48 pages • 1 hour read
The Stranger in the Woods
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Chapters 14-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary
Knight’s new life was “a confounding mix of incredible commitment and lack of foresight, not at all abnormal for a twenty-year old” (86). To unplug from the world, he avoided learning the human-imposed names of places and telling his family about his plans. He only spent one early night sleeping indoors in an empty cabin.
While Knight knew how to hunt and fish, he had no equipment, and foraging was not viable, as the area had no fruit trees and a very short berry season. The taste of raw pigeon roadkill was not to his liking either. After 10 days of hunger, his scruples about stealing broke when he started picking vegetables from area gardens.
Knight traveled southward until he found North Pond. His first campsite was a tunnel he dug by a riverbank, but he would try six other locations over several months to find the optimal protection from intruders. Finally, Knight discovered the impenetrable Jarsey and the clearing behind the elephant rocks. With winter approaching, he knew that the best way to maintain his anonymous lifestyle would be to raid the poorly secured cabins and campgrounds next to the ponds.
Chapter 15 Summary
The process Knight uses to steal from roughly 100 houses and the Pine Tree camp was meticulous. First, he studied resident movement patterns “like a Jane Goodall of the human race” (91). The best time to steal would be late at night with overcast or rainy weather. Knight devised multiple approach routes, and he borrowed a canoe when carrying large items like a mattress.
Knight memorized the forest so that he could travel in the darkness of the new moon with only a small flashlight necklace for illumination. He also collected spare keys and hid them in nearby locations. Knight worked the door lock or window to his target’s house open and then repaired any damage to his entryway before leaving. He masked the thefts if possible, such as by replacing a full propane tank with an empty spare.
Knight’s overwhelming caution saved him from capture. He cleaned up his appearance before raids to minimize suspicion. Knight would wait for hours to make sure no one was around before breaking in. His alarm installation knowledge allowed him to disable systems, and he could sense the presence of would-be vigilantes. Authorities noticed the crime scenes were so clean that they seemed like the work of a master thief.
No matter how often he stole, Knight felt “a hot wave of shame” and found no pleasure from his work (95). His only relief came once he returned to the safety of his campsite, usually with enough supplies for two weeks.
Chapter 16 Summary
Because most diseases are the result of human-to-human contact, Knight stayed remarkably healthy. He can identify poison ivy and eventually lost his fear of tick-transmitted Lyme disease. His only major medical problems were rotted teeth from a lack of professional cleaning.
Knight’s staple meal was macaroni and cheese. He experimented with new foods, spices, and condiments but avoided homemade meals for fear of poison. He maintained a hundred-square-foot dump at the boundary of his site that used dirt and leaves to mask the smell. The pit of empty plastic containers seemed bottomless.
Between raids, Knight rarely left camp and focused on maintenance, chores, and entertainment from books, magazines, and portable electronics. He enjoyed Shakespeare and poets who spoke to his solitary heart: Emily Dickenson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Lao-tsu. He preferred military history, with his favorite book being The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Other important books included Very Special People, a series of biographies on the oddities like the Elephant Man, and Notes from the Underground, about an angry man who spends 20 years away from society.
A portable radio with earbuds allowed him to listen to music and talk shows. Classic rock, especially Lynyrd Skynyrd, was Knight’s favorite genre, though he came to enjoy classical music like Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades. He regularly listened to right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh but now claims he doesn’t actually like him and outlines his own politics as “conservative but not Republican” (104). He hates National Geographic, as he feels it takes advantage of human suffering.
At one point, Knight took a portable Panasonic TV, but switched to a radio that could play TV signals after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He enjoyed Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond. While he considers PBS to be fluff for educated baby boomers, he loves Ken Burn’s documentary series The Civil War. His gaming collection included Dig Dug, Tetris, and Pokémon as well as electronic Sudoku.
Chapters 14-16 Analysis
The search for a perfect campsite demonstrates Knight’s emphasis on continuous improvement. Inadequate camouflage was unacceptable: “One mistake and the outside world would snatch him back” (93). Primal hunger necessitated that new hermit beat down his moral objections to stealing, but his elaborate raids were only possible after he secured the natural defense of the Jarsey.
Situational awareness and caution were key to Knight’s burglary strategy. Even after losing track of dates, he could identify Fridays and Saturdays from the increased activity by the pond. He believed that the food lists and homemade food left by sympathetic residents were traps, and taking them could have left forensic evidence he might not have known about. As guilty as Knight felt about his work, and as much as he tried to mitigate damage from it, the irony is that the hermit who desired isolation survived by intruding on other people’s lives and understanding their habits. Knight’s dispassionate surveillance of North Pond residents is arguably as invasive as the burglaries themselves.
Collecting books and other forms of entertainment is also critical for Knight’s need for socialization. His literary tastes are nuanced but somewhat contrarian: He trashes the “pseudo-intellectuals” who praise James Joyce’s novel Ulysses and dislikes Jack Kerouac fans more than the Beat icon himself (103). Even an isolationist judges works based on a perception of the audience.
Knight’s favorite book, 1960’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer, is a 1,250-page history of Nazi Germany based on Shirer’s past reporting along with post-war testimony. It is controversial for depicting Nazism as the result of German ideological tradition—beliefs like the Third Reich existed before Hitler’s rise to power—rather than a cult of personality or the concurrent rise of nationalist regimes worldwide.
His listenership of Rush Limbaugh, along with a childhood that discouraged “handouts or government assistance” (89), likely influenced his disdain of the self-styled hermits Finkel brings up. Limbaugh has a history of offensive statements about race and gender, but Knight never says anything explicitly problematic. It’s unlikely that Finkel would omit unflattering statements, as Knight himself wants people to judge both his positive and negative aspects.
Knight’s interest in television and videogames is surprising, but he stops using his portable TV after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Watching the events is disturbing in of itself, but this act also has similarities to his decision to live in the woods shortly after Ronald Regan’s address about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Perhaps his isolation is the result of negative world happenings.
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