Summary of Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I was born in 1915, in a war-torn world. My parents were artists, and I inherited their integrity and their capacity for work and vision. But I also inherited their dissatisfaction with the world’s condition. #2 My father, Owen Merton, was a music master and a pious man who taught at Christ’s College in Christchurch, on the South Island. He had a lot of energy and independence, and he told me how it was in the hill country and in the mountains of the South Island. #3 My father had come to the Pyrenees because of a dream he had of living in France and raising a family. But when the friends of his wife and him came to visit, they brought the newspapers, which depicted the Allies overcoming the Germans. My grandparents were worried about my mother being in a land at war, and they could not stay much longer at Prades. #4 My American grandfather, Pop, was a buoyant and excitable man who, on docks, boats, trains, in stations, in elevators, on busses, in hotels, in restaurants, used to get keyed up and start ordering everybody around. My grandmother, Bonnemaman, was the opposite and her natural deliberateness and hesitancy increased in proportion to Pop’s excesses.