“Afraid of dragons”

[Estelyn Telcontar]

and that's Green!

Isn’t it interesting that the book that laid the foundation for the fantasy novel, inspiring many authors (including Ursula LeGuin, in whose “Earthsea” books dragons play an important role) and sparking D&D games, contains not a single dragon?! The only ‘dragon’ encounters are both in the Shire - the Green Dragon and Gandalf’s dragon fireworks. Dragons are mentioned, but they are long ago and/or far away, and even those mentions are at the beginning of the story. The farther we get into the stuff of which legends are made, the less we hear about dragons.

I’m fascinated by this connection between the prosaic, everyday Shire and the ‘subversive’ fantasy creature. Though most hobbits did not consciously believe in dragons, the idea/ideal still existed; an Inn, a most important establishment for their society, was named after a dragon. Was there a subconscious longing for the adventurous, disruptive, unpredictable, even dangerous, lurking inside them? Gandalf’s comment on their inner toughness could be taken to indicate something similar.

Tolkien, who considered himself quite hobbit-like, said of himself as a child in his essay “On Fairy-Stories”:

I desired dragons with a profound desire.

The context of that statement is worth quoting more fully:

I never imagined that the dragon was of the same order as the horse. And that was not solely because I saw horses daily, but never even the footprint of a worm. The dragon had the trade-mark Of Faërie written plain on him. In whatever world he had his being it was an Other-world. Fantasy, the making or glimpsing of Other-worlds, was the heart of the desire of Faërie. I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighbourhood, intruding into my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fàfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril. The dweller in the quiet and fertile plains may hear of the tormented hills and the unharvested sea and long for them in his heart. For the heart is hard though the body be soft.

In pondering over the fantastical use of dragons in fantasy, I realized that to me, at least, it is important that the dragon is sentient. A dragon who is huge, dangerous, uncontrollable is only an animal, not much different than a dinosaur – and I don’t consider dinosaurs to be fantasy creatures. [As there is some (sketchy, perhaps, but nonetheless) physical evidence of their existence, they feel (pre-)historical, not mythical, to me.] But a dragon who can think and speak, now that is so scary that I’m glad it’s not real! What could happen if I listened to him? Dragons are often said to enchant if one looks into their eyes or listens to their voice.

Tolkien does write stories with dragons, of course. The Silmarillion, which I have read but do not recall in enough detail to discuss now; The Hobbit, with Smaug; and Farmer Giles of Ham, with Chrysophylax. Those two dragons speak and are cunning in their thinking – worthy rivals for the pluckiest human. But why did the man who "desired dragons" not include any in his greatest work?