Hate your family? Become a fantasy hero. Or maybe not.
What makes for a page-turning story? What's the engine that makes a narrative speed along like The Little Engine that Could? I've got a suggestion, one that I think works for at least some stories: hatred. You start out by drumming up a little hatred in your readers for the protagonist's enemies (like every single Harry Potter book does with the Dursleys and with the Magical Enemy du Jour -- Draco, Gilderoy Lockhart, Umbridge, Voldemort). Then let the hated villains torment the protagonist for a while, so the energy of readers' hatred builds and builds and builds. Then, when readers can't stand the strain any longer, BOOM, ZAP, BANG -- punish those enemies! Kill them off (Voldemort), or, if you're really sophisticated, let them live, humiliated (Umbridge), defanged (Lockhart), or continually forced to acknowledge the protagonist's supreme good fortune and general all-around coolness (Draco).
Oh, yeah. It may be politically incorrect to say so, but this splenetic plot line seems to underlie a lot of stories. J.K. Rowling has a black belt in the Literature of Tooth-Grinding Resentment, but she certainly didn't invent it. Think of Cinderella triumphing over her step-sisters (in the original version, the sisters have to dance in red-hot shoes until they die). Think of the Death Star blowing up at the end of the first Star Wars. Back in the olden days the theater erupted in cheers when that happened, despite the fact that yeah, the Death Star had a lot of people on board. But those were the bad guys, and the movie had just spent a lot of time teaching us to hate them. So: watching those pestilential scum flame out to their death? Oh, yeah. It felt GOOD. Zap! Bang! Yum.
True, some hated villains get to be redeemed (Darth Vadar, Snape). They also get to be conveniently dead. What a sad coincidence.
I've been thinking about this question a lot recently because I've just finished rereading a story that tries to do without hatred as much as possible. There are villains, sure, but not very many of them by Harry Potter/ Brothers Grimm standards, and the hero's life is remarkably -- almost eerily -- free from conflict. Harry Potter hates hates hates HATES his family; this kid loves his and gets on with them remarkably well. Harry Potter wants nothing more than to escape into a realm of magic entirely separate from the sad pedestrian world where he grew up. This kid also has magic thrust upon him, but right at home, which he has no desire to leave. This kid doesn't escape on a train to an isolated magical school; instead, the world shimmers, and the dearly loved landscape of home reveals previously hidden depths. It's strange and marvelous and sometimes terrifying -- but it's still home, and worth protecting for that reason.
Okay, well and good. Maybe there are stories about hatred and stories about love, yay! Only, not quite yay, and here's why. Harry Potter, the series, is wildly popular. This other book is loved by many, but is much, much less popular. In a recent attempt to make it into a movie, it was seen as so inherently defective that just about everything I've just said about it was changed.
I'm referring to Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, and for me, its relative obscurity raises a disturbing question: is it true that stories that depend on hatred just work better for more people? Do stories need that nasty little explosion of oh-fuck-you at the beginning to get the action going?
I love The Dark is Rising. But more than any other author I've read, Cooper's worked to give her hero a home life that's almost conflict-free, and yes, that does have an effect on how you process the story. This becomes particularly clear when you compare her to a writer who almost does without hatred -- Tolkien. Both Bilbo and Frodo leave the Shire partly because of some external force or threat (Gandalf, Black Riders) but also because -- and this is absolutely crucial to who they are -- they're at least partly discontented with the Shire's limitations. Yes, they love the Shire. In the case of Frodo they want to save it. But something in them would die if they were limited to the Shire and its ways, and so, with a strange combination of regret and eagerness, they go.
That's a very, very grown-up spin on hatred: the sort of transitory flash of mild repulsion one feels for something that's simultaneously irritating and valued. Considered on the Potter Scale of Hatred, it falls at about 0.000015432. But it's enough to get the action going (after lengthy dilly-dallying in Frodo's case, but it does happen).
The Dark is Rising has none of that. I don't want to spoil the plot for anyone who hasn't read it, so I'll just give two examples that hopefully won't give too much away. First: the only time the hero (Will) becomes even mildly enraged happens not in the novel's grand climax but in the middle, when the villain visits Will's family at home on Christmas Day and makes mildly malevolent small talk. Eek! Only, not eek, because this is who Will is. Home is Will's center, the heart of his being. The slightest touch of evil there is a violation that can't be borne.
One other example of how Cooper's universe is relatively free from conflict: the way she shows the hero transitioning from the ordinary world to the world of magic. No fleeing in the dead of night, no magical train that takes him from all he knows. Instead, while he's singing Christmas carols with his family, he realizes that though the music has continued seamlessly, his family's voices have stopped. He's now singing along instead with his Mystic Wizard Guide, who proceeds to take him to a version of the familiar world that stands outside of time. The magical world and the ordinary world are quite literally in harmony with each other, and that's not just a plot point but an essential element of Cooper's imagined cosmology.
Now I feel like committing sacrilege for so baldly summarizing a moment that's exquisitely beautiful in the book, but I hope this shows the extent of the genre difference we're dealing with here. Cooper's books aren't just tentative 1960s fumblings at young adult fantasy before J.K. Rowling turned up and showed people How It Should Be Done. They are an entirely different kind of fiction, relying almost exclusively on a sense of beauty and wonder to drive the reader's interest in the story. If the beauty of Will's world and his close relationship with his family don't catch your interest, then the narrative has almost nothing for you. Eventually there is conflict with Forces of Darkness, sure, but on the heroes' side at least it's not driven by hatred. At one point Cooper explicitly says that the Light battles the Dark not out of malice but because that's the nature of things. Other books make a similar claim in passing, but here's where Cooper's different: the details of her characterization back this up. Her heroes, by and large, don't hate. They can be frightened, but hatred? No.
And if as a reader you're in the habit of connecting with your heroes by sharing their hatreds, this kind of narrative can be disorienting. It can leave you feeling as if there's not quite anything there to grasp, no purchase for you as a reader. Reading Cooper is, in a way, strangely like reading a book meant for angels.
As I said, I love Cooper. My imagination is a richer place for having her world in it. I reread her regularly. But I have to admit that even to me, a huge fan, her world feels like a more static place than some other fantasy worlds that I also enjoy. She's a pleasure, but a pleasure of a very distinct kind. I don't think there are many other books that try to move us (and their narratives) with the mere power of goodness, and I can't help wondering why that's the case.
Maybe Hazlitt said it best:
Nature seems (the more we look into it) made up of antipathies: without something to hate, we should lose the very spring of thought and action. Life would turn to a stagnant pool, were it not ruffled by the jarring interests, the unruly passions, of men. . . . . there is a secret affinity, a hankering after, evil in the human mind, and . . . it takes a perverse, but a fortunate delight in mischief, since it is a never-failing source of satisfaction.
The essay from which this quote comes ( On the Pleasure of Hating), is famously cynical. I'm incredibly glad Cooper exists, and if there IS of pleasure of hating, it's certainly not the only pleasure out there. But taking a look at many of the stories we read and enjoy -- does Hazlitt have a point?
(PS: If you're a Dark is Rising fan, do check out sistermagpie's ongoing weekly read-through of the series on thedarkisrising. A chapter a week, new chapters every Saturday -- they're midway through the first book, Over Sea, Under Stone, right now.)
ETA: The lovely and talented hyel has pointed out that it was Snow White's stepmother who had to dance in red-hot shoes until she died. Cinderella's stepsisters had their eyes pecked out. Yuck! Must have blocked that out of my mind.
Oh, yeah. It may be politically incorrect to say so, but this splenetic plot line seems to underlie a lot of stories. J.K. Rowling has a black belt in the Literature of Tooth-Grinding Resentment, but she certainly didn't invent it. Think of Cinderella triumphing over her step-sisters (in the original version, the sisters have to dance in red-hot shoes until they die). Think of the Death Star blowing up at the end of the first Star Wars. Back in the olden days the theater erupted in cheers when that happened, despite the fact that yeah, the Death Star had a lot of people on board. But those were the bad guys, and the movie had just spent a lot of time teaching us to hate them. So: watching those pestilential scum flame out to their death? Oh, yeah. It felt GOOD. Zap! Bang! Yum.
True, some hated villains get to be redeemed (Darth Vadar, Snape). They also get to be conveniently dead. What a sad coincidence.
I've been thinking about this question a lot recently because I've just finished rereading a story that tries to do without hatred as much as possible. There are villains, sure, but not very many of them by Harry Potter/ Brothers Grimm standards, and the hero's life is remarkably -- almost eerily -- free from conflict. Harry Potter hates hates hates HATES his family; this kid loves his and gets on with them remarkably well. Harry Potter wants nothing more than to escape into a realm of magic entirely separate from the sad pedestrian world where he grew up. This kid also has magic thrust upon him, but right at home, which he has no desire to leave. This kid doesn't escape on a train to an isolated magical school; instead, the world shimmers, and the dearly loved landscape of home reveals previously hidden depths. It's strange and marvelous and sometimes terrifying -- but it's still home, and worth protecting for that reason.
Okay, well and good. Maybe there are stories about hatred and stories about love, yay! Only, not quite yay, and here's why. Harry Potter, the series, is wildly popular. This other book is loved by many, but is much, much less popular. In a recent attempt to make it into a movie, it was seen as so inherently defective that just about everything I've just said about it was changed.
I'm referring to Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, and for me, its relative obscurity raises a disturbing question: is it true that stories that depend on hatred just work better for more people? Do stories need that nasty little explosion of oh-fuck-you at the beginning to get the action going?
I love The Dark is Rising. But more than any other author I've read, Cooper's worked to give her hero a home life that's almost conflict-free, and yes, that does have an effect on how you process the story. This becomes particularly clear when you compare her to a writer who almost does without hatred -- Tolkien. Both Bilbo and Frodo leave the Shire partly because of some external force or threat (Gandalf, Black Riders) but also because -- and this is absolutely crucial to who they are -- they're at least partly discontented with the Shire's limitations. Yes, they love the Shire. In the case of Frodo they want to save it. But something in them would die if they were limited to the Shire and its ways, and so, with a strange combination of regret and eagerness, they go.
That's a very, very grown-up spin on hatred: the sort of transitory flash of mild repulsion one feels for something that's simultaneously irritating and valued. Considered on the Potter Scale of Hatred, it falls at about 0.000015432. But it's enough to get the action going (after lengthy dilly-dallying in Frodo's case, but it does happen).
The Dark is Rising has none of that. I don't want to spoil the plot for anyone who hasn't read it, so I'll just give two examples that hopefully won't give too much away. First: the only time the hero (Will) becomes even mildly enraged happens not in the novel's grand climax but in the middle, when the villain visits Will's family at home on Christmas Day and makes mildly malevolent small talk. Eek! Only, not eek, because this is who Will is. Home is Will's center, the heart of his being. The slightest touch of evil there is a violation that can't be borne.
One other example of how Cooper's universe is relatively free from conflict: the way she shows the hero transitioning from the ordinary world to the world of magic. No fleeing in the dead of night, no magical train that takes him from all he knows. Instead, while he's singing Christmas carols with his family, he realizes that though the music has continued seamlessly, his family's voices have stopped. He's now singing along instead with his Mystic Wizard Guide, who proceeds to take him to a version of the familiar world that stands outside of time. The magical world and the ordinary world are quite literally in harmony with each other, and that's not just a plot point but an essential element of Cooper's imagined cosmology.
Now I feel like committing sacrilege for so baldly summarizing a moment that's exquisitely beautiful in the book, but I hope this shows the extent of the genre difference we're dealing with here. Cooper's books aren't just tentative 1960s fumblings at young adult fantasy before J.K. Rowling turned up and showed people How It Should Be Done. They are an entirely different kind of fiction, relying almost exclusively on a sense of beauty and wonder to drive the reader's interest in the story. If the beauty of Will's world and his close relationship with his family don't catch your interest, then the narrative has almost nothing for you. Eventually there is conflict with Forces of Darkness, sure, but on the heroes' side at least it's not driven by hatred. At one point Cooper explicitly says that the Light battles the Dark not out of malice but because that's the nature of things. Other books make a similar claim in passing, but here's where Cooper's different: the details of her characterization back this up. Her heroes, by and large, don't hate. They can be frightened, but hatred? No.
And if as a reader you're in the habit of connecting with your heroes by sharing their hatreds, this kind of narrative can be disorienting. It can leave you feeling as if there's not quite anything there to grasp, no purchase for you as a reader. Reading Cooper is, in a way, strangely like reading a book meant for angels.
As I said, I love Cooper. My imagination is a richer place for having her world in it. I reread her regularly. But I have to admit that even to me, a huge fan, her world feels like a more static place than some other fantasy worlds that I also enjoy. She's a pleasure, but a pleasure of a very distinct kind. I don't think there are many other books that try to move us (and their narratives) with the mere power of goodness, and I can't help wondering why that's the case.
Maybe Hazlitt said it best:
Nature seems (the more we look into it) made up of antipathies: without something to hate, we should lose the very spring of thought and action. Life would turn to a stagnant pool, were it not ruffled by the jarring interests, the unruly passions, of men. . . . . there is a secret affinity, a hankering after, evil in the human mind, and . . . it takes a perverse, but a fortunate delight in mischief, since it is a never-failing source of satisfaction.
The essay from which this quote comes ( On the Pleasure of Hating), is famously cynical. I'm incredibly glad Cooper exists, and if there IS of pleasure of hating, it's certainly not the only pleasure out there. But taking a look at many of the stories we read and enjoy -- does Hazlitt have a point?
(PS: If you're a Dark is Rising fan, do check out sistermagpie's ongoing weekly read-through of the series on thedarkisrising. A chapter a week, new chapters every Saturday -- they're midway through the first book, Over Sea, Under Stone, right now.)
ETA: The lovely and talented hyel has pointed out that it was Snow White's stepmother who had to dance in red-hot shoes until she died. Cinderella's stepsisters had their eyes pecked out. Yuck! Must have blocked that out of my mind.