The Seven Storey Mountain

The Seven Storey Mountain: An Autobiography of Faith (1948) is Thomas Merton’s account of his early life and spiritual journey toward becoming a monk at the age of 26. Merton wrote the book in two-hour daily stints of personal time in a monastery, and it was published when he was in his early thirties. Although the book focuses on Merton’s spiritual life and includes long passages of religious reflection, the book is conceived as an autobiography: Merton recounts his early childhood years in France, his relationships with his parents, his college years, and so on. The Seven Storey Mountain is considered a classic in the literature of Catholic spirituality, but also brought Merton mainstream fame beyond religious circles. This guide refers to the 1998 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company Fiftieth Anniversary Edition.

Content Warning: The book referenced in this guide contains death, war, poverty, gambling, profanity, and racial discussion.

Plot Summary

The book’s title is a reference to Dante’s Divine Comedy, which describes Mount Purgatory with seven tiers that correspond to sins that should be purged on the spiritual journey toward the top of the mountain, called the earthly paradise. The journey is an allegory for the Christian life. The structure of Merton’s book also refers to the Divine Comedy, with its threefold division of Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

The book follows Merton’s life chronologically, but with much retrospective commentary. In Part 1, Merton discusses his family, their attitudes toward life, and the place where he grew up. Although he was born in Prades, France, in 1915, he spent much of his childhood in New York and England. His mother died of stomach cancer when he was a child. His father, after taking him on many travels, died of a brain tumor while Merton was in college. In his youth, as Merton tells it, he is aimless and sponge-like, absorbing everything without being able to fully comprehend it. This spiritual adriftness is reflected outwardly in his poor health; he nearly dies of blood poisoning due to a tooth infection. That this hellish experience wasn’t a wake-up call to Merton shows just how far he has to go to find God.

In Part 2, he grapples with himself and his life choices and sees his journey as akin to ascending a mountain. He becomes a Catholic and begins his slow ascent toward his ultimate spiritual goals, although he still makes some poor life choices along the way. Merton is quick to learn that, despite his awakening and rebirth, he has a long way to go spiritually. It isn’t about doing good deeds for the sake of being good but about living in accordance with and proximity to God. Becoming a Catholic as an adult means that he is like a newborn in the religious realm, but he doesn’t diminish the significance of this phase. In fact, he notes how important those first steps are, and like all first steps, he faces a few stumbles but learns from them and keeps on walking.

In Part 3, Merton commits to becoming a monk, although he is denied from the priesthood. Eventually, he finds his way to the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. He fears that his past will hold him back, but the Abbey welcomes him and his devotion to God. There, he is encouraged to write because they believe he can help many souls. Merton represents his entrance into the monastic life as an analog to entering an earthly paradise, which maintains the analogy between his book and the Divine Comedy.

Merton’s autobiography describes his spiritual journey from a secular childhood in France to a devout Catholic and Trappist monk in Kentucky. It is important to note that Merton is only 31 at the end of the autobiography, and turned 33 in the year it was published, so it isn’t a complete portrait of his life, let alone his spiritual life. Merton’s book was widely praised for its intelligence and sincerity upon its publication, and Time magazine counted it as one of the best-selling nonfiction books of 1949.