It’s Called Low Because it Reminds you How Low your Life is
By Marisol Flores
If I were to recommend any fantasy
book, I would suggest Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea for those who
are high fantasy lovers and wish to be emerged in a new world that replaces
everything we know. For the low fantasy lovers, who wish to maintain within the
world they know but wish to comingle with a different world, I would encourage
them to read Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. Even
though one of the books is low fantasy and the other is high fantasy, both
allow the reader to go through Tolkien’s framework. Yet, both novels go through
the framework a little differently.
In the essay, “On Fairy Stories”,
Tolkien suggested that there are three aspects present in the “world of
Faerie”, Recovery, Escape, and Consolation. Recovery means that readers are
able to reconcile their inner child. Escape signifies the reader’s ability to
leave the restrictions of the real world behind. Consolation for readers means
that the reader is consoled by being given a happy ending.
A
Wizard of Earthsea allows readers to recover throughout the high fantasy
novel. The new world that readers are encountering has no restrictions like the
world we known. Anything is possible in this new world. We must look at Ged’s
world with open eyes, ready and awaiting anything new that may arise. We must
keep in mind that in this world, magic and dragons are able to appear at any
point in the novel just because they can!
In comparison, Gaiman allows
readers to recover in a similar way. Yet, there are more restrictions in this
world because the world we know still exists. But, that does not stop Gaiman
from inserting things such as rat speakers and door openers. Yet, in Gaiman’s
world the recovery stage is not as drastic as Le Guin’s because of the presence
of the world we know.
Escape,
is experienced in Le Guin’s novel from the introduction of the world Earthsea.
Le Guin begins the novel,” The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its
peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for
wizards.” From the beginning, Le Guin tells the reader that in this world there
are little restrictions. Unlike the world the reader knows, in this world magic
is a possibility.
In
Gaiman’s novel, escape is not nearly as extreme. The reader is able to leave
the world they know, yet it is still present to the main character. Readers may
be more reluctant to the new world because the world we know still exists and
both the reader and the main character know it.
Finally,
consolation is where we see the most differences between low and high fantasy.
In the end of A Wizard of Earthsea (**spoiler
alert**), Ged confronts his shadow and discovers that the shadow is a part of
him. The shadow is he himself. The reader is thus given a happy ending. Ged no
longer has a shadow following and haunting him.
In Neverwhere, the consolation given to the
reader is essentially that our life sucks and Richard Mayhew’s life is awesome.
Richard, unlike us, has the ability to return to London Below. He has the
capability of returning to the exciting and adventurous world beneath London
Above. Yet as readers, we are left here in the boring world represented by
London Above. Readers may be consoled by the idea that our life is much safer
than London Below, but other than that, life is rather boring.
Low and
High fantasy allow the reader to go through a novel and encounter the three
aspects of Recovery, Escape, and Consolation. In high fantasy all three of the
components are clear and evident. Meanwhile, in low fantasy the three parts are
not as extreme. In some cases, such as Neil Gaiman’s novel, the reader has a
rather sucky form of consolation. So both high and low fantasies are great
genres but if you look for more intensity of the three components of Faerie
stories, then go for high fantasy!
Marisol, I'd suggest an alternative way to describe the difference in how low and high fantasy create a sense of "recovery" in the reader. In high fantasy, the reader recovers the childlike ability to believe in a never-never-land, so to speak; we don't have to reconcile the world we know with the world that is presented, because we're clearly shown that the world we know has been replaced by this alternative universe. In low fantasy, there is a still a marked kind of "recovery" the reader undergoes, but it might be more complex, the kind of childhood gymnastics in which we are engaged when we talk to our imaginary friends or decide that we were actually switched at birth with some other kid and that's why our letter from Hogwarts never arrived on time. Because we have to work our childlike belief that the world still holds the capacity for the fantastic in between the cracks of the adult world we've come to know, there's still an act of recovery there, but it's subtle. We have to learn how to look at our OWN world as a source of unknown wonders, instead of wiping the slate and replacing the image with someone altogether different.
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