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D.R. Ranshaw

D.R. RANSHAW

Understandably Unpleasant Characters

2/22/2021

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A fellow Tweeple --- someone who follows me on Twitter while I reciprocate (I’ve no idea whether that’s an official term, BTW) --- was recently musing about literary characters who are unpleasant, but understandably so, given their backgrounds. It got me to musing…
 
(And as Will so famously said, thereby hangs a tale.)
 
Unpleasant characters don’t have to be villains, you know. They’re not always twirling their moustaches, laughing maniacally while placing bound damsels in distress on railway tracks… not unless you want to deal with unbearably hoary old clichés, anyway. Which, in this day and age, when jaded, world-weary readers/viewers seem more aware than ever of tropes, plot twists, and cliché, I advise strongly against. Because, really, unless we’re channelling some saccharine saintly type, we ALL have unpleasant sides, don’t we? Perhaps Even Me. (And frankly, even saccharine saintly types can be quite unpleasant as they sanctimoniously proceed through life, reminding the rest of us, overtly or covertly, how woefully imperfect we truly are.)
 
Most unpleasant characters are, I think, that way primarily because of what SF author Robert Heinlein light-heartedly but accurately referred to as life’s ‘Surprise Party and Practical Jokes Department’ i.e., the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ life routinely chucks at us tends to have a marked effect on our dispositions, outlooks, and actions. (Yeah, I know all about the ‘nature vs. nurture’ debate. While people can be jerks from day one, I think what goes on in and during their lives has a greater impact.)
 
Even protagonists can be UUTs (Understandably Unpleasant Types --- pronounced oot, I’ve officially decided). Personally, I don’t recommend making a protagonist an UUT… it’s important for readers to be able to like and relate to protagonists, and many of us, I think, at least labour under the delusion we’re nice people more or less all the time. (That’s called rationalization, folks, and humans are mostly past masters of rationalization.) But I can think of at least two protagonists who are UUTs. Are they effective? Well, Vox Populi, Vox Dei, I say… AKA The Reader Must Decide:
 
Edmund Pevensie is one of four sibling protagonists in C.S. Lewis’ classic children’s fantasy The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe from the Chronicles of Narnia series, and Edmund is certainly an UUT. He’s angry, mouthy, rebellious --- quite a jerk, in sum --- which is, actually, played up more in the stunningly gorgeous 2005 film version. In fact, we can go further than mere jerk, because he betrays his three siblings and quite literally goes over to the Dark Side, at least for a while, before eventually, smartening up and getting redemption. (To be fair, he doesn’t initially understand the precise nature of the deal he’s making with the White Witch.)
 
So what is it making Edmund understandably unpleasant? Well, to start with, there’s a war on --- the Second World War, and he and his siblings are evacuated out of a London being bombed nightly by the Luftwaffe.  So… dislocation, separation from parental unit, relocation to an unknown environment not particularly conducive to children… check, check, check. Let’s also not forget he’s the third-born of four children. Now, as a first-born myself (I know… you’d never be able to tell), I can understand only intellectually what it would be like to be in the middle of the pack --- not the oldest/bossy star first child, not the youngest and ‘cute baby’ to be spoiled, just part of the Great Unwashed scrabbling for attention in the middle --- but I know there’s a great deal of literature out there discussing the psychological millstones of being a middle child. And once you get started on a certain path, even when you realize it’s heading off a cliff, a great many of us find it hard to swallow our pride and admit our mistake.
 
My second UUT of the day is (perhaps more controversially, although I’ll go with Kingsley Amis on this one --- he said if you can’t annoy someone, what’s the point of writing?) …Katniss Everdeen, of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy. I need to be honest up-front: I don’t like Katniss very much. I find her sullen, apathetic, and totally unwilling to accept the role that’s (admittedly) thrust upon her… right up to the end of the entire tale. She doesn’t want to take up any kind of leadership function, and allows herself to be manipulated by forces around her. Now, before you unleash all kinds of invective about how wrong I am and how Katniss is the greatest thing since sliced bread and how dare I take this attitude… sure, you’re entitled to your opinion… as am I. How is she different from Edmund? you ask. Well, Katniss is the sole protagonist, not one of four, and more importantly, unlike Edmund, she doesn’t undergo any great character epiphany by story’s end.
 
Again, to be fair (the ‘understandably’ U in our acronym), Katniss never asked for any of it. She didn’t want her sister selected as tribute; she didn’t want to have to volunteer in her place; she didn’t want to be forced to kill others in a bread-and-circuses gladiatorial arena on live TV; and she certainly didn’t want to become the face of an entire rebellion. I get that. Most of us wouldn’t want any of it, either. In spite of our frequently laughable romantic notions about ourselves, most of us just want to be allowed to quietly live our lives in peace and plenty. But… when you are The Protagonist… when greatness is thrust upon you… well, as a reader, I want a little more can-do attitude and a little less pouty teenage angst. You know, more along the lines of a Frodo Baggins, whose basic response on learning he’s been handed the Supreme Booby Prize i.e. a one-way suicide jaunt to Mordor AKA Hell on Middle Earth, is, “Well, sh*t, guys. (Pause.) Haven’t got a clue how to get there. But… (longer pause) … okay, I’ll do it. ‘Cause it’s gotta get done.” Yeah, that’s the attitude I want.
 
So suck it up, Katniss; you’re the Katalyst.
 
(Sorry. Awful pun. I’ll show myself out now.)
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Bombadil Days

2/1/2021

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These are Bombadil days.
 
This was the thought which popped, quite unbidden, into my consciousness the other day while I was vacuuming. (A task I frankly loathe, but decades ago, my wife and I divided up that part of household chores… she chose the wet cleaning, and I chose the dry. Note to youngsters: of such equitable divisions of labour are sound marriages made.) Now, I’ve no idea how or why this very random --- and very odd --- snippet wormed its way up through the vaults of thought, but, like most writers, I’ve come to expect and encourage such snippets when engaged in purely mechanical endeavours. Most of the time, they’re nothing if not entertaining, and sometimes, they’re actually useful with regards to writing.
 
Of course, you know Tom Bombadil. From J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (LOTR). What? You don’t know Tom Bombadil? Minor Character Extraordinaire? But… oh, wait, I know: you only watched Peter Jackson’s film version of the tale, didn’t you? You heathen. You Didn’t Read The Book, did you? he said, pointing an accusing finger of condemnation. Sigh. No, Tom Bombadil wasn’t in the film version. Jackson cut him out because he felt Bombadil did nothing to advance the plot. Which, on one level is true, but on others, not. We can discuss that later… or another time.
 
Anyway. Tom Bombadil appears early on in The Fellowship of the Ring, which is the first book of the trilogy. He’s humanoid, and lives in a very old, first growth forest called (surprise!) The Old Forest. Tolkien does a marvelous job describing this shaggy, overgrown aggregation of trees and other miscellaneous foliage, where the trees are unsettlingly self-aware --- in fact, one in particular, an old willow tree called (surprise!) Old Man Willow, is downright malevolent, and traps our redoubtable hobbits, who have been traversing The Old Forest in an attempt to avoid the agents of evil hot on their trail. Tom Bombadil shows up in the nick of time to save our hobbits from a gruesomely woody death, and then takes them home with him to meet the missus, a water sprite named (surprise --- no, really) Goldberry. They stay at Bombadil’s house for a couple of days before continuing on their journey.
 
If none of this is (a) familiar to you or (b) rocking your world right now, the main thing you need to take away from it all is that Tom Bombadil doesn’t venture beyond the borders of The Old Forest. Ever. It’s like that’s his quarantine bubble, and he absolutely refuses to travel outside it. Given that there’s no pandemic raging in the rest of Middle Earth (nothing, either along prosaic Covid lines or anything more florid, like Poe’s The Red Death), we’re not really sure why he draws this line. He doesn’t say, and Tolkien never explains Tom’s travel reluctance. Visa problems? Surly border guards? Poor airline food? We don’t know, and Tom ain’t sayin’.
 
Now, the Bombadil analogy to our current collective situation will only stretch so far… after all, most people don’t particularly want to be quarantined on home turf. But Tom is, in a sense, self-isolating… not from a virus, just presumably from a plague of negativity and evil. (Introverted writers don’t count in this whole thing… we’re the people who feel like we’ve been training for lockdown our entire lives. Oh, please, Br’er Fox, don’t make us stay at home to write in the peace and quiet!) In fact, most of our population is going a little squirrelly --- which is about the politest I can be --- regarding lockdowns and restrictions. In fact, it really does make me despair about the capacity of the human race to solve other major problems confronting our survival as a species. I mean, we can’t even all agree that wearing a small piece of cloth on our faces is a good thing. Or that staying home will save lives. Or so will vaccinations. No, no, we’ve got to rant and rave and froth and bubble about freedom (most people don’t, apparently, understand what it's really all about --- they think it’s just having all the cookies and eating them whenever you want… without having to share) and individual liberties and crackpot conspiracy theories and lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Sigh. I think we could do with more Tom Bombadil in our world today: he’s content where he is, doesn’t let the cares of the world get to him, enjoys and appreciates his beautiful wife, and, basically, doesn’t sweat the small stuff. Or the big stuff, come to that. And he seems to understand what so many people do not: that nothing lasts forever. I’m sure that one day, he’ll look around those shaggy old trees and decide it's time for a wee bit of a stroll beyond those (admittedly self-imposed) boundaries; that whatever it is that’s made him self-quarantine all this time is no longer a threat, and a boat cruise down the Anduin sounds just about right.
 
So chill, people. Just try pulling together for the common good.
 
For a change. 
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    D.R. Ranshaw's Blog

    Author of The Annals of Arrinor series.  Lover of great literature, fine wine, and chocolate. Not necessarily in that order.

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