What's the meaning of " wildness" in this context? Could it mean our nature/essence that we were born with?

Question

. He tried to shape in his mind what he had to say to McDonald. It was a feeling; it was an urge that he had to speak. But whatever he spoke he knew would be but another name for the wildness that he sought. It was a freedom and a goodness, a hope and a vigor that he perceived to underlie all the familiar things of his life, which were not free or good or hopeful or vigorous. What he sought was the source and preserver of his world, a world which seemed to turn ever in fear away from its source, rather than search it out, as the prairie grass around him sent down its fibered roots into the rich dark dampness, the Wildness, and thereby renewed itself, year after year.

Answer 1

Given my relatively limited context, it seems to me that “wildness” is being used to describe an indescribable feeling, so to speak. The text says that wildness is a sense of freedom or of energy and vigor. In other words, positive force. In the context that you have provided for the novel, it seems that the boy is trying to say that he left home in order to seek this force, which he perceived as underlying all the things in his life. So there is no proper “dictionary definition” for how it’s being used in this text. You just have to gain a general understanding of what this character is referring to.

The passage that you written out is rather abstract to begin with. The main character of this passage is saying that while wildness is kind of a positive/energetic force, it underlies aspects of his life that are anything but. He’s saying that wildness sustains his world, but the things in his world reject and fear wildness, and this character wants to actively seek it out instead.