Yeti in Tintin in Tibet (Hons: Sem-III: CC-VI, Popular Literature)

Yeti in Tintin in Tibet

Q. The Character of Yeti in Tintin in Tibet

Answer: The most sympathetic portrayal of the creature appeared in Herge’s comic, Tintin in Tibet. The creature is initially suspected to the villain to blame for the disappearance of Tintin’s friend, Chang Chong-Chen. In the end, it seems that when a plane crash, the friendly yeti rescued Chang and kept him safe in a cave.

According to the legend of Tibetan Mountain valley where The Himalayan snowman existed in the folklore of both the Sherpas of Nepal and the Lepchas of Sikkim, the Yeti is an ape-like hairy creature bigger than the average human being, who “carries a large stone as a weapon” and makes a “characteristic whistling sound”. While the Sherpas consider catching a sight of him ominous, the Lepchas worship the creature as a god for hunting, Siiger wrote.

However, The Yeti is a large ape-like creature said to inhabit the Himalayan regions of Nepal, and Tibet. While the Yeti's existence is still believed in by native people of central Asia, the scientific community usually regards the yeti as nothing more than legend, given the lack of any conclusive evidence to support the mythology surrounding it. However the creature very much does exist as Tintin encountered the yeti in Tibet while he is looking for his lost friend Chang.

Tintin hears tales of the yeti from locals he encounters and is additionally warned concerning them by his guide, Tharkey. The yeti rescued Chang from the wreckage of the crashed plane, and carried him to shelter in a cave, where he rests, recovering his strength. Once the Yeti see's the search party, not knowing their intentions and perhaps thinking they mean to harm Chang, he takes the boy and flees to his true home, a cave in the Horn of the Yak, a mountain in a much farther location.

After Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock discover the Yeti's cave they wait for it to leave and attempt to rescue Chang. The yeti returns to his cave before Haddock can warn Tintin, and he reacts with anger upon seeing Tintin taking Chang away. When he reaches toward Tintin and sets off the flash bulb of the camera, it scares him away. Tintin and Haddock carry Chang back to the village of Charabang, and he explains to them that the Yeti was the one who actually saved him after the crash and took him away from the rescue parties. Along the way, they briefly encounter the Yeti again, but he is scared off this time by Haddock blowing his nose.

After Chang has been prepared for comfortable transport, he, Tintin and Haddock are met ceremonially by the Grand Abbot and an emissary group of monks, who take them back to Khor-Biyong, where Chang recovers. As their party travels away from the monastery, they hear the Yeti's howl one final time, Chang muses that the Yeti is by no means a wild animal, but instead has a human heart and soul to which Tintin agrees is possible. Alone again yeti sadly watches their departure from a distance but does nothing else as it possibly now understands that Tintin's intentions were to help Chang.

The yeti became a topic of worldwide fascination thanks to a photo of a footprint clicked by English mountaineer Eric Shipton in 1951 on the Menlung glacier in the Nepal-Tibet border, during an expedition to Mount Everest. The mountaineers would find unexplained footprints along the way, which could belong to any animal. But the horrified locals would immediately attribute them to the yeti.

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