Though Pratchett finds stories and fairy tales restrictive, he is much more enthusiastic about fantasy and myth. In Discworld, fairy tale narra-tives seem to restrict options and exist independent of human creation, while myths and legends are deliberately created to encourage aspirations.
Both require belief and repetition. Hogfather explores the importance of fantasy, focusing on myths around Christmas. It starts when the Auditors of Reality (extra-dimensional beings who hate the disorder humanity brings to the universe) hire an assassin to kill the Hogfather, Discworld’s Santa Claus. The assassin, Mr. Teatime, decides the only way to do the job is to convince children across the Disc that the Hogfather does not bring presents – parents do. In order to maintain the spirit of Hogswatch, Death dresses up as the Hogfather, hitches up a pig drawn sleigh, and rides across the Disc, delivering presents, leaving sooty footprints, and eating the snacks left for the Hogfather on Hogwatch Eve. What could easily be a mere novelization of the Nightmare Before Christmas, in Pratchett’s hands delves much deeper into the nature of Christmas, the value of myths, and the meaning of humanity.
Hogfather is a complicated and odd book – at one point the Arch-chancellor of Unseen University chases an elephant shaped Devourer of Socks through the university’s washrooms – but the main focus is on Death’s journey as the Hogfather. As such, the novel satirizes many elements of Christmas. Death goes through many of the more modern components of Christmas, like visiting children in a mall, and many other, traditional stories around Christmas, which Death quickly subverts. For
example, when Death observes Good King Wenceslas bringing a Hog-watch Eve dinner to a poor woodsman, he sees Wenceslas humiliating the poor man, demanding slavish gratitude from the woodsman. Wenc-eslas’s men insist that the woodsman must be “pathetically thankful”
causing the woodsman to weep in “humiliated embarrassment.” Death intervenes then, berating the king for ignoring the old man’s plight except when he could use charity to make himself feel good. Death then leaves a supply of sausage and bacon for the woodsman, since as Death’s servant explains “charity ain’t giving people what you wants to give, it’s giving people what they need to get.”31 Pratchett frequently twists stories to this end – the most important thing is to help people consistently and at their own level.
After Pratchett spends most of Hogfather correcting the morals of Christmas stories, he delves into the real value of the holiday, and myths in general. After defeating the Auditors of Reality, and helping the Hogfather regain his rightful role, Death gives the moral of the novel.
According to Death, myths enable humans to be human, and to look past the real. During his journey, Death sees that the “real” meaning of Hogswatch frequently is poverty, mercantilism, and death. However, the “Hogfather can teach people the unreal meaning of Hogswatch”, or the charity, joy, and cheer that Hogswatch is supposed to bring. Myths thus elevate humanity to “the point where falling angel meets rising ape.” It is important to note that Pratchett expressly shows that the myths of Discworld (and by extension the myths of Earth) are artificially created by people. Myths ranging from religion, folk stories, and moral concepts like justice and mercy simply do not exist outside of the realm of fantasy. However, as Death explains, “you need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become?”32 This hopeful element of myth on Discworld encourages Pratchett’s characters and his readers to consciously accept belief. Not belief in an unseen reality, but belief in a potential and desirable reality here on Earth. Death seems to agree
31 T. Pratchett, Hogfather, op. cit., pp. 137–140.
32 Ibidem, pp. 220–222.
with Bruce Berger when he suggested that “the ultimate purpose of myth is not to interpret reality but to create it.”33
c
oncluSionOn the Discworld, belief is a physical and literal power. It can fuel gods, stories, or myths. Pratchett’s categorizations of these overlap at times, but each is a force outside of humans that is shaped and powered by human belief. On the Disc, billions of gods exist, but only ones that receive belief have any meaningful existence, intelligence, or independ-ence. While gods exist independently, their doctrines, personalities, and even appearance is dependent on their believers.34 Narratives likewise exist independently, but only have force once they have been lived and repeated by people, elves, dwarves, trolls, etc. For Pratchett, both gods and stories have a way of gaining strength through collective action and belief, an excellent analogy for social forces and tradition here on Earth. His gods and narratives have tremendous collective power, often threatening individual freedom and initiative, yet they can ultimately be shaped by individuals, or at least the protagonist.
Myth on Discworld likewise draws power from belief and repetition, and has narrative qualities and seem more to be deliberately and in some cases consciously built in order to improve society and the world. Though myths are created to help, Pratchett suggests that only through harness-ing the power of belief and narrative can myths become reality. He does not directly address harmful myths, usually preferring to lump those in with misguided religion or jingoism, but the myths he describes as such range from the harmless, to the fun, to the aspirational, suggesting the richness of the imaginative and mythical worlds. In addition, he warns us
33 B. Berger, The Telling Distance: Conversations with the American Desert, Phoenix 1997.
G. Kochhar-Lingren, Tell It Slant: Of Gods, Philosophy and Politics in Terry Pratchett‘s Disc-world, [in:] Alton et al., Discworld and the Disciplines, op. cit., pp. 81–91 calls attention to Emily Dickinson and others who see the value of fiction for determining reality.
34 This also true to some extent of the physical manifestations of abstract forces. Thus, Death appears as a sickle carrying tall skeleton wearing a black robe, as that is what people expect him to look like.
to look closely at the real ramifications of our myths, stories, and beliefs and bring them in line with our own best values as these myths in turn shape the world. Thus Brutha teaches Om to be more tolerant, Granny Weatherwax fights for a girl’s freedom to choose, and Death pleads for us to embrace justice and compassion.
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is a fantastically imaginative and enjoy-able world of fiction. It more than achieves the primary goal of popular entertainment – to entertain. Yet within the frame of jokes, madcap adven-tures and bizarre plot twists, Pratchett has much to say about morality, fables, tradition, politics, business, modern society, religion, belief, and myth. As Amanda Cockrell writes, despite the parody setting, Discworld is anchored to reality through its “sense of what is at the heart of human life and belief, the human soul... and what makes us kin... to everything else alive.”35 Though religiously ambivalent,36 Pratchett recognizes the power in belief, and uses the Discworld novels to encourage people to use belief positively, achieving Arsenij Gulyga’s hope that “myth is not so much a world model, as it is a model of conduct.”37 Pratchett argues throughout his books to not bother wasting time on unworthy gods, and to avoid being entrapped in rigid, hierarchical stories, but to focus on positive, humanistic values, or simply doing the best that you can so far as you are aware, a goal that he achieved.38
35 A. Cockrell, Where the Falling Angel Meets the Rising Ape: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld,
“Hollins Critic” 2006, No. 1, pp. 1–15.
36 In an interview Pratchett admitted that he is OK with the concept of a creator existing, but that such a being certainly does not get involved down at our level. See Porter, Good Discourse, op. cit., pp. 18–19.
37 Quoted in T. Chernyshova, Science Fiction and Myth Creation in our Age, “Science Fiction Studies” 2004, No. 3, pp. 345–346. Gulyga, however, also argues that myths are impossible in the 20th century, since we control so much of our modern environment (see: Ibidem, p. 348).
Pratchett would presumably counter with quantum theory and the uncertainty principle, which often appear in his novels.
38 D. Porter, Good Discourse, op. cit., p. 20.
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