'The Shining Mountain': analyse af far-datter-forhold

The Shining Mountain, by Alison Fell, is a short story about a young girl called Pangma-La and her father. The short story contains more than a few fairy tale elements. The author uses these to tell us about Pangma-La’s relationship with her father and is shown mostly through metaphor. The story can be seen as an allegory of father-daughter relationships in general and, as it turns out, Pangma-La’s father is a controversial role-model.

There are only a few characters in the Shining Mountain. The most important of these are Pangma-La herself, her father, who is famous for his adventuring, and a mysterious “sherpa woman” that they meet on their travels. We are told that Pangma-La is named after the “Shining Mountain” because “Scotland has enough ordinary Morags and Janets already” (l.7). Since “Morag” is a pet name for a Scottish lake-monster, as opposed to the Shining Mountain, we can see that the father wants his daughter to be more than a “ordinary Janet”. This puts a lot of pressure on Pangma-La, as can be seen when the two of them are climbing the mountain. The girl wants to be a good daughter and make her father proud, but is unable to reach the top without the help of a mystical figure. As they climb the mountain, the figure helps the girl carry her burdens, but the father tells her not to accept any help on their climb. We can tell that he is a proud man and that he has too high expectations of his daughter. He is told so by the mysterious figure, who turns out to be the spirit of the mountain itself, the incarnation of “the Shining Mountain”. The figure tells him that the girl would rather “fly away” than fall to the pressure of his high expectations. The father then breaks into tears, showing us and Pangma-La that he is only human after all. This gesture moves Pangma-La to forgive her father and forget her worries about being pressured.