Tehanu, & the Typical Fantasy Protagonist

It’s been a very odd week, all things considered. I had a delightful vacation, but coming back to work was, uh, painful, not helped by some things I got swamped with. I wasn’t even sure if I would be writing a Saturday Note this week, as I didn’t know if I’d be in on Friday, but here we are! And it’s the weekend! And Thanksgiving is coming up! And also I have a thing I need to paint next week…

I am currently re-reading Runemarks again, and I finished the Netflix Leviathan (which reminds me that I need to re-read those books, too). After that I’ll finish season four of The Witcher and then… Dark Winds’s newest season, I think? Presently playing through The Last Jedi on LEGO Star Wars.

There was a bit in which this week’s Saturday Note was going to be the “Reyna is Awesome” Note, as I have Puerto Rican matters on my mind, but we’re going with this one instead.

Tehanu, & the Typical Fantasy Protagonist

I recently read Tehanu by Ursula K. LeGuin. And it was good! I don’t think it was as good as some of the other Earthsea books, but still good. One thing stood out to me about it: Tehanu is not about the typical fantasy protagonist. The lead character is not an action hero type, or a wizard fulfilling his destiny. It’s a widow on a farm, mostly trying to sort out the goings on in her everyday life. There is a former wizard in the story, but he is depowered and retired, with no interest in getting those powers or that life back. LeGuin was consciously trying to make a different type of fantasy story, with a different focus than what people were used to: the story of one of the common folk in a fantasy story.

[Though I have seen discussion about whether or not it succeeded, as an evil wizard appears in the climax of the book.]

Fantasy tends to not focus on common people. Royalty, knights, nobility, people who are of special bloodlines or reincarnations of important, famous people–that’s what fantasy generally tends to be about. Rarely are protagonists actually just farmers or craftsmen or something like that; when it looks like they are, it’s because they’re secretly of a noble lineage and learn about a special destiny. 

To be clear, that’s not necessarily a bad thing! There’s a reason this is the case: people look to fantasy to tell stories of big events or heroes, and it’s a lot easier for the audience to swallow the idea that a protagonists have a huge effect on the world around them if that person, in a pre-modern setting, is someone with institutional power to make change. And with characters like royalty, if they’re written in a way that’s relatable, you see how people who are like you can make choices that affect the world around them. Everyday people, but written large.

And obviously, there’s the question of stakes. We want to read about big things happening in fantasy, and a shepherd watching over his flock day after day hardly sounds like riveting reading to most people. If there isn’t overt danger, battles, or that sort of thing, most people are going to pick up a different book, or watch a different show, or play a different game.

You’ll notice, if you stop and think about it, how difficult it is to think of a fantasy story where the lead characters are really just ordinary folk. I sometimes think about how in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Zuko insults Katara by calling her a peasant, but her dad is a chieftain. Wheel of Time also comes to mind, but the protagonists being from a small town doesn’t really mean much when they’re important enough to the world that their presence literally warps the rules of destiny around them.

[Some more foolish people tend to blame Lord of the Rings for having or establishing this problem, though that’s not exactly true. Even if we count out Frodo as having come from a privileged, wealthy and well-connected family in the Shire, people tend to forget another key character: Sam. Sam’s a gardener–a servant. And he’s just as important to the story, and gets his own viewpoint characters. I saw one blogger point out that for all his, “It matters what the common people think” talk in A Song of Ice & Fire, George R.R. Martin doesn’t have a common person point of view in the books, though not having read them I don’t know if that’s true.]

And you know? It works. Having a Chosen One, or having an obviously important person in-universe makes it clear for the audience to know who to root for, or who has control of what in this story.

But I think LeGuin is right to point out that fantasy often ignores the point of view of normal people, living their everyday lives. Because you have to think: what is life like in a world where there are wizards and dragons and epic heroes running around? And once you start saying, “Yeah, well we can have the common folk handle the action of the story,” you run into the issue that you’re no longer depicting the everyday life of normal people in this setting.

The times that you do get those perspectives are often in satire or parody. And not everyone is as good about it as Terry Pratchett, who tends to be pretty down-to-earth in writing his characters (and is a very, very good writer). I’m thinking of things like dark fantasy where the common peasants appear only to be painted as stupid, intolerant rubes willing to burn someone at the drop of a hat. In those cases, it only makes you sound like you hate poor people, which shouldn’t be the point of writing a fantasy story ever.

The common people in fantasy are people, too, not just props to be ignored or obstacles to be overcome. That’s what LeGuin was trying to get at. So I appreciate what she was trying to do with Tehanu, and I kind of wish there were more authors out there who are willing to give it a try, though I don’t blame them for not doing so, because it’s a very difficult thing to do successfully.

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