Secrets of the Wee Free Men and Discworld

by Linda Washington

  The idea of creating rat kings by tying rats together by the tail didn’t originate with Pratchett. There are folktales based on attempts by humans to join rats together. And a museum (Mauritianum) in Altenburg, Thuringia, Germany, has the actual mummified remains of a rat king. (Ugh.)

  Speaking of small, vicious animals, who could forget Big Fido, a small white poodle who just happens to be the crazed leader of dogs in Men at Arms? (You might be thinking of All Dogs Go to Heaven right about now. Or maybe that’s just us.) He tries to off Angua and Gaspode—the talking mongrel. Big Fido believes dogs are superior to all animals (sort of like master-race thinking). It is only a matter of time before he amasses a following large enough to take over the city. Unfortunately, his time runs out.

  Evil Entities. The Summoning Dark in Thud! and the hiver in A Hat Full of Sky are the “rat kings” of the supernatural world—a conglomerate of minds acting as one mind. These entities are considered villainous, since they tend to take over the minds of people—like the wizard Sensibility Bustle and Vimes. But the hiver seems, well, pitiable almost with its plaintive request to die. Still, no one thinks, Wow, it would be great if the hiver would stop by for a long visit. Even Jeannie, the kelda who is jealous of Tiffany, pities Tiffany when the hiver gets on her trail.

  The Summoning Dark, on the other hand, is a demonic entity made up of the desire for revenge. It flourishes in the heightened atmosphere of Koom Valley as it tries to use Vimes in its quest to destroy. It’s like something out of The Exorcist franchise of movies. Nasty. Approach with caution.

  And then there are the entities that are named by indefinite pronouns, such as Them (Equal Rites) and Others (Moving Pictures). Like the Fairy Queen and her elves, their mission (and they’ve decided to accept it) is to take over the world. Them, a.k.a. the Shadow creatures, come from the Dungeon Dimension as do the Others (a.k.a. Things). There goes the neighborhood … .

  Magical Human Creeps

  There’s nothing worse than a villain with magical powers. Think: Voldemort. That’s why an Ipslore the Red, who nearly succeeds in destroying the Disc, is a particular nuisance even after he’s dead, thanks to having his essence in the staff given to Coin. He’s like a demonic spirit who possesses a person and uses him or her as a puppet. And the evil vizier Abrim causes a mage war that doesn’t help, either. As Pratchett mentions in Pyramids, “There is no such thing as a good Grand Vizier. A predilection to cackle and plot is apparently part of the job.”114 So Abrim is just doing his part to carry on the tradition.

  But consider the case of Lilith de Tempscire (a.k.a. Lily Weather-wax), the fairy godmother and Granny’s “good” sister in Witches Abroad. Is Lily Weatherwax evil? Well, she makes harmful choices and resorts to murder. She also tries to force the Cinderella of the story—Ella—to marry a frog, all for the sake of a happy ending. She’s not tragically misunderstood as Elphaba, the so-called Wicked Witch of the West (a tweaked character of L. Frank Baum) is, in Gregory Maguire’s Wicked. And on par with villains everywhere, she believes that she’s the “good one”—the one whose actions are for the sake of humanity.

  Lilith is an allusion to Lilith, the mythical first wife of Adam, mentioned in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. In that book Lilith is the White Witch, Jadis. There’s a reference to Lilith in The Alphabet of Ben-Sira.

  THE STOOGES AND THUGS

  Isn’t it funny how there’s always a stooge for hire whenever a megalomaniac seeks to take over the world? Unlike the Three Stooges from the old TV show (and countless movies—okay, they really can be counted), these stooges are usually tireless wreckers of humanity or just out for the money, like the pirates of the Black Pearl. But the ways of stooges make for entertaining reading.

  Don’t you wonder what goes through the stooge’s mind when the plan comes up?

  Megalomaniac: I’m going to use this virus to kill billions of people. You will assist me.

  Stooge: Cool!

  Megalomaniac: We’ll all perish! Every single one of us! Even you! Ha-ha-ha-ha!

  Stooge: Yeah! Woo hoo!

  Obviously a screw is loose somewhere. You don’t have to have intelligence to be a criminal stooge. Having brawn and a willingness to hurt others are two good prerequisites. That’s why Teatime uses Chickenwire, Banjo Lilywhite, Medium Dave Lilywhite, Peachy, and Catseye to help carry out the plan to off the Hogfather. (When we think of Banjo and Medium Dave, we can’t help thinking of the counting song “Green Grow the Rushes, O,” which has the lines “Two, two, the lily-white boys,/Clothèd all in green, Ho.”115)

  Although he doesn’t fit the stooge mold (i.e., unintelligent), student-wizard Sideney helps with the Hogfather plan, to make extra money. But those who follow Dark Lord Harry Dread (The Last Hero)—namely, such henchmen as Slime, Armpit, Butcher, Gak, and a troll that continually says, “Dat’s me”—do.

  For Lupine Wonse, there are the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night, who include Brother Fingers, Brother Doorkeeper, Brother Plasterer, and others. For Lily Weather-wax, there’s the Duc, who’s really a frog, and the snake women, who are really snakes, to help her carry out her nefarious plans. (For more about the Duc and the snake women, see chapter 13.)

  Even if the stooges have some intelligence (like the board members of the Grand Trunk Company in Going Postal), the villain has to be able to outthink them and even dispose of them when they become a nuisance. He or she wouldn’t be a villain if he/she was sentimental, even about a stooge.

  Greed, misplaced nationalism, or religious ideals is also a motivator for the stooge. That’s why in The Fifth Elephant, we find that Dee, the king’s “ideas taster,” is used by the werewolves, rather than the originator of the plan. That’s why Deacon Cusp helps Deacon Vorbis.

  Another sort of stooge can be found in The Wee Free Men—the dromes. They are the dreamweavers, and we don’t mean the 1975 song by Gary Wright nor do we mean the Dreamweavers of Trudi Canavan’s Priestess of the White—although Canavan’s dreamweavers can send dreams. They’re golems of a sort—gray, walking gingerbread men much larger than the tiny gingerbread man of the Shrek movies (but smaller than the big gingerbread man in Shrek 2) and certainly malevolent. Dromes are akin to Morpheus (see chapter 9), in that they provide dreams. But the Feegles compare dromes to spiders for their ability to weave dreams like webs to trap their next meal. In a way, they’re like big, bloated Shelob in The Two Towers and the other giant spiders in The Hobbit.

  As for your thugs, well, there’s Chrysophrase, the extortionist troll thug (Coalface is the right-hand stooge of Chrysophrase). Although Chrysophrase is an employer and a club owner akin to a mob boss, he’s still a thug. Who else but a thug would try to bribe Vimes (see Thud!)?

  And who could forget the “fun-loving,” elves in Lords and Ladies—the full-size models—or the wasp-size ones (see chapter 10)? These aren’t your happy Keebler elves, who sing and make cookies, or the beautiful, wise Lord of the Rings or Obsidian Trilogy elves. Like Teatime, these elves are predatory and vicious, the kind who smile as they kill like the werewolves who like to play “the game” in The Fifth Elephant. They love to hunt others for sport—a plot element seen in other stories as well.

  And then there are the thugs for hire: art appreciator Mr. Tulip and the brains of the outfit—Mr. Pin in The Truth—figure heavily in the plot to get rid of Vetinari (plot #6,000; everyone tries to get rid of Vetinari or Vimes). You can’t help but think of Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, the polite thugs in Diamonds Are Forever. And of course, there’s Mr. Gryle, the banshee thug employed by Reacher Gilt in Going Postal.

  And let us not forget the thugs in uniform—corrupt watchmen, a term that’s almost a redundancy in Ankh-Morpork. There’s Captain “Mayonnaise” Quirke (Men at Arms, Night Watch), Sergeant Knock (Night Watch), and the rest of Captain Swing’s sadistic Unmentionables—the SS of Ankh-Morpork.

  Like the villains, thugs and stooges usually come to a bad end unless they agree to betray their bosses, in which case they pr
obably will come to an end anyway … just like this chapter.

  13

  Les Animaux

  Animal minds are simple, and therefore sharp … . The whole panoply of the universe has been neatly expressed to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.

  —Equal Rites116

  Maybe we won’t catch you ordering Charlotte’s Web or any other cute animal story (Flicka or Lassie, anyone?) through Netflix. Maybe Animal Farm, George Orwell’s searing indictment of Russian-style communism, or Brian Jacques’s Redwall series with its Lord of the Rings–epic style of animals is more your speed. You know—where animals behave as people and even wield a sword and other weapons.

  While a series like Artemis Fowl may be “Die Hard with fairies” (according to its author), Animal Farm is Doctor Zhivago with animals. So, what is Discworld? We consider it Les Misérables with animals. Les Animaux, if you will.

  GIVE US YOUR POOR, YOUR TIRED, AND YOUR WRETCHED

  Victor Hugo’s classic story of poverty and redemption might seem like a far cry from the daily life of a talking dog named Gaspode or an extremely smelly, old wirehaired terrier named Wuffles—the pride and joy of Lord Vetinari. But think of Gaspode as Jean Valjean, the beleaguered hero of Les Misérables, whose crime of stealing bread to feed his family nets him the unwavering persecution of Inspector Javert. Think of Wuffles as Gavroche, the kid who rats out Javert. (Remember, Wuffles is the one who exposes Charlie as the fake Vetinari, thus helping foil the plan of Mr. Tulip and Mr. Pin.)

  Think of Gavin, the wolf who runs with a pack of wolves in The Fifth Elephant, as Eponine Thénardier, a young girl in love with Marius Pontmercy, a revolutionary, and dies to save him. We thought of Eponine because of the love triangle. If you saw the play Les Mis, you know that Marius loves Cosette, Jean Valjean’s daughter. Well, there’s the Angua-Carrot-Gavin triangle. What Gavin’s relationship is to Angua before she arrives in Ankh-Morpork, we can only guess. (And we try not to think too deeply about that.)

  Consider also, the tragic life of Chubby, the stolen dragon in Men at Arms who … well … explodes. Can’t you see echoes of the ill-used Fantine who tragically dies in Les Mis?

  Now think of Dangerous Beans, Peaches, and especially Darktan of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents as the students at the barrier fighting in the revolution. Darktan, of course, is Enjolras—the leader of the student rebels. Can’t you just hear the music swelling? (“Do You Hear the People Sing?”)

  WE’RE FULL OF HOT AIR

  Okay. Maybe we’re full of hot air and you would prefer us to get to stuff like Pet Sematary, the 1983 Stephen King book turned into a movie, where buried pets and people come back to life and turn evil. (All right, all right. Maybe you didn’t see that one.) Greebo, Nanny Ogg’s pet cat, would probably have a starring role. Or how about Amazonian strawberry poison dart frogs? They’re not in Discworld. We’re just mentioning them because we think they’re cool.

  Maybe you won’t think a comparison to Les Mis so far-fetched if you recall the barricades built all over Ankh-Morpork in Night Watch and the songs the flag-waving rebels sing, an allusion to the song of the rebel students in Les Mis—“Do You Hear the People Sing?”

  But we digress. Getting back to Pratchett’s Animal Kingdom, the closest animal you’ll find to the heroic Lassie (the famous collie) or Rin Tin Tin (a series of trained German shepherds who acted in the movies during the 1920s and 1930s—a time when maybe your grandmother wasn’t even alive) ideal is a dog named Laddie the Wonder Dog in Moving Pictures. He’s like Lassie and Rin Tin Tin except he was almost designed by Nature to be in moving pictures—he even barks photogenically! But while he helps save the day (Good boy!), he has an almost pathological need to be affirmed.

  In Discworld, you won’t find a load of heroic animals that seem as if they’re self-cleaning. Instead, you find animals full of hot, smelly air, such as the swamp dragons at the Ankh-Morpork Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons started by Sybil Ramkin Vimes. Pratchett talks all about swamp dragons in The Last Hero and other places, so we won’t go into that much. What we can tell you is that they’re not like the dragons you find in the Pern series by Anne McCaffrey (and Todd McCaffrey, her coauthor son), the Dragon Jousters series by Mercedes Lackey, the Inheritance series by Christopher Paolini, or any of the hundreds of other series with dragons.

  And Gaspode is sort of an anti-Lassie—tough talking and street-wise; not a puppet of “the Man” like Laddie. (If Joe Pesci could play a dog, he could probably play Gaspode.) Oh, sure, he helps save the day in Men at Arms, The Truth, Moving Pictures, and The Fifth Elephant. And he’s briefly known as Gaspode the Wonder Dog in Moving Pictures. But you’ve probably never seen Lassie as filthy as Gaspode. And Lassie, alas, only barks, no matter how many times Timmy asks, “What is it, girl?” (And the gender thing is another issue.)

  And then there’s the matter of Wuffles—a sixteen-year-old dog who likes to bite people. Not exactly Rin Tin Tin. Yet Wuffles is a beloved pet just as Greebo is and Gaspode was briefly. But in Discworld, pets are no more “owned” than people are—at least the smart ones aren’t.

  Of Rats and Men

  Martin and his father, Luke (guess Luke can’t use the Darth Vader line, “Luke, I am your father”), are your epic-style heroes of Redwall. No question about that. You don’t get a name like Martin the Warrior or Luke the Warrior for knitting sweaters. They’re part of the tradition of heroic mice, one you find in the Newbery award-winning book, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien and The Rescuers by Margery Sharp. And then there are rats like Ripfang, the pirate, who are the opposite—nasty, mean—the manner of many rats in fiction. (Many, but not all.)

  Discworld is rat, rather than mice, country. There are the Death of Rats (see chapter 8), Dangerous Beans, Darktan, and Hamnpork. (And there’s the ratlike Nobby.) They’re in the Justin sphere of heroic animals, Justin being the kindly, heroic rat in Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. They’re proof that the most unlikely being (e.g., hobbits) can save the day.

  Like the rats of NIMH, the Discworld rats suddenly discover that they’re cleverer than others of their species, thanks to eating garbage at Unseen University (also the site of Gaspode’s change). The NIMH rats gained their intelligence through being experimented upon. Maurice gained his through, well, eating a magically enhanced rat. You are what you eat.

  Running with the Wolves

  Down through the ages, wolves have gotten the shaft in literature, what with Aesop’s fables, Maugrim in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and all. Pratchett only partially rectifies that with his inclusion of wolves and werewolves. Some are good, like Lupine the “mostly” wolf werewolf in Reaper Man. Some are bad—werewolf-movie bad. We talked about them in chapter 4. These aren’t your “gender-confused” wolves à la the Shrek movies.

  Gavin—all wolf, not a werewolf—is the typical alpha male—reeking of “competent power,” as Pratchett describes in The Fifth Elephant. (As opposed to the wolf Eats Wrong Meat, who probably just reeks.) The wolves of Gavin’s pack in The Fifth Elephant have a social order akin to that of the wolves that raised Mowgli in The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, or the wolves in Jean Craighead George’s award-winning series about an Inuit girl who lives with a pack of wolves. Although the Discworld wolves probably wouldn’t raise a human child, they’re willing to tolerate humans and even snack on them, as Angua warns Carrot in The Fifth Elephant when he threatens to underestimate them. They’re very intelligent animals and even have a system of passing on information that’s just as effective as the clacks.

  Cats “You” Later

  Whether or not you’re a cat lover, you can find plenty of cats in fantasy—at least in kids’ fantasy; for example, Erin Hunter’s Warriors series featuring warring factions of cats.

  In Discworld, you’ll find cats with a Pratchett twist. In the Carnegie medal-winning book The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, Maurice is a street-smart cat with a
plan. He’s the Discworld version of Thomas O’Malley, the alley cat in Disney’s The Aristocats. Maurice could probably out-con Moist von Lipwig, who is a con artist supreme. He subscribes to the talking animal school of which Gaspode is a charter member, thanks to the influence of Unseen University (and on Maurice’s part, a judicious diet of rats).

  In many fiction stories, cats are the province of witches. Some are used as familiars. Nanny’s battle-scarred cat Greebo is a little too familiar. He’s not like Hermione’s cat Crookshanks in the Harry Potter series, being of a pillaging personality. But even he gets a comeuppance when Granny gains a kitten (You) in Wintersmith.

  Even Death has a soft spot for cats, as we mentioned in chapter 8. But it’s doubtful that even he would like Ratbag, the family cat of the Achings. We’re introduced to Ratbag in The Wee Free Men. He belongs to the nasty pet cats school of which Si and Am, the sinuous Siamese cats owned (if a cat can be owned) by Aunt Sarah in Lady and the Tramp, are members. (Even Greebo, as nefarious as he seems, is more lovable.)

  Sisterhood of the Snakes

  What fictional wild kingdom could be complete without snakes? But like the wolves, snakes have a bad rep, thanks to a certain snake in the Garden of Eden. In the Harry Potter series, you know that Voldemort, who can talk to snakes, has a huge snake named Nagini. And, of course, there’s the python Kaa in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. Even though Kaa helps rescue Mowgli at one point (mainly so he can have a few monkeys for a snack), he’s still viewed as sneaky. Not content with just one snake, Kipling adds three more—Nag and Nagaina, two nasty cobras, and Karait, another poisonous snake, all of which encounter the mongoose Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (in the short story of the same name in The Jungle Book).