Saphira herself faces a similar battle, as the only other member of her race, Glaedr, repeatedly rejects her. Though Glaedr is a kind, if stern, mentor in her battle training, he does not recognize the intelligence of Saphira’s interest in him, and treats her as nothing more than a baby with a crush. Yet Saphira shows both wisdom and purpose in desiring to mate with Glaedr. She not only wishes to share her existence with the one thing she thought she would never find, another of her own kind, but also to rebuild their race. What greater benefit could there be in the struggle against Galbatorix than more eggs, and so ultimately more dragons and more Riders? Glaedr might be eldest, but it’s possible that in this decision to spurn Saphira’s advances and cut off this avenue of potential benefit, he is not necessarily the wisest.
It is the ancient dragon spirit roused during Agaetí Blödhren that shows the elves, particularly Vanir, the shallowness of their thinking about both Eragon and Saphira. A conscious magical dragon emerges during the ceremony, and once more Eragon’s instincts drive him to do the right thing. He raises his right hand, allowing the magical dragon to touch the heart of his gedwëy ignasia. This contact heals Eragon’s crippling back wound and infuses him with the physical abilities and speed of an elf as well as bringing him to maturity as a Rider in just moments. The ancient dragons, then, have passed their judgment. They have found Eragon to be worthy, and Saphira’s choice of Eragon as Rider both well-founded and, yes, wise.
We see in Eragon’s next duel with Vanir that Eragon has likely been the superior fighter all along. Now that their strength and speed are equal, Eragon is more than a match for Vanir, and ultimately breaks the elf’s arm in combat. “By the gods!” Orik the dwarf exclaims afterward. “That was the best swordsmanship I’ve ever seen....”
Eragon then has another rush of instinct, the sense of an “ominous storm . . . gathering beyond the edge of the horizon.” Saphira tells him, “What you feel is what we dragons feel and what the elves feel—the inexorable march of grim fate as the end of our age approaches.” Shortly after, Eragon moves to new heights in his training, and he and Saphira realize it is time for them to leave the land of the elves—and this time no one challenges their decision. The elves, it seems, have learned that the dragon and Rider’s wisdom should not be questioned.
The gathering battle against Galbatorix offers Eragon and Saphira yet more opportunities to demonstrate wisdom greater than most around them. In one of the most profound yet smallest examples of this, Eragon accepts Nasuada’s urging to allow the Urgal Garzhvog and his fighting forces into the ranks of the Varden. After interacting with Garzhvog, Eragon realizes that his ironclad prejudice against the creatures is misinformed, and he refuses to persist in ignorant beliefs or practices. Garzhvog and his Urgals turn out to be inordinately valuable in the battle, and this decision of Eragon’s might be amongst those that ultimately prove to be world-changing.
Another example comes while Eragon faces Murtagh on the edge of the Burning Plains. Eragon sees his cousin Roran creeping toward the very dangerous magical Twins and almost utters a spell to transport him away from danger. Murtagh urges Eragon to wait, and Eragon must evaluate whether or not Murtagh will warn the Twins and thus cause Roran harm. Murtagh gives his word not to interfere, and Eragon chooses to trust his instincts, and Murtagh leaves Roran to his fate. Seconds later, Eragon is gratified to see Roran successfully attack the Twins with his hammer. This wise choice to let Roran make his attack results in the defeat of these two magical menaces. And because the Twins are no longer able to fight, the dwarves and the Varden reclaim lost ground and rout the confused soldiers the Twins had been controlling. The physical aspect of this battle against the Empire is won, and Galbatorix’s forces retreat.
However, the greatest example of Eragon’s wisdom, and perhaps the most heart-rending, occurs in Eragon’s actual showdown with Murtagh. Despite the fact that Murtagh has betrayed Eragon and nearly battled Eragon and Saphira completely out of the sky, Eragon attempts to reach out to the older Rider. “Join me, Murtagh,” he pleads. “You could do so much for the Varden. With us, you would be praised and admired, instead of cursed, feared, and hated.” Eragon even offers to help Murtagh escape the bonds of Galbatorix and pledges his help and Arya’s in assuring Murtagh’s freedom.
This choice to reach out to Murtagh, this older Rider who considers himself smarter and stronger than Eragon, softens Murtagh’s heart. There is even a long moment in which Murtagh studies his sword and seems to be debating whether or not to accept Eragon’s offer. When Murtagh refuses, the two battle again, Eragon intent on killing Murtagh rather than allow him to return to the evil king. Eragon fails, and Murtagh plans to take Eragon and Saphira to Galbatorix—but Eragon asks Murtagh to release him instead. He tells Murtagh, “If you do this, Murtagh, you’ll be lost forever.”
The wisdom of Eragon’s statement sways the older Rider. Murtagh lowers his sword and releases Eragon. Thus, despite being physically weaker and less able to defend himself with magic, Eragon prevails in this fight, and he does it with thought, intelligence, and wisdom greater than that of the older Rider.
Murtagh takes his leave, but not before burdening Eragon with the knowledge of their shared parentage. Eragon is initially stunned, but then his innate wisdom once more rises to the surface. “Morzan may be my parent, but he is not my father. Garrow was my father. . . . I am who I am because of him.” Many people, many older and purportedly wiser people, would take many years to come to such a realization—if they ever managed to do so. Murtagh in fact is so far from understanding it that he has allowed himself to believe he is hopelessly ensnared by the evil king. Eragon, however, refuses to let his bloodline color his beliefs about himself, his intentions, or his abilities.
After his showdown with Murtagh, Eragon enjoys his reunion with Roran and comes to understand the burden of horror and misery placed on his cousin by the capture of Roran’s true love Katrina. Eragon intuitively understands that this situation must be resolved before Roran can reach his destiny, whatever that might be. He uses magic to show Roran that Katrina still lives, then agrees that he will go with Roran to Dras-Leona to rescue Katrina, and ultimately to kill the Ra’zac and avenge their father Garrow.
In Brisingr, there are those who decry this decision and insist that Eragon and Saphira are being immature and impulsive, tending to Roran’s heart and the life of one girl before the needs of the Varden, but these naysayers are ultimately forced to understand their folly when this trip turns out to be yet another key stop on the path to defeating Galbatorix. The Ra’zac are dead, slain by Eragon’s bold mission, and Galbatorix has lost some of his most valuable weapons. Moreover, the Varden has gained Roran, a valuable warrior and commander who will do his part to turn to the tide in the battle against the twisted emperor.
Eragon and Saphira’s wisdom is what Alagaësia needs, especially with the ultimate loss of Oromis and Glaedr in the third installment of the series. The land itself has decided that love and loyalty must be honored, even at great cost. Yet those who surround dragon and Rider remain slow to recognize this, and to respect Eragon and Saphira’s decisions.
Perhaps in the fourth tale in the Inheritance Cycle, Eragon and Shapira will finally enjoy the full measure of the respect they deserve. The second tale, however, makes one thing abundantly clear: eldest does not always equal wisest.
Susan Vaught is the author of Trigger, which was called “a powerful cautionary tale” by Publishers Weekly in a starred review, and Stormwitch, winner of the Carl Brandon Society Kindred Award. Both were named Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library Association. Her most recent release, Big Fat Manifesto, is already garnering critical acclaim. She is a practicing neuropsychologist and lives with her family and dozens of pets in rural Tennessee.
Q: How Does a Fifteen-Year-Old Do This?
A: The Same Way a Fifty-Year-Old Does.
CAROL PLUM-UCCI
This essay by Plum-Ucci is less a commentary on Paolini’s young
age than it is a mediation on how it si we writers do what we do. I have often commented that everyone has interesting insights, odd observations, and unusual connections occur to them-writers just make a point of writing them down, and then waiting until the proper occasion to string them together. Plum-Ucci shares some of her own insights into this concept, and offers some succinct conclusions about Paolini’s own processes
When novelists have the opportunity to meet their readers, the most popular question they’re asked is, “How do you come up with your story ideas?” Readers’ eyes loom, full of wonder. Some anticipate a blow-by-blow description of a process, similar to what they might hear from a bridge builder. Others would love to hear what borders on magical: “I was sitting at my terminal and suddenly became overwhelmed by the sounds of mighty, rushing water! The hero, the setting, this powerful plot drove me into another world, and I rarely came back out of until the final page was written!”
The real answer inevitably seems tame, like perhaps something is missing. Christopher Paolini has taken some stabs at answering, such as this one he posted for Teenreads.com: “It took me a month to hammer out the main details of what was now the Inheritance trilogy. Then I sat down, put my tremulous pen to paper, and finally started book one: Eragon. I worked sporadically at first, but as I became more and more engaged with my project, I spent as much time as I could writing.”
The answer interests us—but perhaps because it came from Paolini himself. If he’s like a thousand other authors out there, he finds that the questioners say, “Oh!” politely, but often continue to stare.
Lots of authors take Paolini’s stance, trying to answer the question with as much sanity as they can impose on the process of novel writing. However, we’re aware that when our answers resemble the description one might give of completing an extra-long math homework assignment, something indeed seems missing.
Strangely, there are fascinating explanations for the writing process—but normally the writers don’t know much about them. Busy novelists are up to their gizzard in imagery, settings, story-weaving, and reader response. We should think of them like sea captains, who might understand a lot about their boat, but not necessarily a lot about the sea creatures roaming the depths beneath them.
The magical concept of capturing a story is so stupefying that I really had to study it myself five years ago. In doing so, I found myself in the world of psychology, specifically psychoanalysis, the study of dreams and how the dream center interacts with our imagination even when we are awake. A walk through information pertaining to imagination can shed some light on how Paolini has created the Inheritance Cycle.
We can all agree that the Inheritance Cycle is driven by a very powerful imagination. And specifically in the case of Paolini, the complex question of conjuring story components is buttressed to the question of, “How does someone do this at the age of fifteen?”
The second question is slightly easier to approach than the first, if one is willing to accept a bit of a surprise. Unbeknownst to many, a critical key to story writing is not sweating bullets like a student taking the SAT or plotting calculations like an accountant balancing columns of numbers. In fact, the opposite is true in chronicling tales: The best passages are written when we are most able to relax. Some psychologists suggest that writing comes from a part of ourselves they call the “Inner Child”: the part that likes to color, paint, play. It is only when the “play” thoughts become taxed by “work” thoughts that the imagination falters and creativity is disrupted.
Personally, I never suffered from writer’s block until after my first book, The Body of Christopher Creed, won numerous awards and I was suddenly inundated with contracts. The connotations of “work” associated with “contracts” wreaked havoc on my “play station.” Telltale of a well-functioning “Inner Child” are Paolini’s words further along in the Teenreads.com interview: “Eragon flowed out of me at a tremendous pace; I never had writer’s block. Part of my speed was due to the fact that I had no idea what, technically, constituted good writing, and therefore, I did not edit myself during this process.”
Granted, he ran into challenges later in editing (which uses brain function that more closely resembles that required for the SAT), but in laying the groundwork, in painting his fantastic world and breathing the breath of life into characters—the boy was simply having some fun.
You might say, “We all have imagination, and that doesn’t explain how dragons and boys and wizards and caves and Urgals come together so engagingly for a fifteen-year-old.”
Having never been published myself until I was forty, I have often said, “I learned nothing of the art of writing until the age of twenty-one when I was able to put school behind me.” Teachers are well intentioned and encouraging, but so many hours in school are spent on work one is not interested in, waiting for others to complete their tasks, operating in circumstances where free choice is nominal, and warding off social scrapes. One arrives home from school quite mentally taxed, yet often facing another hour or two of homework. According to John Taylor Gatto, author of Dumbing Us Down, the sensitive, artistic student could border on intellectual burnout by the age of fifteen or sixteen.
In this sense, homeschooling could be a benefit to some future artists, and I believe it explains a lot in Paolini’s case. I could write a hundred essays on this subject, but for the purpose of this one, let’s suffice it to say that specialists often comment on how the imagination of children is far more dynamic than that of their adult counterparts. A five-year-old can imagine for hours at a time, but as the impositions of school, then work, then marriage and family build, imagination dims. Essentially, the imagination of a fifteen-year-old, properly cultivated and preserved, is far less banged up, damaged, and cluttered than the imagination of his elder counterparts in publishing. Paolini has that edge in this sense.
Let’s leave that for a moment and move on to what happens to him while writing. Imagination does not shut down when one is sleeping. The founding fathers of dream analysis suggested a hundred years ago that literature pulls from the dream center to acquire its organic materials—characters, settings, ideas for plots, symbols. This doesn’t imply that writers work in a sleepy trance. If the phone rings, we’ll answer it.
But think of the dream center as a closet with many interesting things on the shelves. When we sleep, the light in the closet is bright; when we’re awake, it grows dim—except for those who are involved in creative processes such as writing, painting, or daydreaming. The artist’s conscious mind works with his subconscious mind to create.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud theorized that everyone has a “subconscious,” that part of our mind that acts like this dark closet full of images, actions, and emotions. As we dream, Freud said, these closet images drop off their hangers and dance around in the air, causing us to see, feel, and respond to an amazing parade of people, things, and plots.
This imagery can signify things in our waking life. For example, last night I dreamed I was holding a beautiful little lizard who was annoyed by being held and turned to bite me several times. The bites didn’t hurt, but I felt sorry for the little thing and finally let it go. It sprouted wings, flew out my window, and grew to the size of a dragon I recognized as Eragon’s Saphira. I knew the dream had to do with my nervousness about writing an essay for publication when, generally speaking, I only publish novels these days. Letting go of Saphira symbolized “letting go” of my anxiety. If I did so, what I had to say would actually grow into something far more worthwhile than if I were uptight about writing the essay.
Thank you, Dr. Freud.
Karl Jung, initially a student of Freud’s, coined the term “collective unconscious,” implying that what lies on the shelves of our dream closet proves somewhat common among all human beings, of all races, cultures, and eras. For example, psychologists agree that a circle usually symbolizes unity in a dream. Hence a dream about being given a beautiful ring might reflect how the dre
amer is coming into a time of peace with herself or her family.
For the images, impulses, and life forms that are common to us all in dreams, Jung used the term archetypes. These include numerous universal symbols like the circle, plus impulses, emotions, and plots that people have fixated on universally, throughout history. Jung was also among the first to suggest that the same archetypes that serve in dreams also serve in literature. Hence, a ring that causes strife—such as the featured element in Lord of the Rings—might represent unity gone bad in story as well as dreams. As Tolkien wrote the trilogy bearing the scars of World War II, the ring, with all its malignant power, could represent what he sensed as a serious threat to world order.
It’s generally the people we remember best from our dreams, and since the days of Aristotle people have named the character as the most important element of the great story. Some popular archetypes and their meanings in both dreams and literature include the following, with examples from Paolini and friends:The Child
Secrets of the Dragon Riders: Your Favorite Authors on Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle: Completely Unauthorized Page 9