Naima Muckom: "Dear Bridget Smith: Important Elements in Fantasy"

Dear Bridget Smith: Important Elements in Fantasy

By

Naima Muckom

One element of fantasy that I enjoy is Jason Cambell’s explanation of The Hero’s Journey, also known as the Monomyth, the typical formula for a fantasy story which authors can use to write their books.  The Monomyth is a cycle that consists of three main stages: Separation, Initiation, and Return.  Most books follow this cycle and one benefit of books following this cycle is that it helps me as the reader to feel comfortable because I know what will happen in the book.

However, after a while of reading fantasy book that follow the Monomyth, it can become a bit boring.  I still enjoy reading those types of books and just because a book follows the cycle doesn’t mean I won’t read it.  In fact, some of my favorite books, such as the Harry Potter series, and the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series follow the Monomyth.  But, I do appreciate books that differ from the stages of the Monomyth once in a while.  After reading several books that follow the Monomyth, a book that doesn’t follow it can be refreshing and more interesting.  For example, one specific stage of the Monomyth is the “Belly of the Whale” in which the hero leaves their current world to enter another.  Instead of having the hero stay in the unknown world throughout the entire story, I think it would be interesting if they switched between the worlds.    If a book has variations of the stages of the Monomyth, it would stand out to me among other books because I wouldn’t be getting what I anticipated of the story.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s books had three stages that readers went through: Recovery, Escape, and Consolation.  Most fantasy books, if not all of them, are also written in a way that makes readers go through these stages.  Because I’m a huge fan of fantasy and use it as a way of escaping the real world, I greatly value this element of fantasy.   The Recovery stage helps me get immersed into the story and back into fantasy.  The Escape allows me to hide away in a fantasy world and escape the real world and its troubles.  And finally, Consolation helps me feel positive and energized after finishing the book.  I find this element of fantasy extremely valuable and it is one of the main elements that I look for in a good book.

Another element of fantasy is archetypes.  I read A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin and it surprised me because of the archetypes it broke which made it unique.  A story that follows too many archetypes becomes too predictable and boring.  Yes, Le Guin’s book was the one of the first books about wizards and wizard schools to exist, but I had grown up reading more recently written books and “popular” books.  Because of this, I had certain expectations of a book about magic due to the archetypes set by the books I had grown up reading.  For example, I was surprised that the main character, Ged, tried to use as little magic as possible.  I wasn’t used to this idea since most characters with magic use their powers whenever useful to them.  Also, Le Guin chose to have Ged travel unaccompanied on his journey.  There also wasn’t a set series of goals he had to reach which lead him to his final challenge.  For a majority of the book, Ged is just traveling with no specific goal.  This made the story more interesting because I anticipated one thing but something else actually happened.  In my opinion, this bait and switch idea caused by breaking the archetypes makes the story better.  I do believe however, that not all the archetypes should be broken.  If too many archetypes are broken, I start to dislike the book because nothing is expected and I like being able to predict what will happen in a story to a certain extent.  Archetypes serve to make a story more organized and it’s similar to “shorthand” writing for readers so that readers can more immediately be immersed into the story.

Because of this, I find that a book should try to vary a little in the Monomyth and should break archetypes once in a while.  However, I think the strongest element of fantasy that authors should try to incorporate is the three stages the readers go through when reading a story.