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.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter: Structured Quatrains
“The Mountain” is not technically a formal poem, but it uses regular stanza breaks and some conventions of the villanelle. The poem is divided into seven quatrains, or stanzas of four lines each. Each stanza ends with the phrase “I do not know my age” (Lines 4, 12, 20, 28) or “Tell me how old I am” (Lines 8, 16, 24, 32, 36). The alternating refrains create a circular structure of repetition, always bringing the poem back to the same central question or idea. This mimics one of the rules of the villanelle, which also repeats one or two phrases throughout the poem. At the end of a villanelle, the two phrases repeat side by side, but in the end of “The Mountain,” the line changes to “I want to know my age” (Line 35) before repeating again, “Tell me how old I am” (Line 36). This emphasizes the change in the line “I do not know how old I am” to the more forceful declaration “I want to know my age.” The variation from “I do not know” to “I want to know” gives the mountain more agency, with it declaring that it is capable of desire, of intention, of a search for knowledge. The repetition, and then the variation on that repetition, makes this second to last line more impactful.
Repetition
The repetition of the two 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) hold the poem together. They mimic the thinking pattern of a person obsessed with a certain idea. In “The Mountain” the speaker repeats this phrase over and over but never makes it clear to whom they are speaking. The speaker mentions that “[t]hey say it is my fault” (Line 14), and “Nobody tells me anything” (Line 15), suggesting the mountain is being ignored by those around her. The repetition suggests the mountain is obsessed with the idea but also that nobody is listening. It enhances the feeling of loneliness and abandonment. The repeated refrain, without answer, makes the mountain seem more pitiful and powerless since it can only ask and declare its ignorance, without having the power to compel answers.
POV/Persona
“The Mountain” is a persona poem, written from the point of view of a mountain who wonders what its age is. The choice of persona is significant. A mountain, perhaps more than any other part of nature, is durable and seems to be unmoving, almost eternal. However, even mountains age. Bishop notes in these lines:
The deepest demarcation
can slowly spread and fade
like any blurred tattoo (Lines 17-19).
A mountain can change or be changed by human interaction. Eventually, those changes, and the presence of the mountain itself, disappear. The mountain is a symbol of something unchanging, and yet, even that seeming permanence is rendered impermanent on a large enough time scale. The great age of the mountain also makes it seem sad as it sees all the children go too soon and as it suffers the loss of its senses, its memory, and its faculty as it ages.
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By Elizabeth Bishop
