“Afraid of dragons”

[davem]

How can I answer this question - not being an American?

Well, it has been said that ‘reality is for people who can’t handle science fiction’ & I suppose one could add that ‘science fiction is for people who can’t handle fantasy’.

Sf is a kind of middle ground between reality & fantasy - Sf writers seem to feel a need to base their stories in the known & provable - well, provable in terms of known scientific theories. If an sf writer has a dragon in his/jher story they would have to ‘explain’ how it could be that a lizard could have fly & breathe fire. The explanation would be necessary if the story was to be sf - if they didn’t have such an explanation it wouldn’t be science fiction.

So, fantasy requires a leap of faith (in the author), & at the least a suspension of disbelief. The fantasy writer says ‘In this story there are dragons - if you cannot accept that, go away. I will not explain how they ‘work’ - how they fly & breathe fire. All I will say is that there are flying, fire breathing dragons in this story.

‘Here be Dragons’ produces two responses in readers (as it did in those who saw the words on old maps). Some will want to avoid such things, others will seek them out. And that’s not a matter of the potential danger involved. Those who would seek out the dragons would, I guess, seek them out even if they knew of the danger - in fact, the danger would be part of the attraction.

Are Americans (& Canadians) afraid of dragons? Are they afraid of monsters? And if they are, would that lead them to avoid them or seek to destroy them? I am afraid of dragons, but I’d love to see one. In fact, I think i’d sacrifice a great deal to see one (perhaps I’d be sacrificing myself).

The dragon is a subtle foe. It is wise & magical. So, are Americans afraid of those things - wisdom & magic? What did Le Guin mean? Afraid of dragons! With all those guns & bombs, & all those computers?

The dragon - raw, uncontrolled (uncontrollable) nature - for what is more natural than a dragon. No, its not just merely natural, its super/hyper/ultra-natural. Why, I bet that all those bullets, & bombs (& computers) would just bounce off a dragon.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

What is being subverted here? What values are being endangered? Will the dragon eat Mom and the Apple pie both?

I suppose there were early maps which showed the Americas as a vast blank space, with nothing but pictures of dragons & the location of El Dorado. But then, why would all those proto-Americans go there if they were afraid of such things?

Or have Americans become too settled, too lacking in the pioneer spirit, too much like hobbits (perhaps ‘an invasion of dragons would do them good’)?

What do dragons (or the idea of them) subvert? The idea that we can make ourselves totally safe? The idea that we can be completely in control? That everything can be regulated & our world made just like the Shire?

The dragon makes us powerless. Just in its presence. Just by the fact that it exists.

Its that fact that makes them so frightening (& so alluring). We are helpless in the face of raw nature - which is why we’re drawn to it, I suppose. Fantasy subverts all the things which separate us from our true selves - our egos, our desire to be in control, to have everything explained (away). It says ‘Here be Dragons. Here be mysteries. Here be things you’ll never understand, never account for, never (really)know. Here, in this place, you’re an ignorant child, not an all wise, all knowing, all controlling ‘grown up’.

In Faerie the fear of Dragons is the beginning of wisdom.

[Carorëiel]

What a fascinating topic. Cool.

My guess is that in the statement that people are afraid of dragons, dragons are meant to be a metaphor for subversive elements, whatever form those subversions may take. If one holds up fantasy and speculative fiction as inherently subversive, dragons work as a representation of what people are afraid of, i.e. anything that is different, or rather anything that is presented as differing from the norm of reality without apologizing for being different. As davem implied, a fantasy story would not explain what a dragon was; it would be assumed that dragons are "normal" and thus need no more explanation than would, say, a dog in a story about reality, such as it is. I think that's what people are afraid of and what is, generally speaking, subversive about fantasy. It's not necessarily any one specific point of social commentary (though it can be) but rather the suggestion that there could be a reality other than our own that is just as "normal" as ours. If dragons can be accepted as normal and without need of explanation, what might be next. Gay marriage? A bit of a leap, I think, but to someone afraid of social change, anything that indicates thinking beyond the defined accepted sphere of what is "good," or "proper," or "moral," or "real," or whatever could be scary.

As far as Tolkien and subversion goes, I'd say Tolkien is subversive in the general way that I've mentioned above. He presents a world that is not, on the surface, in line with the reality one encounters when one walks out his front door. As with other fantasy, by offering another way for things to be without any indication that that alternate reality is weird or strange, he creates the potential of opening the door to questioning our own reality.

But I think Tolkien is subversive in more specific ways, as well. This might sound odd, but I believe that by holding up conservative values, Tolkien was being subversive. In a society becoming increasingly capitalistic, he offered a world where there seems to be no money and where characters value abstractions (like loyalty, friendship, nobility, etc) over things or products. In a time when industrialization was the norm, he presented a world where industry was aligned with evil. (This point, I believe, was also mentioned by davem.) And, in a world increasingly concerned with power, who had it, and how it was spread out, he wrote a story in which the ultimate source of power (the ring) is destroyed rather than used. I think this may be the most subversive idea in Tolkien's work.

[ElanorGamgee]

I’m currently taking a Tolkien literature class of sorts: “Literature, Religion, and Culture.” We’ve had some pretty interesting discussions on the unique nature of Tolkien’s world and have tackled the unpopular status his works have in the eyes of many contemporary literary critics. It’s interesting to compare who Tolkien’s literary contemporaries were: Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, James Joyce, pioneers of the stream-of-conscious style. Pablo Picasso was at the forefront of the artistic movement. Freud was radically changing the way we think about ourselves. The world of art was forever changed, fragmented and unstructured, and the old traditions were made unpopular.

Tolkien published after World War I, a war that soldiers entered with strong ideals of honor and bravery and left (those who made it out) jaded and disenchanted after stalemates and mass slaughter and onslaughts of nerve gas. Tolkien, too, served in WWI, lost all of his friends in battle, and came down with a serious case of trench fever (which probably saved his life, as it got him away from the frontline)…but he did not lose those ideals. They shine forth boldly in his writing, but his values had been abandoned by his literary contemporaries. His ideals were deemed obsolete, and Tolkien’s works were largely ignored or patronized by the new literary establishment. In this way, I would say that Tolkien, like many other fantasy writers, is very much “subversive.” He and other fantasy writers dare to take ideals of the past, often in medieval or otherwise archaic settings, and present them as an acceptable way of thinking and living. Science fiction is also interesting in this regard: these writers will often carry out the mindset of our times to its logical conclusion, letting apathy toward morality and attacks on the dignity of man become a “Brave New World” or freedom-stifling trends shape the world of 1984. Fantasy looks to the past for renown, and sci-fi mourns its death.