The power and the glory
This is a tale of two tendencies, tendencies among tales, but also tendencies among the wishes nestled deep within the hearts of readers — especially little boy readers. (There is a like tale to tell about the wishes deep in the hearts of little girl readers, but the ‘spheres of influence’ involved differ.)
Superboy
On the one side, you have the Superboy, here represented by Robert Jordan’s Rand al-Thor, the hero of his Wheel of Time series of epic fantasy tales. In the first of these tales, The Eye of the World, we follow three boys from a small town on an unfamiliar, though Earth-like, world, perhaps long ago, perhaps far in the future; since all histories rise and fall like the turning of the great cosmic Wheel which Jordan says governs the Universe, past present and future are irrelevant.
Among these three lads, we are told, there is a prophecy. One of them is destined for greatness. One of them is the reincarnation of the Dragon, a mythical hero, the Hero of Humanity, who has come and gone innumerable times through the ages, always opposed by the great Enemy of Humanity, who likewise has come and gone. The last time this Hero appeared, he did so under the nickname of the Dragon, and it is this rebirth that has been so long rumored, anticipated, and feared.
The agents of Death and Evil, working for the great Enemy, are abroad, looking for the boy said to be the Dragon Reborn. The first such agent we see is a Black Rider on a black horse, whose presence brings a chill, and whose essence is sensed as evil and threatening by all even from afar.
The first of the three boys we meet is Rand, son of Thor, or Rand al-Thor. The Black Rider is stalking Rand. Soon enough it will lead its ghastly followers into Rand’s home, murder his father before Rand’s eyes, and cause Rand to run for his life. Along the way he will pick up his two best friends, who happen to be the other two boys of the prophecy. (There are actually, as I recall, other boys in other villages and cities the prophecy might indicate, all born on a certain summer, with other considerations. But these three are the tale’s main focus, and we are given no doubt that the Dragon Reborn will prove to be one of them.)
Through the 10,000 pages (I overstate…a little) of the tale, we follow the three boys on their adventures, chased and seeking, led at first by a mysterious priestess, a member of a special order of women with great powers, and her swordsman lover/slave/guardian. The boys part ways, but mostly we follow Rand al-Thor, and sure enough, at the Eye of the World, Rand shows that he has powers greater than any ordinary human, and he (seems to) exterminate the Evil One. This victory is an illusion, however, and we will follow Rand and his two friends (both of whom also have special fates and talents) and a cast of dozens, through ten other novels and a prequel. (Jordan died, unhappily, not long ago, leaving the final volume unfinished.)
Rand al-Thor has amazing powers. He is the most powerful man alive who is able to tap into the Source, the power that runs and sustains the cosmos. He becomes one of the top swordsmen of his age. Acknowledged as the Dragon Reborn, he is heir to the allegiance of all monarchs and priestesses, the titular leader of Humanity against the Evil One, who has broken his ancient bonds, and is once more exerting his malevolent powers upon the world, bent upon its destruction.
Everyboy
On the other side from Rand al-Thor, you have Frodo Baggins, the protagonist of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic tale, The Lord of the Rings. He too is sought after by the Evil One, and he too is chased by Black Riders (I have little doubt that Jordan wrote his way into The Eye of the World as a Tolkien pastiche, as he had written Conan pastiches in the 1980s, which is why I use Rand as the exemplar of the Superboy. But over the course of the dozen volumes of The Wheel of Time Jordan wrote his way apart from Tolkien.)
The tale of The Lord of the Rings is probably too well-known to bear summarizing. Enough to point out some salient differences between Tolkien’s tale and Jordan’s — and between Tolkien’s tale and almost all the other Hobbit pastiches that have been written over the past 30 years.
For the differences are fundamental. Frodo is not the great man to come and rule and save — that part is played by Aragorn son of Arathorn. Frodo has no special powers beyond an innate decency and stubborn goodness of spirit said to be a perverse part of the Hobbit kind. Where Rand carries within himself access to great power — and can be said to be himself a great power — Frodo has none; rather he carries a ring, the Ring of Power, which has come into his hands through accident — the sort of accident a benevolent God seems often to effect. And in the end, it is Frodo’s weakness that is his strength; but his victory is not one any boy would boast about, nor does Frodo. For he failed, in the end, to overcome the malignant influence of the Ring, which fell into dissolution only because Frodo was set upon by Gollum, a sort of inverse image of Frodo, who only by his own frenzied leaping to possess the Ring falls with it into the Cracks of Doom.
The Lord of the Rings was an immense success worldwide, and has spawned many imitators. Almost all of these pastiches and homages and copies have changed the essential relationship Frodo bears to Power in the tale; they all tell of Frodo as Superboy, the One Foretold, the Future King, even as Jordan did with Rand al-Thor (and Rand’s two friends, though neither turns out to be so great as the Dragon Reborn, are also figures of legend and destiny, and in any other tale would be superheroes themselves. Both qualify as Superboy figures).
These Tales are about Ourselves
Bruno Betelheim would tell us that in fairy tales, little boys see themselves as princes, even though the characters begin as beggar boys. They all grow up to marry the King’s daughter, the highly sought-after Princess, and come into kingship of their own. Betelheim would say that this is all psychological, that it mirrors the urge of the young boy to find and found and become Master and Father of his own house some day; furthermore, when the young boys read how the abandoned or lost princes or beggar boys end as Kings and rulers, this gives solace to the boys who read, that one day they too will win a princess of their own, with a kingdom to go with her.
This may well be true, and it may be that the boys inside the talesmen who wrote all the Tolkien pastiches are speaking their own hearts, writing as boys to other boys, and telling of these very hopes and truths.
Thus we would say that Tolkien wrote perhaps not humbly, but as a grown up man, speaking to children (for he originally wrote The Hobbit out of bedtime tales he had told his own children, and The Lord of the Rings he wrote more or less for money, as The Hobbit reborn) and thinking of them as children. His hobbits are strictly patterned after children, small and ever-hungry. But Jordan wrote from his boyish heart, as a boy to fellow boys (and girls) who see themselves not as children but as grownups already.
But in keeping with yesterday’s post on fascism in the United States military and its relation to popular fantasy tales (‘Willie and Joe vs. Conan’), we must look upon these tales of Superboy with some skepticism.
(Composed on keyboard Monday, July 14, 2008)
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