Combining Honesties Sunday, Mar 29 2009 

1 loveofbooks 7:27 am

Terry Pratchett’s Challenge

Although Terry Pratchett has demonstrated incredible skill in manufacturing characters who manage to capture our hearts with their unique forms of honesty, there is one challenge which has obviously posed some difficulty for the mighty author. As I have already previously described, although Pratchett’s heroes often possess some form of honesty; either internal or external, they generally do not possess both. This is probably because one would need to be truly godly in order to be completely honest both with oneself and with the people with which one associates and still lay claim to a measure of heroism.

Getting Close

Perhaps the closest Terry Pratchett has managed to get to the ideal of total honesty is with the character of Johnny Maxwell who is the character of an excellent trilogy. Johnny has certain unique powers that primarily affect him and his friends. The effect on his friends is such that they only half believe him if at all. His life at home is a total disaster and he is probably supposed to be somewhere near the bottom of the social ladder of society. Nonetheless, Johnny is almost completely honest with himself and with his friends. He is aware of his powers (at least to a certain extent) and he realizes their responsibility. He is also almost completely honest with is friends regarding his powers and achievements. There are only two elements of the story which succeeds in containing Johnny. The first is his complete lack of belief in confiding in grownups and the second is the fact that regardless of whatever happens, no one ever really believes him.

 

Honest to Oneself Sunday, Mar 22 2009 

1 loveofbooks 8:31 am

Honesty Within 

In my previous blog entry I began to describe the fundamental honesty which pervades the heroes created by Terry Pratchett. I wrote that there are two kind of honesty which exist in the Pratchett novels. The first is an external honesty where the person tells everyone the plain truth. I pointed out that when such a character appears he is generally completely honest with everyone save himself. To illustrate this I brought an example of a character who plays important heroic roles in several of Terry Pratchett’s Diskworld novels. I would like to discuss the second form of honesty I mentioned. The hero with a remarkable internal honesty. This hero (who is usually an anti hero) which Terry Pratchett excels at describing, is often a disreputable person of seemingly few recommending qualities who has an internal set of values which he adheres to with solid rigidity. The hero knows the truth of himself and the reality about him. He simply feels powerless to confront it. Thus, he is effectively being completely honest with himself.

A Little Example

Since I realize that this is a difficult concept, I shall attempt to elaborate by means of an example. The leader of Ankh Morpork (a prominent city in the Diskworld novels) is Lord Vetinari. The lord tells little to everyone and makes people do what they should be doing through veiled threats and innuendo. There could perhaps be no less honest a character. On the other hand, Vetinari has excellent perception and he sees precisely how the city needs to be run. He knows precisely what his limitations are and is willing to step down at a moment’s notice should the need arise. He holds the good of the city and its people above all and he is thus completely honest with himself.

 

Honest to a Fault Monday, Mar 16 2009 

1 loveofbooks 8:15 am

The Hallmark of Honesty

One of the hallmarks of practically all the heroes of the Terry Pratchett novels is that they are incredibly honest. They are either completely honest with themselves or else they are honest with everyone else. For some reason, it is difficult for Terry Pratchett to combine the two together. In order to illustrate this concept I will elaborate with some examples of heroes (or anti heroes) who meet the description I have just defined.

Carrot Ironfoudersson

Carrot is a member of the city watch. His character plays important parts in several of the novels of Diskworld. He often plays the part of the straight forward hero. He is supposed to embody the typical role of the long hidden crown prince in a humorous manner. He is thus incredibly practical and straight forward and has no aspirations to the thrown at all. His honesty is absolutely straight forward. He always tells the truth because he can not conceive of telling an alternative. Everything he does is completely by the book. Of course, since he is a hero, this honesty somehow manages to lead him to victory and he rarely fails at a task. The only person that Carrot is seemingly not completely honest with, is himself. Perhaps this is justified by his inordinate humility, Carrot assumes and expects all people to live up to his ideals. He seemingly fails to realize certain fundamental concepts like; that he is the ordained king (although he has hinted more than once that he is aware this may be so) or that everyone is lying to him in some way or another (although it is never clear how naive he really is).

 

Repeating Heroes Sunday, Mar 8 2009 

1 loveofbooks 7:52 am

Epic Satire has Heroes

Epic adventures include prolonged adventures that follow heroes through their prolonged ordeals and challenges. Epic satire is no different. The classic stories of epic satire include heroes who the reader learns to know and love. Good epic satire generally includes sequels where the same well loved heroes go on yet another adventure. As with many non satirical adventures, the hero of epic satire is often one which the readers can identify with in some way. He is generally a non hero character who often does not have many exceptional qualities aside from being practical friendly and honest. Even if he does have certain special qualities he always has many aspects of his character which put him in the same boat as the readers.

Author Tendencies

Often, authors tend to imagine and create a certain form of hero with which they identify so well that the same hero appears in different books and worlds under different names. Although the characters have many different characteristics there are certain aspects of the character which simply repeat themselves. For example; Frodo and Bilbo are essentially the same their characters do include certain differences but these pale in the face of the comparisons. Another example is the character of Simkin in the Darksword chronicles. His equivalent in other creations of Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman is Fizban in the Dragonlance chronicles, and he appears in the Deathgate series as well. Terry Pratchett  is no different. Several characters that he creates in one of his books have their equivalent in another book. It would be interesting to speculate if such a tendency reflects certain personal views of the author or simply the limitations of the author’s imagination. In fact, Terry Pratchett seems to have several characters which repeat themselves. Again, is this because his imagination is broader than his contemporaries or because he manages to identify with more than one of his characters?

 

The Carpet People Monday, Mar 2 2009 

1 loveofbooks 7:44 am

The Carpet People

The book known as the Carpet People is a creation of Terry Pratchett’s from when he was significantly younger. In this tale the heroes go to save the Carpet from the evil forces who are trying to take over. The concept of the book is to describe the ongoings in several square millimetres of carpet. The giant city of some of the people living on the carpet consists entirely of metal and is actually someone’s dime. The carpet people live in a technologically backward world which reflects European life before the invention of gunpowder. The story stresses the problems people have of coping with things that are bigger than they are and of accepting the different.

The Wights

This story includes several fantasy elements. Perhaps the most intriguing of these are the wights. Wights are beings which see the future and are aware of what must happen. The climax of the story occurs when the bravery of the heroes manages to change the foreseen future. This enables good to triumph and allows those who are always so certain of their path to consider living life forward rather than backward. This allows the wights to break away from what they view as what must come to pass and fight for a new, as yet unvisioned, future. This symbolizes the rigidity of certain elements of society (perhaps religious elements?) which have a mighty power in and of themselves yet are so bound by tradition that they cannot conceive of an alternative. In the story these people are forced to learn to think in new ways and this is what allows them to survive.