My Side of the Mountain Study Guide

Literary & Historical Information

An important part of growing up is being able to take care of oneself and not rely on others. This real life concern can be heightened dramatically when a young person's self-sufficiency becomes a necessary part of survival. Survival tales about adults are in themselves often dramatic and powerful, as the image of man against nature ' or man in communion with nature ' plays upon the delicate balance between man's progress and the forces beyond his control. The image of children alone in the wilderness goes back throughout much of known history, including stories of abandonment such as the baby Moses being sent down the Nile, as well as more heroic tales such as the Japanese legend of Momotaro, who gathered animal companions on his quest to defeat an island of demons.

In modern times, dramatic stories of wilderness survival remains popular for both young readers and adults. There are many non-fiction accounts as well as those inspired by real events, including Jack London's autobiographical tales of the Klondike in the late 1900s, most notably the short story "To Build a Fire". Nonfiction wilderness survival stories continue to be popular to this day, including such works as Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild where people choose to leave civilization to be closer to nature, as well as stories built on a disaster where people must survive against all odds, such as Piers Paul Read's Alive!.

Fictional accounts of surviving in the wild have a particularly rich history for young readers, including Newbery Award winning books such as My Side of the Mountain and Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins. Jean Craighead George has built a career on stories about nature, including not only the Mountain Series ' with My Side of the Mountain as the first of the trilogy ' but also Julie of the Wolves, which is itself the first in a trilogy. Another notable writer of nature for young readers is Gary Paulsen, whose multi-book Brian's Saga begins with Hatchet. And while many such stories are about individual children forced to fend for themselves, perhaps the most famous story of children forced to survive in the wild involves a group effort: William Golding's Lord of the Flies.

In having Bando nickname Sam "Thoreau", there is an explicit link made between this book's message of selfsufficiency and the philosophy of Transcendentalism as promoted by such writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Useful texts in this regard are Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance", Thoreau's essay "Civil Disobedience", and most importantly Thoreau's book Walden, where the author recounts living in relative isolation from civilization and the lessons learned from this self-imposed experiment.