Dragons Are For Slaying

By Scott Forrester

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore-- Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. --William Wordsworth
Many of you are aware that I am an admirer of the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, and I thought I would begin today by reading a brief selection from Professor Tolkien's The Two Towers by way of introduction. Listening to the words of his counselor Grima Wormtongue and looking at the decline into war of the lands around him, King Theoden has been led into despair and decrepitude. His rule of the kingdom of Rohan has waned to the point that disorder and fear have become its governing laws.

'Now Theoden son of Thengel, will you hearken to me?' said Gandalf. 'Do you ask for help?' He lifted his staff and pointed to a high window. There the darkness seemed to clear, and through the opening could be seen, high and far, a patch of shining sky. 'Not all is dark. Take courage, Lord of the Mark; for better help you will not find. No counsel have I to give to those that despair. Yet counsel I could give, and words I could speak to you. Will you hear them? They are not for all ears. I bid you come out before your doors and look abroad. Too long have you sat in shadows and trusted to twisted tales and crooked promptings.'
Slowly Theoden left his chair. A faint light grew in the hall again. …With faltering steps the old man came down from the dais and paced softly through the hall. Wormtongue remained lying on the floor. They came to the doors and Gandalf knocked.
'Open!' he cried. 'The Lord of the Mark comes forth!'
The doors rolled back and keen air came whistling in. A wind was blowing on the hill.
* * *
'Now, lord,' said Gandalf, 'look out upon your land! Breathe the free air again!'
From the porch upon the top of the high terrace they could see beyond the stream the green fields of Rohan fading into distant grey. Curtains of wind-blown rain were slanting down. The sky above and to the west was still dark with thunder, and lightning far away flickered among the tops of hidden hills. But the wind had shifted to the north, and already the storm that had come out of the East was receding, rolling away southward to the sea. Suddenly through a rent in the clouds above them a shaft of sun stabbed down. The falling showers gleamed like silver, and far away the river glittered like a shimmering glass.
'It is not so dark here,' said Theoden.
'No,' said Gandalf. 'Nor does age lie so heavily upon your shoulders as some would have you think. Cast aside your prop!'
From the king's hand the black staff fell clattering on the stones. He drew himself up, slowly, as a man that is stiff from long bending over some dull toil. Now tall and straight he stood, and his eyes were blue as he looked into the opening sky.

King Theoden undergoes a transformation--from darkness to light, from debilitation to health, from blindness to vision, from self-concern to rule of his people, from despair to hope--and the healing (as well as the sickness) comes by means of words. The poisonous doomsaying of Grima Wormtongue had worked its way into the mind and heart of the King, eroding his confidence and resolution. But the words of rebuke and hope spoken by Gandalf restore his standing and his vitality.

Like Theoden, you have been deceived. You have unknowingly listened to the recitation of despair and fallen prey to its lies. And while I am no Gandalf, by any stretch of the imagination, it is nonetheless my hope to clarify your vision, or at least to show you that there is another way, to show you the sky, to give you hope where you looked for none.

But in what way, you ask, have we been deceived? What are the lies we have believed? Well, I will tell you. You have grown up in an era and in a culture in which fairy tale and myth have fallen into disrepute. Indeed, the very terms themselves are despised. Fairy tale has become synonymous with foolishness, even nonsense, where once these stories were known to contain great wisdom. Myth has come to mean untruth, quite the opposite of its original sense of being the stories which make a people--the means by which truth is communicated to the people of a culture.

To begin with, then, it is important for us to understand the value of myth and fairy tales in culture. Far from being merely vacuous stories of "once upon a time" which end "happily ever after," fairy tales and myths were created to tell us the truth. They create in us a sense of justice, a distaste for cheating, a love of valour and humility. In the broadly drawn characters of fairy tales and the colossal heroes and anti-heroes of mythology we meet people grander than ourselves, greater than ourselves, and yet we meet in them all the people we will ever know in life: kindly and wicked, valiant and indolent, down-trodden and spoiled, determined and compromising. We are not told to hate the wicked stepmother, we simply do. She is grasping and mean, partial to her own children, and we despise her for her petty nature. Our admiration of the prince who is undaunted by traps and terrors, who stops at nothing to reach the castle of the maiden is intuitive. His valour and resolve are admirable.

This is the manner in which myth and fairy tale work. They make it clear what is valuable and what is spurious by providing vivid pictures which the hearer carries with him through life. These stories get into the listener's bloodstream in a way that a list of character qualities or an enumeration of "do's" and "don'ts" does not. This is the power of storytelling. We are not simply told what to do and what not to do, we are shown in vivid characterization and epic adventure both right and wrong. The Bible works this way too. God is a storyteller. He is, in fact, the storyteller. Creation was a story told when there was nothing--and then "God said...." Redemption is a tale begun before the foundations of the world and still being told today: "In the beginning was the Word..."! In this sense, creation and redemption are also myth. They are the true myth which is true in its particulars, as well as in the principles it expresses.

The myths that we hear as children become a part of who we are. They define us. The stories of Noah and the ark, Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, David and Goliath form the basis of our understanding of justice, mercy, strength, and sacrifice; of deception, wrath, cowardice, and selfishness. Likewise, the myths that previous generations heard as children exemplified the championing of good and the repudiation of evil--the stalwartness of Odysseus in spite of the capricious acts of Poseidon and the Olympian gods, the strength of Beowulf pitted against the evil of Grendel and the dragon. Again, in fairy tales we are shown the bravery and tenacity of young Jack pitted against the violence of the giant, the purity and simplicity of Snow White in contrast to the malevolent envy of the queen.

When stories like these are a thriving part of our childhood, they work in us without our consciously knowing it. When we grow up with them, these stories form our conscience and give us an arsenal of weapons with which to fight the very real foes of sin and self we meet in our everyday lives. We all know we ought to stand up to impatience and be true to our families, but it is inspiring tales like Penelope's fortitude awaiting her husband's return from Troy which inspire us to bear up. It is stories like that of St. George and the Dragon which create in us a sense of watchfulness and stir us to stand against heresy and untruth. We can face these enemies, virulent or petty, disturbing or childish, because we are armed with the virtues inculcated in us by the hearing of stories, of myths and fairy tales which have taught us how to be. Or so it used to be. I fear it is not the case with many of you here today.

I do not place the blame for this on you. In fact, blame is not really the issue. We live in an age where the legends of old have passed out of knowledge. In another era you would have been the recipients of this glorious heritage without ever having had to ask for it. As I suggested a moment ago, the work of these tales is unconscious on the part of the hearer. You could not know to ask for these stories to feed your soul, and it is likely that no one--parents, grandparents, teachers--knew they should read them to you. How could they? In its pragmatism and so-called "enlightenment," our culture has militated against their doing so. Our modern culture believes itself to have outgrown the need for such stories. It is obsessed with practicality, with function, with how things work, and with getting to the facts. What place does Jack the Giant Killer have in a world such as ours? Where in the twenty-first century is there room for Childe Rowland or The Swan Maiden? Our culture is certain that it stands on an enlightened plane above the narrow-minded view of ages past. Even worse than simply not hearing these valuable stories truly told, you have seen them devalued and ridiculed.

The tales are not completely unfamiliar to us, but more often than not what retellings of these great stories we know are movies instead of books, and movies work on our minds differently than books. They work not so much on our imaginations as they supplant our imagination, replacing our mythological vision for someone else's fully realized perception of the tale. We are not required to create the image of these things in our own minds, and, like any muscle rarely used, our imaginations atrophy. (Those of you who have seen the recent Lord of the Rings movies and then gone back to read the books, for instance, know the difficulty of trying to imagine a character or location differently than it was portrayed in the film now that you've seen it.) More importantly, movies do not work on our conscience so much as on our emotions. We feel things--anger, fear, pity--but are not then driven to regard as virtues justice, courage, and mercy. Watching movies, our moral imagination, like our intellectual imagination, is idle. It does not create the image of the true and beautiful in our souls. And yet this is not the worst of it: these versions of the stories also very often lie and drain the very vitality of myth from our veins.

By way of example, I would like to turn your attention to a recent phenomenon of popular culture which may seem harmless enough at first glance, but which I believe has served to sap the mythical life-blood of a generation: the movie Shrek. The idiom of the movie is satire, its target is fairy tales, and its attack strikes at the very heart of those seminal truths which are best learned in stories--the truths that are so foundational that previous generations took them for granted. Those who grew up fed on fairy stories went through life assuming that their neighbors, classmates, and co-workers were in agreement with their conceptions of justice and love and kindness which were based upon these tales--and for the most part they were, because they and those around them had believed the tales intuitively. There was no question, upon hearing the tale of St. George and the Dragon, of whether or not the Red Cross Knight did the right thing in slaying the dragon. Dragons are made for slaying. But you have been told otherwise. Shrek, for one, has told you otherwise.

To begin with, Shrek tells us that enemies are not really enemies at all. Ogres, which once every schoolboy knew from reading fairy tales and Norse myths are evil creatures who wreak havoc on mankind out of sheer malice, according to the movie turn out to only be flatulent goofballs who just want to live peaceful lives and not be bothered by nosy human neighbors looking for a fight. Contrary to what the fairy tales tell us, ogres, according to the filmmakers, are really just reclusive misfits with a puerile sense of humor who have the misfortune to have green-skin and a bad reputation, and are thus reviled. Silly, right? Funny, right?

But are we listening? Are we aware of what is happening? That which has always been identified as evil and reprehensible has been made to appear odd but not truly ugly, crude but not really ill-intentioned, and vulgar but not entirely distasteful. There's no need for a valiant knight to fight and slay the ogre. As a matter of fact, Shrek's got a humorous accent, a quick wit, and an acerbic sense of humor--we kind of like him. We are even led to believe that any distaste we had for ogres coming into our viewing of the film was primarily due to the color of their skin and our unfamiliarity with their ways. We're not familiar or comfortable with green skin, so we vilify those who have it. We don't really know any ogres, so we project our inherited assumptions onto them. It's not unlike To Kill a Mockingbird really. If you hate ogres, you're really just prejudiced.

Hearing it stated this way, you Logic students could probably give us the correct title for the fallacy being employed here, but on the screen--in an entertaining story with jokes flying faster than reason--the message has the effect of perpetrating our acceptance of its false parallel without thinking twice. The fact is ogres are not people. They cannot be equated with humans and ought not to be considered as anything but what they are--enemies. To carry on as though ogres are people with all the rights of a red-blooded member of the human race is to lie about the truth and to devalue humanity.

The same goes for the dragon from which Shrek is to rescue his ogre-cum-princess. The dragon who guards the princess is not really fearsome, but a long-lashed female of her misunderstood species who really only wants to be loved. Once again, the need for a hero is denied. If one only took the time to talk to the dragons he would find they are not so terrible after all.

So what? you say. It's just a movie. True, and as such it demands nothing of us, least of all deep thought or rational questioning. However, the fact that it is not asking anything of us does not mean that it is doing nothing to us. The question is what is it doing to us? What happens to a child who never hears that dragons are evil and only ever meets them in movies like Shrek where their mythological importance is belittled? Does he know that dragons are to be feared and fought? Does he recognize the need for heroism and virtue? What happens when an ogre is the protagonist of the movie? When a dragon seeks not vengeance or treasure but friendship? This sort of equivocation might well be funny (as, in Shrek, I'm sure it is intended to be) if it were not so dangerous. Whether in literature or life, enemies must be identified as such--Neville Chamberlain comes to mind. (For those of you who have not gotten that far in your history study yet, Neville Chamberlain was the prime minister of England at the outbreak of World War II who failed to recognize Hitler for the enemy that he was until the chance to pre-empt his sprawl across Europe had been missed.) One suspects that Winston Churchill knew better at least in part because he had a better governess--she told him bedtime stories.

Children reared on fairy tales and myths believe in and are inspired by the Red Cross Knight because they know that dragons are evil. The knight must and will prevail because dragons are for slaying. They are not humans with "inalienable rights." (Nor, for that matter, are they big-eyelashed females who fall in love with donkeys.) To tell the lie that dragons or ogres are something other than what they are and always have been--worse yet to make us laugh at them as though they were not dangerous and deadly--is to attempt to steal from us, from you the younger generation especially, the sense of morality and honor and truth which only myth can provide. Having never heard the fairy tales and myths in their true form in the first place, you have no predisposition to recognize the lie. You face the attack on mythical truth with no weapon or means of defense, disarmed even further by the humor and light-hearted appearance of the assault. It is not light-hearted. It is, in fact, cynical--a form of humor of which children are not naturally capable--it is the sole province of mean-spirited, disillusioned adults; I do not say grown-ups, because they are not.

Here is a syllogism whose logic is verifiable. Ogres are for slaying. Shrek is an ogre. Shrek is for slaying. (The donkey, perhaps, can be forgiven for choosing friends badly, but the ogre dies!) Of course, the real villains here are the filmmakers who lie about ogres--and dragons and heroes and princesses. Do not be misled: dragons are for slaying.

If I may quote, from no less an authority than Christopher Robin,

Whenever I'm a shining Knight,
I buckle on my armour tight;
And then I look about for things,
Like Rushings-Out, and Rescuings,
And Savings from the Dragon's Lair,
And fighting all the Dragons there.
And sometimes when our fights begin,
I think I'll let the Dragons win...
And then I think perhaps I won't,
Because they're Dragons, and I don't.

Now as I said before, I am not blaming you. The impoverishment of your soul in this case is not your fault, but its reclamation lies within your power, and at this point in your life you are the only one who can ensure that it is nourished and strengthened. My Latin and English students will know what I mean because we have discussed soul-strengthening in class on several occasions recently. I am goading those students onward in the uphill struggle with Latin by reminding them of their need to be vigorous in the care and exercise of their souls. I (and hopefully they) look forward to the day when we can feed our hungry hearts on the words of the great writers in their original language, when we can drink the soul-stirring stories of Western Literature directly from the fountains; when we can ask bigger, deeper questions--not how does it work?--how can I take it apart an explain its function?, but why is it so?--what is its importance?; when we can let go our petty distractions and personal desires and hear the myriad questions being asked of us from across the centuries, when we can listen to the voices of the ancient sages echoing through the scriptures and The Aeneid and Hamlet and even Moby Dick. The day can still dawn when we can dive into the conversation begun more than 3000 years ago which, however quietly whispered in times like ours, has never ceased, but has been carried on by all who would throw off narrow-mindedness and own up to their lack of understanding, who would raise their eyes and see the immensity of God's universe, and feel their miniscule but valuable place in it.

But, you say, we are not there yet. We don't love Latin or, for that matter, Moby Dick, and our souls, you have told us, are weak. What can we do if we have heard the call to rise up and to cast aside the prop of our premature dotage? How can we step out into the fresh air of hope when we have listened so long to the recitation of despair--when we have been stripped of the weapons of story and myth? How do we get there from here?

Train yourselves to be souls who will not be satisfied with "cheap successes." Refuse to be deceived any longer. As far as possible, make up for time lost listening to Wormtongue by rejecting him now. Throw off your premature cynicism. Refuse to despair. Learn to look at the world with wonder and awe, to look at the stars and see not balls of burning gas but the light of the Silmaril on the brow of Earendil and the dragon Draco hurled into the heavens by the goddess Athena, to hear in the night the music of the spheres. Drink deep draughts of myth and fairy story while you are still young that you may face the future better human beings. Recognize the impoverishment of your souls; acknowledge it, but do not be defeated by it. Like Theoden, let the words of the wise fill you and revive your heart.

Read The Hobbit (again) and just let the beauty of the prose and the wonder of the story baptize you. Swim in the poetic loveliness of the tale of St. George and the Dragon. Invite your friends over on a Friday night and read Bearskin and King Stork and the other fairy tales of Howard Pyle together amongst popcorn and cookies. Read Beowulf--and, boys, read it once a year for the rest of your lives. (If you start now, you can probably do so and not have to read the same translation twice until you're 30--but you'll likely find a favorite and return to again and again.) Come to my classroom on Mondays at lunchtime and read The Snow Queen or the tales of the Brothers Grimm, including The Water of Life. Anyone who wants to come is welcome. Bring your lunch, bring your friends--if you're there, I'll read--starting today!

There's more, of course. There's The Weaving of a Dream and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, especially The Steadfast Tin Soldier. There's Winnie-the-Pooh and Now We Are Six. Read The Odyssey and Treasure Island--read them aloud. Read them to your younger brothers and sisters. You will receive no grade. You will have produced nothing. It will earn you no reward but the nourishment of your impoverished soul, the bolstering of your heart for the battle of everyday life. No gain but joy. And that is gain indeed.

I will end as I began, with the words of William Wordsworth:

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.