Michael Adams Thinks. . .

Michael Thinks …Low Fantasy is Cool Enough For School

By: Michael Adams

Despite numerous warnings and various deterrents, I decided to do the unthinkable: watch the BBC version of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. For two hours, I watched with amusement as the incredibly average Richard Mayhew was transplanted from the mundane reality of London Above to the mysterious world of London Below. While the mini-series was not as bad as I was led to believe, I was left with two major feelings. First, I was stunned that all of the characters in the show had thick British accents. As I read the novelization of the series, it had never occurred to me that Richard and his companions would have accents. Secondly, and more importantly, I also felt a renewed interest in Richard’s journey through John Campbell’s Monomyth and its relationship to low fantasy. As opposed to the far-fetched, high fantasy adventures of characters like Ged in Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea , Richard’s experiences were more relatable to the average audience member.

After indulging in the exquisite quality and special effects of late 1990’s television, I looked back at the novelization and felt like I could form a strong connection to Richard’s experiences. During the “Call to Adventure” stage, in which the protagonist of the story leaves his or normal life and enters into an unfamiliar world, Richard helped Door, a young girl form London Below whose “face was crusted with dirt and [whose] clothes were wet with blood” Neverwhere. In the same way, while good Samaritans do not typically carry people back their homes, seeing one person helping a complete stranger is not completely uncommon in the normal world. Similarly, Richard’s “Crossing the First Threshold” consisted of crossing Night’s Bridge with the young rat-speaker Anesthesia and voyaging to the Floating market. Although I have never felt darkness, as Richard put it, “slip into [my] lungs, behind [my] eyes, and into [my] mouth”, an irrational fear of the dark and nightmares are an experience that many young children have lived through and huddled by their teddy bear night lights to escape.

On a very different note, the events that the main protagonist in Le Guin’s novel encountered were much more alien. Since high fantasy books like A Wizard of Earthsea heavily rely on the mystical and magical aspects of the story, the Monomyth also revolves around these concepts. For the “Call to Adventure”, for instance, Ged harnessed his newly found control over the elements to “[weave] fog and scare off Kargish swordsmen with a mess of shadows” A Wizard of Earthsea. Despite overcoming small obstacles as a young child, like learning how to ride a bike, I have never single handedly saved my town from utter destruction at the hands a menacing army. As a result, I found it more difficult to relate to Ged’s entrance into the unknown since his world was already so different from my own. Correspondingly, the “Crossing the First Threshold” stage of his journey was also far-fetched. Before leaving to attend Wizardry school on the island of Roke, Ged’s mentor Ogion bestows the “real” name Sparrowhawk onto Ged, stating, “Do not try any tricks with the sea and the winds of the sea, Sparrowhawk; you are a landsmen still”. While nicknames and name changes are commonplace in today’s society, a system of forgotten names that pervades humans and nature is a larger concept that may be more difficult to grasp.  

  After comparing the mini-series and novelization with Le Guin’s story, I came to one the conclusion:  low fantasy is high fantasy with accommodations for human expectations. In low fantasy, the plot is based on the manipulation we know into a new world, as opposed to high fantasy, where a new world seems is built from scratch. Based on this distinction, two completely different approaches can be taken to writing fantasy. On one hand, in high fantasy stories like A Wizard of Earthsea, the author is able to explore grander ideas such as a “scale head, spike-crowned, and tripled tongued” dragon. On the other hand, low fantasy writers can play on the sensibilities of their audience by mixing the past and present in the underbelly of a modern city Neverwhere. Either way, both captivate the reader, taking their minds away from the normalcy of reality.