Tag: Narrative

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The Pallid Mask: unpacking the symbolism of masks in cosmic horror

The English occultist Andrew D. Chumbley once wrote, “mistake not the mask for the face, nor the symbol for the symbolised” and yet in this wisdom we see one of the central paradoxes of the human condition exposed: our fascination with idols and representations juxtaposed with a desire to lift the mask, pierce the illusion, and find the truth.

The human desire to fashion false images has been with us since the earliest beginnings, from the golden calf forged by the Jewish exiles in the Book of Exodus to modern day celebrity worship; virtually every history, mythology, and oral tradition tells us that human beings have always worshipped false idols. We have always, in other words, mistaken “the symbol for the symbolised”.

Nicolas Poussin: Adoration of the Golden Calf

But along with this has also been a quest to probe reality, whether through spiritual or scientific means. Both have merits and drawbacks, of course. But it is this enquiry into the true nature of things that drives us to constantly interrogate both symbol and symbolised, both mask and face, and ask the question of how we differentiate the two.

It is this vice, or perhaps a better word would be ignorance, that separates us from the animal kingdom, for animals do not inhabit the realm of symbols, and therefore only know of direct interactions with reality. Animals can, of course, perform deceptions: cloaking themselves, even disguising themselves as other animals, but these parlour tricks are mere sleights of perception, not of intellect. There is a world of difference between mistaking one animal for another, for example, and mistaking an image of God for God Himself.

And God—or one other phrase to use might be “true reality”—is really what we’re looking for in life, whether we consciously know it or not. All of us are born with a sense of profound connection to the universe. This is personified in the childish belief that if we point our finger at a plane and say “Crash” the plane will actually crash. We believe so strongly we are part of a whole system that our mere thought can influence another part of that whole, even condemn hundreds of lives to death. Of course, this influence can work positively as well, but most of us first encounter the potency of our own minds in a negative context as we test the limits of our own power (something children are hardwired to do). Unfortunately, adulthood—with all its pressures—often breaks our sense of connection and instils in us a belief that all things are separated. This leads to a yearning to know the true nature of reality—something we already knew, but have become ignorant of.

In The Matrix, we see the urgent desire brilliantly expressed by the character Morpheus:

“What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.”

Morpheus in The Matrix (1999)

This desire is a longing to lift the mask and see the true face of the world.

Masks are in many ways the “other side” of symbols. A symbol is a sign that conveys meaning. Words are symbols, a mechanism to deliver meaning to another person. Masks, on the other hand, are often used to conceal a reality. However, in order to conceal something, we have to create a new reality—an illusion—to take its place. Thus, the theatrical masks of the commedia dell’arte, Japanese Noh masks, and the props of Venetian masquerade are all stylised to either resemble archetypal emotions or else fabulous monsters and beasts. Masks are lies that paint over the truth in order to forge a new one. Symbols, on the other hand, are an attempt to describe the truth. The problem is that symbols often obscure true reality just as much as the mask. The word “fire” is not fire. A map is not the territory. If you look at Everest on a map and place your finger upon it, you have not touched Everest. The map is useful, of course, in order to help us navigate the territories of life. But it is not life itself.

We need symbols, but we must also be wary of them. We need masks to function in society, but we must also be careful lest we begin to think of the masks around us as faces, mistake our own mask as our true nature, or even begin to think that insubstantial constructs are actual reality.

A great example of this is to be found in money. Money is not real. This is no new philosophical statement, it’s fairly broadly understood at this point. Money is a concept that is collectively agreed upon by the human race in order to help society function. It has no true meaning. It is not “real”. If all the banks in the world crash tomorrow, in reality, nothing with have changed, and there is no reason for any bloodshed or harm. But we all know, deep in our hearts, people will go out and kill one another if such an event occurs, all because of a symbol, all because of an illusory mask.

This is a form of madness our species is subject to. We have not evolved much from worshipping the golden calf. And the Pallid Mask created by Robert W. Chambers, author of The King In Yellow, is a perfect embodiment of this. For the mask brings madness to those who wear it. And soon, one cannot tell the difference between a mask and a face.

Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.

Stranger: Indeed?

Cassilda: Indeed it’s time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.

Stranger: I wear no mask.

Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!

But there is a flip side to this. Just as we must not mistake the mask for the face, we must also recognise that perhaps we are wrong to assume that face and mask are separate. In our quest to surgically divorce mask from face, symbol from symbolised, we violate the original unity of the universe. Intriguingly, in Carcosa, the dark fantastical landscape over which the King in Yellow reigns in Chambers’ mythos, masks and faces are often synthesised, made One in the all-powerful realisation of truth:

“The mask of self deception was no longer a mask for me, it was a part of me. Night lifted it, laying bare the stifled truth below, but there was no one to see except myself, and when day broke the mask fell back again of its own accord.”

Man in the Pallid Mask by Adam Lane.

Perhaps then, this is the greatest wisdom? That there is neither mask nor face either, only the ceaselessness of here and now, the interplay of symbol and symbolised in the endless dance of the King in Yellow’s eternal court… When such a dance becomes ubiquitous, when all know its steps, a new era shall begin, perhaps not dissimilar from that described in “The Greater Festival of Masks” by Thomas Ligotti:

"For the old festival has ended so that a greater festival may begin. And of the old time nothing will be said, because nothing will be known. But the masks of that departed era, forgotten in a world that has no tolerance for monotony, will find something to remember. And perhaps they will speak of those days as they loiter on the threshold of doors that do not open, or in the darkness at the summit of stairways leading nowhere."

***

I hope you enjoyed this article on the nature of reality. If you want to read more about Carcosa and the Pallid mask, then you might be interested in my upcoming book inspired by Chambers, The Claw of Craving; you can listen to an extract from the first chapter, here. I’d like to take a moment to thank the incredible folk at Blood Bound Books, Joe Spagnola and S. C. Mendes, for being brave—or perhaps mad—enough to publish my take on the mythos.

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I F*CKING LOVE NARRATIVE POETRY

There. I said it. It’s been a long time coming, this confession. I guess some of you already knew it, but I have to announce it to the world.

Reasonably recently, I released a book called Virtue’s End, a 70,000 word epic poem written in iambic, taking influence from sources as diverse as Spenser’s 16th Century fantasy masterpiece The Faerie Queene, and T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. Unlike the latter of these two sources, however, the poem is grounded in a story with lots of action, drive, even one or two twists, alongside the usual poetic fare of imagery, symbolism, and synaesthesia. I did this because, frankly, I had to. I experienced a mystical epiphany on a trip to Glastonbury, and the outcome of this experience was a transmission—what I believe might well have been a direct channeling of something beyond. I couldn’t not write the book. In many ways, the book was writing me.

But once this outpouring was over, I think a part of me believed I would go back to writing novels like a good little modern author. I’ve never exactly been a “commercial” writer. I write weird stuff for weird people who like multiverses and serial killers who go on fantasy adventures—oh, and telepathic crabs. But, obviously fantasy is a big genre and lots of people read it.

Less so for poetry.

But the thing is, the novels weren’t flowing like they used to. I had this block. Instead of prose, I wanted to write poetry, LOTS more of it. Dissenting voices in my head kept telling me that was dumb. I should stick to more commercial stuff. Hell, I should start writing thrillers and romances and really break into the big leagues…

But the Muse has to be respected, and the Muse cannot be compelled. Something was, and still is, telling me to write poetry.

And now I really am not certain I’m going to go back to novels…

There are many reasons, but perhaps the main one is I am falling in love with narrative poetry.

I love how it can cut to the heart of the matter. One is not burdened with describing every little detail, or making a scene feel grounded by drilling down to the boring mechanics and logistics.

In narrative poetry, you excavate the very core of the story. Who is saying what to whom? Who is feeling what? And what are we looking at? There’s no need for the fluff that pads so much of modern narrative—the epaulettes on a soldier’s pauldron or the exact mechanics of zero-g space-travel—because you’re driving to the centre of meaning, or as close as you can come without going mad. Faery tales and myths do the same thing. The greatest stories in the Bible and other spiritual texts are sometimes merely a few paragraphs of text, sometimes only a few lines. 

And deeper than this, the condensed and distilled form of poetry means that the language—at least in good poetry—becomes loaded with associations, double or triple meanings, and symbolic power. Through this mechanism poetry reaches the Jungian realm of archetype. 

It is also possible to blend and marry concepts that in a “realistic” prose novel simply cannot be married, because the laws of so-called reality restrain them. Even full-on bizarro novels must make their worlds obey the confines of linear reality, although the best of them at least comment on this fact, such as Alistair Rennie’s epic BleakWarrior.

But in poetry, all bets are off. So long as the feeling and the sense rings true and is comprehensible, then it works. Poems are like dreams in this respect. Upon emerging from their grasp, we recognise their weirdness, but in the throes of deep REM, we care not.

Environments and actors within these environments can be elided subtly by the choice placement of words. Images can ambiguously refer to multiple people or places. For a non-dualist, poetry is a paradise of synergy, a Hieros Gamos that allows us to synthesise wronger and wronged, righter and condemned, flame and burning spirit.

I think poetry, therefore, provides a new frontier for writers and readers alike. Especially poetry that uses form. For form creates beauty. And on the subject of "beauty", poetry is often considered snobby and intellectual, but the irony is that poetry—able to access the direct feeling state—is the exact opposite of intellectual. In many ways, it is pure feeling. 

It is no surprise to me that some of my favourite books over the last two years have been narrative poems. The first of these is my father’s epic poem, HellWard, a masterful homage to Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. In this epic, my father describes his battle with cancer in Bournemouth Royal Hospital, which leads to a near death experience, and a descent into hell worthy of The Inferno.

A more playful—but still epic—narrative poem can be found in Andrew Benson Brown’s Legends of Liberty Vol. 1, which rewrites American history whilst, using fiendishly inventive language and imagery, making a satirical commentary on our present day.

Lastly, I had the pleasure to read Michael Pietrack’s upcoming fable, Legacy. This story seems like it’s written for children, but the honest truth is adults will have a lot to learn from it too, and the storytelling and imagination on display here are simply magnificent.

What are your favourite narrative poems? They can be as obvious as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner or something completely obscure. Let me know!

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Now Editing Poetry

Hello everyone. In the light of publishing Virtue’s End, and my renewed interest in poetry, I am now offering editing to aspiring poets out there. Poetry is very dear to my heart and I believe there should be more real poetry out there in the world. So, for those sincerely looking to improve their poetic craft, whether writing free-verse or more formal poetry, please consider signing up to work with me.

Work edited by me has been nominated for the Bram Stoker, National Indie Excellence, and Splatterpunk Awards. My own poetry, in the form of Virtue’s End, has been described as “an astounding and daring piece poetry, offered with the utmost openness and sincerity, a rare, meticulously crafted gem in an age of rapid mass consumption” (Christa Wojciechowski), and as “[Sale’s] Magnum Opus. An intricate, multilayered epic poem” (Steve Stred).

The main editing criteria for poetry will be:

  • form

  • diction

  • theme

  • style

  • narrative (if relevant)

The pricing for editing is £50 ($70) for up to 50 lines. If you're interested, please don't hesitate to get in touch using the contact form on this website, or by emailing me directly!

Alternatively, if you don’t have something specific you want editing, but you want to find out more about how great narrative is shaped—about poetic form, writing style, and more—consider signing up to Joseph Sale’s Patreon The Mind-Vault, where you can get access monthly videos (including the Magical Writing podcast and interviews with authors), articles, and digital downloads:

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Entering Carcosa Part 5: The Book of the New Sun

Hello dear scholars! Welcome to the fifth installment of Entering Carcosa, a series that examines the modern epic. Our aim is to show that epic narrative is far from dead, far from confined to the dusty shelves of snooty academics, but rather a living breathing thing. And we need it more than ever. We’ve looked at a variety of epics so far, from video-games: Metal Gear Solid, to collaborative novel series: The Horus Heresy and TV: True Detective. I retreated into the dark recesses of my ‘workshop of filthy creation’ for a time, poring over your suggestions for further entries in this series, and one suggestion above all captured my imagination. So, today, I want to write about an often over-looked Fantasy-Science Fiction epic, a quartet called The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe. I’d like to thank Dana, a senior developer at Red Hook Games (the geniuses who made Darkest Dungeon), for recommending The Book of the New Sun to me. It has honestly been a life-changing experience reading it, and it is certainly a fitting entry into the epic canon.

The Book of the New Sun was published in four segments: The Shadow of the Torturer (1980), The Claw of the Conciliator (1981), The Sword of the Lictor (1982) and The Citadel of the Autarch (1983). Since, it has reached a kind of cult-status among fandoms, but is not as widely known as say The Lord of the Rings or even the works of Raymond E. Feist or David Eddings. However, Gene Wolfe’s quartet is surely a masterpiece, one that probes the nature of time, love, destiny, morality and divinity. The true brilliance of the novel is not simply the scope of its world ‘Urth’ (which in fact is our own post-technological world thousands, or perhaps even millions, of years in the future), or the scope of its themes, but the way these are conveyed to us via the first person narration of its protagonist, Severian the Torturer. Severian recounts to us his complicated and colourful life, from being a humble apprentice with the Guild of Torturers, to ascending to the very apex of society. He is an unreliable narrator, prone to tweaking facts and investing too much thought in certain interpretations of events. Everything we see in this world is filtered through his perception, and Gene Wolfe does a phenomenal job sustaining this viewpoint for the entirety of this lengthy narrative. Severian is as real to me as any historical figure.

Introducing an element of unrealiable narration into the Fantasy genre is a stroke of brilliance because it creates space for the reader to create their own interpretations, to question, and to draw their own conclusions about events. Whereas Fantasy has a tendency to be simplistic, or even didactic (the prophecy is the prophecy and is undoubtedly true, for example), Gene Wolfe’s epic muddies the waters, which actually more closely resembles Homer’s own grey and ambiguous morality. Are we supposed to see Achilles in The Iliad as a hero or monster? Are we supposed to condemn Odysseus for his unfaithfulness to Penelope or forgive him? The epics of old created complex characters that were in no way saintly in their actions, and so we see this in Severian, who is remarkably convoluted. On the one hand, he has no qualms about torture and execution, and even prides himself on his relative mastery of the art. On the other, he shows remarkable compassion for certain people and things: his dog Triskele, whom he rescues, his lover Thecla, whom he spares further torture (which causes him to be banished from the Guild, initiating his quest), Dorcas, whom he takes under his wing despite knowing nothing about, and even his arch-nemesis Agia, who tries to kill him on more than one occasion. However, it is precisely this complexity that has potentially stymied The Book of the New Sun from reaching mass-market appeal, unlike some of our other entries in this series, which are more broadly popular. Still, it is widely regarded as one of the best Fantasy novels of all time (according to Locus magazine and many others).

Not only is this first person close perspective a deeply intimate and personal style, which makes it incredibly emotive, it is also elusive. By this, I mean that Gene Wolfe manages to bury many secrets in his narrative. The answers to the narrative’s many questions are there for the observant reader, but they are not spelled out to us. We must seek them ourselves. This, I would argue, is a relatively new idea in the epic, which as a genre has never been much about twists or ‘surprises’. However, Gene Wolfe’s narrative is not reliant on it. The story can be read at a surface level: a rip-roaring fast-paced and unusually well-written Fantasy novel. However, look a little deeper, and you will see threads connecting characters, events, and timelines in the most astonishing ways. Gene Wolfe has achieved such remarkable narrative depth that, thirty five years on or more, it is still being discussed on reddit forums, podcasts, and in book clubs. There are wild schools of interpretation that take certain angles on the events described in the book, piecing together the elliptical parts of the storytelling. In addition, writing in Severian’s voice, Wolfe uses a plethora of antiquated words to evoke a post-technological (and therefore, paradoxically ‘ancient’ even though it is in the future) world, such as sabretache, oubliette, zoanthrope, eidolon. Though Severian writes in a fairly accessible way, his vocabulary is that of an older world and often dazzling, matching the high, elevated style of the epic.

Time and again, Wolfe draws us back to the classical epics with his work. Severian is, in many ways, the epitome of an epic hero. He bears a double-edged executioner’s blade called Terminus Est, and a ‘fuligin’ mask and cloak, a colour dimmer than black which hides him in darkness. He also carries the Claw of the Conciliator itself, a magical talisman, remnant of a Messianic saviour, that can ‘heal’ people and create awe-inspiring light. His cloak echoes the magical cloak used by Siegfried in the German epic The Nibelungenlied which can turn its wearer invisible (think also of the cloaks given to Frodo and Sam by the elves of Lothlorien). His sword echoes numerous ‘epic’ blades, including Siegfried’s Balmund, King Arthur’s Excalibur, and the Spear of Achilles, which can ‘cut the wind itself’. This magical equipment allows Severian to overcome many perils on his journey.

He has been trained as an instrument of the law (all epic heroes require a sense of justice), and is proud of the fact that he never ‘exceeds’ allotted punishments, which is his idea of fairness. Severian of course, as the narrator, tries frequently to persuade us to his point of view. Odysseus narrates part of his tale in The Odyssey, and during this story he often asserts his moral rectitude. In this way Wolfe mirrors the classical epics, but he stretches our empathy even further, perhaps to breaking point. Many of the acts Severian commits would make Odysseus pale. In addition, Severian has several powers, including ‘perfect recall’, although some instances of omission in the narrative lead us to question the veracity of this.

Severian is an orphan who does not know his true parentage and has been raised by the Guild itself, though hints of his origins (and his true nature) become evident later. Here, he echoes Achilles, who was sent away from his mother Thetis to be raised in a secluded sect of women, dressed and disguised as a woman, so that he might never go to war. The prophecy about Achilles was that if he went to war, he would die young but win great glory. Thetis does this to protect Achilles, but of course, as with all Greek tragedy, it ends up becoming part of the prophecy’s fulfilment, for the sect is discovered by Odysseus who recruits Achilles for the war. Achilles has been dispossessed of his masculinity, his royalty, and his free choice by being hidden away, and in going to fight in the Trojan war he reclaims it. So, too, Severian is dispossessed in his own fashion, dispossessed of an identity and a ties to other people, hence his sociopathic nature. He is forced to wear the habit of the Torturer, which he remarks upon himself is ‘a disguise’ of his true nature. Many characters refer to him as ‘Death’, yet as he says himself he is not Death but simply ‘a man’. However, we sense as readers deep down he may not even be a man at all. There are many layers of disguise and symbolism here at work. In a way, The Book of the New Sun is a rags to riches story of Severian coming to inherit what is rightfully his, though whether he truly knew himself that he had been dispossessed is up for much debate. He arguably shares one other trait with Achilles, that of his indestructibility, yet this too is uncertain given the lens of unreliable narration.

Severian possesses many tragic flaws; he might even be described as monstrous from a certain point of view. He is full of lust, morally unscrupulous, deceitful in his narrative and frankly terrifying to most people he meets, and is it any wonder: he is described (roughly) as a six-foot tall man in a black gimp mask with a blade longer than he is tall. Certainly not a knight in shining armour, but he does have redemptive qualities that make him compelling to read. Much like the compellingly vile heroes of Ancient Greece (Ajax, Achilles and Agamemnon come to mind).

Severian is our ‘guide’ through this story, in one sense, though not an entirely reliable one. He does have his own guide too, that of Thecla, who in some ways, like Penelope, is symbolic of his deeper, better self. The anima of his soul (for our souls are said in Greek philosophy to be the opposite gender to our bodies). She is also a philosophical teacher, much like Virgil was to Dante. Thecla is the first person to introduce Severian to the tales of the old world in the ‘little brown book’ that she reads to him and subsequently bequeths him. Her wisdom and knowledge, the stories she imparts to him, prove a comfort and guide in his times of need. Though Thecla is no longer with him (in one sense), her voice continues to guide him throughout the events of the story. This becomes more literal later on, whereby ingesting the gland of the alzabo (a creature possibly hailing from another world) along with a piece of Thecla’s flesh, Severian absorbs her consciousness and becomes a dual self. He also gains her memories which become essential to infiltrating the citadel of the Autarch later in the story. Severian, in one sense, becomes a keeper of the dead.

The Book of the New Sun is many things. I have mentioned that in some ways it resembles a ‘rags to riches’ story, and I think at its heart that is the narrative that most resonates. At the end of the story, we revisit many of the locations and people that formed the early narrative in an unexpected yet heart-breaking return. It is this moment we realise ‘how far we have come’, how Severian has grown, now being at the highest eschalon of society, and how much has been lost and gained. It is a truly masterful turn from Wolfe – an Odyssey moment where the hero comes home. However, he subverts this. Whereas Odysseus’ home is more traditionally comforting (his loyal servants, his roaring hearth, his family, his loving wife), Severian’s ‘comforting’ return is to the torture cells of his old Guild tower. Somehow this is no less emotive.

However, despite this ‘rags to riches’ moment, it is undeniable that Severian’s journey into the north and south of his land feel like a traditional quest, with episodic encounters, recurring characters, and unexpected turns of fate. He even has a party of followers, which changes from time to time with the ebb and flow of the story. He winds up in a war against the Ascians, climbing Mount Typhon to meet with an Autarch of old, plumbing ruins filled with devolved man-apes, a captive prisoner of a renegade of the state, and a respected official in the city of Thrax far away from his home of Nessus, and much more besides. In essence, the scope of this story in a literal sense is immense. Underlying this are the thematic elements which are what truly make the story work and give it such powerful resonance. Severian describes a world to us that once knew interstellar travel, but which now regards technology as a kind of magic. The sun of the world is dying, fading to a dull red glow, the Urth dying with it. There is a prophecy, however, that one day the New Sun (which may in actuality be a New Son) will arise, causing Urth to be reborn and ushering in a new age of technological greatness. The New Sun, and the other quasi-deities that are worshipped in this strange future world are, in a way, the Muse which Severian invokes to tell this tale. They are the promise of a redemptive future and a new hope to which Severian has dedicated this tale of his life. Wolfe performs the invocation of the Muse within the universe and mindset of his character, never breaking the illusion he has created.

Through this lens, Wolfe is able to make all kinds of anachronistic observations of our world, as well as predictions about the worlds of the future and commentary on the past. Still, timeless themes prevail as well as political or sociological ones (the Ascians are certainly a commentary on Communism in the East, for example, only able to recite ‘approved’ scripture, yet an entire language is formed around this and Wolfe subverts expectations by having one of the most powerful framed narratives in the whole book told by an Ascian prisoner). Love and its antithesis is a big theme in this novel. Severian’s many encounters with women are often unwholesome and cause us to judge and condemn his repulsive behaviour; we are supposed to feel this way about them. Yet, these give way to moments of transcendent beauty and forgiveness too. Death and religion are also big themes. Severian is Death, in a sense, a man in black with an executioner’s blade stalking the land. Yet, he is also life, because he bears the Claw. He is, in some sense, an adjudicator, the ultimate judge with the power to give and take away. The world itself is dying, but there are also possible futures where it is renewed, and this is not only through technology but also a spiritual occurrence, the return of the Messianic Conciliator (New Sun). For some this hope is nothing but a faint delusion, but for others it is real. The power of religion to inspire and deceive is dealt with in equal measure. Ultimately, Severian’s beliefs shape the whole narrative, because as insightful as he is, he is blind to the truth about what he really is. Wolfe, I think, is making the point here that perhaps we all are.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a katabasis, a descent into hell. There are many instances where Severian descends into a kind of ‘land of the dead’, the first of which in The Shadow of the Torturer, significantly, is his pursuit of his dog through the tunnels beneath the Guild Tower, where he stumbles upon the forgotten Atrium of Time. In this place, he meets an eerie maiden, Valeria, and time itself seems to be stopped. You will not know it upon first reading, but his conversation with Valeria, much like Odysseus’ with Tiresias in Hades, is prescient, and foreshadows many events of the later narrative. Time remains a theme throughout The Book of the New Sun. Severian seemingly steps into the past in The Claw of the Conciliator via the incantations of the Cumean, a witch queen. He sees a strange ritual and sees a vision of a dead man: Apa-Punchau. He also experiences the horrifying rite at Vodalus’ camp whereby he eats the dead body of the woman he loves most in the world, Thecla, in order to absorb her consciousness. This is truly hellish, yet it leads to a moment of beauty in which Severian is, finally, re-united with the woman he lost. Nekyia is the Greek word for the rite by which the dead are summoned (e.g. necromancy), and here we see that rite not only allows Severian to see the dead but to keep them alive. [see my own ‘epic’ novel Nekyia if you’re interested in more on this theme]. In The Sword of the Lictor, Severian has many hellish encounters, including an assault on a keep overlooking Lake Diaturna, a keep occupied by a terrible giant. Within the keep, he sees many malformed experiments, twisted once-humans the giant has created, and which he must fight through. This ends with a frankly hair-raising confrontation with the giant himself which is almost reminiscent of the battle between Achilles and Hector. In the final book, The Citadel of the Autarch, Severian goes to war, finding himself amidst the horrors of the front, though this is not nearly so dramatic as his escape into the Corridors of Time, glimpsing the world behind the world.

Ultimately, The Book of the New Sun can easily be considered an epic. In its scope, pathos, style, structure and most of all: its protagonist. Wolfe has created a modern legend that is deeper than it appears on first glimpse, full of hidden meanings, subtexts, and secrets. Yet, it does not lose its narrative power or pace. Rather, each part augments the whole. Were our society to come to an end, and The Book of the New Sun be one of the only surviving fragments, no doubt whatever species discovered our ruination would be curious as to what incredible and convoluted hero it was that wrote such an account.

It has been a pleasure to bring you a fifth part of this series. I am always looking for more examples of modern epics, and while I have some thoughts myself, I quite enjoy taking your suggestions, as it introduces me to new material! Please, feel free to leave a comment with your suggestions for further epics or thoughts about The Book of the New Sun.

Also, feel free to message me on Twitter!

If you feel that you have benefited from today’s class, then please check out my KoFi page, where you can donate $3 to “buy me a coffee” to help me keep producing free resources like this. Do not feel pressure to do so, but small contributions can go a long way for creators like me.

Until next time, my friends!

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Entering Carcosa Part 4: True Detective

Television can be trivial, populist, unadventurous and mind-rotting – but it can also be brilliant. At its best, television can certainly be an epic form. Its long-running series structure allows for incredible scope and ambition, beyond that of a movie, whilst also maintaining cohesion and intensity. One only has to look at examples of recent television extravaganzas, such as HBO’s Game of Thrones, to see the epic potential of television. Game of Thrones is overtly epic, with its high-fantasy setting, dragons, wars, and tremendous cast, drawing on the historical events of the War of the Roses and Fall of the Caesars, as well as on Tolkien’s corpus for inspiration. However, in this series, Entering Carcosa, we are looking for the less obvious epics, the ones that ask us to re-evaluate epic values or styles in intriguing ways. A story doesn’t need to be told over eight seasons to be epic. In fact, one of my favourite television series of all time is True Detective, told in a mere eight episodes. For the purposes of this article I will be focusing only on the first season, which I believe stands alone as an epic.

On the surface of things, HBO’s True Detective seems insufficient in scope to be called ‘epic’. Compared to the complex, world-spanning military drama of Metal Gear Solid, or the intergalactic wars of the Horus Heresy, a series of killings on the Louisiana bayou seem relatively small-scale. However, True Detective uses symbolic significance to elevate the narrative to a timeless story about good and evil. In essence, the entire series is an extended metaphor for something deeper. Director Cary Fukunaga’s awesome cinematography  draws out the concurrent themes and moods of Nic Pizzolatto’s writing. Again, a collaborative epic effort.

‘It’s all just one story, man… Light versus dark’. These lines are uttered minutes from the series’ close, yet True Detective never strays into hackneyed simplicity. Its characters are grey, complex, and at times downright repugnant. In the first episode, Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) asks Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey): ‘Do you ever wonder if you’re a bad man?’, to which Cohle responds: ‘The world needs bad men, Marty.’ The oldest epics challenged the idea of good and evil as clear-cut definitions. Odysseus is a heroic leader who is trying to do what is right. But he is not perfect. Unlike his wife, Penelope, who remains faithful to him throughout his 20 year voyage home, Odysseus strays, betraying Penelope with both the sorceress Circe and Kalypso. True Detective pushes the envelope even further, showing us two despicable anti-heroes and asking the question of whether their ultimate good deeds outweigh their sins.

The Odyssey is certainly one of the three key models for True Detective. The show spans a twenty year period, paralleling the time-frame for Odysseus’ voyage home. In particular, it focuses on three periods: 1992, 2002 and 2012. It begins in media res in 2012, as Marty Hart and Rust Cohle are called into their old office to be interviewed about a recent killing in the same ritualistic style as the ones they dealt with in 1992. Marty Hart very much typifies an Odysseus character. He is quick-witted, personable, and naturally looked-to for leadership, earning promotions fast. He is also unfaithful to his wife Maggie (Michelle Monaghan), unable to resist the lure of younger women. Rust, on the other hand, is very unlike Odysseys. Though he is a thinker, he is alienating to those around him. His atheistic, nihilistic worldview and self-punishing asceticism trouble those he comes into contact with. He experiences visions, which he dismisses as the result of his years infiltrating a drug cartel, though he admits at times they feel like: ‘A mainline to the secret truth of the universe’. These issues stem from the death of his daughter, a death which psychologically scars him and destroyed his marriage.

If Rust is based on anyone, it is in fact, ironically, Jesus, the Bible crucifixion story being the second key influence on True Detective. The more I watch the series, the more obvious it becomes. Like Jesus, Rust is a radical social reformer un-intimidated by social opinion. Rust speaks in imperative language, a trait of Jesus’ speech patterns. In addition, Rust uses religion (even though he claims not to believe in it) to extract confessions, breaking down his subjects until they ask him for forgiveness. His monk-like existence (in a minimalist room with no furnishings) echoes Jesus’ humble origins and nature. Rust’s only notable decoration in his room is a crucifix. He claims he doesn’t ‘believe’ in it, but likes to meditate on ‘the garden’ (aka, of Gethesmane) and how Christ was willingly able to give up his life for others. Rust Cohle’s name is almost an echo of the meaning of Adam’s name in Hebrew, which means ‘red’ or ‘earth’ – Jesus was thought to be ‘Adam come again’, a kind of new beginning for mankind. I could go on and on about the many parallels, but it has already been written about at length by other writers.

In this image, Rust most resembles Christ, with the long hair and blackened eye, having offered himself up as a sacrifice to defeat the killer. He receives a wound in his side (much like the Spear of Destiny pierced Jesus). Rust returns from his death-coma, again echoing Christ.

 

Suffice to say, we have here a story about two modern interpretations of mythological/theological heroes. Rust, in particular, certainly qualifies for the epic description. He is from an unusual place, Alaska, where the ‘stars are brighter’, a far-out world to the deep, warm South of Louisiana. However, he moved to Texas, away from his home and father, in a way self-orphaning. He has a magical power, which are his visions – visions which often help him on his case – and his synaesthesia, a condition which confuses the translation of senses by the brain, meaning he can taste ‘psycho-spheres’ and smells. Rust has an obvious sense of justice – he is a homicide detective, after all, and a good one. He possesses a special red toolbox of equipment which is hidden away under the boards of his house containing AK-47s, grenades and other tools, such as a liquid concoction and syringe for simulating drug-use (which he uses to re-infiltrate a biker gang). Rust has a tragic flaw, which is his nihilism and lack of belief, which is healed in a moment of true catharsis at the end of the story.

Marty and Rust must hunt down a serial killer who has secretly, in the shadows, been haunting Louisiana for some time. Like the epic Beowulf, a ‘monster’ resides at the heart of the story as the central obstacle to be overcome. Or perhaps more aptly, like Theseus and the Minotaur, which I believe is the third significant narrative influence for True Detective. At the end of the tale, when the killer is finally tracked down, Rust and Marty enter a literal labyrinth filled with the bones of decades of raped and murdered children. They must, like Theseus, navigate this maze in order to find the monster at its heart. In Rust’s own words: ‘To realize that all your life – you know, all your love, all your hate, all your memories, all your pain – it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream, a dream that you had inside a locked room, a dream about being a person. And like a lot of dreams, there’s a monster at the end of it.’ This profound philosophy and soliloquy, reflections on the nature of existence itself, is another reason True Detective can be considered epic.

Scope is one thing, but we already know style maketh the epic. True Detective has style in abundance. The script is labyrinthine in itself, full of nuances and complexities that reward subsequent viewings. It shifts from black comedy to poetry to sordidness effortlessly. In the second episode, Rust looks around at the desolate town and says: ‘This place is like somebody’s memory of a town, and the memory’s fading…’ A beautiful poetic image (and extended metaphor) that perfectly encapsulates both their bleak surroundings but also Rust’s more spiritual, artistic character. Marty’s put-down is hilariously delivered and salt-of-the-Earth: ‘Stop saying shit like that.’ Whilst some people have said they found the series difficult to get into because of the way the characters talk (and I can’t disagree the thick Southern American accents and phrases are hard to decipher, particularly for non-US audiences), it is this very thing which elevates it. There is a rhythm and metre to even the most banal exchange of insults, the most libidinous comment, the most corporate excuse. Like Shakespeare, you have to tune your ear, but once you break in, your mind picks up the meanings.

Both men act as guides for each other at different points in the story. Throughout the investigation, the relationship between Marty and Rust and which of them is most dominant swings. Rust drives many of the investigative breakthroughs, but it is Marty who is able to buy them more time with his superiors, who are ever more eager to hand it over to the task force and be rid of it. Marty smooths things over with Rust and the others, guiding him through the social malaise and securing his position (until their falling out in 2002). Rust encourages Marty to love his wife and be a better man. This alternation subverts the idea of a guide in the traditional epic sense. Neither one is the ultimate guide, both in turn have their strengths and weaknesses.

In addition, True Detective frequently plays with our expectations for their characters. For example, Marty claims: ‘I was steady and Rust was smart’. At first, we believe him. Rust seems a genius, Marty seems a great ‘family man’. But later, the series challenges this. Marty ultimately cracks the case. His comment about Rust, that he has a ‘tendency for myopia’ proves correct. However, Marty is inconstant in that he is unfaithful to his wife and friends, and suffers from wild mood swings. His hypocrisy, as well, when dealing with the two teenage boys who slept with his daughter is palpable, the very definition of unsteady.

Rust, on the other hand, though seemingly an intellectual giant, is ultimately not the one to make the final case breakthrough, as his thinking and worldview is mono. But, he is the one who never gives up on solving the case and understands its true, wider implications. Even when it seems that he and Marty’s relationship will be irreparably destroyed by Rust’s liaison with Maggie, he does not fight Marty with his full strength, suffering significant injury through holding back, remaining bizarrely loyal to him. Similarly, in the early days of their relationship, he never gave away to Maggie that Marty was betraying her – whilst also never directly lying to Maggie (this kind of masterful ‘treading of the line’ is also another reason he is comparable to Jesus, who was legendary for his ability to circumnavigate very ensnaring questions and accusations). Rust, in fact, is so remarkable not because of his speeches or philosophy, but because of the sheer depth of his integrity. He is the ‘true’ detective of the title, who remains unshakeably loyal to his purpose no matter what.

Arguably, the two interviewing officers Maynard Gillbough (Michael Potts) and Thomas Papania (Tory Kittles) are also guides as they force Rust and Marty to go back through their past and details of the investigation. This is an intriguing play again on the trope, as Maynard and Thomas are actually really trying to wrong-foot Rust, Marty and also Maggie – whom they interview towards the end. Though they do end up doing the right thing at the close of the investigation, trusting Marty and providing backup when he makes the call, they are antagonists for the majority of the series, as well as guides for the audience and their interviewees.

I’ve said there are three key story influences on True Detective: The Odyssey, Theseus and the Minotaur, and the Bible, but there is also a fourth key influence on the setting, which is the mythos of the Yellow King, particularly the collection by Robert W. Chambers: The King in Yellow. Now, we finally come to the title of this series. Entering Carcosa. Carcosa is a mystical land ruled by the King in Yellow in Robert W. Chambers’ stories. The King In Yellow is not only a personage in this world, however, but also the name of a play in the ‘real’ world. Reading this play drives you insane and brings the phantasmagorical to life.

Carcosa itself is only hazily described in Robert W. Chambers’ tales. We get the sense of a kind of fantastical realm warped by ancient ruins, colossal lakes, sprawling beneath a sky full of ‘black stars’. Carcosa is mentioned several times in True Detective as the place to which Rust is ultimately being drawn for his final confrontation with the killer, who may be the King in Yellow, or an incarnation of him. Carcosa seems both a spiritual dimension beyond the veil of reality and a physical space (the labyrinth at the end). In a brilliant scene in the final episode, Rust experiences a vision where the firmament opens up and a swirling vortex of stars pours down into the darkness. The gate to Carcosa itself, or just another hallucination resulting from neural damage? Rust’s visions seem to become more frequent the closer he gets to the killer. Could he have glimpsed something beyond the real? Or does it mean, as Rust is told by the killer that: ‘You’re in Carcosa now’ – he has already crossed over.

Carcosa, needless to say, is a metaphor for hell. By using cosmic, Lovecraftian horror (Robert W. Chambers was a tremendous influence on Lovecraft), True Detective neatly sidesteps the well-worn path of so many horror movies, instead giving us something more sinister, evasive and mysterious. Carcosa is a place, a state of mind, but also – most importantly of all – a feeling. It is not-quite-rightness embodied. It is Rust’s skin-crawling sensation that the town is not real, just a ‘memory of a town’. It is Marty’s feeling that his life is ‘slipping through [his] fingers’. Carcosa is the hell that creeps up on us in unexpected moments, the constant threat that the universe is not quite right. Rust feeds his interviewers cosmic theology, claiming that ‘Time is a flat circle’, that we live the same life over and over again and can never escape it. This morbid nihilism is thought, by some, to be merely a smokescreen to wrong-foot the investigators, but I think at some deep level Rust believes it. He believes there is something wrong with the world. That more than anything else is Carcosa. True Detective brilliantly subverts the epic by bringing Hell to Earth, but not in an obvious way. It brings it to us in the insidious doubts of our lives.

The references to The King in Yellow also serve as a kind of subversion of the invocation to the Muse. The King in Yellow is worshipped by many people in the story secretly, and the pervasiveness of his worship is only truly known at the end of the series. As the story unfolds, the king becomes an increasingly sinister presence, felt in every scene but never quite seen. There is a feeling that the Yellow King is the one controlling events, leading the story where it needs to go. The muse has become a frightening demonic force in the narrative.

On a side note, there is much debate about who, truly, the Yellow King is. Is it Errol Childress, the Killer? That would be perhaps the most obvious solution, but the killer does not identify himself as the king. In fact, he refers frequently to higher powers which he hopes to ‘ascend to’. Is it Rust, then? The killer refers to Rust as ‘My little prince…’ (incidentally, ticking another box for epic heroes: royalty). Does this suggest he has a place in Carcosa too, a lineage? Or, most weirdly of all, is it mundane Marty? Marty’s second name, Hart, weirdly chimes with the antlers the killer attaches to many of his victims’ heads. The antlers are described by Rust as a ‘crown’. There is also a moment when Marty steps into a club in search of one of the drug dealers who might be supplying the killer with his LSD cocktail, a concoction he uses to presumably make his victims more compliant. A ray of yellow light falls across Marty, illuminating him. Coincidence or deeper meaning? It is, after all, Marty who finally closes the case. Never has the Muse been imbued with such a sense of mystery.

Ultimately, the epic can be expressed in so many different ways, but all epics tap into something deep within us. A craving for a higher narrative of existence. A sense of cosmology – aka, an order to the universe, an explanation why things are the way they are, whether that be visualising mountains as the result of a tap-dancing god, the rivers as the seed of a giant bull, or an understanding the disharmony of life as the result of a deeper struggle against cosmic darkness. Metal Gear Solid, The Horus Heresy and True Detective are vastly different works, and all of them have had many hands in their creation, but they are unified in the way they help us to define who we are and what heroism is. In an era of increasing deceit and cowardice, where no good deed goes unpunished and no crime goes swept under the carpet, we need epic narrative, and definitions of heroism, more than ever before.

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We’ve now come to the end of this series. I do hope you enjoyed it, it was an absolute pleasure to write. I would love to have your suggestions for other modern epics so that I can write more of these articles in the future. A few of you already have recommended some stuff, so I’m going to spend some time checking it out. Who knows, part 5 might be coming sooner than you think! Thanks for being there.

If you want to find out more, or ask me any questions, feel free to leave a comment on my website, or to message me on Twitter!

If you feel that you have benefited from today’s class, then please check out my KoFi page, where you can donate $3 to “buy me a coffee” to help me keep producing free resources like this. Do not feel pressure to do so, but small contributions can go a long way for creators like me.

Until next time, my friends!

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Entering Carcosa Part 3: The Horus Heresy

Welcome back to Carcosa, mortal! In this series, I’m discussing the modern epic, deep-diving some unusual examples of the form that speak to our times. If you’ve missed parts 1 and 2 of this series, never fear, you can find them at the links below:

PART 1: THE EPIC ISN’T DEAD (INTRODUCTION)

PART 2: METAL GEAR SOLID

If you’re up to date, then let’s jump right in to part 3!

Before the existence of copyright, storytelling was more communal. It was not only okay to borrow one writer’s ideas and expand upon them, but encouraged. Just be sure you did it better than the original lest you lose face. In Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon epic of circa 900 AD, we are treated to an abridged version of the German legend of Sigmund. Within the tale of Beowulf itself is reference to another legend, one that influences the titular hero. Homer’s stories, too, refer to other Greek legends, probably penned/told by contemporaries or predecessors of Homer. There is even a common misconception that The Iliad tells the story of the destruction of Troy, including the Trojan Horse. In fact, The Iliad ends with the moving funeral of Hector. The story of the Trojan Horse is filled out in another incomplete poem and briefly alluded to in The Odyssey. The escape of the Trojan people and their journey to the promised land of Latium, which would be founded as Italy and Rome, is a tale told by Virgil hundreds of years later in his epic The Aeneid, a story that casts new light on Troy and re-moulds Odysseus (not entirely convincingly, I must say) as a villain as opposed to the clever hero we knew.

What is clear is that this story was so vast, so inspirational and intriguing, that it was like lucrative ore, loaded with rich minerals and gold. Much like Lovecraft’s mythos, it has been mined and mined for generations. Shakespeare re-imagined Troy again in the 17th Century with Troilus & Cressida, focusing on overlooked characters and giving a shocking twist to the Achilles myth. 2750 years after the original Iliad, David Gemmell would write his own novel trilogy, Troy, offering yet another re-imagining of the city’s fall from a soldiers-on-the-ground perspective, effortlessly modernising a mythic narrative about gods and monstrous warriors. All these authors have offered their own contribution to this grand, mythic tale, making it into the rich tapestry we know today.

The creation of the Horus Heresy series by Black Library, Games Workshop’s publishing wing, harks back to this ancient mode of storytelling. The tale of the Heresy is set in the future, using sci-fi technology such as gene-seeding, biological enhancement, and bionics to re-imagine the heroes and magic of older narratives, although later in the story real gods do also play a part; the negative emotions of mankind have birthed four atrocious horrors in the warp, the iconic Chaos Gods: Khorne, God of Bloodshed and War, Nurgle, Lord of Decay and Death, Slaanesh, Master of Excess, Pleasure and Pain, and Tzeentch, The Fate-Weaver, God of Knowledge and Changer of Ways. Just as the Greek and Roman authors had their pantheon of deities which were integral to the narrative, the Horus Heresy creates its own pantheon of dark gods and also demi-god heroes in the form of the all-important super-enhanced Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes and their leaders: The Primarchs. Milton evolved the Christian framework by creating his own ‘orders’ out of Satan’s legions and the nine hierarchies of angels, but the Horus Heresy goes one step further in creating something entirely new, using old cabalistic gods (Khorne/Kharneth) and Sumerian deities (Nurgle), among other influences, as inspiration.

The story takes place some 10,000 years prior the events of the grimdark Warhammer 40,000 game but thousands of years after The Great Crusade, which was the Emperor of Mankind’s attempt to colonise the known galaxy with his legions of Space Marines (thus locating the story in media res, a middle-point in a much larger story). The narrative spans hundreds of worlds, with a myriad of characters from different races, religions, military chapters and hidden cults (so many characters in fact that all the books have a dramatis personae at the front to ensure we know who everyone is – literal epic catalog). The depth of lore is such that this is not a story that can be written by one person. Like the Fall of Troy, many writers have contributed to the task. Currently, there have been 52 books in the series (plus accompanying audiobooks), with stories by well over 20 authors. In 2019, the series will end with a book entitled The Buried Dagger.

The Horus Heresy unashamedly borrows elements of Christian theology (The Emperor of Mankind a kind of god-figure betrayed by his favoured Luciferic son Horus Lupercal), as well as Egyptian, Norse and Indian legends and myths. It is, for lack of a more elegant phrase, a melting pot of mythological ideas, taking the best of everything and forming it into an epic Science Fiction extravaganza that tackles themes of brotherhood, betrayal, sacrifice, redemption and faith. The Primarchs, commanders of the vast Space Marine chapters each gifted with one facet of the Emperor’s personality (much like the Egyptian gods are each a facet of Ra’s personality), are also like Christ’s apostles, except there are 18 of them (originally there were 20, but 2 were lost in the warp never to be recovered).

In a similar vein, though Horus and his relationship to his literal creator, The Emperor, parallels the Christian dynamic of Satan and God, the Horus Heresy feels like a Greek tragic play more than Milton’s rebel-narrative of Paradise Lost. Horus is a tragically conflicted figure. He stands against his father’s hypocrisy and lies, seeking to reveal the truth to his loyal battle-brothers. The Emperor has created the Primarchs, and his Space Marine legions, using Chaos itself, the very thing the Emperor decries as heresy. The Emperor punishes all those who come into contact with Chaos, including his own gene-son, the Primarch Magnus the Red, whom the Emperor imbued with his psychic attunement (and therefore natural affinity and ability to communicate with Chaos). Is it Magnus’ fault he is drawn to the warp when the very trait he has been bestowed by the Emperor is his psychic power?

In the process of trying to overthrow his father, Horus becomes corrupted by Chaos himself, a dramatic irony of epic proportions. Ultimately, in his quest to defeat the Emperor, he loses everything, even the very things which first positively separated him from his monomaniacal father-figure. Horus was once the ‘most loved’ of the Primarchs, a charismatic leader who unified the legions despite their differences. He achieved this through his understanding of human psychology, able to relate and listen to his brothers as well as ordinary ‘un-enhanced’ human beings, the ‘lesser mortals’ of the Warhammer universe. The Emperor, on the other hand, is aloof and often fails to understand human thinking. For example, he names Horus ‘The Warmaster’, placing him ‘First Among Equals’, thus setting him above his Primarch brethren, a mistake anyone with any understanding of the human heart can immediately see will lead to dire consequences. In one scene of hilarious meta-commentary, Malcador, the Emperor’s loyal regent, remarks that many of the problems with the Primarchs could have been averted had they been created as women. Again, a severe oversight on the Emperor’s part.

During the course of the heresy, Horus becomes embittered, ruthless and uncaring, unwilling to listen to the tactical advice of his brothers, and throwing away allies on a whim. He loses his ability to connect with people and understand the human heart, in a bizarre way, turning into a mirror of the xenophobic, egocentric, patriarchal godhead of the Emperor, the very thing he wanted to oppose. There is a wonderful moment of clarity in the audiobook Warmaster (John French) that illustrates the influences of Greek tragedy on the story, when Horus reflects that the nine Primarchs who have turned upon the Emperor to aid him are the ones he holds in least regard. As he cradles the skull of his former friend, the Loyalist Primarch Ferrus Manus (a scene which directly parallels Hamlet), Horus laments that he has only ‘broken things’, monsters, and psychopaths, at his side, not real men of strategy and conviction like Ferrus. All the people he admires are fighting on the Emperor’s side. He wishes he could make them see reason, and already cannot see that the very thing he admires in them is the thing which means they will never side with him.

Stylistically, the writing in the series varies in tone. It has to, given there are so many hands on deck. However, all of the Heresy stories are unified by the faux-Latin of the Imperium and the archaic technology; remember, epics bridge the past and future. The arcane technology of the Warhammer universe is more like Fantasy than true Science Fiction, a re-creation of the Triremes of ancient Greece, save they battle in the cold gulf of space rather than the sea. But deeper even than that, the formality of military discourse is used as a clever way to write dialogue in an elevated, regal style that doesn’t slip into parody, or sound like the many hackneyed Fantasy novels that imitate epic speech in clumsy ways. They tread the line between modern and fable, and it works. Whilst the prose is more of a ‘hard-boiled’ affair, it nonetheless uses the presence of the warp, and the grandeur of the battles and characters, to make way for sublime imagery that transcends simple action sci-fi or space opera. Particularly when it is in the hands of writers such as Dan Abnett and Aaron Demski-Bowden, who craft their novels with the loving, painstaking artistry of poets. These writers use thematic riffs and motifs, bringing lines of resonant dialogue back in compelling and surprising ways, much as Homer uses repeated images ‘Dawn showed her rosy fingers’, for emotive effect. In one of the most dramatic examples of this, Dan Abnett takes the iconic battle-cry of the Space Marines: ‘For the Emperor!’, and twists it on its head at the end of his novel Legion, making it into a chilling declaration of a sunken costs fallacy. The line is delivered by the character you least expect to say it, and in a manner that is a perfect juxtaposition of ideal versus reality. For the Emperor is a battlecry of an old era, the Great Crusades, not of this time now when things are much more complicated. As such, there is a kind of ‘call and response’ effect in many of these novels, authors giving us new spins on characters first created and explored by other writers.

But what of our epic hero? Well, there are many heroes and villains in this vast saga, but Horus must be the central character. The heresy is, after all, named after him. Like Milton’s depiction of Satan, Horus is an anti-hero, someone we route for but who we know is ultimately wrong and must fail. He hails from Cthonia, a planet of gang-lords and industrial conflict (unusual place and orphaned) where he swiftly rose to power. He is one of the 20 Primarchs, super-enhanced with incredible speed, strength, reactions and healing abilities (unusual power and royal heritage). Horus, however, seems more powerful than even his super-powered brothers, being the ‘first son’ to be found by the Emperor and therefore benefiting from direct one-to-one tutelage from him. Only one of the other Primarchs was thought to be a match for Horus, and that was Sanguinius of the Blood Angels. Even then, Horus is purported to have slain Sanguinius in the final battle of the Heresy aboard the ship: Vengeful Spirit. Horus has a sense of justice, which is why he opposes his father in the first place, though this is corroded and warped over time by the malignant influence of the Dark Gods. He wields the Talon of Horus, a master-crafted Lightning Claw forged in the depths of Mars, as well as a mace called World Breaker, which was forged by the Emperor himself. He is armoured in a suit called the Serpent’s Scales which is surrounded by a force-field (special equipment). His tragic flaw is his ambition, paralleling Shakespeare’s Macbeth. This ambition ultimately blinds him, sending him going down the wrong path. Ironically, it is also the trait he has inherited from his gene-father. Horus was encouraged to be ambitious, because the Emperor saw it as a strength and saw himself in Horus above all the others. Sadly, the Emperor should have instead tempered Horus’ ambition. Horus himself thought that Sanguinius (whom he admired above all other Primarchs, and which makes his murder of Sanguinius all the more tragic), should have been the Warmaster, for he truly embodied the Emperor’s spirit. If Horus had instead been the right hand man and aid to Sanguinius, the galaxy might have been all the better for it.

Horus has many guides, all of which seem to mislead him and take him down the wrong path, such as the Word Bearers Erebus and Kor Phaeron. In later books, Maloghurst, a dark sorcerer, takes over the role, nursing Horus as he lies wounded by the Spear of the Emperor and entering his dreams. All of these prophets, priests and guides are really extensions, however, of the Dark Gods themselves, whose true aim is to neutralise the Emperor, who is too powerful a threat to them. Unfortunately, all this at the expense of Horus. The Horus Heresy really subverts the idea of the ‘epic guide’ altogether by showing us that sometimes common sense and intuition – which is what guides most of the heroic loyalists in the narrative – is a better compass than false philosophy or ideals. Horus is corrupted by over-thinking and scheming. If he had listened to his heart, he might have thrown off the influences of his heretical brethren.

Lastly, hell. Hell is ever-present in the Warhammer universe in the form of The Eye. No, not the Eye of Sauron, though clearly there is an allusion there to a previous epic, but the Eye of the Warp, a great vortex-portal in space that leads to the kingdom of the Dark Gods. There are many instances where, either through dreams or literal tears in reality, Horus and his servants (and even some of the Loyalist Space Marines) must go to the Eye, and chance an encounter with the Dark Gods and their servants. In one particularly memorable scene in Vengeful Spirit (Graham McNeill) Horus enters a portal on the planet Molech (Molech perhaps a corruption of moloch, the plant that Odysseus must consume in order to resist the magic of Circe). This portal was once used by the Emperor to reach the stronghold of the Dark Gods. With the powers the Emperor found therein, he created the Primarchs and the Adeptus Astartes. We do not follow Horus through the portal. He returns moments later. Millennia have passed for him, more than millennia in fact; Horus has visibly aged, which is impossible, given that the Primarchs supposedly live forever. Horus led demonic armies and brought thousands of worlds to his heel in this time. He effectively conquered hell itself. He returned to use his newfound knowledge to destroy the Emperor once and for all.

This is really secondary to the true hellish descent of the narrative, however, which is the descent of Horus’ mind. While the Warp is ever-present and literal, it is nothing compared to the horrors of Horus’ corrupted morality, and his continual descent through the many entries in the series. Horus commits many atrocities, including chemical bombing his own brethren from orbit after they make planetfall. The ‘drop-site massacre’, as it later comes to be known, is one of the most visceral, heart-rending, awful moments in the entire series, where many characters we love are obliterated without a chance to fight and die honourably: the true desire of any Space Marine. He robs them of dignity in his betrayal. The real hell is Horus’ and his corrupted followers’ minds, not the Eye itself, which is merely a mirror image of all the hatred, fear and negative emotion of human and alien kind. This powerful subversion is what makes the Horus Heresy work, and what has made it so successful and enduringly popular with fans. Without this psychological depth, it would merely be Myths in Space.

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We’ve now come to the end of part 3 of this series. I do hope you enjoyed it. In part 4, the final part, we’ll look at our third example of a ‘modern epic’, a hit TV series… If you want to find out more, or ask me any questions, feel free to leave a comment on my website, or to message me on Twitter!

If you feel that you have benefited from today’s class, then please check out my KoFi page, where you can donate $3 to “buy me a coffee” to help me keep producing free resources like this. Do not feel pressure to do so, but small contributions can go a long way for creators like me.

Until next time, my friends!

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Entering Carcosa Part 2: Metal Gear Solid

Welcome back to Carcosa, mortal! In this continuation of my series on the modern epic, we’ll be discussing one of my favourite stories of all time. I hope that in reading this analysis, you will see places where you can draw from this rich well for your own work, and find ways to expand your narrative from ordinary to epic. So, let us begin.

It’s no secret to those who know me that I love Hideo Kojima’s legendary Metal Gear Solid series. But one of the reasons I love it so much is that I consider it a modern epic. Video-games have delivered some of the most iconic stories and characters of the last thirty years. They stand on their own as valid artistic works. Not only that, but they culturally connect with a vast, vast number of people in a way that films and poetry increasingly don’t. Statistics have shown more young people play games than watch films. In some ways, films have become a cinephile niche, save for the one or two major blockbusters that draw colossal numbers. Whilst games are anchored with technology (therefore it becomes more difficult to play older titles as technology advances), this is no different from how epics are anchored to language. Who now speaks Ancient Greek? Very few among us, except perhaps within Greece itself, where it is compulsory and they are aided by the affinity of their modern language with the ancient one. Yet, The Odyssey can be read and enjoyed in translation around the world. So, too, can Metal Gear Solid be enjoyed in English (translated from the original Japanese) and by those with older consoles, emulators or even by those willing to purchase premium ‘remasters’ of the game that overhaul graphical fidelity and allow games to be played on later consoles. Of course, there is irony in this, as Metal Gear Solid is itself an exploration of technology and its relentless advance; the eponymous ‘Metal Gear’ represents a threat to the world, a mobile robotic walker capable of launching a nuke from anywhere.

I believe Metal Gear Solid has surpassed pretty much all other video-games in terms of its storytelling. This is because it reaches for that lofty trophy of the epic. Kojima-san is someone who clearly, intuitively, understands what constitutes an epic, and how to execute it. Tackling tremendous themes such as nuclear proliferation and the horrors of modern warfare alongside subtle emotional complexities such as the sins of parenthood (especially fatherhood), friendship and love, the epic scope cannot be questioned. He has learned from Western and Eastern masters alike, and synthesised the best of both to create something truly unique. Despite his cinematic leanings, Kojima-san uses a 5 Act structure in most of his stories (overtly dividing Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots with five title screens). This undoubtedly takes its precedence from Greek tragedy and the work of Shakespeare, themselves epic influences.

In creating Solid Snake, Kojima-san has created an iconic epic hero, rivalling the greats of cinema such as Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name or Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken (off whom Solid Snake was certainly based). But how does Snake fit the epic archetype? Well, he’s a clone for a start (his unusual origin, royal genealogy and unusual power in one), inheriting the inferior genes of Big Boss, a legendary special operative gone rogue. Even though he has inherited the ‘inferior’ genes, Snake is not to be dismissed: his abilities are super-human, with lightning-fast reflexes and above-average toughness and strength. He inherently has a sense of right and wrong, of justice, even though he has been trained to kill from an early age. In a cold yet heartbreaking moment of self awareness, he says: ‘Unfortunately, killing is one of those things that gets easier the more you do it.’

Left: Snake Plissken from John Carpenter’s “Escape From New York”, played by Kurt Russel / Right: Venom Snake from Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Snake uses specialist kit – including stealth camouflage, nano-machines, and high-tech weaponry – employed by only the most elite military units (magical equipment). His clone origin means he was not raised by his true parents (orphaned), but instead trained from birth to be part of FOXHOUND. Jokingly, Snake believes his smoking addiction to be his major flaw, but this is superseded by his real physical weakness which is a form of Werner’s disease, a byproduct of his artificial creation, leading to extremely accelerated ageing. In an emotional sense, Snake’s tragic flaw is his inability to form true human relationships, his lack of trust, meaning that even those closest to him feel they don’t know him. It is only by overcoming this weakness, trusting his friends, that he can defeat his nemesis Liquid Snake, his clone brother, at the close of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. It should be noted that the fourth instalment in the game’s series is actually the last one chronologically. Like a true epic, Metal Gear Solid’s story is told out of order. In terms of narrative chronology, the ‘first’ game is Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, followed by V, followed by 1, then 2, then 4.

Kojima-san’s invocation to the Muse is not a one time thing, but an ever-present trope through the series, in that he auteuristically homages movies and television that have informed his work. The style and characters of Metal Gear Solid are heavily influenced by John Carpenter’s Escape From New York, and many scenes reference and recall this iconic cult-classic, including one scene in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty in which Snake, asked to reveal his identity, gives the codename: Iroquois Plissken. In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, there are many uses of the ‘split-screen’, showing multiple threads of action at once, which is almost certainly a direct homage to the American TV series 24 which aired its first series 7 years prior to MGS4. 24 has many obvious thematic and plot similarities with Kojima-san’s work (spies, espionage, terrorism, how war breaks down human relationships). Later, Kiefer Sutherland, who plays 24’s legendary agent Jack Bauer, would voice Venom Snake in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and go on to collect an award (Game of the Year) on behalf of Hideo Kojima when Konami, the developer Kojima-san previously worked for, refused to allow him to attend the ceremony. Here, the Muse is not only invoked but becomes part of the story. There is direct interplay between inspiration and output.

The split-screen action culminates in Metal Gear Solid 4 in one of the most iconic gaming scenes of all time, a scene in which the player must force Solid Snake through a microwave emitting corridor in order to disarm Liquid’s all-pervading digital control system, a system which will give him absolute control over warfare across the globe. On one screen, we see Snake literally coming apart at the seams, the microwaves frying musculature and braincells. On the other, we see his friends, Otacon, Raiden, Meryl, Johnny, Dreben, Mei Ling, fighting for their very lives against impossible odds. This scene is brilliant because it forces us to watch beloved characters fall, their last resistance against Liquid’s superior armies crumbling before our eyes, giving us all the incentive we need to force Snake on, even though he himself, a character we have known and loved for 20 years, is falling apart. Through its framing, it becomes a culmination of seemingly every war ever fought, the entirety of human suffering, condensed into a 5 minute sequence. The further we push Snake down that corridor, the worse it gets. In the background, a piece of music aptly entitled ‘Love Theme’ plays with sorrowful, funereal strength. Snake’s love is what sets him apart from his clone brothers Liquid and Solidus, and his corrupted father Big Boss. Although he is not perfect, he is more human than all of them. Broken, aged, he gives everything, redefining heroism for our era.

Kojima-san’s games subvert the tropes of video-games, that of killing to win, by forcing the player to focus on stealth and espionage. Avoidance of conflict is the solution, and this is reflected in the gameplay as well as in the cinematic storytelling; at the end of the series, it’s about passively enduring something un-endurable. He takes his influence from the Japanese writer Kobo Abe, who wrote: ‘The rope and the stick are two of humankind’s oldest tools. The stick to keep evil at a bay, the rope to bring that which is good closer, both were the first friends conceived by humankind. The rope and stick were wherever humankind was to be found’ (The Rope). The idea is that we use the stick to destroy things, and this is the predominant narrative focus of most games, movies and books, but there is an alternative path – that of the rope. Kojima-san discussed this philosophy at length an article for Rolling Stone. This not only subverts video-game tropes, but epic ones. In The Odyssey and The Iliad, killing is at the heart of the narrative, and is the method by which the heroes overcome most of their problems. Whilst the violence is not always justified or portrayed in a positive light (in a tragic scene in The Odyssey, Odysseus ‘weeps’ to hear Achilles described like a ‘human being’), it nonetheless proves the ultimate solution. Kojima-san creates an epic in which violence is a tragic reality, but not the ultimate resort of the true hero. Snake rises above violence in entering the corridor. He can’t fight the corridor, he simply must survive it, crawling on his belly (like a snake) to reach the end.

Stylistically, the use of the split-screen and music to generate such emotion is certainly epic. It has grandeur, ambition, and homages other epic tales that have gone before it. Like Orpheus, who was told never to look back as he walked from hell with the soul of his wife behind him, Snake cannot look back down the corridor. If he does, he will weaken and turn back. He must keep going forward through hell itself and trust his friends can hold just long enough. Similarly, epic catalog is employed frequently through the Metal Gear Solid series. Endless names, ranks, numbers, data, historical events, political treaties, technology and more are described and referenced, and you can call your allies on your Codec to get more information at any time. Military acronyms, tech-jargon, cutting edge science, are spliced with rich philosophy and poetic sentiment: ‘I’m a shadow that no light will shine upon,’ Snake says, ‘As long as you follow me, you will never see the day.’ Not only do the characters speak in weighty monologues rich with extended metaphor and double-meaning, but the names of the characters themselves are a kind of extended metaphor. Snake is told to ‘crawl on his belly’ by Vulcan Raven in Metal Gear Solid 1, an insult referring to his codename and the fact he spends a lot of time, well, crawling around like the sneaky agent he is. But later we are told that ‘A name means nothing on the battlefield’. Snake is not really a snake, he is a human being.

Snake finds himself frequently descending into hell. In Metal Gear Solid 1 this is perhaps best expressed. Snake must infiltrate a secret base in the depths of freezing Alaska called Shadow Moses. Cut off from help, struggling to survive in hypothermia-inducing temperatures, the stark landscape, concealing layers and layers of military facility which he must literally descend into, becomes a kind of hell. It is even cold, much like Dante’s Inferno is at its absolute abyssal inverse-apex on the Ninth Circle. Hell literally freezes over. In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater we follow Big Boss (Solid and Liquid Snake’s forbearer) as a young, naive soldier (not the jaded villain we know from later parts of the narrative) as he journeys into a kind of Heart of Darkness, a 1960s Soviet jungle. ‘Hell is murky’, Lady Macbeth claims in one of Shakespeare’s iconic monologues. This is eminently true of the jungle we explore in the game. But in a breathtaking scene where Big Boss must throw himself down a sheer cliff into a river to escape Soviet prison, we enter a more literal hell. Big Boss seems to die, and begins wading down a river in the dark. Suddenly, he meets the deceased member of the elite Cobra Unit, The Sorrow. The Sorrow summons the dead against Big Boss, forcing him to experience the suffering he has inflicted on others. In a brilliant twist, Kojima engineers the game so that every person you have killed confronts the player, in exactly the state you killed them. There are soldiers burning forever, clutching at slit throats, riddled with bullet-holes. It’s harrowing and punishing. The more people you’ve killed, the longer the sequence goes on for. This is true katabasis.

In terms of a guide, I’ve already mentioned a few who help Snake throughout his missions. The most significant is Snake’s friend Otacon, who takes his name from the Japanese word ‘Otaku’, which means ‘geek’. He’s an anime fan, a kind of sly wink-nod to the audience playing the game, who will most likely be fans of Japanese culture and anime themselves. He’s a cowardly scientist (pissing himself with fear the first time we meet him), but extremely intelligent, loyal, and kind. Although arguably he displays a different kind of bravery to Snake’s, trying to help undo the terrible wrongs of helping to create Metal Gear, even though he knows he will face consequences for betraying his former masters.

Metal Gear Solid is an incredible tale, told over twenty years. It’s a miracle that Kojima-san got a chance to tell it. And while his last efforts were partially scuppered by Konami at the very end (MGSV: The Phantom Pain is unfortunately unfinished – Kojima’s original plans for it would have brought the series full circle with a beautiful closing arc, but sadly this was not to be), the series still holds up without any major gaps in the tale. Epics, after all, are notorious for being left unfinished anyway. It’s part of the risk in undertaking such a vast story. Virgil’s Aeneid was half finished. On his deathbed, the Roman poet commanded it to be burned because he was disappointed with it, but the Emperor decreed that it be saved. Strangely, though Virgil had another 12 books (chapters) planned, the poem ends at a perfect, spine tingling point: ‘Turner’s soul fled murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night’ – the soul of the antagonist finally going down to hell, defeated. Similarly, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen was purportedly half completed when he died, and yet it ends at a moment that to me perfectly encapsulates the transition from the era of the heroic and epic into the modern day, when the Blatant Beast, a creature that destroys art and sincerity, escapes from captivity to roam the world again.

But of course, the Blatant Beast cannot truly destroy beauty in the world, because there will always be epic poets, and epic stories worth telling, we simply have to look for them. Whilst epics always bridge the gap between past and present, they do not have to be backward looking, or rehashes. They can be bold, different and unique – and they can be modern. We like to think the Ancient Greeks could never have conceived of the idea of a giant walking robot with nuclear capability, but what then is Talos, the gigantic iron guardian who attempts to halt Jason and the Argonauts? Resonant imagery is eternal, echoing down through time, through generations, finding new ways of expression that are concurrent with the era we live in. At the same time, epics cause us to reconsider the world around us and our culture. Metal Gear Solid, while undoubtedly a story of war, is also its sincerest critic. It tells us that the epic is still alive and well, and that heroism exists, but not in the way we think.

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We’ve now come to the end of part 2 of this series. I do hope you enjoyed it. In part 3, we’ll look at our second example of a ‘modern epic’, an ambitious collaborate narrative work… If you want to find out more, or ask me any questions, feel free to leave a comment on my website, or to message me on Twitter!

If you feel that you have benefited from today’s class, then please check out my KoFi page, where you can donate $3 to “buy me a coffee” to help me keep producing free resources like this. Do not feel pressure to do so, but small contributions can go a long way for creators like me.

Until next time, my friends!

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Entering Carcosa Part 1: The Epic Isn’t Dead

Hello and welcome to a new four-part series, Entering Carcosa, by your friendly neighbourhood Mindflayer! In this series, I’ll be discussing what defines an epic, how they’re changing in the modern world, and I’ll explore ways in which you can shape your own epic narrative. My aim with this series is to inspire people to engage with more epics, to widen the discussion of epics to include other mediums such as video-games and serializations, and to lastly, perhaps most importantly, aid people wanting to write one themselves. So, let us begin.

Throughout time and culture, one artistic pursuit has, by and large, been held in regard above all others. This is the creation of an ‘epic’. Narrative is central to human ideology, identity, and our relationship with the world around us, it helps us make sense of things, processing both our external and internal worlds. At its deepest level, it is healing. The act of writing is therapy, catharsis, liberation. And core to the literary heart of so many cultures, peoples, tribes, religions and countries throughout the ages is the concept of an epic. A story that is greater than other stories. A story that operates on an entirely other scale. These are some of the most powerful and healing stories of all time. To write one is one of the highest forms of artistic achievement. But rarely is one written purely for praise and honour and bragging rights. They are written from a deep place. They can only be written from that deep place, which is why so many of them begin with an invocation to gods, or the Muses, or even human sources of inspiration. To write an epic is to shake the soul of a person.

Now, I can’t teach you how to write an epic. I’m not sure that’s even possible. I maintain I can teach anyone to write and that everyone has one story in them, but I’m not sure I believe everyone has an epic in them. An epic is a one in a million. An epic is lightning bottled. However, having studied epics for a long time, I think I can give you some steering on what they involve, how they work, and give you examples of recent modern and accessible works that use epic tropes. These will act like Muses in themselves, guiding your path. From there on, it’s all you. But if you really feel you have an epic in you and you’re reading this, I’m telling you: You have to write it. We need epics, like we need food, water, air. Yes, that’s not melodrama. Without them, we wither. Culture withers, human relationships wither, our sense of who we are and what life means withers. Stephen King said that art is a support system for life. Never were truer words spoken. Science helps us to live. Art gives us a reason to.

So, let’s start with an overview and go from there. Are you excited? I’m excited. I hope you have a pen and notepad ready.

OVERVIEW

Traditionally, the epic is relayed in poetic form. Some were performed by the poet, or upon a theatrical stage. Some were set down. Either way, the epics of the past are unified in poetry, although the poetic form they might be expressed in differs drastically. In recent years, it seems there has been a tailing off of epic poems, although they are certainly still being written in our time. One such example being my own father’s astounding work The English Cantos: a modern journey into hell recounting his experience in Bournemouth Hospital battling cancer. It is penned in fluid terza rima, homaging Dante’s Divine Comedy. The first three Cantos of this amazing poem have been published by the Society of Classical Poets, and are available to read for free. He continues to write it, aiming to publish 33 cantos in total. This work in progress is what I would call a poem penned in the ‘true epic style’. It tackles the issues of modernism, the disintegration of moral values and the meaninglessness of a modern world driven by profit and gratification. It uses many of the epic tropes: the invocation of the muse (calling on Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry specifically), the wise guide (in my father’s case, Dante himself, the poet who perhaps best explored hell before him), and the katabasis, the descent into hell itself.

My father is not the only one to attempt an epic poem. In the last decade, many ‘new’ epic attempts have emerged, including Tim Miller’s To the House of the Sun and Apocalypse by Frederick Turner. But, it’s safe to say that these are obscure works, not popularly known as the epics of Homer, Dante, and Milton would have been in their day, confined to study by poetry-nerds (such as my father and I) concerned with this ‘niche’. In fairness, my father’s epic is being fairly widely read, partly due to its accessibility in terms of theme (we all feel the dearth of this era), style (it is beautifully written in form that propels the narrative on, as opposed to many other modern poems written in formless free-verse), and its publication online which allows anyone to read it. However, poetry in general is not the pick of the day. How many people can truly say they regularly read poetry? It has become a niche of a niche, a subset of writing itself, whereas once it was the entire aim of it.

The long and short is, unless you are a poet of considerable experience reading this, I think it’s highly unlike you’d want to attempt an epic poem. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, of course. If you’re that way inclined, go for it. Poetry will never die. There will always be poets, and poetry, and it will always have validity. You see, epics are a bridge between past and present. Often, they refer back to a past time, but use modern language to describe it. Similarly, most epics are written when the language is young or even unformed.

To get specific, it’s thought that when Homer penned The Iliad, the first of his two major known works, around 750 BC, that the Greek language had not formally been set down prior to his writing of that book. In a way, writing The Iliad, was a way to document the rules, vocabulary and possibility of the language. In short, The Iliad may have served a dual function as an extremely beautiful grammar book. It covered the full spectrum of linguistic potential, and concretised much of the spelling and punctuation. Similarly, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales after the invasion of the Normans and the influx of French words into the language which broadened the ‘primitive’ vernacular tongue of Anglo Saxon into what scholars refer to as ‘Middle English’. Before then, the language was limited to predominantly Germanic-influenced words. Chaucer introduced Latinate and French words (and some others too) in penning his epic, vastly increasingly the potential of the language. Whilst Anglo Saxon had been around for a while, it went through an evolution when he wrote The Canterbury Tales.

This would happen again and again, particularly in English, perhaps because the language was just so darn pliable. Edmund Spenser would pen his beautiful epic fantasy romance The Faerie Queene after the language had leapt forward again in the 16th Century, eschewing many of its clunky qualifiers and taking on board many Italian poetic techniques. Shakespeare would then advance the language much, much further – only forty or so years later. In fact, we can track a distinct evolution of language through Shakespeare’s work from his early, quite archaic plays such as The Comedy of Errors, which is written in a more medieval style, right up to Hamlet, which opens with the line: ‘Who’s there?’ – practically modern English. By the time Shakespeare was done with the language, adding a plethora of words, expressions and neologisms to the dictionary, the language was unrecognisable and infinitely closer to the language we speak today. In the 17th Century, Milton was able to pen his epic Paradise Lost using an ‘argumentative’ stylein keeping with the cultural changes brought on by the Protestant Reformation (which in turn coincided with the boom of literacy and printing presses). This included the idea of religious debate in vernacular language. It opened up many wide possibilities for Milton make political and theological points within his work in a way never hitherto attempted. For example, this from the first book:

‘What in me is dark / Illumin, what is low raise and support; / That to the highth of this great Argument / I may assert Eternal Providence, /And justifie the wayes of God to men.

Just pick out the words: ‘argument’, ‘assert’, ‘justify’ – the language of a legal associate going through her case opening. But this, married and juxtaposed with the stunning, heart-breaking imagery, and the depth of incredible feeling, is what makes Paradise Lost work. So, you see, when the language evolves, it often provides new, fertile ground for writers to pen an epic. Once the ground has been well-trodden, it’s very difficult indeed to write one. And whilst our modern language is certainly changing and evolving, I’m not sure it’s changing in such a way that facilitates the writing of an epic. Normally, it is when a language expands that new possibilities for another level of storytelling emerge. However, I’d argue that many changes to our language now are merely to increase its basic functionality and efficiency. Text-speak, abbreviations, emojis. There’s nothing wrong with these (and many epics contain phrases and conflations which would have been known to people of the time), but too many of them makes writing at a feeling level difficult, because they are ultimately mechanical, designed to conserve space and time.

But does this mean the epic is dead? No, I believe it is far from it. Over the course of this series, I want to talk about what a modern epic looks like, specifically focusing in depth on three ‘epics in spirit’ that take on the tropes of the epic but express them in modern forms. These are perhaps genres or mediums you would not immediately think of when considering the ‘epic’. I hope analysing them will inspire and steer you on your course to attempting your own. There is a certain mythos, a Holy Grail allure to writing an epic, that is tantalising to almost all writers. So why not? After all, the Grail Quest is as much about the journey as the end result. Attempting it is, itself, an achievement. What the hell have we got to lose?

To conclude part 1, I’m going to run you through what I deem to be the six key tropes of the epic. There are many more than six tropes, of course. Some of the ones I will not be covering today include the ‘extended argument’ (characters, or even one character internally, debating an important or weighty theme in great detail), nationalism (many epics purport to detail the genesis of a people, even Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings) or macrologia (playing with scale and size). Sadly, we do not have time to cover everything, and I’ve chosen to focus on the six ones I believe are most important to defining what an epic is and more importantly how it feels.

In parts 2 – 4, I’m going to talk about my three modern examples, and how they play with and use these tropes. Note, whilst the novel undoubtedly facilitates epic writing and epic stories, I actually don’t want to focus on the novelin its basic form too much (save in overview), because I want to get on to some more unusual examples. I think sometimes it’s easier to find inspiration from genres outside our own, and I know many of you reading this will be writing novels and avid novel-readers. Similarly, I think film is again a too obvious example, so I’ll be avoiding discussing movies, except in terms of references, stylings and allusions. So, without more ado, let us begin…

(1) DEFINING EPICS – SCOPE & SUBJECT MATTER

Part of the epic is this idea of scope. Vast, complex stories with huge casts of characters. Novels, needless to say, facilitate this rather well, as they are not restricted by factors such as audience attention-span or memory (readers can put down the book and then pick it up again – they don’t have to sit through a four-hour movie). Many obvious examples of epic novels spring to mind (I’m sure you have some too). For me, Stephen King’s The Stand has to be one, with its length, breadth of characters, and theme (subject) – the timeless battle of good and evil. Another, I would argue, is Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. In fact, Tolkien intentionally set out to write the ‘unwritten epic’ of the modern English language. After all, the English people had adopted the Greek and Italian epics (with Homer, Virgil & Dante), or alternatively Christian frameworks (Milton & Spenser). Tolkien wanted to create something that uniquely belonged to us, and I think it’s fairly safe to say he achieved it. In terms of recent entries, I recommend you check out Anna Smith Spark’s incredible Empires of Dust series, which is written in a fresh yet epic style that has a flavour of The Iliad’s blood-drenched intensity.

Scope and subject matter go hand in hand. Milton spent a long time thinking about what the subject of his epic would be, because he knew it would determine all the possibilities of his story. One theme he contemplated writing about was the Arthurian myths, though this had already been partly done by Edmund Spenser and Chaucer, the former of which was one of his inspirations. Eventually, Milton settled on the Christian Fall of Mankind. It should be noted that epic subjects do not always have to be original. Milton’s poem drew heavily from, of course, the Bible, but also from Anglo Saxon/Old English poetry that re-told the story of Adam and Eve to align the Christian stories with Pagan values (Genesis A & B). The Anglo Saxon poems of Genesis A & B make Eve into a complex character, seduced by knowledge, tricked by Lucifer’s superior powers, and ultimately sympathetic, as opposed to many earlier Christian narratives that blamed her for mankind’s misstep. Milton hugely incorporated this in his own re-telling. Shakespeare drew most of his stories from Roman or Greek plays, or history, and reworked the narratives to suit his ends. The long and short is that with the epic, it is as much the telling of the tale as anything else. But, you need a tale that is going to provide you with enough scope to reach epic heights.

(2) DEFINING EPICS – STYLE

Epics have a certain style about them. It is often called the ‘elevated’ style. It conveys grandeur and scale and significance. Pulling this off without sounding pompous is very difficult and something every epic writer has struggled with for millennia.

Epics are often told out of order, with a device called in media res, a Latin phrase meaning quite literally: ‘in the middle of the thing’. The stories start mid-action and work backwards and then forwards, allowing for incredible resonances and webworks of emotional complexity to be developed in a way that is more sophisticated than standard narratives.

Another part of epic style is what is called ‘epic catalog’, what I affectionately term the ‘roll call’, the listings of endless ranks, positions, people, places, events, times, dates, and items. Epics have scope, remember, and they can increase their scope by listing minutiae to give the reader a sense that this is a detailed and real world. In The Iliad, we don’t just know who the main actors are, we also know who practically every damn soldier in the Greek armada is. Many fantasy novels use this trope poorly, resulting in podgy prose that is laborious to wade through. When done well, it creates a sense of excitement and scale and three-dimensionality.

Finally, a key part of this style is the ‘extended metaphor’. Elaborate metaphors and similes, as well as comparisons, that are more developed and in-depth than standard imagery. Epics are beautiful, and should evoke beauty even in their most horrifying moments. Part of the way they can do this is with extended metaphor and beautiful imagery. They elevate an image to something else entirely.

(3) DEFINING EPICS – INVOCATION TO THE MUSE

Epics must invoke the Muse, because they are not simply stories written from the brains of writers, but divinely inspired. Epics often open, or at some point feature, a calling upon a divine entity to aid in the recital of the poem.

(4) DEFINING EPICS – THE HERO / HEROINE

The hero or heroine of an epic is often defined in very specific ways. They are:

  • often from an unusual place or land
  • they have an unusual power
  • they usually have a sense of justice (even if it is a warped one, such as Satan in Paradise Lost)
  • they possess magical weapons or equipment
  • in some way royal, or dispossessed of something that belongs to them
  • often orphaned or not raised by their true parents
  • lastly, they possess a tragic flaw, a weakness

(5) DEFINING EPICS – THE GUIDE

The hero is often guided by either another hero that has gone before them or a sage guide or counsellor. Odysseus, in Homer’s The Odyssey, is guided by the goddess of wisdom Athena. Dante is guided by Virgil in hell (and in turn my father is guided by Dante in his version of hell)! Adam is (mis)guided by Satan in Paradise Lost. Satan himself is guided by Chaos. The list goes on and on.

(6) DEFINING EPICS – KATABASIS

All heroes must descend into hell. Hence, the title of this series: Entering Carcosa. This is arguably the most important aspect of the epic, in my humble view. The hero proves himself/herself above all normal heroes or normal stories by surviving hell itself, whether literally or figuratively, is up to the writer to decide.

So, these are the six key tropes of epic literature. You have now had a potted history of predominantly Western poetic literature (as much as I would love to discuss the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, or the Chinese epic The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, there is simply not time – nor am I sufficiently qualified to speak on these). This should, however, give us a background to launch into discussing our first ‘modern epic’ next week, which in fact hails from Japan. Until then, adieu!

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We’ve now come to the end of part 1 of this series. I do hope you enjoyed it. In part 2, we’ll look at our first example of a ‘modern epic’, a famous video-game series… If you want to find out more, or ask me any questions, feel free to leave a comment on my website, or to message me on Twitter!

If you feel that you have benefited from today’s class, then please check out my KoFi page, where you can donate $3 to “buy me a coffee” to help me keep producing free resources like this. Do not feel pressure to do so, but small contributions can go a long way for creators like me.

Until next time, my friends!

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What The Last Jedi meant to me: Mark Hamill’s journey

[Needless to say, here be spoilers…]

In the light of recent Oscar nominations, I think it would be a good time to talk a little bit about The Last Jedi. Whilst it received four nominations for technical aspects, it didn’t get put forward for anything to do with performance, screenplay or narrative. Although I agree that there were perhaps some more deserving films on this front, such as the incredible Get Out and The Shape of the Water, I do think it’s a crying shame that one person, in particular, was not recognised for outstanding achievement. I’m talking about Mark Hamill.

Let’s take it back a few frames. The Last Jedi has been one of the most divisive Star Wars movies ever made. In fact, it may even be one of the most divisive movies of all time. Fans, critics and everyone inbetween seem to be conflicted, with criticism levelled at its disregard of the central mysteries established in The Force Awakens as well as its complicated plotlines, which subverted many audience expectations of hero narrative. There has been both praise and condemnation of its feminist messages (as there unfortunately always is), coupled with sheer outrage at the character decisions made about one of the most iconic Star Wars characters of all time: Luke Skywalker. Whilst there have already been several eloquent defences of this complex and culturally significant film, I want to add my own, but not as a film critic. I want to speak as someone who witnessed a deep, personal, emotional journey not just for the characters on screen, but for the actors behind them.

Hamill has been an idol of mine for many years. For me, Luke Skywalker was one of the best parts of the original Star Wars. Although I was always in love with the villains as a kid (and who really can boast being a bigger villain than Darth Vader?), Luke Skywalker was perhaps the most inspiring hero-figure I could have wished for. Whilst some fans found the roguish, anti-hero Han Solo more entertaining and down-to-earth (show me the damn money!), for me, it was always Hamill’s Luke that held the three films together. He portrayed and owned an incredible journey from naive farm-boy to self-sacrificial saviour, willing to endure the most terrifying torture imaginable rather than compromise his beliefs. Hamill brought a unique stamp to the role. While not all liked it, few could argue that it was something unique: iconoclastic heroism that still remembered its roots: “I’m Luke Skywalker, I’m here to rescue you”. Luke embodied the mythic archetype of the Nobody who becomes Somebody whilst always hitting the off-beat. A farmer’s boy raised on a shit-hole who one day, with the guidance of a teacher to unlock his potential, rose to become a hero and save the Galaxy. I guess I connected with that dream more than I ever realised at the time. I saw myself in this young, naive person who came from nothing, someone who dreamed they could become somebody heroic. As a kid, I arrogantly believed I had all the pre-requisites. I even loved milk.

Mark Hamill said on the Graham Norton Show, following the release of The Last Jedi in 2017: ‘Back then [when the original Star Wars was being filmed], I though that every movie I did would become a pop-culture phenomenon.’ People in the audience laughed, and so did he, but you can tell he isn’t joking. He was young, and had the arrogance of youth. I’d argue there was a certain arrogance in the Luke of the original trilogy too – even at the end in Return of the Jedi. Luke’s near-flippant defiance of the Emperor seems almost ridiculous when we consider both the cost in lives to the Rebellion his game represents, and the potential waste of his training from Yoda and Ben Kenobi as the last member of the Jedi order. Despite his belief that there is ‘still good’ in his father, it could be interpreted that his entire final stand is nothing more than impetuousness, a refusal to bow to anyone no matter the cost. Of course, many fans do not see it that way. Luke’s faith in the Jedi, and all they stood for, and his commitment to die for that cause just to prove the way of Light is the right path, was nothing short of a Messianic act.

We are asked to believe, in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, that Luke has lost faith. His failure to create a new Jedi order, his loss of Ben Solo to the Dark Side, and his own inflated legend-status have worn him down – he no longer uses or connects to the Force. Many have complained about this direction, saying that this angle reverses the lessons Luke learned in the original trilogy, and makes the ending of Return of the Jedi redundant. Even Hamill argued against it and is purported to have disagreed with Rian Johnson about several elements (although subsequently he expressed his regret at voicing the concerns in public and said Rian Johnson’s vision was ‘a great one’.) Nothing to me could be more realistic to me than a legendary, rigorously righteous hero becoming cynical and misanthropic in later life. There’s a recent Nolan quote which you will all know too well that illustrates this point: ‘You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.’ Heroes are not meant to go home. This is one of the oldest archetypes in the book. Heroes love war, they come alive in chaos, and when it’s all over, they stagnate and rot, corrupt and lose themselves. Luke hasn’t lost himself as dearly as this. In many respects, his self-imposed exile to Ahch-To, and from use of the Force, is like a return to his boyhood on the desert planet Tatooine. He’s even back on the milk. But, he has forgone his identity as the Jedi Master Luke Skywalker. He is no longer a hero. He is no longer sought after and starring. He is cynical and carries the scars of the past. He will not even look at his old lightsaber, tossing it over his shoulder as though it’s a worthless trinket. The pain is still too near.

The thing about this plotting and character-decision that rings so true for me is that this is exactly what happened to Hamill. Once, he was the centre of attention, a super-star hero, one of the most well-known faces on Earth – bar China and a few other countries where Star Wars wasn’t aired until recently. He – from humble beginnings – had become a hero. Exactly like Luke Skywalker. From that point on, he expected, perhaps like Luke Skywalker did, that success would follow success, that his legacy would continue on. But it didn’t. He left the limelight, instead transitioning predominantly to voice-work (at which he was exemplary, it should be noted – his performance as The Joker stands against Nicholson and Ledger’s easily). He admits candidly he became disillusioned with Hollywood, with the industry, with everything. In other words, he became cynical.

I’d go so far to say that Hamill was fed up of being Luke Skywalker. Fed up of being called upon for endless conventions, to be goggled at by adoring fans who only saw him as a character and not a human being. Luke Skywalker had made him and broken him. Who can blame him for feeling angry? Anyone would be. You can feel this pain in Luke’s speech in The Last Jedi, where he extols the consequences – moral, spiritual, and emotional – of being a ‘legend’. He confesses his own arrogance to Rey, that he saw all the danger of what he was doing but couldn’t stop himself anyway. This speech is surely one of the greatest performances of 2017, a raw, fourth-wall breaking moment where Hamill finally gets to confess the truth of how he really feels and who he really is. Luke Skywalker is a lie, an accident, he is not really The Legend we believe. Hamill delivers a speech that de-constructs millennia of hero-worship in a way that makes it seem as though this issue has burned at the core of him his whole life. Only an actor of his caliber could carry such an awesome and important speech.

But that isn’t the end of the story. Whilst The Last Jedi de-constructs toxic masculinity with a deft hand, subverting our aggressive ‘kill those we hate’ narratives with beautiful pathos, it does not abandon the concept of heroism or heroic identity entirely as some have supposed. In fact, it lovingly, jubilantly affirms it. On the Graham Norton Show, Mark Hamill explained: ‘[Carrie Fisher] said to me: “I will always be Princess Leia, and you will always be Luke Skywalker. Get used to it!” She was always way ahead of me in these things’, and I think that’s a perfect encapsulation not only of his journey as an actor and a human being, from frustration and disappointment to a kind of acceptance of who he is and the community he will forever be a part of, but also a perfect encapsulation of what The Last Jedi is really about. Hamill displays an incredible gift for comedy, lighting up a room and satirising his flaws, and I think this demonstrates a move away from taking himself seriously to something truly humble and life-affirming. Luke tells Rey, when he is training her on Achc-To, that the Force ‘Does not belong to you’ – because it belongs to everything. To me, this mirrors the beautiful revelation that Luke Skywalker and Star Wars is for everyone. Mark Hamill has realised that just as Carrie Fisher said, whether he likes it or not, he will always be Luke, and Luke will always be for everyone. He is part of something bigger than himself. And he is the hero. It doesn’t matter how much time passes or what people say, he will always be Luke Skywalker. And it’s not such a bad thing.

At the nadir in The Last Jedi, when all hope seems lost, Luke returns to save the Resistance on Crait. He faces down an army, a cavalcade of AT-ATs, and the newly crowned Kylo-Ren, but he does it non-violently, projecting an illusionary image to the other side of the Galaxy in an incredible demonstration of Force-power we have never seen hitherto in the series. He buys the Resistance just enough time to escape while he distracts Kylo with the promise of a one-on-one duel. This is surely the epitome of Luke’s character. He would not violently kill the Emperor or Vader in Return of the Jedi; he had learned the lessons of violently confronting Vader in Empire Strikes Back. And in The Last Jedi, he does not kill Kylo Ren (though he was once tempted too – as he was with Vader – because he sensed the darkness in him growing). Instead, he chooses to rescue those he loves and once again use the Force for good. During his exchange with Kylo, he echoes his old role-model Ben Kenobi, telling Kylo that he will be with him forever should Kylo kill him. At the end, the exertion of projecting this illusion kills Luke, using up too much of his strength. He becomes one with the Force, but just before his death, sees twin-suns shining on the horizon, the twin-suns of Tatootine, a complete close of the cycle – returning to our very first image of Luke, that of the farm-boy beneath those suns.

It’s difficult for me to think of a more fitting farewell to the screen for this heroic icon of popular culture (although he may return as a Force-ghost the final trilogy instalment). He mirrors his master and role-model before him, dying the honourable death of a true ‘true’ Jedi; he returns to his point of origin symbolically completing the cycle of life and birth; he re-affirms his status as a hero and icon, and upholds the character-defining pacifist ideology that is his hallmark. His passing is at once grandiose, like the denouement of an ancient Greek mythological hero or Arthurian Knight, but with its own flavour of subtle humility that Mark Hamill effortlessly captures. When people talk about the arc of Luke Skywalker, they do so without acknowledging the man behind all that. Luke’s journey is as much Hamill’s as it is his. The two are intertwined. And that’s the whole point of The Last Jedi. Hamill is a hero: he is Luke and Luke is Hamill. His performance in The Last Jedi is the culmination of thirty years of learning and experience and growth. Let’s acknowledge the beauty of that, and be glad we lived to see it.