My Mini Essay, by BigBlueHead
Stunties and Longears: Themes of Identity in Fantasy Literature
Part 1: The Use of Archetypes to Support Identity
The use of intelligent non-human characters has been a long tradition in fantasy literature. In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Elves, Dwarves, Humans, Orcs, and Hobbits all represented different cultural and racial populations. C.S. Lewis, in the Chronicles of Narnia, wrote about human beings, but also a large cast of talking animals and mythic creatures such as fauns and dryads. The cultural variety that this provides in a fantasy story can be helpful in painting a more varied world that comes with its own premade division points to make cultural differentiation simpler for the reader. Rather than try to describe superficially similar characters in such a way as to accentuate their cultural differences, the author can explain a series of cultures in connection with superficial characteristics, and thereafter conjure a strong correlation with what people in the story look like (in the imagination of the reader) and how they behave.
Once the division is made properly in the narrative, a single word is enough to communicate the innate characteristics of one person - "The elf shook his head in disagreement." This is a powerful tool in storytelling, permitting a more compact text to deliver more meaning to the reader. Even in the case of a character who does not conform to the standards of their society, it is immediately a surprise to the reader - they do not need to relearn the entire social structure to be able to appreciate the importance of the "elf who doesn't speak to trees".
(John Cleese once spoke of the internal logic of a humourous sketch, saying that if a sketch begins with four people dressed as carrots sitting in dumpsters, and a person in a tuxedo walks onto the stage, the viewer will immediately ask why he is not dressed as a carrot and not sitting in a dumpster. This applies, in a certain way, to all storytelling; the beginning of the story is accepted as being its framework.)
However, the strong sense of culture in fantasy stories lends itself to a minor literary difficulty, which is what I shall call Appearance as Identity. This, in short, is where a person's characterization identifies so closely with their culture that different individuals of that culture are only really distinguishable by name. This is a form of laziness on the part of the author because it relies on the cultural background - itself sometimes only implied - to do the work of characterization.
An example of this problem is the animal-people story, an outgrowth of the talking animal stories like those of Thornton Burgess and Richard Adams.
The Talking Animal story generally refers to a story in which animals talk, and usually all share some common animal language, but otherwise generally go about being like the animals that they are supposed to be - birds fly and make nests, weasels and foxes hunt, toads eat flies and bury themselves in the mud. The only supposed difference between the real lives of animals and those depicted in the Talking Animal story is that we are permitted to understand communications that might go on between them.
I should briefly distinguish between the Animal-People story and the Anthropomorphized Animal / Furry story. The AA/Furry story generally assumes the burden of explanation as to where the anthropomorphized animals came from - seperate evolution, genetic engineering or mutation, or some explicable source. In science fiction, the AA's tend to be mutants or designer animals, or creatures from another planet; in fantasy AA stories they tend to take place in a different world where such creatures have existed as long as humans have on Earth.
This distinguishes these stories from the Animal-People stories, where if a person is a mouse, then even if they walk upright, speak English, wear clothes and shoes and live in a castle, they are still a mouse and identify directly with those characteristics that are traditionally associated with mice, usually even as far as relative physical size. Mice are shy and furtive, dogs are loyal and tenacious, weasels are malicious and violent. Although individual characters will have individual strengths and weaknesses, the assumed characterization of their species still predominates in their description. (Again, even if they are a "surprise", the nice weasel, the tough rabbit.)
This in itself is not a major literary problem; at worst it is a bit of laziness that will have a deleterious effect on an author's work, by weakening the individual presence of supporting characters. However, it has given rise to a larger problem, a kind of internal cultural stagnation that has become a characteristic of some fantasy writing.
Stunties and Longears: Themes of Identity in Fantasy Literature
Part 1: The Use of Archetypes to Support Identity
The use of intelligent non-human characters has been a long tradition in fantasy literature. In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Elves, Dwarves, Humans, Orcs, and Hobbits all represented different cultural and racial populations. C.S. Lewis, in the Chronicles of Narnia, wrote about human beings, but also a large cast of talking animals and mythic creatures such as fauns and dryads. The cultural variety that this provides in a fantasy story can be helpful in painting a more varied world that comes with its own premade division points to make cultural differentiation simpler for the reader. Rather than try to describe superficially similar characters in such a way as to accentuate their cultural differences, the author can explain a series of cultures in connection with superficial characteristics, and thereafter conjure a strong correlation with what people in the story look like (in the imagination of the reader) and how they behave.
Once the division is made properly in the narrative, a single word is enough to communicate the innate characteristics of one person - "The elf shook his head in disagreement." This is a powerful tool in storytelling, permitting a more compact text to deliver more meaning to the reader. Even in the case of a character who does not conform to the standards of their society, it is immediately a surprise to the reader - they do not need to relearn the entire social structure to be able to appreciate the importance of the "elf who doesn't speak to trees".
(John Cleese once spoke of the internal logic of a humourous sketch, saying that if a sketch begins with four people dressed as carrots sitting in dumpsters, and a person in a tuxedo walks onto the stage, the viewer will immediately ask why he is not dressed as a carrot and not sitting in a dumpster. This applies, in a certain way, to all storytelling; the beginning of the story is accepted as being its framework.)
However, the strong sense of culture in fantasy stories lends itself to a minor literary difficulty, which is what I shall call Appearance as Identity. This, in short, is where a person's characterization identifies so closely with their culture that different individuals of that culture are only really distinguishable by name. This is a form of laziness on the part of the author because it relies on the cultural background - itself sometimes only implied - to do the work of characterization.
An example of this problem is the animal-people story, an outgrowth of the talking animal stories like those of Thornton Burgess and Richard Adams.
The Talking Animal story generally refers to a story in which animals talk, and usually all share some common animal language, but otherwise generally go about being like the animals that they are supposed to be - birds fly and make nests, weasels and foxes hunt, toads eat flies and bury themselves in the mud. The only supposed difference between the real lives of animals and those depicted in the Talking Animal story is that we are permitted to understand communications that might go on between them.
I should briefly distinguish between the Animal-People story and the Anthropomorphized Animal / Furry story. The AA/Furry story generally assumes the burden of explanation as to where the anthropomorphized animals came from - seperate evolution, genetic engineering or mutation, or some explicable source. In science fiction, the AA's tend to be mutants or designer animals, or creatures from another planet; in fantasy AA stories they tend to take place in a different world where such creatures have existed as long as humans have on Earth.
This distinguishes these stories from the Animal-People stories, where if a person is a mouse, then even if they walk upright, speak English, wear clothes and shoes and live in a castle, they are still a mouse and identify directly with those characteristics that are traditionally associated with mice, usually even as far as relative physical size. Mice are shy and furtive, dogs are loyal and tenacious, weasels are malicious and violent. Although individual characters will have individual strengths and weaknesses, the assumed characterization of their species still predominates in their description. (Again, even if they are a "surprise", the nice weasel, the tough rabbit.)
This in itself is not a major literary problem; at worst it is a bit of laziness that will have a deleterious effect on an author's work, by weakening the individual presence of supporting characters. However, it has given rise to a larger problem, a kind of internal cultural stagnation that has become a characteristic of some fantasy writing.
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