The Secret Grove Pt. 3

Last week we covered the reasons behind four key Secret Grove conventions; child protagonists, often orphaned or child of a single parent, enter a new, fantastic world through a portal. Today we tackle the following conventions; travel buddies, guides, the ultimate evil villain, and prophecies.

Travel Buddies: Dorothy picked up several friends on her yellow brick adventures that turned out to be an irresponsible practical joke on the part of Glenda “The Good” Witch, but she had Toto from the beginning. In “The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles” and “The Tower of Geburah,” it is a family of three with identical gendered birth order that make their journeys. Once again, C.S. Lewis uses a variety of mix and matches with siblings, family members and friends for each of his novels. Also once again, “The Horse and His Boy” is excluded because, despite taking place in the same universe, it does not qualify as a Secret Grove.

The friend/sibling (hereafter referred to as “friebling”) is brought along as reassurance for the protagonist, to raise the stakes, and if the author is feeling preachy, to teach a valuable lesson about friendship. When crossing the otherworldly threshold it is comforting to have someone from the original world to remind you of who you really are and what is important. The friebling is an anchor to reality. That same friebling, however, can be vulnerable in the new world and become a focal point for rescue operations, from imprisonment by the ultimate evil and possibly part of a “Sadistic Choice.” The best example would be Peeta from “The Hunger Games,” who serves all of these roles flawlessly, but with sexual tension and love triangle elements thrown in to satisfy YA audiences.

It appears a balance needs to be struck with the number of kids. Lewis starts with four, but with limited word count it is difficult to make all of the characters sympathetic and compelling. We feel limited connection to Susan in particular, so Lewis pares the number down to three in “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.” It still feels a little crowded with Edmund in the mix, so he works with pairs for the rest of the series. Many others work with three children, possibly to extend character identity to any possible reader. Birth order is a defining factor for children. Three kids allows a child to relate to the oldest, middle or youngest without superfluous characters running around.

Guides: When dropped into a completely alien socio/political situation that may or may not involve unfamiliar creatures, natural laws and/or technologies, both the protagonist and reader are in desperate need of exposition. Who better to deliver the 411 than the first person the protagonist meets, a person who happens not only to speak the same language as the protagonist, but also has an identical values system and access to the Prophecies? This time saving trope greases the plot and moves the characters along to the exciting stuff. Let’s face it, a logical progression of these events would be tedious. Tedium is bad for any book, but kids are far less forgiving than adults. Why do you think the training montage is a thing?

The Ultimate Evil: Antagonists are amazing. They are the yin to the protagonist’s yang, the shadow cast by a heroes’ light, they are harmonization, counterbalance, salt in the mashed potatoes. Villains define heroes. They give heroes agency, purpose. We wouldn’t cheer for the plucky underdogs half as hard if their opponents were gracious sportsmen. We wouldn’t root for the hapless suitor if his potential father-in-law were patient and reasonable. Think about Luke without Vader, or Enigo without Rugen. Without Jafar, Aladdin is just a homeless creep with an elaborate con to get into Jasmin’s fashionable Hammer pants. In its original 1981 rendition, without the eponymous villain Donkey Kong, the princess does not require rescue, Jumpman has no barrels to jump over, no chance to prove his mettle, no chance to become Mario. These examples show that villains first provide the skeleton of a plot. Second, they contrast with heroes to bring out their best qualities.

You can experiment with villains. Make the villain someone unexpected (Watchmen). Make the hero only slightly morally superior to the villain (Interview with the Vampire). Reverse morality so the villain is the protagonist (The Godfather). Make the villain more sympathetic than the hero (The Phantom of the Opera). Make the hero and villain personal friends (X-Men). Make the hero realize that he is really the villain (I Am Legend). Make the protagonists realize that the villain is not really a villain, and it was all just a huge misunderstanding (The Sandlot). Make the hero and the villain the same person (spoiler!). Or you can just go with the straight, inexplicably malicious, rotted soul, black as carbon villain to contrast your gold hearted hero. You can do just about anything except leave villains out.

Another function villains serve is to raise the stakes. If your protagonist saves a child from being hit by a car they are a helpful bystander. If the driver of that car is drunk they are a hero. If the driver of that car is Adolph Hitler they are a saint. The status of the protagonist changes on merit of the antagonist alone, without having to do anything extra. Therefore, when the villain’s evil plan involves not only murdering a few innocents, not only world domination, but tearing the fabric of space-time itself and destroying all worlds in the multiverse both known and unknown, the heroism of the protagonists is immediately elevated to the highest degree.

Children’s literature offers extra challenges to the villainous character. The bad guy can’t do anything too graphic like eat foie gras made from baby livers or sell puppies into prostitution. Their activities must sound menacing without being too specific, such as destroying souls or making it atmospherically unpleasant for like, a really long time. Forever, even. Anything longer than five minutes is forever in kid time anyway. Thus, a balance must be struck; make the villain too soft and you end up with a petty, ineffectual, comical non-threat like Disney’s Captain Hook. Get too crazy and you emotionally scar your audience for life, like Der Struwwelpeter. Even if you strike that sweet spot of appropriately foreboding yet not quite nightmare fuel, you aren’t out of the woods. You may find your villain has more charisma and commands more interest than your hero. Finally, if your book takes off and your publisher asks you to spin it into a series, you may be tempted to reuse your perfect villain over and over, even against logic and to the detriment of their potency.

The Prophecy: This is not a product of Secret Grove specifically, but a combination of Child Protagonists facing the Ultimate Evil. Even in a fantastic world, there is typically not a lot of reason to trust a child with the fate of your chicken sandwich, much less the world. Unless, that is, there is a prophecy that legitimizes the child as a hero. The Prophecy is yet another device to streamline the narrative so we can get to the good stuff, with the added benefit of doubt and angst three quarters into the book due to the vague nature of prophecy. The author can tack on a lesson on either determinism or the malleable nature of fate should they choose.

I don’t know why I dislike the prophetic plot device other than the fact that it has been done so often.  When prophecies are mentioned, the proceeding conversation about who believes what, the vagueness of the text etc. is boring because it is predictable. I’d like to see a book try to plausibly have child protagonists face the ultimate evil without the support of ancient prophecies. In fact, I’d like to see that so much I just might try it myself.

Next week we’ll discuss allegory, and the consequences or lack thereof resulting from the magical journey.