“You Weren’t There”; Historical Events, Trauma, and the Glorious 25th of May

Have you ever listened to Austin Wintory’s soundtrack for the game Journey? It makes good writing music.

I am juggling both Men Went to Cattraeth and Wild New World, with mixed results. I’ll let you know how that goes in the Book Diary/Goodreads.

I had originally marked to talk about Free Comic Book Day, but what the heck! Along with being Towel Day, it’s also the Glorious 25th of May. And Memorial Day Weekend. Talking about Free Comic Book Day just didn’t seem fitting.

Next week’s Note should be about Saint Joan of Arc.

“You Weren’t There”; Historical Events, Trauma, and the Glorious 25th of May

At the beginning of the Discworld novel Night Watch, by Sir Terry Pratchett, we learn that on the 25th of May, certain citizens of Ankh-Morpork wear lilacs to commemorate the Glorious Revolution which took place decades prior, and the people who fought and died in it. Many notable side characters wear one. One clueless young copper asks if he should be wearing a lilac too, only to be angrily rebutted because he wasn’t there.

There’s this idea, often by the same crowd that likes to use terms like “literary fiction” or “magical realism”, that fantasy is disconnected from reality, and only has a vague understanding of the harsh parts of life. Which is stupid. It’s not particularly unusual that fantasy and science-fiction feature characters remembering traumatic events; it’s fairly common in fact. “I was there, Gandalf,” comes to mind, as does “Remember Reach.” There’s a reason fantasy fiction is this way. I don’t have a full thesis on this, though I one day might–a lot of big name authors are veterans, even in genre fiction. J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis fought in World War I; Robert Jordan was a Vietnam veteran; Gene Wolfe was drafted into the Korean War; Lord Dunsany fought in the Second Boer War. It’s not a requirement to be a fantasy author, definitely, though I think it’s something worth noting that so many of them, and so many influential ones, were. Terry Pratchett was not a veteran, either, though the BBC special on his life, Back in Black notes that he had a particularly harsh headmaster in school that he suspected was so unforgiving because he had been at war. He grew up in a Britain that still vividly remembered what it was like to be at war.

Mind you, not all of the traumatic events that ever happened were even wars; Stephen R. Donaldson, author of the Thomas Covenant Chronicles, was on campus during a school shooting at his university. There are fantasy books that detail or refer to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. I also remember that in the wake of Hurricane Maria, there were a lot of Puerto Rican writers who were trying to make sense of the disaster.

Given how often we see warfare and disaster happen in fantasy, it should not surprise us that the trauma of these events are often key parts of characters. Part of me wants to say that this is a great way to build character and worldbuilding–and it is, let’s be clear–but it’s also a very good way to try to make sense of troubling things that happen to us in real life.

[Fun fact: Robert Jordan originally planned for Wheel of Time to be about a veteran having returned home after a brutal war and trying to make sense of things (as he did after Vietnam), only to be pulled onto another quest. The idea for that character eventually developed into the protagonist Rand’s father, Tam al’Thor, instead of the protagonist himself.]

This idea fascinates us, even people who haven’t been part of huge, traumatic events themselves. Part of the reason for Firefly, for instance, was that Joss Whedon was interested in the idea of people moving to new frontiers after a massive, violent war that overthrew their lifestyle, especially the people who lost–or bluntly, what happened to people who lost the Civil War? Many of them moved west; hence, Firefly is a space Western, though without the awkward baggage of casting protagonists as people who fought for slavery.

George R.R. Martin is also pretty interested in this; I can’t say how it’s covered in A Song of Ice & Fire, as I haven’t read it, but A Knight of Seven Kingdoms has two of its three stories feature the aftermath of a rebellion fifteen years prior, with people still talking about it and willing to take up arms over who they think should have won that war; it is, after all, still in living memory to them.

The trauma of a war that just happened, of still recovering from a conflict that you came home from, is part of the reason that the worldbuilding of some grimdark fantasy doesn’t quite work for me. The Witcher books and games are full of near-constant warfare, from which apparently no one learns any lessons. I’ve lost track of how many times Nilfgaard has invaded. I think the idea is that the world is kind of numb from it all, but it doesn’t feel like the writers have fully fleshed out the effects of that war in a character sense, only built what they thought the most horrifying and horrendous things that might happen as a result. Yeah, the world’s there, the characters just aren’t fully living in it because you’re constantly throwing crap at them.

I won’t try to say that Sapkowski doesn’t understand trauma; like Pratchett, the previous generation knew World War II (his father fought in it, in fact), and, uh, Poland under Soviet rule wasn’t a picnic. I think he’s just not interested in character or worldbuilding as much as his idea of deconstructing fantasy and fairy tale ideas. That, and the main characters don’t hold allegiance to specific kingdoms, which probably factors in considerably.

The Glorious 25th of May, however, expresses this whole interesting idea that I think is fascinating and heartbreaking all at once: “You weren’t there.” Luckily, yes, these veterans of the Glorious Revolution have each other to get together and go put an egg on Keel’s grave, but they all know that this is something they don’t have in common with everyone else. They can’t explain the importance of this event to other people, at least not in a way that feels right, because they weren’t there.

Tolkien has something similar with the hobbits returning back from adventures; Frodo eventually decides he has to leave because he simply doesn’t fit in Shire anymore, despite how hard he fought to save it, and so many of his friends being there. The only one who comes close to getting it is Sam, and Sam has a family to take care of, which Frodo doesn’t–although Sam also will eventually sail away into the West.

If fantasy is going to have war or other horrible disasters, it’s got to have this sort of reflection on past events. It’s got to have an effect on these characters, and that effect is going to be negative. I almost want to add, “Unless that character is a psychopath,” but no, even then it should have a negative effect, even if the character in question doesn’t understand it as such. A character deciding to become a cheerful unhinged murderer after wartime trauma is still a negative effect.

I very much think it should be worth exploring how that changes one’s interactions with others. How does it feel to take part in a revolution that changed your country and not be recognized for your contributions? How does it feel to come back from a war and find a population that doesn’t know what you’re going through? How does it feel to survive on the losing side of a conflict, and all the history books say that you deserved it? How does it feel to survive a natural disaster and then go to a location where no one has experienced anything like that level of devastation?

And how do these people interact with people who aren’t part of that experience? How do they feel about questions? How do they feel about attempts to be in that group?

Fantasy is equipped to deal with all of these questions, if writers put in the time and effort.

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