“Myth is the name of a way of seeing, a way of knowing. Not fantasy, not lies, but things coming to us from beyond the walls of this world.” –Waking the Dead
Something has been stirring in my mind for several weeks now. Once I began thinking about how to make my apology for poetry, a new train of thought was opened up before me. I am not an English major so I have never had the incessant need to defend my position on stories that aren’t true. Our assignment, however, challenged me to investigate my beliefs on this subject and ask myself some hard questions about what I really do believe. Do I think that there is a point to studying English as a major? Do I agree that there is a purpose in reading poetry, fiction, and myth? I had never really stopped and considered where I stood….I ended up diving into many ideas that I was able to incorporate into my defense. Through my thoughts, a light bulb began to turn on, at first very dimly, yet gaining brightness the more I contemplated it……I wasn’t ready to write about it in my paper (and even now I may not be ready to discuss it) but I am going to attempt to share with you what I discovered.
I had to stop and ask myself, why are people so attracted to myth? When I think about some of the great myths that have been written over time, Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia come to mind. I am sure we can all think of many others as well. The point is that these stories are certainly NOT true, yet they seem to draw people in by the millions. In order to discover the reason for their powerful pull, I decided the best place to start was with myself. I know everything isn’t always about me, but just maybe, if I could find out why I am drawn to them, it might give me a clue into why others are as well. From here my quest began and it led me to a highly unlikely place (insert sarcastic tone here) a book! Waking the Dead is a book by John Eldredge that, I must admit, I have only read parts of. I became enthralled with it this time around because of its strong focus on myths and what they teach us. The book delves into the thoughts that I have been experimenting with… I sense that the beauty of myth is that is opens the pathway for the discovery of some very important truths. There are so many things in life that we hear are supposedly “true” yet to grasp onto them can be very difficult sometimes. What I realized when looking at myths is that, through them, I am able to accept truths about life. The book talks about one of the truths being that “some great struggle or quest or battle is well under way….."
When the four children stumble into Narnia, the country and all its lovely creatures are imprisoned under the spell of the White Witch and have been for a hundred years. In another story, Jack and his mother are starving and must sell their only cow. Frodo barely makes it out of the Shire with his life and the ring of power. In the nick of time he learns that Bilbo’s magic ring is the One Ring, that Sauron has discovered its whereabouts, and that the Nine Black Riders are already across the borders searching for the little hobbit with deadly intent. The future of Middle Earth hangs on a thread.
Darth Vader just about has the universe under his evil fist when a pair of droids fall into the hands of Luke Skywalker. Luke has no idea what is unfolding, what great deeds have been done on his behalf, or what will be required of him in the battle to come. Sitting in a sandstone hut with old Ben Kenobi—he does not know this is the great Jedi warrior Obi-Wan Kenobi—Luke discovers the secret message from the princess: “This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”
In all of these stories there is the underlying truth that a battle exists that must be fought, someone must step up, and it can be anyone that makes the difference….we can hear about the truth that we have a role to play in the world that is important and has the potential to make a huge impact on civilization, but how many of us actually believe this? Especially the idea that little (seemingly insignificant) you and I each have the ability to change something significantly. That is one of the reasons I am drawn to The Lord of the Rings, even if I don’t at first realize it, because reading about a little hobbit named Frodo who stepped out and saved the world, gives me the ability to see that it doesn’t take a big person to make a big impact on the world.
The book again seems to echo my feelings on this by discussing that every mythic story shouts to us that in this desperate hour we have a crucial role to play. It goes into several myths (not just in books) that point at this truth--
For most of his life, Neo sees himself only as Thomas Anderson, a computer programmer for a large software corporation. AS the drama really begins to gear up and the enemy hunts him down, he says to himself, “This is insane. Why is this happening to me? What did I do? I’m nobody. I didn’t do anything.” A very dangerous conviction, though one shared by most of you, my readers. What he later comes to realize—and not a moment too soon—is that he is “the One” who will break the power of the Matrix.
Frodo, the little Halfling from the Shire, young and naive in so many ways, “the most unlikely person imaginable,” is the Rind Bearer. He, too, must learn through dangerous paths and fierce battle that a task has been appointed to him, and if he does not find a way, no one will. Dorothy is just a farm girl from Kansas, who stumbled into Oz not because she was looking for adventure but because someone had hurt her feelings and she decided to run away from home. Yet she’s the one to bring down the Wicked Witch of the West. Joan of Arc was also a farm girl, illiterate, the youngest in her family, when she received her first vision from God. Just about everyone doubted her; the commander of the French army said she should be taken home and given a good whipping. Yet she ends up leading the armies to war.
Myths remind us that we are not just ordinary people as we seem to be and that things around us may not be exactly what they seem to be. We talk all the time about the fact that we live in “reality” which is often boring or mundane as well as uninteresting; however, I find that we really live in a world of unending adventure and excitement. The issue ensues when we hide this truth in familiarity. As C.S. Lewis points out, “The value of…myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’”
Even if all that I have written does not fully make sense to you, I am hoping it at least engages your minds and causes you to consider something that you may not have previously given time to. Regardless, I am thankful for the truths that “stories that aren’t even true” have taught me. Even Don Quixote had a truth to teach, that you can be whoever you want to be regardless of whether people call you crazy or accept who you are. In this “real” world that we live in, we often live in fear of people. We try to hide or change who we are so that people will accept us, yet we love to dive into books because, in them, we CAN be those people that we dream of being. Myths like that of Don Quixote teach us that it is ok, and even admirable, to follow that which we want to be, even when it isn’t necessarily the safest or most fruitful pursuit. What matters is that you go after it, and you fight to show others that a dream can be made into a reality. The beauty of a story is that it does inspire us to be more than we have dared to be because someone in the story shows us that it is indeed possible. In a way, as the book title suggests, a story has the power to “Wake the Dead”.
**All quotes from "Waking the Dead" by John Eldredge, Thomas Nelson Publishers 2003
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