thomas merton the seven storey mountain summary

These books became instrumental for his conversion to Catholicism. Meanwhile, Merton began to read books by Roman Catholic writers. As a result of his disappointment, he left communism. But later the young communist was disappointed to find out that communists, having excluded Him, and all moral order with Him… were trying to establish some kind of a moral system by abolishing all morality in its very source” (146). As a communist, he started blaming his society for his unhappiness: “it was not much I myself that was to blame for my unhappiness, but the society in which I lived” (133). Yet he acknowledges: “It was not the right conversion, but it was a conversion. In the course of time, however, he turned to communism, “a step to moral conversion” (131). Merton describes himself, in his early years, as “an extremely unpleasant sort of a person-vain, self-centered, dissolute, weak, irresolute, undisciplined, sensual, obscene and proud” (132). An important theme that runs through the book is his quest for happiness. In this piece the author chronicles his spiritual journey from the world to the monastery. Merton completed this book in 1946 at the age of thirty-one, and published it in 1948. He is particularly well-known for his autobiographical work, The Seven Storey Mountain, an account of his life from 1915 to 1944. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948, 429 pp., hardcover.īorn in France in 1915, grew up in the U.S., and died in Thailand in 1968, Thomas Merton, is regarded as one of the most celebrated Catholic writers of the twentieth century.

Thomas merton the seven storey mountain summary