The Weight of Story

Fairy tales

This article is part of the Claritas fall 2023 issue, Stages. Read the full print release here.

By: david johnson

Fairies in My Freezer

Snip.

Snip. Snip.

The cheap and fraying brown yarn plunged lazily into the water contained by a stainless steel saucepan. When ample yarn had been squandered, I neatly wound the remains into a ball for safekeeping. I then employed my clammy little hands to slide a chair from the dining room into the kitchen and, mounting it, gingerly lifted the saucepan into the freezer. 

An ancient Greek skeptic—let’s call him Aesop—would have surely attributed my curious behavior to some spectacular superstition, but I was only doing what was rational, at least to a five-year-old: I was making dog food. 

Our golden doodle, Chester, was an aggressive little scoundrel. He bit visitors and terrorized children. Nevertheless, he needed to be fed. [Enter yarn strewn about a saucepan of ice.] 

What was I thinking? I clearly believed that the unconventional concoction would be transfigured into nourishing dog food, but how? What miracle or magic took place in the black box of that freezer? I suppose I believed in a “Dog Food Fairy” who worked tirelessly to ensure my recipe would serve Chester well.

Weirdly enough, I still believe this. I’m pretty convinced that an immortal soul did reside inside my freezer. In any case, I believe, contra Aesop, that my fairy tale contained a morsel of truth. That’s just what fairy tales are: a small, digestible piece of truth enshrined in narrative.

A Humpty Dumpty World

Even as my clammy little hands matured, and I became disenchanted with my practice of making “dog food” out of yarn, fairy tales continued to invade my life. The more I consumed them, the more it became obvious that all fairy tales are predicated on two pillars. First, there is a way the world ought to be. Second, the world is not that way.

In The Beauty and The Beast, a self-absorbed prince is bewitched by an enchantress and transformed into a hideous monster. In Moana, the beautiful island of Motunui is permeated with darkness because Maui, a demi-god, stole the heart of the creation goddess, Te Fiti. In Snow White, a princess is put into deep sleep after being poisoned by her jealous stepmother. The Beast ought to be a prince, Motunui ought to be beautiful, and Snow White ought to be awake. But things are not that way.

Why, in every generation, are we drawn to these stories? Because they preserve this truth: It’s a Humpty Dumpty World—beautiful but broken and desperately groaning to be put back together again.

Cheap Resolutions?

We are also drawn to these stories because, in each one, some seemingly miraculous turn occurs, rescuing the characters and the world they inhabit from the cruel jaws of darkness. Belle’s marriage to the Beast turns him back into a prince; Moana teams up with Maui to return the heart of Te Fiti and restore Motunui; and a prince’s kiss releases Snow White from her sleep. Things become what they ought to be, but what exactly is the mechanism of these resolutions?

Aesop would likely diagnose these maneuvers as “deus ex machina,” a literary device used by ancient Greek playwrights to escape from a maze into which they unwittingly wrote. Deus ex machina was the lowering of a “god from the machine” and allowed writers to produce contrived solutions to otherwise hopeless problems. Aristotle was an early critic of the gimmick, proclaiming, “It is obvious that the solutions of plots, too, should come about as a result of the plot itself, and not from a contrivance.” [1] 

And yet, Beauty and the Beast, Moana, and Snow White do not leave us feeling cheated. Rather, they make us say, “Ahhh, I’ve been outwitted,” or “So that’s how this world functions.” The method of resolution in each tale is more than a cheap plot device. The gods of these films do not come “from the machine” but are very deliberately designed and, for those who have ears to hear, reveal something about the nature of the world.

J. R. R. Tolkien, in a serious and sophisticated essay entitled “On Fairy Stories,” termed such a resolution “eucatastrophe,” with the Greek prefix Eu- meaning “good” (as in eu-phoria, eu-phemism, or even eu-thanasia). [2] This sudden, good catastrophe is more than a happy ending, and it is decidedly distinct from deus ex machina. The difference between deus ex machina and eucatastrophe is this: Eucatastrophe is planned, prophesied, and performed; it is formulated, foreshadowed, and fulfilled. It is revelatory.

Human Agency

In most fairy tales, renewal is sown by loving not the beautiful but the broken. Although Beauty and the Beast, viewed from the Beast’s perspective, has an important lesson—namely, that loving others will redound to our benefit—deeper wisdom is gleaned when we, like Belle, discover that hideous creatures must be loved before they can be restored. In the same vein, Moana was only able to rehabilitate her broken island with trenchant love, and Snow White required a prince to love her despite her sleeping state. 

Herein lies another important attribute of eucatastrophe: It relies not on the alignment of the stars but is, instead, character-driven. Tolkien’s own handiwork, The Lord of the Rings, illustrates this well, though it may not be apparent to the casual reader.

In this mythopoeic epic (I write not of the films), the narrative suspense is resolved when Gollum, an antagonist, trips into Mount Doom, thereby destroying the Ring of Power (the “precious”) and finally accomplishing Frodo’s noble quest. This ending is often maligned as an employment of deus ex machina, but is it?

At first glance, Frodo appears a failed hero, a poor excuse of a protagonist. After enduring the treacherous journey, he looked at Samwise, his loyal friend, and refused to destroy the ring, saying, “I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!” Tolkien writes that Frodo, overtaken by its power, “put on the Ring and claimed it for his own.” [3]

Gollum, realizing his opportunity, wrestles with Frodo and bites off his ringed finger. “And with that, even as [Gollum’s] eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell. Out of the depths came his last wail Precious, and he was gone.”

A reader might at this point throw up their arms. Did they really just read over 900 pages for Gollum to … to trip? By accident?

A closer reading, however, suggests the resolution is more profound. Over 300 pages earlier, as Frodo and Samwise were on the brink of killing him, Gollum swore “to be very very good” and that he would “serve the master of the Precious”—that is, Frodo. Moreover, Gollum swears this all on the Ring of Power, the “One Ring to rule them all and in the Darkness bind them.” Frodo decides to spare Gollum’s life, but he warns Gollum that the Ring will “hold him”—that is, bind him—to his promise. [4] 

In light of this foreshadowing, the final resolution fits together ingeniously. After all, if Gollum had not broken the oath, and if Frodo had not shown mercy to him, Gollum would not have tripped, and the Ring would not have been destroyed. As Tolkien writes in a drafted letter, “It is the Pity [compassion] of Bilbo and later Frodo that ultimately allows the Quest to be achieved.” [5] Moreover, if Frodo and Sam had not loved Middle-earth despite its evident evils, the Ring would not have been destroyed. Human agency—or rather, hobbit agency—occasioned the resolution.

Divine Grace

Agency alone, however, is insufficient. Love for the hideous and a desire for restoration presupposes a divine grace that is enmeshed into the nature of the world. Tolkien explains, in a letter to a correspondent, the balance between agency and divinity.

“Frodo deserved all honour because he spent every drop of his power of will and body, and that was just sufficient to bring him to the destined point, and no further. Few others, possibly no others of his time, would have got so far.” This much is agency. Tolkien continues, “The Other Power then took over: the Writer of the Story (by which I do not mean myself), 'that one ever-present Person who is never absent and never named' (as one critic has said).” [6] This is Middle-earth’s god, the progenitor of the nature of the world.

Is the “Other Power” deus ex machina? After all, Tolkien appears to imply the entire resolution—Gollum falling into Mount Doom—was brought about by an outside, supernatural character. Not so.

In The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s account of the early history of Middle-earth, we meet the “Other Power” and learn that this power created the universe and all that is in it. [7] He even fashioned the world in such a manner that Frodo would be rewarded for showing mercy to Gollum, and Gollum would be punished for breaking a prior oath. The “Other Power,” rather than being simply Tolkien’s “get out of jail free” card, is woven into the story. In this admittedly complex case, he—the Other Power, not Tolkien—wrote the story. 

As we begin to train our ears to hear, the nature of Middle-earth, and perhaps our own world, is revealed to us. The moral architecture of Middle-earth required Frodo and his fellows to work faithfully, even in the face of evil, to repair their broken world, a feat only possible through divine grace.

Fairy tales generally exhibit this feature. Moana’s exertion to return the Heart of Te Fiti to Te Kā, which transformed the noxious lava demon back into the creation goddess, was effective only because her world was constructed to allow for such a restoration. Similarly, there is no naturalistic explanation for how Belle’s marriage to the Beast transformed him into a prince or, in Snow White, how the prince’s kiss awakened the princess. 

These eucatastrophes, while chased by the characters, were enabled by their worlds, and, through extension, by divine grace. These two ingredients, divine grace and human agency, the first empowering the second, are the building blocks of eucatastrophe.

A Hopeful Labor 

Too often, I sit lethargically, utterly overwhelmed by the wounds of the world. Perhaps you also look at our campus and community, disfigured as they often are, and throw up your arms, relinquishing agency and resigning yourself to all that is broken. It’s fair—the going gets tough.

Maybe, for you, it’s the big things: the brutal burden of tuition coupled with your parents' astronomical expectations for you; the imposter syndrome of seeing peers succeed in difficult classes; the mental unease that accompanies vocational indecision. Or maybe it’s a conglomeration of smaller things: the faulty bathroom stall door that provides little more privacy than a Roman bath; the perennially packed buses that seemingly serve only to congest campus; the guy who took your usual albeit unassigned seat in lecture, leaving you to glean from the next row back.

For me, it’s my sleep schedule, my scattered mind, and my running injuries. It’s those awkward moments when I pass a faint acquaintance in the hall and think twice—nay, thrice—about whether to say “Hello.” It’s the media fatigue that haunts me every time I attempt to stay informed about world news. It’s the indomitable, infinite inertia of time lugging me ever forwards. The going gets tough.

Are we merely characters, then, in a global tragedy, stumbling steadily sideways in a world strangled by darkness, governed only by stars? 

Although I always knew fairy tales were good stories, nobody told me that they also tell the truth about the world—and my role in it. These stories come face-to-face with brokenness, and they openly invite us to be agents of good change, to be catalysts for eucatastrophe—eucatalysts, if you will. 

The narratives we have examined—Beauty and the Beast, Moana, Snow White, and The Lord of the Rings—all feature characters responding to the brokenness of their world with labors of love. Even Humpty Dumpty, despite concluding with a fractured and helpless anthropomorphic egg, should not be read as a tragedy, but as an unfinished work on eucatastrophe: If all the king’s horses and all the king’s men continue to love and to labor, Humpty Dumpty might well be put back together again. Perhaps our world is that egg, and perhaps we are the King’s helpers. 

Fairy tales, it turns out, don’t lie. And, more than being merely descriptive, fairy tales prescribe an empowered posture even in the valley of darkness. G. K. Chesterton, an English writer and literary critic and incidentally Chester’s namesake, writes, “Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey [that is, an evil spirit]. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.” [8] Fairy tales equip us with an empowering hope: Dragons can be slain.

Chesterton prompts our motivation for slaying dragons—those pestilent problems which militate against virtue and happiness—to come not out of sheer hatred for evil, but out of love for all that is good. “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” [9] This is hopeful labor—love directed at the goal of restoring brokenness, realized only through a divine grace that is woven into the nature of the world by the Author. 

Participation Is Not Optional

I maintain the Dog Food Fairy is real, even if only in the sense that my preschool imagination captured a deep truth: Loving Chester despite his wickedness was the only way towards his—and our—flourishing. For we so loved Chester that we gave him away to a household better suited for him. We visited him years later to find that he was remarkably gentle and unrecognizably mellow, a beauteous dog of beastly origins.

Does this mean that my culinary misuse of yarn was in vain? Did you really just read over 2000 words to find out that Chester was … was given away? 

Not quite. Although the yarn did not directly heal him, it was an outgrowth of the same love that led towards his—and our—flourishing. I leveraged what few possessions I held, including “every drop of [my] power of will and body,” to restore my small corner of the world. Every strand of yarn was wielded in defense of the dog I deeply loved, even in the valley of darkness and dog bites. And by divine grace, after I had done all I could do, the fairies took over.

This is hopeful and human labor. We are invited to prepare the first spiritual hors d'oeuvres of the coming feast, the first whiffs of an ultimate restoration. 

[1] Aristotle, Poetics, 1454a33–1454b9.

[2] Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” 33.

[3] Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, 945-946.

[4] Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, 618.

[5] Tolkien, Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter #153.

[6] Tolkien, Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter #192.

[7] Tolkien, The Silmarillion.

[8] Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles, Book XVII: “The Red Angel”

[9] Chesterton, Illustrated London News, Jan. 14, 1911.