Mountains

In "The Mountains Shall Stand Forever," the imaginative absence of mountains symbolizes the freedom of solitude for young Ellen Peterson. After being bullied by mean girls Ginny, Violet, and even Gloria, Ellen is dying to leave her isolated, suffocating boarding school and be free somewhere, unchained from the social pressure of fitting in. The greatness of the mountains, their place in the landscape outside her room, is a comfort to her as she drowns in the overwhelming scene of early adolescence. Imagining the disappearance of the mountains becomes a way of imagining the glorious impossible: "She wished that [her peers] would disappear, that in their place would be space, a great empty hole, all black. And she would run out of doors and leap into the space that had been mountains and lake, and be all alone, forever" (41). In this way, the mountains symbolize Ellen's escape...