Will you have some tea?

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me" -- C. S. Lewis

Symbols vs. Allegory

Of all words that have begun to lose their meaning and to be conflated in modern society the ones that have been bothering me most of late are symbol and allegory, which it seems people have begun to use interchangeably.

Allegories are man made constructs--a one-to-one correlation between two things. They are simple and contained within their subjects. That is why when, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when people kept telling the Pevensie children that Alsan was not a tame lion I only half believed them. It is true within the constructs of the story and they way they meant it, Alsan couldn't be called or beckoned. Yet at the same time the reader could expect him not to be too terrible or do anything unexpected because he is confined by being an allegory. Aslan can be depended on not to do anything Christ wouldn't.

Symbols are much wilder things, which point to something else, not as a correspondence but as an illumination of its mystery. Chesterton gets to the heart of this paradox with his customary wit and insight in his essay "The Heraldic Lion," saying: "For all the mystical animals were imagined as enormously big as well as incalculably fierce and free. The stamping of the awful unicorn would shake the endless deserts in which it dwelt; and the wings of the vast griffin went over one' head in heaven with the thunder of a thousand cherubim. And yet the fact remains that if you asked a medieval man what the unicorn was supposed to mean, he would have replied 'chastity.'"

Symbols are not human constructs in the same way allegories are, but rather are a way to illuminate a mystery already in existence and to point to a truth that humans have only partially grasped. In the case of the unicorn this truth is that Chasity is not an absence or a lack of something, but instead something powerful, alive and flaming. I believe that elsewhere Chesterton made the comparison to Joan of Arc--something pure with the power to shake the world.

In the Renaissance a philosophy called The Doctrine of Signatures gained prominence. Essentially what this said was that everything in creation was created for a purpose with and end in mind and God "signed" each bit of creation to let man know its purpose. While not being as literal as looking for ear shaped plants to cure ear infections, this is what symbols do. They help unlock the secrets of creation by pointing to meanings beyond the superficial and illustrate a world full of mystery and wonder.

Not every man truely lives

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."-- Martin Luther King Jr.

English Marks a Million

A thought for the end of your week: The Economist, in its preview of 2009 issue, reports that the Global Language Monitor predicts that on April 29th 2009 English will officially pass the one million words mark.

In other news the average text message or IM conversation uses less than 50 of these.

A defense of monsters

The chatter around the library for the past few weeks has been unarguably focused on Twilight: Was the movie any good? Who is the best character? Who would make a better boyfriend, Edward or Jacob?

The last question caused me to pause, one is a werewolf and one is a vampire so neither should make a good boyfriend. Oh wait, that's right, they are not really vampires or werewolves, Stephenie Meyers managed to strip them of what made these creatures monsters, the subject of horror movie-their uncontrollable nature, their complete otherness. This is most evident in the werewolves who did not have to change at the full moon, who could transform back and forth at will, and who retained all of their mental capabilities. While in the fourth book she at least has the decency to say they are not traditional werewolves but rather shape shifters, it still felt week. Despite both Jacob and Edward's frequent assertions that they were monsters neither Bella nor the readers bought it.

I began thinking then about the Harry Potter books, the last big fad in teen lit which transcended that genre and were popular with a broad spectrum of people. In that, at least, the monsters are monstrous--no one meeting a dementor, troll or Voldemort would expect compassion and they were not objects of infatuation. Yet in Harry Potter it is set up as a one-on-one struggle, not part of a larger problem. Voldemort is the evilest wizard and Harry the boy destined to kill him, an act which will restore order the the world and everything will be fine again.

Stories where the monsters stand out, where they are truly terrifying are those where defeating a monster does not eradicate evil but merely stems the tide until the next monster arises. At the beginning of the Dark Knight Gordon tells Batman that his taking the out the mob bosses did not save Gotham but opened the door to a new generation of criminals. In the Lord of the Rings the unspoken knowledge that Sauron was not the first dark lord and probably would not be the last is evident. For the characters in these stories this is no reason to stop resisting, but there is also no talk of chosen ones, just of a person standing against the monsters until it is someone else's turn.

Tolkien got at the heart of this mentality in his essay The Monsters and the Critics, "The monsters had been the foes of the gods, the captains of men, and within Time the monsters would win. In the heroic siege and last defeat men and gods alike had been imagined in the same host. Now the heroic figures, the men of old, remained and still fought on until defeat. For the monsters do not depart, whether the gods go or come."

Defanging monsters robs the struggles of everyday life of their virtue. The fact Beowulf still resonates with modern audiences, that the Lord of the Rings has not flagged in popularity since it was "discovered" in the 60's, and that superhero stories are becoming popular with a whole new generation means that the idea of an unending struggle against evil still speaks to people at least as much as stories where the main problem is finding a date to prom or staying on top of your clique. Leaving monsters monstrous sparks the imagination and gives people a guide for when the dragons come.

There is power in me yet, my race is not yet run

Who are we? we who claim to know so much yet know so little. Are we so arrogant that we cannot confess to be proud? We have but one chance to do something in this world, who are we to falter? Why are we afraid to fight for the right to be free? I want to run I want to fly I want to do something with my life. There will come a time when we must decide who we are. In this world why are we restricted in professions that we deem others will want to emulate? Why simply cannot we walk and learn and hope to understand? Damn their warnings damn their lies, they will see the people rise! I want to learn, I want to learn so much. To travel to learn the trades of better men. I want to wander I want to be free. I want to be remembered for the life that I led. I want to be written in the stars. Let the rains fall and the seas rise! Let us walk unafraid of what is to come. Let us reach for the stars and let the stars be changed. Who cares about your lonely soul, we strive for a higher goal, our little lives don't count at all! The trumpets wills sound for the Lords of Gondor have returned. I would have called you my brother. my captain. my king. We do not know the path that we tread, but He does, and so we must content ourselves with this knowledge, the knowledge that there is a being greater than us, that there is a will greater than our own. The stars can be changed. The Son also rises. Are we willing to give our lives or are we to afraid to even say our name. He stood as if challenging the world, and all who looked upon him concluded that in the case of a rumble, the world would lose.

To all the Farsighted

"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." — Mark Twain