20 pages • 40 minutes read
Elizabeth BishopThe Mountain
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1952A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Mortality and Immortality
Mountains are traditionally a symbol of timelessness in poetry. More than any other natural phenomenon on Earth, they remain solid, unmoved, and appear to be unchanging. Yet, mountains do age, and in this poem the mountain is personified as having lived a long time, experiencing the effects of human aging, such as nearsightedness, deafness, and memory loss. Rather than glorifying the immortality of the mountain, Bishop uses it to explore both the effects of aging on the psyche and the effects of an almost immortal experience of time on the mountain.
The mountain has lived so long that it doesn’t know how old it is. Perhaps the mountain has lived so long that it is senile, but more likely, it simply does not have a human sense of time. Either way, the mountain seems to be in distress, growing deaf and near-sighted. The children with their clambering lights leave too early. The birds who live on the mountain die, leaving it lonely, and confused. Leaving the mountain without an answer to “Tell me how old I am” indicates that nobody is listening or nobody knows the answer.
Mortals invent time. An almost immortal being, like the mountain, cannot fit into the cycle of human life precisely because it does not die. Not having that fundamental aspect of life makes the mountain feel more shut out. The cry “[t]ell me how old I am” (Lines 8, 16, 24, 32, 36) is as much a call for attention and connection as it is a cry for knowledge.
In the last stanza, the mountain says “Let the moon go hang” (Line 33) and the stars can “go fly their kites” (Line 34). The moon and stars are almost immortal, older than the mountain even. They might be able to tell the mountain how old it is, yet its phrasing here is dismissive. When the mountain rejects the moon and stars, it also rejects immortality. Instead, the mountain seems to crave connection with other terrestrial beings—the children and the birds.
Bishop leaves it ambiguous whether the mountain is afraid of dying or afraid of living forever. What is clear is that the advanced age of the mountain throws it into confusion and loneliness. Rather than glorifying or envying immortality, Bishop calls into question the value of living forever in a world where everything else dies.
Isolation
In the fourth stanza, the mountain says:
I do not mean to complain.
They say it is my fault.
Nobody tells me anything (Lines 13-15).
These lines paint a picture of a person (mountain) who is not only abandoned by society but also shamed by those around them. “They” and “nobody” are ambiguous terms, referring to society in general rather than a particular person. “They” tell the mountain “it is [the mountain’s] fault” (Line 14). The speaker does not specify what “it” is. A reader could infer that “it” is the fact of their age or their deafness and loss of vision. This is nonsensical. Aging is a natural process that nobody can control. The reader can infer that those who tell the mountain it is the mountain’s fault are out of touch, unsympathetic, and likely have not experienced the aging process themselves.
“Nobody tells me anything” (Line 15) emphasizes the mountain’s sense of loneliness and isolation among a community that shuts it out of daily life or even information. It reflects the way the elderly may feel patronized or infantilized in a society run by younger people. The younger people do not want to include older people in their activities. They treat the aging as irrelevant, making them feel inhuman, almost like scenery, inanimate and non-sentient.
In stanza six, the speaker says:
Shadows fall down, lights climb.
Clambering lights, oh children!
you never stay long enough.
Tell me how old I am (Lines 21-24).
To the mountain, everyone is “children.” The mountain laments that “you never stay long enough” (Line 23), expressing its attachment to the “children” but also exposing one downside of immortality—watching those around it die. At the same time, Bishop is playing with a cliché turn of phrase one might hear from a senior citizen, which is that their children don’t visit them often enough or stay long enough. Both the idea of uncaring offspring and the sad reality of outliving those you like and care about build a core sense of abandonment and aloneness.
Returning to stanza four, when the mountain doesn’t “mean to complain” (Line 13), it indicates that it too buys into society’s beliefs that age is the mountain’s fault. The mountain shows contrition and apologizes because it doesn’t want to offend the younger people around it. It will stop complaining to appease the children around it because it is lonely; however not complaining means the mountain cannot be honest about how it feels, further isolating itself in silence.
Self-Knowledge and Self-Awareness
The mountain’s continuous refrain is “I do not know my age” (Lines 4, 12, 20, 28) and “Tell me how old I am” (Lines 8, 16, 24, 32, 36). This emphasizes both how important this information is to the mountain and the impossibility of getting an answer. It demonstrates a philosophical conundrum Bishop meditates on in several of her poems, the inability to truly know the self.
In the first stanza, the mountain says it feels something behind it at evening time and it “blenches” (becomes pale; flinches out of fear or pain) and “burns.” This implies the mountain may have been sleeping before the start of the poem, unconscious of itself and its position in the world. Evening itself suggests endings, twilight, a time when the world transitions from wakefulness to sleep, consciousness to unconsciousness. Rather than falling asleep, which would be part of the natural rhythm, the mountain wakes up, startled by what is behind it.
The position of “behind” also suggests the passage of time. The mountain is startled by something literally moving behind it. This also suggests all the history that is now behind the mountain, in past eons. The opening lines indicate that the mountain is realizing that time has passed, and it is feeling suddenly old. Yet, it cannot say how old it is.
By using the vehicle of the mountain to explore the concept of this self-alienation, Bishop emphasizes how impossible it is to truly know the self, the discomfiting feeling of not knowing basic information. Mountains are not sentient. They do not have mirrors, and they do not keep time. Because of their advanced age, they may have a harder time establishing a set feeling of a personality or a place in the world. The slow pace of living for a mountain allows it to be lulled into sleep—itself a metaphor for a lack of self-reflection.
Age, on the other hand, and the awareness of mortality, can confront even a mountain, making it urgent that they understand who they are. The repeated phrases “I do not know my age” (Lines 4, 12, 20, 28) and “Tell me how old I am” (Lines 8, 16, 24, 32, 36) also suggest the mountain is asking “who am I?” Though that too is a question nobody can answer.
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