to be an extremely interesting figure, and well worth writing about. She comes to realize the value of what she has written and turns her attention to the potential for her work to raise awareness about the breakneck speed at which Americans find it necessary to live at all times.

“He is our mythical inner self, made flesh, which is why it’s comforting to meet him. Like seeing a bald eagle. (As long as there’s one left, we think, maybe things aren’t so bad, after all.) Of course, embodying the mythical hopes of an entire society is a pretty big job for one man, but Eustace has always been up for it. An people also sense that in him; they sense his self-assurance of being large enough to serve as a living metaphor, of being strong enough to carry all our desires on his back. So it’s safe to idolize him, which is an exciting experience in this callow, disillusioned age when it’s not sage to idolize anybody. And people get a little dizzy with that excitement, a little irrational.

In this passage Gilbert illustrates the idea that Eustace has become a symbol for us due to the fact that his very existence is comforting to us. Much like the bald eagle she mentions, if we see that birds such as those still exist, or men such as Eustace still exist, then things are not as bleak as they might appear. We therefore want to idealize Eustace in order to justify to ourselves American expansion. If a man such as Eustace can exist, then there really is no problem, is there? Gilbert writes the Last American Man for this reason. She wants to dispel the myth that just because a man like Eustace exists in today’s world, it means that things are at an acceptable place. She shows this throughout the story by revealing just how difficult Eustace’s life is, and through this she hopes to illustrate the dire condition American culture is in.