This is part two of my post about Messages in Fantasy. If you have not read the previous post, you can read it here.
Fiction, in
general, can be, and has been, a medium used by writers to express their
thoughts, passions and beliefs. Classic literature has been scrutinized in
classrooms and in non-fiction books for decades, spelling out the authors
meanings and intents. Fantasy fiction is no exception. It is a genre which is
more pliable for infusing meanings; however, one could spend years reading in
the genre and not really grasp what the author is wishing to convey—whether
it’s subtle or obvious. As I pointed out in my last post, the story is
everything, and a message should not overpower the story.
Now, this
is not to say that all of fantasy fiction has a “message” to put forth. Most of
the stories are just entertainment, as they should be, but, in the most part,
there is usually always some kind of theme. The sort of themes that you find in
most fantasy stories are things like: overcoming adversity and fears;
comradeship between individuals; fighting injustice; banding together for a
cause; discovery of one's potential; and what-ifs. This is only naming a few,
but these themes tend to be universal and less complex—or less intrusive, for
lack of a better word.
When an
author interjects their worldview into their stories the reader should be able
to come out of that story with their own conclusions, not with a forced view by
the writer. The reader may come away with misconceptions, but as long as they
enjoyed the book the author should be content. In answering a question in
regards to someone reading their own meaning into the story (fairytale),
instead of his meaning, George MacDonald said, “Why should you be so assured? It may be better that you should read
your meaning into it. That may be a higher operation of your intellect than the
mere reading of mine out of it: your meaning may be superior to mine.” In a
forum on his own website, author Stephen R. Donaldson wrote: “Reading is an interactive
process. Readers have always supplied their own interpretations of what they
read. In my case, the issue is simple: I've never had a ‘message’ I wanted to
communicate (impose on the reader), so rejecting my message should be effortless.
(I'm a storyteller, not a polemicist. As such, my only mission is to help my
readers understand my characters and appreciate what those poor sods are going
through.) In general, however, one might say that the task of any writer is to
communicate his/her intentions so clearly that the reader will—as it were
spontaneously—arrive at the appropriate interpretation. And if that task has
been accomplished, what would be the point of rejecting the author's message?”
Stephen R.
Donaldson’s The Chronicles of Thomas
Covenant the Unbeliever series has been described as “existential fantasy”.
The books hold a firm view of Existentialism, which gives the stories a pretty
grim, melancholy setting, as the main character, Thomas Covenant, is a leper
whose life collapses around him and he becomes a man of despair—suicidal—which
makes him into the kind of character you really don’t enjoy following. Existentialism
is a philosophical movement that sprung from Europe in the 19TH century, but rose to
prominence after World War II, which focuses on the human condition. In his
book, From Hegel to Existentialism, American professor of philosophy, the late Robert
C. Solomon, wrote: “Existentialism is not
simply a philosophy or a philosophical revolt. Existentialist philosophy is the
explicit conceptual manifestation of an existential attitude—a spirit of the
‘present age’. It is a philosophical realization of a self-consciousness living
in a ‘broken world’ (Marcel), an ‘ambiguous world’ (de Beauvoir), a ‘dislocated
world’ (Merleau-Ponty), a world into which we are ‘thrown’ and ‘condemned’ yet ‘abandoned’
and ‘free’ (Heidegger and Sartre), a world which appears to be indifferent or
even ‘absurd’ (Camus). It is an attitude that recognizes the unresolvable
confusion of the human world, yet resists the all-too-human temptation to
resolve the confusion by grasping toward whatever appears or can be made to
appear firm or familiar—reason, God, nation, authority, history, work,
tradition, or the ‘other-worldly’, whether of Plato, Christianity, or utopian
fantasy. The existential attitude begins with a disoriented individual facing a
confused world that he cannot accept.”
Solomon’s
summed-up description of Existentialism just about lays out the theme in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Author
Stephen R. Donaldson created a character that is a man in the real world, a
successful, bestselling novelist, with a wife and a son, and financially
secure, but he is diagnosed with leprosy, and all comes crumbling down. Thomas’
wife and son leave him, he loses his confidence and ability to write, and
people around him reject him as one accursed. One day he finds himself in
another world, known as The Land, where he is embraced as a foretold hero who
has returned to save them from Lord Foul. The people try to raise him up as
someone of great significance, but Thomas is determined not to believe such
things, and resists the inclination that this other world that he has found
himself in is real—so much so that he goes to the extreme of raping the
young woman that was simply trying to sympathize with him. The story follows
Thomas’ conflict of seeing himself as a man of any worth, holding on to his own
assured death in the real world, and resisting the realty of the “fantasy”
world (the Land). Thomas feels that the Land only offers a false hope,
something that gives him escape from his condition. However, as the story
progresses, Thomas begins to see that he is of worth and begins to resist the
thought of suicide. He begins to believe in the Land and the people around him,
and he sees himself as someone who can be effective.
Stephen R.
Donaldson’s choice to take a character and inflict him with one of the worst
diseases know to man, and bring him into loss and despair, illustrates a
character that takes an existential view of life. This character is aware of
his human condition as a leper and his assured death, but he later finds
purpose for his life; therefore, shunning the thought of suicide. His discovery
of purpose is not obtained from a higher power, but by taking his own action,
and being responsible for himself.
There are
essays and books that go into great detail in pointing out the Existential
themes in The Chronicles of Thomas
Covenant. One essay is called Suicide
and the Absurd by Benjamin Laskar, available online here. Books like Variations on the Fantasy Tradition by
W.A. Senior and Stephen R. Donaldson and the Modern Epic Vision by Christine
Barkley also discuss, in part, about the Existential message in Donaldson’s
work.
Donaldson
wrote in his essay, Epic Fantasy in the
Modern World: “Now that the door has
been opened, what I want to do is to bring the epic back into contact with the
real world. Putting it another way, I want to reclaim the epic vision as part
of our sense of who we are, as part of what it means to be human. For that
reason, I chose to focus my epic on one ‘real’ human being. . . He is an ‘Unbeliever’
precisely because I wanted to bridge the gap between reality and fantasy: I
wanted to take a fantasy-rejecting modern human being and force him to confront
all the implications of an epic vision. Epic vision is powerfully seductive—because
it is powerfully human—and I wanted to consider the question of what might
happen to a modern man who was seduced by such beauty. . . Also because I
wanted to bring the epic back into contact with the real world, I chose the
technical device of reversing Tennyson's method. He took one epic character,
Arthur, and surrounded him with ‘real,’ ‘modern’ human beings. I took one real,
modern human being, Thomas Covenant, and surrounded him with epic characters. .
.”
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
the Unbeliever is a
series that one either loves or hates. Not everyone can endure such a flawed
and depressing character long enough to see him overcome his despair; and the
Existential overtones flowing through Thomas Covenant may make an interesting
story for some, while causing others to discontinue their journey in the series.
See Part 3 of Messages in Fantasy here.
See Part 3 of Messages in Fantasy here.
