1、A Brief Introduction of the AuthorDonald Barthelme is an American writer known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction and his best-known work is Snow White. Barthelmes stories typically avoid traditional plot structures, relying instead on a steady accumulation of seemingly-unrelated
2、detail, and always subvert the readers expectations through constant non-sequiturs. With the weird and black humored writing style, Barthelme is the recipient of many awards and honors, including the National Book Award.A Brief Introduction of the StoryThe Glass Mountain is a short story which only
3、consists of a list of 100 numbered sentences and fragments. The story was first appeared in Andrew Langs book, the Yellow Fairy Book, as a traditional fairy tale, but Barthelmes version only kept the original frame. The place where story happens was changed into downtown New York City and the mounta
4、in was replaced by a “splendid, immense office building”. There was a heap of corpses both of horses and riders at the bottom of the mountain,but the man in Barthelmes story used two plumbers friends to climb, brave but painful. The crowd was cursing and laughing, hoping him to fall down. The man in
5、sisted climbing and finally, he reached the top and saw “the beautiful enchanted symbol” - a beautiful princess. Surprised and upset, he threw the princess down. Here, the story stops abruptly.The Word “Acquaintance” in the StoryIn the beginning of the Glass Mountain, when the main character attaine
6、d the lower slope, he told the readers that “I was new in the neighborhood. Nevertheless I had acquaintances”. In the whole story, the word “acquaintances” has appeared more than ten times, it seems that the man isnt all alone in the modern city and his acquaintances have gathered to encourage and s
7、upport his adventure. But to our surprise, not only did these acquaintances not understand the mans behavior, but they even started to gloat and use many bad words to humiliate him. However, such kind of thing is not hard to understand in 1960s, the time when the story was written: cold war, civil r
8、ights movement, lack of faith, dismantling of traditions and many other crises brought America to a stressful and even turbulent period. At that disordered time, the relationship between people is indifferent and distant, the whole society was facing the moral depravity problem. People only focused
9、on money and materials, the money-mad relationships has already replaced the sincere friendships. The 55th sentence “It was cold and when I looked down I was not encouraged” can be regarded as the true feeling of a man who lived in the cold postmodern society - unease and hopeless. The story is a reflection of that disappointing society, and I can only hope that there wont be a replay of such tragedy.
