“He who ascends to mountaintops”

“He who ascends to mountaintops” is the epigraph that opens Part Five, “THE PINNACLE,” dated 1918–50. Attributed to Lord Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” the passage turns ascent into a double-edged emblem: reaching the highest position brings both a commanding view and exposure to the resentment of people below. Its placement gives the part’s title a shadow. The pinnacle is not simply a destination or triumph; it is a height wrapped in cloud and snow, where achievement carries isolation and antagonism with it.

Text and Placement

The epigraph appears after the close of the preceding passage, in which Emma Harte sometimes reaches instinctively for the telephone to share a confidence with the dead Laura O’Neill, then finds solace in her children and family. Part Five begins immediately afterward with its title and date range, followed by Byron’s lines; Chapter Forty-Four starts next. This sequence moves from intimate bereavement and family care to an image of elevation and public hostility. The contrast does not explain the coming events, but it establishes a broader, less domestic register for the section that follows.

The quoted stanza begins with a conditional promise: “He who ascends to mountaintops, shall find”. The next line qualifies that promise. What awaits the climber is not an unobstructed panorama but “The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;”. The superlative “loftiest” magnifies the achievement, while “wrapt” makes the height seem enclosed and obscured. The summit is reached, yet its view remains clouded; elevation does not guarantee clarity or ease.

Ascent and Its Cost

The stanza then shifts from physical climbing to human power. Its parallel construction links the person who ascends mountains with the person “Who surpasses or subdues mankind”. The movement from “ascends” to “surpasses or subdues” places achievement and mastery beside one another without making them identical: the line allows distinction between exceeding others and overcoming them, while associating both with the height of the first image.

The consequence arrives in the final line: “Must look down on the hate of those below.” The upward view is also a view of hostility. “Must” makes that consequence sound compulsory rather than incidental, and “look down” echoes the literal position of the mountaineer while suggesting the unequal relation between the elevated figure and those beneath. The image therefore holds triumph and estrangement together. Height offers distinction, but it also makes antagonism visible and difficult to escape.

Framing Significance

As the opening device for “THE PINNACLE,” the epigraph supplies a compact interpretive tension rather than a plot report. The title promises a peak; Byron’s verse complicates what reaching one means. The clouds and snow qualify the apparent reward, and the concluding “hate” turns ascent into a condition of conflict. The poem’s paired movements—from mountain to human society, and from elevation to hostility—allow the part’s title to suggest both culmination and cost.

The epigraph’s force also lies in its position between two scales of experience. The preceding scene emphasizes Emma’s grief, care for her children, and consolation in family; the stanza broadens the frame to ambition, superiority, and resentment. It does not specify a particular antagonist or declare what Emma will do. Instead, it gives the reader a charged pattern through which to approach the new part: whoever rises high may discover that the summit is obscured, and that those left below are not necessarily admiring the ascent.