Past the Summit: Metaphors and Environmental Ethics in Mountaineering Narratives

Mountaineering narratives are ripe for ecocritical study. Climbing books describe feats of daring, often ending in heroic success or miserable tragedy. But few have asked what implications mountaineering literature may have on our cultural mindset and environmental ethics. This thesis explores that question, and examines how metaphors in mountaineering narratives can reveal underlying environmental ethics. While predominant metaphors visualize the mountains and environment as objectives, enemies, and arenas for human competition, more recent mountaineering texts offer a wider range of metaphors, including metaphors of goddess and spirit. These metaphors encourage a sustainable environmental ethics by implying an interconnected relationship between earth and humanity, which may in turn have positive consequences for human society. By understanding the inherent assumptions in language, we can choose to resist metaphors that allow us to harm the world and instead choose metaphors that will help us keep the entire biotic community beautiful and stable.