Before I began reading this book I fully expected to be reading a work of non-fiction. I was confused because of Daumal writing seemed to be coming from the first person perspective as it seemed he was writing about a biographical account of one of his mountain exploits. I was pleasantly surprised that this was indeed a tale about a group of people in the pursuit to find themselves during this seemingly impossible endeavor. The story blends poetic comparisons to how the mountains are the one true place within the world that a person can truly understand who they are as a human being. Mount Analogue is the ultimate goal of human freedom, a place that can literally reach to the heavens and contact the gods. The whole story is a metaphor for the hunger and desire for the human soul to understand the world around them and their purpose for existence. This quote from Sogol sums this up perfectly ” I suffer from an incurable need to understand. I do not want to die without understanding why I have lived.” (Pg.41) The fear of death and the insatiable need to explore and understand one’s purpose seems to be one of the main themes of the entire book.

It seems that Daumal is expressing the need for human beings to explore their surroundings and to experience a sense of freedom from their daily struggles. One can’t begin to understand themselves until they have spent time within the majestic calmness and unknown that is exploring and climbing mountains. this passage really stuck out to me as a great way to summarize possible the entire message of the books intentions. “My only good moments were when I took my hiking boots, my rucksack, and my ice axe to climb the mountains.” (pg.43) He expresses that climbing and seeing the snowfields helps restore and rediscover the characters that make him whole, and that it purges the city toxins from him.

One Thing that I found interesting was the passage about Sogol’s experience being a religious vessel and living among a group of priest. His comparison to how evil and diabolical the practice of a Tempter or a person acting as a person of sin and who would test individuals faith on the spot. “Imagine thirty men living a communal life, already half-crazed by the perpetual terror of sin, looking at one another with obsessive thought that one of them, without knowing whom, is specifically charged with testing their faith, their humility, and their charity.” (Pg.38) he compared the act as more cruel and ghastly than Human sacrifice and cannibal rights.

The last passage that stood out to me was the explanation of how the glacier is in fact, a living entity and the first living entity to grace the earth. The poetic explanation of how and why glaciers are living things goes deeper than just saying glaciers are conscious beings, but rather that the entire mountain is just an extension of the glacier itself. “the glacier is an organized creature, with a head, its permanent snow patch, which gazes on snow and swallows rocky debris, a head neatly separated from the rest of the body by the rimaye; then an enormous stomach in which the snow is transformed into ice.”(Pg.70-71)