Frightful's Mountain

“A northern waterthrush trilled. Frightful envisioned a dashing stream shaded by a majestic forest, the summer home of the northern waterthrush. She heard the stream in the distance. It had many voices as it spilled down a stairway of rocks.”

Jean Craighead George represents Frightful’s thoughts and point of view through third-person limited narration. George’s use of imagery showcases the beauty of nature as well as Frightful’s keen sense of hearing. The figurative language, which describes a stream’s splashing as “many voices,” conveys Frightful’s deep connection with the earth; even the sound of water is like a language to her.

“The young girl’s voice brought back images of the one mountain among thousands of mountains, the one hemlock tree among millions of trees—and Sam.”

Similar versions of this quote recur throughout the novel to highlight the main conflict: Frightful’s struggle between following her instincts and her desire to return to Sam. The repetition emphasizes this constant inner struggle and creates a common thread throughout Frightful’s various movements in the weeks and months after she is separated from Sam.

“Frightful had arrived in perfect peregrine habitat. She was only vaguely aware of this. Almost her whole life had been spent with Sam on a mountain. Sam and his forest and abandoned meadow were her habitat.”

In delivering Frightful to a “perfect peregrine habitat,” George highlights how atypical Frightful’s upbringing in Sam’s mountaintop home was. Frightful does not know the way of life of her kind and needs to learn the natural order of things away from Sam.