Children’s continuations of stories in their minds are often reminiscent of fanfiction, and I am beginning to wonder whether children don’t prefer to write in an already made universe and just add to it than to make up their own. I am perfectly capable of making up my own universe, but sometimes don’t feel like it. Sometimes I want the ease and coziness of snuggling into someone else’s universe. After all, that’s pretty much a reflection of life as a child. The universe is made by previous generations—parents, teachers. I fit in as best I can.
Eragon and Me
But what, indeed, of my view on Eragon? As a child, surely my view is as important as other children’s. So what do I think?
When I first read Eragon (I was ten, and I’m fifteen now) I was sucked into the story. It seemed exciting and interesting, and I honestly wondered from moment to moment what would happen to the characters. I really liked it.
The second time I read it (still ten) I noticed more than one fault. Previous bits that had seemed incredibly exciting now seemed dreary. When I first read it I adored the battle at the end. The second time I found it boring and repetitive. Interestingly, I did not have the same experience with Eldest. When I first read it I found it boring and incomprehensible. The excitement of the first reading of the first book had been reduced to what seemed like an endless cycle of Yoda-like anecdotes.
Recently, to write this essay, I reread all of Paolini’s books. It had been a long time since I read them (save the third, which I had read fairly recently), and with an older, and perhaps much more critical eye, I reappraised them.
I was, again, sucked into the story. But unlike last time, when I had been fully immersed, it was more like sitting in a bubble, or maybe watching it on TV. You are absorbed at the time, but later you see its gaping faults. For instance, I began for the first time to notice just how often Eragon became unconscious at the end of a chapter. And how overworked the description was. I later read an essay by Ursula K. Le Guin about fantasy, “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie,” and noted with interest how much of the language she criticized crept into Eragon (though her main foe, ichor, never appeared). And while I am talking about language and description, Paolini’s style is slightly confused. He often switches from modern idiom to archaic language in the same sentence. This became jarring.
As well, my favorite parts of the book changed. As I have mentioned, when I first read it I felt that the battle at the end was exceptional; now listed among my favorite parts are the mock sword fights with Brom.
Am I being unfair and biased in my criticisms? Probably. But I think from this we can learn an important point, more about what we choose to read than about Eragon itself.
Whenever we read, we choose a particular thing to read. Often it may be the wrong thing. It turns out to be boring, or doesn’t suit our mood, or it’s total pap and we feel we’ve been suckered. But we pick it nonetheless; we have power and also responsibility. Whatever our age, we all need what I like to call, in my childish way, “stretch” reading and “relax” reading. Let us take the reading brain to be an elastic band. Difficult books stretch the band. Easier books relax it. Your mind needs both difficult and easy things. Read too many difficult books and you become worn out and unwilling to read at all. Read too many easy ones and it becomes impossible to read anything more difficult. We must learn to strike a balance, something which many of us have lost the knack of. Maybe children need a bit of guidance—but adults do too, or they wouldn’t be rushing out to buy The Da Vinci Code. Without that guidance we might all find ourselves the victims of marketing ploys, like the new Scholastic series where the games and plastic toys are already planned to accompany the purpose-written books.
Learning from Eragon as a Child Author
So what have we learned? Looking back over the text, it seems I have raised more questions than I have answered, or know how to answer. Can it be that we have learned nothing after all this questioning?
No. We have learned a lot. We have learned that adults, upon learning that a piece of work is by a child, begin to read in a different way than they normally would. They read in the same way teachers do when they mark a piece of work: analytically, critically, looking for faults. They focus less on what may be good and instead turn to what is worst. Whereas children, in what may be just as bigoted a way as adults, tend to notice only the story and nothing else. Both of these are equally silly ways to read a book. Both of them are too focused and require expanding. But how? I am not sure, though I feel sure someone else will have a plan, maybe even an answer, that I cannot spot.
But one problem has been bothering me the whole of the essay. Is Eragon the best example? Are there other, better examples of child authorship I could have used? Of course there are other child authors, that we all know, but is Paolini the one I should have chosen?
Of course, many other child authors have received similar receptions. A French child author named Flavia Bujor also wrote a children’s book called The Prophecy of the Stones or The Prophecy of the Gems (there appear to have been two publications under different titles), and it too has been called derivative and overwritten. In fact there was one reviewer on Amazon.com who directly compared it to Paolini’s work: “People have criticized books written by young authors such as Amelia Atwater-Rhodes and Christopher Paolini but let me tell you, their prose is Shakespeare compared to Ms. Bujor.” Again, the focus seems to be that though it is adorable that the child author is writing and not hitting his or her friends over the head with trucks, he or she has no skill whatsoever. Should I have, perhaps, added another example, then, for a broader, bigger picture? I do not think so, since I would only have been able to focus on one child author and his or her work, or else confuse everything by constant switches from author to author. And I have only read Paolini’s books, and of course my own (on which I have a naturally biased view, which is why I didn’t choose them).
For, at least in my opinion, “child authors” are but mere one-minute wonders that flash like a supernova across newspapers and then fade, probably just about as annoying as the celebrities who think the bedtime stories they tell their kids will make a great book. I see why people find us a pain. Stories on child authors always regard them as special, because they are children and authors, and so do not treat them in the same way as adult authors, so they behave differently. So maybe the answer to the problem that child authors face, vast opposition, is to treat them equally with adult writers. Which is actually what I want, and why I publish under a pseudonym. But the reason they aren’t treated that way now is child labor laws and education laws, which prevent children from being forced to work by their parents or adult friends. So maybe, though I at least think there could be a median, we have a straight choice between liberty and safety. Maybe child authors and readers have to be patronized to keep other children safe from exploitation. But which is better? And which should we, in all honesty, choose? But that is not my question, and though I hope it may be answered, I at least do not have that answer.
Another way to think about child authors, child readers, and child reviewers is simpler. One day they will be adults. Many great writers wrote books when they were children. Among children’s authors, Louisa May Alcott, J. K. Rowling, and Jacqueline Wilson did this. Among adult authors, Jane Austen, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, and Virginia Woolf all wrote stories, poems, and pretend newspapers as children. Inside every child author is an adult author who will one day emerge. Christopher Paolini has already emerged, and it will be interesting to see the result.
Michael Dowling, sole author of this essay, is one half of the author Tobias Druitt; the other half is his mother, Diane Purkiss. Their books are Corydon and the Island of Monsters, Corydon and the Fall of Atlantis, and Corydon and the Siege of Troy (forthcoming in the U.S.), all published by Knopf in the U.S. and by Simon and Schuster in the U.K. They retell Greek myths, but the monsters are good and the heroes cowardly. They have also been recently translated into French, by Stan Barets, and a number of
other languages, including Czechoslovakian. Michael is fifteen and has started school at Abingdon. He’s been homeschooled for eighteen months, like Paolini.
Roran: The Reluctant Hero
J. FITZ GERALD MCCURDY
In heroic stories, the hero is usually easy to spot-especially when the book is named after him. But her. McCurdy explains how a secondary character, Roran, not only resembles a greater archetypal hero than the title character Eragon, but perhaps also more fully shapes the true heroic core of the Inheritance Cycle itself.
Before I began writing this article, I was curious about what critics were saying about the books in the Inheritance Cycle, so I searched the Internet to get a sense of the critical consensus. Among the thousands of results, the majority were fan driven, sharing a common “this is the best book ever written” theme. Many, particularly those posted by publishers and booksellers, seemed obviously generated to sell books. A few were written by serious reviewers; others were something else entirely, and ranged in quality from goofy to obscene. All focused solely on the obvious elements of plot and characters and either approved of or poked holes in their development. None qualified as literary criticism.
Breaking with the rigid traditional standards, the eighteenth-century German critic Johann Gottfried Herder conceived of criticism (according to René Wellek in volume II of Dictionary of the History of Idea) as “a process of empathy, of identification, of something intuitive and even subrational.” He held that “in order to understand and interpret a piece of literature [one must] put oneself in the spirit of the piece itself.”
Herder’s view revolutionized the art of literary criticism and was the basis for productive or constructive criticism as opposed to the destructive criticism of that era, which simply applied a measure or standard of comparison—a yardstick for perfection. For example, if destructive criticism were applied today and if J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was the standard against which all fantasy was measured, Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle probably would have failed . . . along with almost every other modern fantasy book and series out there. As a result, there would be a lot fewer books published, including books that deserve attention but do not quite measure up.
Because I intend to show Roran emerging as an unwitting hero of Inheritance, I did as Herder suggested and put myself “in the spirit of the piece.” Specifically, I focused on Eldest which, in effect, is Roran’s first book, just as Eragon is Eragon’s first. I also looked at Brisingr to strengthen my “Roran for Hero” argument. I approached both stories with several questions in mind: What did Paolini set out to do? Why did he give Roran a major role in Eldest ? Was his plan sound and practical, and did he succeed in carrying it out? What effect do Roran’s segments have on Eragon? And what, if anything, does the author do to get his hero back on track in book three?
To understand Roran’s emergence as hero, it is necessary to understand the author’s intent with respect to Inheritance in general and to Eragon in particular. Paolini’s own words in an essay written for Random House provide a partial answer: “All I really wanted to do was share the epics floating around in my head with other people—writing was something I just had to master in order to make those sagas reality. . . . When I graduated from high school, I wanted to write a pure, dyed-in-the-wool hero story. So I immediately plotted out a trilogy based on my ideals of the archetypal maturation plot.”
Eragon and its subsequent success are ample proof of Paolini’s ability to plot and write a pure, well-paced hero story. This is important because he succeeded so well in book one that there was no need for Paolini to insinuate Roran into the story beyond teasing us with his presence—subtle foreshadowing that perhaps we weren’t yet done with Roran. As readers we can smell a hero even before we reach the part where fifteen-year-old Eragon grasps the mysterious blue stone. Despite the author’s inexperience, which shows in the lack of emotional depth in his characters and his often bumpy writing (after all, he was still a teenager), Paolini created a hero in the true mythic sense. While far from over, Eragon’s journey is modeled after the universal pattern of the mythological hero journey Joseph Campbell called the mono-myth . In Campbell’s words in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow men.”
Seeking revenge for the death of his uncle, Eragon ventures forth in the company of wise old Brom and Saphira, the dragon hatchling, leaving behind everything and everyone he has ever known. Along the way, he bonds with his dragon, spars with Brom until his body is black and blue, uses his magic to zap bad things, rescues an elf maid, slays the shade Durza, experiences pain, suffering, and loss, and is on the brink of embarking on the deeper, darker journey within himself.
About subsequent books in Inheritance Paolini had this to say in an interview with Kit Spring in The Observer: “I want to show what I can do. And I think even the first draft of . . . Eldest . . . is better than the last draft of Eragon.” He elaborated further to Dave Welch in a three-way interview with Philip Pullman and Tamora Pierce on www.powells.com: “My second and third book, as I see it, are opportunities to expand upon the original archetypes and try to bring a depth to the world that I haven’t seen done or in ways that I want to explore personally. . . . I chose to have Eragon mature and learn throughout the course of my story because, for one thing, it’s one of the archetypal fantasy elements.”
It’s a good plan. And yes, maturation is an archetypal element of fantasy. The challenge, though, is to show the hero growing older and becoming wiser without making him aware he is doing so. In Eldest, instead of maturing and gaining wisdom as a result of his adventures on the journey, Eragon voluntarily veers far off course; he consciously grows in maturity and wisdom among the elves. It’s a bit like having a character confront adversity and realize immediately its cumulative effect by exclaiming, “Cool! I just gained self-confidence!” What’s missing is the sense of the hero’s wonder when, by his actions in some future trial, he realizes that he’s been changed by something he can’t quite put his finger on. Separating the hero’s maturation from the journey is like reading a song without the music.
It didn’t work when Luke Skywalker went off to train with Yoda in Star Wars, and it doesn’t work in Eldest. For one thing, the process is far too long for what Eragon gets out of it, as we learn in the battle scenes at the end of the book; it fills 450 of the book’s 668 pages in my edition. For another, it upsets the rhythm and balance of the story and dilutes and weakens the entire journey, diminishing Eragon’s role. As a result, Eldest is less bold and original than Eragon, whose hero and dragon delighted us as they delighted in each other. There was an impressive simplicity in the way Paolini dealt with the notion of a teenage boy finding himself with a swiftly growing female dragon on his hands.
Enter Roran.
At first reading, it appears that the Roran segments were added to Eldest after the book was written, perhaps at the urging of an editor in order to sate readers’ appetites for action and to have Roran conveniently on hand at the end of the book, ready to set out with Eragon to save Katrina in book three. But in the interview on Powell’s, posted before Eldest was published, Paolini explained his plan: “In Book Two, I switch viewpoints to Eragon’s cousin, Roran. For a large part of the book, I’m flipping back and forth. That gave me the ability to move to a more mature character and explore some stuff I really can’t deal with with Eragon at this point.” For the most part, Paolini sticks with his plan in Brisingr , flipping back and forth between Roran and Eragon. (Curiously, once or twice he also flips to Saphira’s and Nasuada’s points of view. Because their brief musings do nothing to advance the plot, those segments are disappointing; I felt tricked when I thought I was flipping to Roran only to find my way blocked.)
Whatever his reason for inserting Roran into the story
as a major character, Paolini could not have known that he was creating a hero whose amazing accomplishments would completely overshadow Eragon. If he had known, I think he would have left Roran back in Carvahall. There are no rules of fantasy that limit the number of heroes an author can include in a story. If there were, Steven Erikson’s magnificent Malazan Book of the Fallen, with its dozens of heroes, would be in serious trouble. But Erikson’s heroes don’t diminish one another, they complement each other, whereas in Eldest, each flip from Roran’s action sequences to Eragon’s passive study feels like a stumble.
While Roran is slogging through ankle-deep mud and tripping over corpses, fighting alongside the villagers against Empire soldiers and non-human Ra’zac, and while they are all weeping over their dead, crushed by the sight of ten-year-old Elmund among the casualties, the story flips to Eragon. We find ourselves adrift, literally, on a raft floating down the Az Ragni carrying Eragon, Orik, and Arya in the direction of Ellesméra, only to discover our erstwhile hero struggling to memorize the names of his seven dwarf companions as kingfishers and jackdaws flit above the water and the occasional bullfrog croaks from the ferns growing wild along the riverbank.
Secrets of the Dragon Riders: Your Favorite Authors on Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle: Completely Unauthorized Page 4