Banner In The Sky

In Banner in the Sky, Rudi has little to remember his father by. His father’s red flannel shirt is not only one of his most prized possessions but also a symbol for his father’s legacy, both as a dreamer and as an honorable man. The red shirt represents the dream of climbing the Citadel. While the shirt was tattered from Josef Matt’s failed attempt, Rudi still dreams of flying it from the summit. After he has a taste of climbing, he has a dream in which he takes his climbing pole and sets it into the “magical, shining snow upon which no man had ever stood before” (52) and straps the shirt to it “like a flame on the white summit of the Citadel” (52). Rudi insists on taking the shirt with him as a symbol of his intent to summit the Citadel.

However, the shirt takes on a deeper meaning as Rudi learns more about his father’s honorable behavior. Old Teo explains, “While he himself was freezing to death, your father had taken it from his own back to try and keep another man warm” (84). When Rudi is stuck at the fortress overnight, he wraps the flannel around him, thinking that “it might save him” (159).