Monadnock Mountain, which sits silently above Jaffrey, New Hampshire, represents Amos Fortune himself, and particularly his faith. Its name means “the Mountain that stands alone,” and Amos feels an immediate affinity for the it—he, like the mountain, is solitary and steadfast. He studies the mountain closely, retreating there to think and pray when he must make important decisions. At one point, Amos climbs to the summit Monadnock to wait for a sign from God as he deliberates between helping Lois Burdoo and buying his own land, which alludes to the biblical story of Moses ascending a mountain and waiting for God to speak to him. Monadnock Mountain thus represents Amos’s unwavering Christian faith and his willingness to trust in God rather than yielding to his own judgment.
Monadnock Mountain Quotes in Amos Fortune, Free Man
“What he wants all those fine clothes is hard to see,” he said aloud to himself. “They caught his fancy like a child’s. But that’s what they are, those black people, nothing but children. It’s a good think for them the whites took them over.”
In retracing his way, Amos […] faced the mountain he was leaving behind and he talked to it as a man might to a friend.
“I’ll be back,” he said. “Just you wait there, you old mountain, and we’ll soon be talking together every day.” Then he lifted his gaze a little higher and looked skyward. “Thank You kindly, Lord, for the sign You gave me back there in Keene, and thank You for all my fine clothes. Violet’s going to be mighty proud when she sees me in them, but I’ll keep them for our wedding day—her freedom day, so help me Lord.”
Always [Violet] thought of him as climbing some mountain in his mind, like that great one to the west on which his eyes would dwell so often and from which he seemed to derive something that was even more than strength.
“Monadnock says it will be good weather today,” Amos would announce on a morning when the mountain stood clear against the sky.
“Monadnock says we’d best not leave any leather out for there’ll be a storm before night,” he would say when a veil of cloud like the thinnest gauze capped the mountain’s crest.
He knew its moods and he talked to it as a friend, and the mountain never failed him.
“That’s a long name […],” Celyndia said one day. “What does it mean, Papa Amos […]?”
“[…] they say in the Indian language it means ‘the Mountain that stands alone.’”
But Amos would not go home while hate burned within him, so he sat on a boulder by the roadside and faced his mountain.
That was the day the men of Marlborough and Dublin had set fire raging on Monadnock to drive out the wolves and bears that had been doing damage among the herds pastured on the slopes. Amos watched the fire climb slowly at first, starting from a dozen different places; then like a wall of destruction it moved up the steep sides until the flames met and linked in a vast pyramid of fire at the summit, consuming everything that could be consumed and leaving the mountain smoldering.
Hate could do that to a man, Amos thought, consume him and leave him smoldering. But he was a free man, and free at great cost, and he would not put himself in bondage again.
Monadnock Mountain Symbol Timeline in Amos Fortune, Free Man
