The narrator of Robert Frost’s “The Mountain” encounters a man driving an oxcart and stops him in hopes of getting information. He gets his information: the name of the town and the name of the mountain. The farmer does more than answer his questions, however: He puts in the narrator the desire to climb the mountain when he had no intention of doing so.
The Farmer Ignores the Narrator’s Statements
The farmer’s part of the dialog reveals much about the farmer. The narrator—who to the farmer is a stranger visiting in these parts, asks for basic information and then early on says he is not interested in climbing the mountain, at least not that morning before his breakfast. The farmer’s first several statements are as follows, with the line breaks and poetic capitalizations removed.
This? Lunenburg.
- There is no village—only scattered farms. We were but sixty voters last election. We can’t in nature grow to many more: That things takes all the room!
- I don’t advise your trying from this side. There is no proper path, but those that have been up, I understand, have climbed from Ladd’s. That’s five miles back. You can’t mistake the place: They logged it there lat winter some way up. I’d take you but I’m bound the other way.”
- I’ve been up on the sides, deer-hunting and trout-fishing. There’s a brook that starts up on it somewhere—I’ve heard say right on the top, tip-top—a curious thing. But what would interest you about the brook, it’s always cold in summer, warm in winter. One of the great sights going is to see it steam in winter like an ox’s breath, until the bushes all along its banks are inch-deep with the frosty spines and bristles—you know the kind. Then let the sun shine on it.
Why does the farmer immediately launch his negative statements about the mountain? Probably, as he traveled slowly with his oxen and cart that morning, he observed the stranger coming toward him, the stranger’s next turned to look at the mountain as he “swung around it.” The mountain was on the stranger’s mind. This must have been evident to the slowly advancing farmer. Curious himself about what was up there, but not curious enough to climb it himself, he saw a chance to find out.
Building Interest in the Narrator
When the farmer says, “That thing takes up all the room,” he shows the stranger that the locals also have the mountain in their mind. This makes the stranger feel at home, in a way. When the farmer responds, “I don’t advise you trying from this side,” he must have sensed something in the stranger’s statement “Not for this morning…” that indicated a willingness to climb. It would be worth the farmer’s while to keep goading the stranger.
The farmer then brings up the spring, or brook. “…that starts up on it somewhere—I’ve heard say right on the top, tip-top.” This does not seems to bring up the stranger’s curiosity, not even the part about the temperature of the water, for he mentions the view from the mountain rather than the spring.
The farmer continues to talk about the spring. He says about the view,
“As to that I can’t say. But there’s the spring,
right on the summit, almost like a fountain.
That ought to be worth seeing.”
Finally the stranger takes the bait and begins to talk about the spring. The farmer has succeeded in arousing the right kind of curiosity that will lead the stranger to climb, when he has the time. He even tried a trick of diverting the stranger’s new-found interest in the spring by mentioning a mountain in Ireland with a lake at the top.
The Farmer Speaks to the Narrator With Familiarity
Part of the farmer’s gambit is to treat the narrator, not as a stranger, but as someone he knows. The farmer said concerning the spring, “but what would interest you….” How does he know what would interest this stranger? This appears to be a manner of the farmer, to build up the stranger, let him know that the farmer sees something in him. He mentions the failure of a previous climber to reach the top. This seems to be implying that the stranger is a better man than that other climber was.
Finally the narrator talks about the spring in a way that shows great interest: “Warm in December, cold in June, you say?” The farmer has won. He once again builds up the stranger by saying, “You and I know enough…”, letting the stranger know he considers him in his own category as to knowledge. The farmer breaks off the conversation, apparently confident the stranger will soon climb Hor and find out if the spring is there or not.
Frost does a masterful job of using blank verse techniques to keep the story moving. The reader can never quite forget this is a poem. Although blank verse (unrhymed, metrical poetry) can seem prosaic, Frost’s words captivate as a poem, not as a prose story. It is, as Frost’s farmer says in the poem, “All the fun’s in how you say a thing.”
See Analysis of Robert Frost’s “The Mountain” for an overview of the poem.
 |
 |
