Tribe is both the overarching motif of the book and its most frequently leveraged symbol. As a motif, it draws upon actual histories and experiences of social organization. Junger builds his portrait of the tribe from anthropological studies of actual tribes in human history. These tribes are all understood to have existed prior to the emergence of modern society or as relics of a primordial era that persisted into the early stages of the modern period. Insofar as our understanding of human history is filtered through a cultural lens, the tribe Junger writes about is as much a construct of Western social science as it is a historical fact. He does not attempt to denote contemporary tribes; even his focus on soldiers does not lead him to identify the military unit as a tribe, but only as bearing qualities that are reminiscent of tribal societies.

As a symbol, tribe represents a mythic human collective in which all members enjoy equal standing and contribute equally through relations of reciprocity, dignity, and mutual dependence. The tribe does not exist, and it does not serve as a literal model for organizing society. Rather, it represents the ideal for Junger, the place where the ills of modern society vanish.