The Mountian And The Valley -symbolism Essay, Research Paper
The Mountain and the Valley :
The Symbolic Mountain of David’s dreams and hopes.
“The mountain slopes were less than a mile high at their
top-most point but they shut the valley in completely.”
(Buckner , 7). Our first view of the Mountain in Buckner’s
classic The Mountain and the Valley prepares us for its
importance throughout the novel. Its presence haunts David
throughout his life ; it is symbolic of fulfilment and
David’s desire to leave the Annapolis Valley, but due to
circumstances remains unsurmountable. The mountain is a
symbol that deeply influences Buckler’s narrative and t
pervades the story, by representing both David’s dreams and
inability to leave : beginning in his childhood, continuing
through his adolescence, his young adulthood, and finally
following him into the grave.
In his youth the protagonist of the story, David Canaan ,
is a sensitive boy who becomes increasingly aware of the
difference that sets him apart from his family and his
neighbours. He views his first trip to the mountain as a
large step in his life, even at the age of eleven. Buckner
portrays David’s childish delight (at finally being big enough
to go fishing on the mountain ) as an adventure : ” As they
came close to the mountain , it was so exciting that David was
almost afraid.” (Buckner 22) This attempt to scale the
mountain fails, as do all David’s attempts to climb the
mountain except his final one, “they were crossing the bridge
to start to climb the mountain when they heard the
voices”(Buckner 23). David’s father ends their excursion
because of the death of valley farmers Pete and Spurge. The
tragedy and death in the valley makes David’s journey to the
mountain impossible. Before he faces the news that he knows is
bad from the other valley men approaching , he must “touch it
, [the mountain road] anyway , before he knew indisputably
that the day was over” (Buckler, 34) , symbolically searching
for what he missed. The mountain, in David’s mind, represents
something better, or grander, than his rural valley life. The
prevailing theme of David not quite getting beyond the
mountain begins here, in his youth. Later in the novel, when
David is twelve , on the trek up to find a Christmas tree ,
David asks his sister Anna “If anyone walked through the
mountain , weeks and weeks, I wonder where he’d come out
…”.( Buckler, 56) The mystical question of what was beyond
the mountain is lingering in his mind even during this happy
moment, in David’s innocent youth.
The mountain throws its influence into childhood of
Anna, David’s twin sister, in a different way. Anna sees “A
rainbow arched from mountain to mountain”. (Buckler, 29). This
symbolises Anna’s later flight from the Valley and ability to
mesh – although she never quite gets it right- both the city
life of Halifax and her country existence in the Annapolis
Valley. The rainbow appears “almost faded over the valley”
(Buckler 22). This shows how Anna will become detached from
her childhood home, as she makes the premonition that she
later fulfils of marrying a sailor.
In David’s adolescence,the mountain takes on a more
defined shape in his mind. At age 13 ,”The mountain across
the lake looked like a far-off furniture of a dream.” (Buckler
88). David’s thoughts of his future, while pondering death
and helping his family fix the old graves in the cemetery,
are very positive. He shudders to think of Anna in the
cemetery, but does not picture himself there. He believes he
will be something great, and his dreams are still attainable
in his mind, and “the mountain looked to him as if , with one
great leap, he could touch it.” (Buckler , 88) Just as, when
he’s 14, “the afternoon, in a steady hush seemed to bring the
mountains closer” (Buckler, 96). David begins to push the
mountains, and what they represent, to the back of his mind.
His dreams are attainable and fulfilment of them an
inevitability of the future. Toby – the city boy from Halifax
who visits David (and is also a character foil of David)- is
introduced when they both are nearly sixteen. Toby becomes
David’s only friend, and doesn’t understand when David tells
him that “you can see everything” (Buckler, 138) from the top
of the mountain. Anna, David and Toby turn back after starting
up the mountain, and once again David is unsuccessful at
climbing to the top of the symbolic mountain. He is frustrated
when Toby says that “It isn’t like it was a real mountain
…What makes it so wonderful?” (Buckler, 138). David is
looking for understanding from the outsider Toby, and doesn’t
receive it. The mountain, or misunderstanding of it shows how
different Toby and David are and how David’s ambitions and
dreams seem small, and are not understood by Toby. David’s
desire to leave the Annapolis Valley and dreams of fulfilment
seem to pale, or seem unrealistic – “the thought of the
mountain went as lint-gray as the toes of his larrigans in
November slush.” (Buckler, 139)- when the “wordily” boy from
Halifax comments on the mountain.
Dave enters the world of a young adult through
heartbreaking circumstances : his girlfriend dies and he feels
somehow responsible, sleeps with his girlfriend’s mother and
tries (unsuccessfully) to leave home . Yet, his “childish
excitement” (Buckler, 168) about the mountain remains.
Joeseph, David’s father, suggests he and his son, now 19, and
the rest of the family, go to the top of the mountain in
search of a large tree for a keel. The mountain is finally
resurfacing in David’s mind after the string of bad
circumstances, and the mountain shows us that David is
beginning to hope again. He wonders why, “though he was
nineteen he’d never been to the very top yet.” (Buckler, 168).
They begin their trek up the mountain, but are stopped again
by returning Toby and Anna, and it becomes another failed
attempt -in Toby’s new car – to reach the top of the mountain.
The mountain illuminates the separateness beginning in David.
David believed that if he ” had been going to the top of the
mountain with his family
alone , their bond would have been the trip” (Buckler, 172),
and that with Toby “that he could have shared toby’s
excitement : not because of the mountain…but the car”
(Buckler, 172). David is left unfulfilled and wanting
more.Climbing the mountain alone never enters his mind at this
point. He feels separate and cut off from his family, as
though he “had to keep up a balancing act ” (Buckler 178) to
keep everyone happy. The mountain therefore shows david’s
inability to be content or fulfilled, as he has to act or
“balance” in the presence of his family , but David is still
clinging to the hopes that the mountain represent.
In the final stages of David’s short life, his adulthood,
he recognises the dual nature of the mountain. His Illness and
his father’s death trap him into the monotonous life of a
farmer, where “his thoughts clung low to his brain, like the
clouds that curled above the mountain.” (Buckler, 221) His
inability to act, and his beliefs that he can still attain his
dreams are shattered. David sets out, determined to climb his
mountain, and his “tendrils of thought begin to curl outward”
(Buckler 280). David begins his final trek to the top of the
mountain, this time “absolutely alone “(Buckler, 281). He
experiences a mental breakthrough of sorts, and recognises his
dreams and inability to attain them for what they are. He is
seized with a new positive outlook, and believes that he can
“live again … and begin again” (Buckler 182). “The Shape
and colour reach out to him like voices” (Buckler , 281) and
David sees the faces of everyone he knows on his journey up
the mountain, forgiving each one :”all the faces there were
everywhere else in the world, at every time waited for him”
(Buckler, 289). The mountain, as a symbol of his, is no
longer unsurmountable, in David’s mind. This new awakening is
ironic and “as he raised his head and saw that he was at the
very top of the mountain”(Buckler 291), simultaneously telling
himself he will “tell them just as they are, but people will
see there is more to them than the side that shows” (Buckler,
294), David drops dead. David’s old ideals about his dreams,
represented by the mountain, are back just before his death.
The book ends with David as a “grey body falling swiftly
….exactally down over the far side of the
mountain.”(Buckler, 296).
David, ironically, reaches his goal in death. He sees
everything, as he Told toby he would in his childhood, at the
top of the mountain. The mountain followed David throughout
his short life, as a symbol for his dreams and desire to
become-or be-somewhere beter as a child , as his desire to
leave as an adolescent, and as the realization that he is
trapped – inable to leave – in his adult life. Each of
David’s dreams were realized in his death, through the
influence of the mountian.The book David longed to write down
when he finally reached the top can also be read – the
portrait of the people that he yearned to write is the novel
itself, The Mountian and the Valley.