51 pages • 1-hour read
Seven Years In Tibet
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, graphic violence, and death.
Personal Transformation Through Adversity
Harrer’s journey is not only one of physical survival but of deep spiritual and personal transformation. Although Harrer faces many hardships during his trek to Lhasa, he eventually gains insight and maturity through overcoming challenges and setbacks. Thus, throughout the memoir, Harrer explores personal transformation through adversity.
Harrer depicts himself as someone who, from an early age, longed to test his endurance and push the limits of human achievement. He depicts his early mountaineering excursions as foreshadowing his later exploits, emphasizing his athletic abilities and mental stamina. When his first escape attempt from the prisoner-of-war camp in India fails, he presents himself as disappointed but not discouraged, immediately planning his next escape instead of giving up. This self-portrait thus presents Harrer as someone who thrives in adversity instead of turning away from it.
Once Harrer and Aufschnaiter successfully escape from the camp, they must endure many months of deprivation and physical hardship on their way to Tibet. As Harrer and Aufschnaiter travel deeper into the Himalayas, they battle frostbite, starvation, and exhaustion. Harrer also complains that, the deeper they go into Tibet, the more resistance and suspicion they face from some of the locals, who know that they are trespassing in what is usually a forbidden land to foreigners. This chronic hardship and sense of rejection often takes an emotional toll on the men, with Harrer remarking, “Somewhat depressed we returned to our tent, which was for us a little home in the midst of an interesting but oddly hostile world” (29, emphasis added). Nevertheless, despite these obstacles, the men refuse to give up and eventually reach Lhasa.Though Harrer never converts to Tibetan Buddhism, he comes to respect it deeply, admitting, “The time we had spent in this peaceful corner of the world had had a formative effect on our characters” (193, emphasis added). After meeting the Dalai Lama and becoming his tutor, Harrer feels even more attached to Tibet, presenting himself as someone who has become an ”insider” with intentions to stay permanently, as opposed to a foreigner seeking temporary refuge.
Through suffering, endurance, and cross-cultural exchange, Harrer ultimately undergoes a profound transformation, emerging not as a survivor, but as someone spiritually awakened by a world far removed from his own.
The Value of Cultural Encounter and Adaptation
Throughout his memoir, Harrer depicts his years in Tibet as an important opportunity for learning and embracing a culture and society very different from his own. While Harrer retains some biases toward the Tibetans, he nevertheless suggests the value of cultural encounter and adaptation through recounting his experiences.
At the beginning of his journey, Harrer often views Tibet through a lens of Western skepticism and detachment. He and his fellow escaped prisoners tend to treat the locals they meet along their route with arrogance and aggression, such as when they threaten some locals into giving them a goat after the locals refuse to hand the animal over. Harrer and Aufschnaiter also ignore local expertise, such as when they are told that Khampas, a group of dangerous robbers, lurk along a particular route and that the men should therefore take the alternate path. The men dismiss this advice and take the path anyway, which leads to a near-fatal encounter with the Khampas shortly afterwards. The men also repeatedly refuse to obey government orders, such as when they are told to go to Nepal instead of pushing into Inner Tibet, only for the men to escape into Inner Tibet anyway. They are also repeatedly asked to leave Lhasa at first, but refuse to go.
However, as Harrer and Aufschnaiter spend more time in Tibet, Harrer begins to notice aspects of Tibetan culture that he admires. Despite his background as an SS member and a European raised on ideas of Western superiority, he finds himself increasingly drawn to Tibetan humility and devotion. The Dalai Lama’s “modesty was a source of perpetual wonder” (265) to Harrer, emphasizing his growing admiration for a culture once so strange to him. Instead of dismissing Tibetan beliefs as superstition, Harrer learns to honor them. Though he never fully adopts Buddhism, he writes, “I have always envied the Tibetans their simple faith, for all my life I have been a seeker” (60). Through mutual respect and curiosity, this exchange becomes deeply transformative, with Harrer gradually regarding Tibet as his new, permanent home instead of a temporary place to hide until the end of the war.
Harrer leaves Tibet not just with memories but with a new understanding of purpose and peace. His wish that the book fosters “some understanding for a people whose will to live in peace and freedom has won so little sympathy from an indifferent world” (288) serves as both a tribute and a call for empathy between cultures, born of curiosity and respect.
Nature as Barrier and Sanctuary
A significant portion of Seven Years in Tibet details Harrer and Aufschnaiter’s escape from India to Tibet, detailing their many sufferings along the way. While the men must struggle to overcome the many obstacles the landscape presents, they also grow to admire its beauty and power. Through both the highs and lows of their time in Tibet, the memoir explores nature as barrier and sanctuary.
During the early months of their escape, Harrer and Aufschnaiter often experience their natural surroundings largely as a barrier that threatens their physical and emotional well-being. Harrer describes the difficult conditions of their trek, such as their chronic hunger and thirst, their fear of exposure and capture, and their struggles to maintain their physical endurance over so many miles of strenuous trekking. At several moments of their journey, Harrer experiences the landscape as “hostile,” as though nature itself is trying to destroy their chances at obtaining freedom.
However, as the men move further into Inner Tibet, Harrer begins to recognize more deeply and more often how nature can also be a source of beauty and sanctuary. The harsh terrain of Tibet, its ancient rituals, and its deeply spiritual people begin to soothe and inspire him. Harrer becomes overwhelmed by the beauty of the land, such as when he describes, “the terraced monastery with its gold-pointed roof-pinnacles gleaming in the sunlight and the waters of the Sutlej flowing below” (30). Similarly, pilgrims building stone heaps at Mount Kailas speak to a culture steeped in sacred tradition, “grown through the centuries to giant proportions, expressing the childlike piety of the pilgrims, each of whom, following ancient observance, adds fresh stones to the heaps” (44). Harrer sees the Tibetans as living in harmony with their natural surroundings, with nature becoming a protective force instead of a hostile one.
Harrer himself gradually becomes touched by the landscape, regarding it as a source of spiritual nourishment instead of a mere obstacle to be overcome. The serenity of places like Longda monastery, sitting 700 feet above the valley, moves Harrer. His own transformation within his surroundings reaches a critical moment upon first seeing Lhasa: “We felt inclined to go down on our knees like the pilgrims and touch the ground with our foreheads” (111).
In depicting himself and Aufschnaiter as “pilgrims,” Harrer forms an important contrast to his earlier assertion that they moved forward with the ambition of “explorers,” suggesting an important shift from an antagonistic, domineering attitude toward the landscape into a position of humility, gratitude, and even reverence, transforming the nature of Tibet into a sanctuary for both men.
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