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.
Symbols & Motifs
An Open Book Confronts Me
In the second stanza, the mountain states that “in the morning it is different. / An open book confronts me” (Lines 5-6). Speaking literally, the mountain is reading or trying to read. The book “confronts” her, posing a challenge to her failing eyesight. Figuratively, an “open book” connotes obvious, easily accessible knowledge. When someone says, “I’m an open book,” they mean they are honest, not hiding anything. When the mountain says “an open book confronts me” it may signify that truth confronts her. The truth is, it is aging. This knowledge is what “confronts” the mountain. What others might be able to read easily, the mountain cannot comprehend or endure.
Deepest Demarcations
Literally, “[t]he deepest demarcation” (Line 17) means lines that mark the mountain. They may be grooves cut into the land or pathways people have carved. Demarcations also signify more abstract ways that something is marked, i.e., with memories:
The deepest demarcation
can slowly spread and fade
like any blurred tattoo (Lines 17-19).
These lines suggest that the mountain doesn’t know what the markings mean anymore. The memories that were so sharp and deep before have become blurred. Over time a tattoo, which is meant to be permanent, may fade and change with the shape of the body.
Stone Wings and Feathers Hardening Feathers
Birds are a symbol of movement and lively energy. The line “[s]tone wings have sifted here” (Line 25) suggests that the lively energy on the mountain has died. The first birds the mountain would have supported would have expired so long ago that their feathers might have hardened into fossils at this point, suggesting the magnitude of the passage of time. Everything around the mountain has calcified, turning hard and cold. This reflects the mountain’s own feeling that its life is ending, and it too is losing its senses, its memory. The bird motif reappears with “I am growing deaf. Birdcalls / dribble” (Lines 29-30). In this case, the birds do not die, but the mountain, due to its advanced age, cannot hear them. It is one more signal that time is taking its toll.
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