Need some help with a location breaking a person

[ascanius]

Am at the point in my story where the tension is growing. What I want is this location a mountain that has an item of importance at the top to symbolically break the character. This is the point where the character starts to examine the motivations behind the goal. How can a location symbolically break a person? and more specifically start to change how they solve problems especially when the character is alone on this quest.

The character is going through a rite of passage and chooses to join an elite group. The character has to then go on a quest first to get a weapon then kill an enemy. along the way the character has to pass over a mountain and starts to examine the motivations. finally ending with her finding herself and letting her past go.

The characters motivations are mostly to prove that her capability, her family was killed and she doesn't want to be useless like she was before so decides to prove the contrary thinking it will change the past. At the mountain she starts to understand she cannot change the past. then when she confronts the enemy and finds strength in herself that she never knew she had. She finds this specifically because she stops trying to prove it to herself.

So in what way could I have this mountain symbolically break a person to the point where they reach rock bottom?

 

[Filk]

Hello again,

Are you saying that she will realize that she does not want to be strong to avenge her family, but to simply defend the innocent and so forth? Did she find her vengeance petty? Perhaps she faces a mirror of herself as the enemy and vanquishes her connection and obsession with her past and that allows her to move on with her life? Is she approached by phantoms of past on her journey up the mountain slope? Is she alone on this journey? That would seem fitting.

The test of climbing a treacherous peak could be quite a challenge in itself. Conditions on the slope (gases, mushrooms, etc.) could cause hallucinations of a nature of self-realization. It is a little difficult to pin down what you are specifically asking without the full story, so I would suggest writing the passage and see where it takes you.

 

[pskelding]

Filk covered what I think most would say. I would add that maybe it's not the mountain that breaks the character but maybe an event or encounter (with wild monsters?) on the mountain breaks the character.

 

[wordwalker]

Two elements that might go well with her other tests are that she begins to hallucinate images of her dead family, and their killer-- and has to accept that she can't throw herself blindly trying to reach the one again or to smash the other.

Another idea might be that she decides not to go for the weapon, when she sees how dangerous it is to reach. That means accepting she wants to live rather than take any risk for revenge or power, and trusting herself to become strong enough on her own. (Weapons represent a shortcut to power, at least if the emphasis isn't on long training with them to match trained foes.) I think this isn't quite the way your story is looking, but just a thought.

 

[Ayaka Di'rutia]

You can write about how broken the mountain itself is - if it's ancient and crumbling away, representing the past and the character breaking. She has to navigate all the broken and breaking pathways and crevasses, and maybe tie in her experiences to past tragedy and failure and how she overcomes them like she overcomes her dangerous terrain. I was thinking maybe the object at the mountaintop is broken. Maybe she needs to find a way to fix it? Fixing it could represent ultimate triumph over failure, even though she can't change the past, but she can change the present.

 

[brokethepoint]

Think about how you would feel after spending several days in the mountains. The cold gnawing at you. Do you have any food left? Chased by a bear or mountain lion? Do you have any supplies left to start a fire? So you end up tired, hungry and cold, just plain exhausted and the air is now low in oxygen and you feel like you are struggling to breath. The terrain can all start to look the same, didn't you just walk past this rock or tree a couple hours ago? You begin to wonder if you will make it out. . .

 

[celebathien]

Brokethepoint has a good... well, point. This may sound like it has nothing at all to do with this topic, but bear with me.

I'm currently reading, for a master's level course in English, Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. Most of it takes place on a mountainside in Spain during the Spanish Civil War around WWII. Robert Jordan (no kidding, that's his name) is the main character, an American professor of Spanish, who is fighting for the Republicans against the fascist army trying to take over. He deals with explosives. Now, it's a good book; however, what does it have to do with your story?

Through the story, the reader is mostly centered in Jordan's thoughts. He's in a country that isn't his own, speaking a language that isn't his own, fighting a war that isn't his own, and despite trying to remain aloof and separate from the others on what has virtually become a suicide mission (which he is aware of from the outset), he starts liking them. In fact, he falls in love with one guerilla fighter, a girl named Maria, over the three days he's there. He likes these people. He thinks they're good people. He doesn't want to endanger them and kill them, but that's exactly what he's having to do and that eats at him more than a little.

Add onto that, the leader of the guerillas has lost his courage and his heart. There's a betrayal in there somewhere that does serious things to Jordan's ability to think positively, and he finally has to either accept his fate or fight against it.

Again, so what? The so-what part is where your character comes in on this mountain. Is it a suicide mission, or just a very difficult one? The fact she's alone is going to weigh on her mind heavily - there's nobody to talk to about her decisions, and she has to be right in each one of them, 100% of the time, or it might kill her. The cold is biting. The path up is less challenging perhaps than Everest, but definitely something that isn't easy. Perhaps others before her have attempted the climb and failed, succumbing either to the elements, madness, or injury along the way. The point is, it's not going to be a walk in the park.

The more physically draining each day becomes, the colder the nights, the lonelier it gets, the more wild animals she comes across to threaten her, and even the hungrier she gets when her supplies run out, the harder it's going to test her will and her mind. It's going to make her question her reasons for going up there. It's going to make her ask if it's worth all this. Even if she thinks it is, by the time she gets to the summit and the weapon, she'll be physically, mentally, and even spiritually exhausted -- so much so, that whatever symbolic breaking happens up there with the weapon (especially if it's not there and hasn't been for centuries, or otherwise isn't what she expects) is going to be easier than if she were simply magically planted there, poof!, from the base.

TL;DR: sometimes it's the journey itself that can change a person's thinking and desiring rather than anything a writer might want to cobble together, and the more that gets heaped on someone, the more likely they are to evolve to either handle it and survive, or accept their inevitable death.

(Man, modernism, you're such a downer. )

 

[Kahle]

Between a Rock and a Hard Place might help you out. If your character were to barely survive a near death experience, they could come to a new perspective on life. However, it would probably work better if the experience were lengthy, or at least inescapable without personal sacrifice. This would probably involve being trapped for an extended period of time, either by rocks, a cave in, avalanche, where the MC has to abandon some memento of their loved ones (won't fit through the escape route, gets caught and must be cut away, or weighs them down too much for a climb). Having to physically lose that piece of their old life could allow them to move on. Something like this:

Climb-Accident-Escape-Loss-Safety-Reflection/Catch Breath-Whole Again

Also, as Filk mentioned with the hallucinations and dementia, these could play a huge role in the post-traumatic reflection and flesh out the breakdown of the character (visions of the dead, mental torment, old memories given life). With their connection to the past lost, all that's left is to finish the climb to the weapon.