Glass Mountain
By Donald Barthelme
In the short story "Glass Mountain" we meet a man on a quest to reach the top of the glass mountain. When he succeeds he realizes the reward for his hard work is a beautiful princess, whom he then drop to the masses, because she is not what he hoped to achieve. Therefore the author does not meet our expectations in a addiction to how traditional fairytales should end.
Marie:
SvarSletI am not sure of what the Glass Mountain is a symbol of, but surely, it is something everybody talks about and something which is very meaningful to most people: “The top of the mountain vanishes into the clouds, or, on cloudless days, into the sun.” – It becomes very illustrative that no matter what, and how the weather is, you cannot see all the way to the top because it is unattainable and much bigger than human nature. Moreover, we hear that no one has ever climbed it: “on behalf of science, or in search of celebrity, or just because it was a challenge” – so the mountain is invincible and almost formidable. The 1.person narrator of the text, who is a knight, is climbing the mountain and he keeps repeating that he is new in the neighborhood, but that he nevertheless has acquaintances. This gets quite ironic: “My acquaintances had gathered at the bottom of the mountain to offer encouragement”, where after we hear the adjectives “shithead”, “asshole” – so obviously the “acquaintances” of his, aren’t that devoted to him, and therefore our 1.person narrator is quite ironic. He describes them as being “his” acquaintances – which they obviously aren’t, together with his use of the word “encouragement” which disagrees with the words the people at the bottom of the glass mountain are pointing at him.
Asta:
SvarSletThe short story could be a way of mocking the American dream and everything the US stands for. Using all these fairytale-like traits and the dismissing them at the very end, and the fact that he throws away the goal of his quest, could be a way of dismissing the way the American society has turned out, as he does not believes it to be the Utopia intended by the first European immigrants. “Everyone in the city knows about the glass mountain. People who live there tell stories about it. It is pointed out to visitors. Touching the side of the mountain, one feels its coolness”. America is very proud of its idealistic foundation, being a land of freedom and opportunities, but obviously, this is not the case in modern day America. The American society has become a cold society, where everyone looks out for himself or herself. The US is not a land of opportunities, which in the short story is shown in the way that almost no one is able to climb to the top of the glass mountain and achieve the goal. In the last line in the short says: “nor are eagles plausible, not at all, not for a moment”. The eagle is some kind of a national symbol of the US and saying that the eagle is not plausible, could be a portrayal of how the US and the American dream is an unattainable illusion.