Analyse og karakterisering af 'The Shining Mountain'

The story is about Scottish girl called Pangma-La, named after a shining mountain so she would stand tall and be proud. Pangma-La’s father was a famous mountaineer, so she promised herself that she would never disappoint him. When Pangma-La was tough enough, her father and she went to the shining mountain, to climb it as promised. When they arrived the Sherpa men offered to carry their loads, but they did not need porters. The Sherpa men got angry and told them that the mountain goddess would send them, winds, spindrift snow and avalanches. The father just laughed scornfully. Pangma-La climbed the mountain happily, but after a while she began to grow weary. Then an old Sherpa woman appeared and offered to carry her heavy sack, but Pangma-La declined. The next days the Sherp woman appeared and Pangma-La gave her more and more from each day in change for feathers. But the fourth day the roar of an avalanche thundered past them, and the Sherpa woman appeared as the days before, and this time she offered to take her heart, the lungs and the bones and replace them with feathers. The Sherpa woman had tricked Pangma-La and did not give back her heart this time. The Sherpa woman appeared to the father and changed looks, she was the mountain goddess. The fathers was angry and tried to strike her but was stopped. The goddess told the father that she had given him his heart’s desire: his daughter made it to the top and he had named her after the goddess, to be strong and light and feel no pain or weep tears.The father tried to kill himself, but the goddess would not let him, she gave him Pangma-La’s heavy heart and rucksack and made him fell the heavy burden. The father cried for the first time, and then the goddess was satisfied and brought Pangma-La back to life. She was happy to see her father cry and together they skidded and sledded down the sheer mountain, and never again were Pangma-La afraid of disappointing her father.