MYTHOS

On Story

King Arthur as one of the Nine Worthies, ca. 1385

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There are two things which, in my view, forge human society and distinguish civilisations. The first of these is music, the second is story. Music is a topic which lies outside the scope of this present article, but I think I shall have to address it at some length later.

For those unused to abstract discussions of concepts like ‘story’ (as opposed to ‘stories’) and such, what I mean is this. Everyone loves stories. Telling them, writing them, hearing them, being in them as well, though perhaps not always to the same extent. To discuss what I want to discuss, though, it’s necessary to go up into the clouds, so to speak, and view the great tapestry of individual stories, myths, legends, as Story, or Mythos; a greater category. I will not be restricting story to merely literature (though I would like to) but I include media such as films and television in the category of story.

So what is it about story that so pervasively forges a people? Well, as I said above, everyone loves stories. Why is that? One might say the reason is entertainment. It certainly seems to be these days, with stories being enjoyed on screens at a greater rate than in the pages of books (a shame). But is it really only entertainment, and no other reason? Would fandom exist if it were merely entertainment? Would merchandise of various sorts exist? Would not the majority of television programmes and films die in obscurity once the majority of people lost interest and ceased to be entertained?¹ I think it’s not just entertainment that drives people to consume stories. After consuming these stories, they then tell them. To carry on with the screen media example, this is why spoilers are a problem.

Story, I argue, forges one’s worldview like almost nothing else does. I thank that when one hears a story, one has, for a time, a playground of a sort in which to experiment, observe, learn, and take the findings away, once playtime is ended, into the real world as beliefs. This is important. Nobody believes in a vacuum, absent of exterior forces. You are an object which will remain at rest, in ignorance, unless acted upon by an outside force.² Thankfully, the universe is full of such forces, and story is among the most powerful. My reasons as to why this is the case are threefold.

1. Identity

Story forges identity because it not only entertains but involves one, and one is invested in the tale sometimes even to the extent that one gets withdrawal symptoms upon ending the story. When you enjoy a story, it makes a deeper impression on you than just ‘I found this story entertaining’. When you enjoy a story, it contributes to a genre of the kinds of stories you enjoy, and the similar motifs in each steadily contribute to a list of tropes which impact you most. For instance, for some, a romance novel grants them this experience more than a classical epic will. The story tropes of two lovers captivate them in a far deeper sense than tragedy, irony, and death in an epic novel would. This is entirely subjective experience. As the Latins put it, de gustibus non est disputandum.³ This gradually-assembled genre of stories one likes, I argue, leads one to define oneself according to it. ‘These are the kinds of stories I like’ begets an attachment. This begins to shape a worldview.

2. Worldview

As ones preferred story genre takes shape as one reads more.⁴ This begins to alter how one sees the world. I believe the reader of romances, who gains joy from their favourite romantic tropes, begins to see the world more in context of the characters and stories they love than outside this context. Likewise, the lover of history⁵ sees the world in context of real life tropes: real trends of human behaviour which their reading has directed them to note. Once again, the lover of fantasy and fairytale will begin to see the world in the context of (if the fantasy is any good) the war between good and evil, and the glimpses of fleeting beauty in an otherwise stained and fallen world. Not everybody will fall completely into one genre and see the world entirely through one lens, of course. But you are what you read, so to speak.

3. Escapism

Story accomplishes the above most powerfully because you are entering another world. For a time, you are not on earth, you are not in your lounge room, you do not have work in the morning or an exam later the next day. You are in Narnia, Middle Earth, Derbyshire, Ancient Rome, Edgestow, or some other such setting. You are enjoying a story, but you are immersed in the story. If you look at it a certain way, a book is more vivid virtual reality than anything else man has yet devised. And here’s the best part. You can explore this world to an infinite extent while you’re there. You can return to it as many times as you like to find out more. The best stories are boundless worlds full of delightful discoveries unknown even to the author. In this world, one can conduct thought experiments. One can interact with the characters, too, and involve them in your experiments. A puzzling question of morality can be taken into The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and one can observe and compare the behaviour of Edmund with Lucy, and see if a compelling answer to the question does not present itself.

The strength of story in forging identity and worldview lies here. Escapism is good and healthy. I often remind my 10 year-old sister that books are the safest place for her to explore new concepts and learn new things. Children should be exposed, within reason, to evil in the stories they enjoy. This is essential to a firmly rooted Christian worldview. This experience of story is magical to children if it is not squeezed of all life and joy. Fairytales in particular cultivate a love for stories in children of a young age, from whence their voracious appetite for stories and literature in general only increases as they get older. The educational and intellectual benefits, I can say from my own homeschooled childhood, are immense. Through the books that came into my hands, I learned much about the world and came to love learning for its own sake. Knowing things became an end in and of itself, to me. I also came to love many characters whose journeys and personalities shaped my worldview and became role models for me. A few examples are Peter and Prince Caspian from The Chronicles of Narnia, and Boromir, Sam, and Eomer from The Lord of the Rings. There are many more. These become friends, and you want to return to the stories in which you encountered them to catch up with them and spend time with them once again.⁶

Before I close, I’d like to provide a tangible (you will see why I call it tangible in a moment) example of what, in my opinion, really makes or breaks story. It’s a length except which comes from, as will be unsurprising to those who know me well, The Lord of the Rings.

The upper wind settled in the West and deeper and wetter clouds rolled up to spill their laden rain on the bare heads of the Downs. Nothing could be seen all round the house but falling water. Frodo stood near the open door and watched the white chalky path turn into a little river of milk and go bubbling away down into the valley. Tom Bombadil came trotting round the corner of the house, waving his arms as if he was warding off the rain — and indeed when he sprang over the threshold he seemed quite dry, except for his boots. These he took off and put in a chimney-corner. Then he sat in the largest chair and called the hobbits to gather round him.

‘This is Goldberry’s washing day,’ he said, ‘ and her autumn-cleaning. Too wet for hobbit-folk — let them rest while they are able! It’s a good day for long tales, for questions and for answers, so Tom will start the talking.’

He then told them many remarkable stories, sometimes half as if speaking to himself, sometimes looking at them suddenly with a bright blue eye under his deep brows. Often his voice would turn to song, and he would get out of his chair and dance about. He told them tales of bees and flowers, of the ways of trees, and the strange creatures of the Forest, about the evil things and the good things, things friendly and things unfriendly, cruel things and kind things, and secrets hidden under brambles.

As they listened, they began to understand the lives of the Forest, apart from themselves, indeed to feel themselves as the strangers where all other things were at home. Moving constantly in and our of his talk was Old Man Willow, and Frodo learned now enough to content him, indeed more than enough, for it was not comfortable lore. Tom’s words laid bare the hearts of trees and their thoughts, which were often dark and strange, and filled with a hatred of things that go free upon the earth, gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning: destroyers and usurpers. It was not called the Old Forest without reason, for it was indeed ancient, a survivor of vast forgotten woods; and in it there lived yet, ageing no quicker than the hills, the fathers of the fathers of trees, remembering times when they were lords. The countless years had filled them with pride and rooted wisdom, and with malice. But none where more dangerous than the Great Willow: his heart was rotten, but his strength was green; and he was cunning, and a master of winds, and his song and thought ran through the woods on both sides of the river. His grey thirsty spirit drew power out of the earth and spread like fine root-threads in the ground, and invisible twig-fingers in the air, till it had under its dominion nearly all the trees of the Forest from the Hedge to the Downs.

Suddenly, Tom’s talk left the woods and went leaping up the young stream, over bubbling waterfalls, over pebbles and worn rocks, and among small flowers in close grass and wet crannies, wandering at last up onto the Downs. They heard of the Great Barrows, and the green mounds, and the stone-rings upon the hills and in the hollows among the hills. Sheep were bleating in flocks. Green walls and white walls rose. There were fortresses on the heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords. There was victory and defeat; and towers fell, fortresses were burned, and flames went up into the sky. Gold was piled on the biers of dead kings and queens; and mounds covered them, and the stone doors were shut; and the grass grew over all. Sheep walked for a while biting the grass, but soon the hills were empty again. A shadow came out of dark places far away, and the bones were stirred in the mounds. Barrow-wights walked in the hollow places with a clink of rings on cold fingers, and gold chains in the wind. Stone rings grinned out of the ground like broken teeth in the moonlight.⁷

One does not simply read this. One experiences it. Tolkien has us sit by the fire with the hobbits and listen to Tom Bombadil, Iarwain Ben-Adar,⁸ tell us the tale of all the years he has seen in his land since before the Dark Lord came to Middle Earth. Tom’s story does for the hobbits what every story worth the time spent experiencing it does for us. It transports us and takes us on a journey. As we experience the story of The Hobbit, for instance, we are among the companions of Thorin Oakenshield journeying to Erebor, then we are lurking in the dark with Bilbo as he plays riddles with Gollum, then we are kneeling amidst the wrack of the Battle of Five Armies hearing Thorin Oakenshield’s last words. Story is not a thing one reads as much as it is an experience one shares in, and shares with others. There is no art quite like story which we possess which does this for us. Music functions in a similar way, but the experience of music is not of the same kind.

If having read through this article you have realised that the Scriptures function in this very way, you are correct, I believe. The Word of God is a story, and it is a story which The Lord of the Rings can only hope to imitate as a glass darkly. We experience the story as we read Tolkien, but we live the story, as the Church, the body of Christ, as we read God. The entire Bible is the epic tale of how Christ set out to win His bride, and despite the best (but futile) efforts of Christ’s enemy, the Dragon who oppresses the Woman who Christ loves, the Dragon is destroyed utterly. The promises of Christ to His bride are the promises to us. They are fulfilled and yet unfulfilled. Fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Christ which redeemed His bride, and yet to be fulfilled in the return of Christ and the end of the age, where He will come and take His bride to dwell with Him forever. But the story does not end there, because there begins the eternity in which the story becomes fully real. The mystery of which the story taught us is revealed to us. The stories we write, read, experience, and share are imitations of the great story God has written, and that story is a prophesy of the life of the world to come.

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Sunday Evening

Lord, Almighty God and Heavenly Father, I thank You from the bottom of my heart for all the fatherly gifts and kind favours that You have shown me today and that You have preserved me from all evil. As Your dear child, I ask that You would graciously keep me in Your Word, which alone brings salvation, until the sigh of my last breath. Illumine my heart with Your Holy Spirit, that I may discern the good and evil. And may all my sins, those that I have knowingly committed and those that remain hidden to me, be forgotten in Your mercy. Give to me this coming night a peace that comes from knowing You, that I may awake again refreshed and healthy in order to praise You. Dear Father, grant me peace that my life may be pleasing to You and befitting the salvation won for me in Jesus Christ, Your dear Son, my one and only Lord. Amen. (33)

1. Yes, that reference came into my head too. But this is not an article about movies.

2. Perhaps Newton’s laws of motion apply also to metaphysics, not just physics. An idea for a future article.

3. ‘Concerning tastes there is to be no dispute’, an ancient Roman saying of unknown origins.

4. I believe this process has to begin in childhood if any real love of story is to be best preserved into adulthood. It is not strictly necessary, one can cultivate it later in life, but as I will mention later childhood is crucial.

5. This is story too, technically. More perhaps on this later.

6. This is why I have read through The Lord of the Rings approximately 4-5 times, with countless other dip-ins.

7. The Fellowship of the Ring, pt. 1 chapter 7, pp. 129-130

8. Oldest and Fatherless