 Fantasy: July 30, 2014 Issue [#6461] |
  Fantasy
This week: Monsters Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
-Friedrich Nietzsche |
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Monsters
They're a staple of both classic and modern fantasy, and they're integral to fantasy role-playing games and their video game equivalents, but really, what is a monster?
Zombies, trolls, werewolves, hobgoblins, whatever... they seem to exist for the protagonist to fight, to prevail against before moving on to the next. In the works of Tolkien and beyond, they're either obstacles for the hero to overcome, or provide the Big Bad Evil Thing that's making the world a worse place to live.
Now, I'm no postmodernist - if I were, I wouldn't be editing a Fantasy newsletter - but it's my considered opinion that, in fantasy or science fiction, all monsters are metaphors.
I'm not Joseph Campbell, so I'm not going to get into all the mythological basis for this, but read his stuff if you're interested. He has, for example, a wonderful treatise on Star Wars as modern mythology. I'm just going to keep this simple:
You're born, you struggle, you die.
The dying part isn't usually covered in stories in America. We need our happy endings. One day I'll understand the cultural bias that requires this, but suffice it to say that not all cultures share this need. Read Russian literature if you want to be depressed. So I'll concentrate on the other parts. As I've said elsewhere, there are no happy endings; there are merely stories that end too soon.
So, you're born, and you're thrust into a world that you have to struggle to comprehend, something alien and vast and unfathomable. You have a Wise Elder, your parents or whatever, who guides you through the first part of life, and tries to convince you that the monsters you're certain are hiding in the bed and in your closet are not real, while simultaneously trying to convince you that the gods are real.
Then you go off into the world pretty much on your own. Your Wise Elders aren't around to slay the monsters any more, so you have to do it yourself. All the stuff of day to day existence, you figure it out based on your previous experience and what your elders taught you. Sometimes you prevail. Sometimes you don't. Worse still, there's the inner conflict, the one against your childish nature, the part of you that wants instant gratification, or, on a darker note, can lead you to addiction or crime.
These are all monsters, and they're represented in fantasy and science fiction by ogres, aliens, kaiju, or whatever.
In fantasy, the hero overcomes the obstacles and prevails. It's what we want for our own lives. Reading it gives us the sense of satisfaction we need, the idea that the struggle CAN be won.
Whether that's true or not, I leave as an exercise to the reader. |
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