Echo Mountain

Dogs arise as a multi-dimensional symbol throughout Echo Mountain, but primarily as a symbol of The Force of Healing. The novel opens as Ellie carries a seemingly dead puppy in her arms. She instinctively gets an urge to plunge the puppy into a pail of cold water: “The flicker, the flame, the voice all tugged me toward the bucket where I plunged the baby dog deep into the cold, cold water and held him there until I felt him suddenly lurch and struggle” (4). Ellie names her new companion Quiet, and Samuel comments that the dog’s name is “a heartbeat name. You know: two parts. Ba-bum. Ba-bum” (6). Samuel’s remark illustrates the dogs’ secondary purpose as a symbol: they serve to unite two worlds.

Ellie regularly draws parallels between the dogs and her family and friends. When she first holds Quiet, she feels “as if [she] had two hearts but only one of them beating” (3). She also brings Quiet to see her father often, and she notices that they both keep their eyes closed and sleep all the time. When Quiet finally opens his eyes, Ellie is certain that her father soon will too. She puts Quiet on her father’s chest, telling him, “Teach daddy how to open his eyes while we’re gone” (280). Cate’s dog, Captan, helps to unite Ellie’s and Cate’s families and as a result heal both Ellie’s father and Cate. He wakes Ellie’s mother one day, coaxing her into Ellie’s father’s room. Ellie understands that Captan wants her mother to play her mandolin, and when she plays her song alongside Captan’s barks, together they wake up Ellie’s father. Soon after, Larkin arrives with a doctor and Cate’s wound is stitched.

The mandolin that Ellie’s mother owns acts as a symbol of The Duality in All Things and the connection between seemingly distinct worlds, those of Ellie’s family and Cate’s family. Ellie and her family were forced from their life in the town of Bethel when the stock market crash left both of Ellie’s parents without work. They moved to the mountainside with almost nothing and built a new life together. One of the only possessions that Ellie’s mother kept was her mandolin, which she used to teach music but also to play for her family and teach her children how to play. When her husband sinks into a coma, Ellie’s mother puts the mandolin in the corner to collect dust. When Ellie learns that Larkin’s father was the luthier who crafted her mother’s mandolin, she knows that the instrument can act as the bridge between the two families and possibly even help save her father.

The mandolin also serves as a symbol of The Force of Healing. Ellie’s mother refuses to play it while her husband is in a coma, until the day she picks it up and awakens her sleeping darling. She “began to pluck the strings softly, one by one, turning the knobs on the neck of her mandolin, of her Keavy, until the notes rang true. Whatever true is. And Esther went still. Even Samuel went still. And Cate began to smile” (337).