The Shining Mountain by Allison Fell
Introduction:
What would be your first thought if your dad choose his own work instead of your love? It would not be nice if the only reason to your presence was to carry out your father’s work, would it? This is exactly what happens for Pangma-La in this story - The Shining Mountain.
The Shining Mountain is a fairytale written by Allison Fell in the year of 1992.
Narrator, setting, characters, conflict:
The narrator is an all knowing third person.
The story takes place on a mountain, called The Shining Mountain.
Pangma-La’s father is a very self control person, who just thinks about making his own dreams come true. He tends to be very arrogant and he is just thinking of himself. I think he sees himself like the very best human in the world, and nothing can beat him down, just because the whole world sees him like a “hero”. This clear example of the fathers domination in the family (page 1, lines 7-10), shows a clearly picture of who is making the decisions in the family. He does not care about his wife and Pangma-La’s opinions.
Pangma-La is a girl hiding her feelings, and because of that she gets a really bad feeling inside. She cannot carry all the expectations her father is stacking up on her shoulders.
Throughout the story Pangma-La makes a development, growing up and grows from her father. In the text we hear about a girl who just does what her father told her to do. She did not do anything to refuse her father’s expatiations. The reason that she did not try to stop it was that she believed in him being the big “hero”. But she found out that her father was actually a human being who had the ability to cry and show emotions like anyone else (Page 3, line 19). Actually Pangma-La had never seen her father showing his feelings before, she had never seen him cry before now and she felt that by showing her feelings, she would disappoint her father. And that’s why she was hiding all her feelings.

Composition:
Like in many other fairytales, I would say that the story has a kind of home-out-home construction.
“Home” is, in this story, any other place than at the mountain. They start at home, where things are as they used to be, and then they get to this mountain, which is “out”. Here things aren’t as they used to be. Everything is strange, and it doesn’t feel safe anymore. At the end of the story, they get down from the mountain, which is “home” again.

Symbols:
“My boots are too big and I can’t fill them”. Of course it can mean that she is tired. But is also a symbol, which may mean that she can’t fulfill her father's expectations. She cannot fill the boots!
Pangma-La’s name itself is imagery. It signals that Pangma-La’s father expects his daughter to be just as strong and famous as he was, because he named her after the mountain. It is like the only reason he has led her to the world, to climb the mountain!
A symbol is also when Pangma-La turns into a swan, which symbolizes an imagery of a bird that is clean and loyal. Just like Pangma-La actually is.

Themes:
The theme is of course “growing up”. The last sentence of the story gives you the best picture of Pangma-La’s development and how it is connected to the theme “growing up”. She has seen her father crying and showing his emotions, and for that moment she will never be afraid of her father’s expectations anymore. She realized that no matter what she did or told him, he would still love and take care of her.

Conclusion:
This story is about growing up. It is about finding your own identity in life, and making your own decisions. I think it’s a good story, also because it is very relevant. It will always be relevant, because it is so important to grow up in a healthy family. Pangma-La develops from being a girl with a father who decides everything for her, to that she shows how clever she actually is, and that now she’s big enough to make her own decisions.

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