MASARYKOVA UNIVERZITA

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

Department of English Language and Literature

Exploration of the Themes of the Watch Series of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld through the Character of Samuel Vimes Diploma Thesis

Brno 2019

Supervisor Author Mgr. Jiří Šalamoun, Ph.D. Bc. Martin Linhart Anotace Předmětem této práce je průzkum užití dvou hlavních témat série knih zabývající se Ankh- Morporkskou Městskou hlídkou, která patří mezi knihy řady Úžasná Zeměplocha Terryho Pratchetta. Těmito tématy jsou, za prvé osobnost hrdiny v civilizovaném a relativně moderním městě a kterak je schéma hrdinovy cesty popsané Josephem Campbellem adaptováno do Pratchettova prostředí a stylu psaní. Druhým tématem je aplikace filozofického konceptu Já a Jiní (určování identity, respektive vylučování jedinců nesplňujících kritéria daného zmíněným určením) na fantaskní tvory obývající Ankh-Morpork. Tento průzkum je veden skrze postavu Samuela Elánia, protagonistu zmíněné série, který v první části slouží jako subverze tradičního hrdinského vyprávění a ve části druhé slouží jako výchozí úhel pohledu z něhož jsou pozorovány jeho definice Jiných.

Práce je rozdělena do dvou hlavních částí. Teoretická sekce poskytuje základní informace o Terry Pratchettovi, prostředí Zeměplochy, Ankh-Morporku a také Hlídky. Mimo to také shrnuje schéma transformací hrdiny a průběh hrdinovy cesty popsané Campbellem. Analytická sekce poté porovnává informace ze sekce předchozí s životem a vývojem osoby Samuela Elánia jako možného Campbellovského hrdiny. Schéma hrdinovy cesty je porovnáno s románem Stráže! Stráže! který slouží jako odkaz na toto schéma. Následující kapitoly analytické sekce zkoumají Elániovy názory na Jiné, nejprve ve všeobecném smyslu jeho Já a všech ostatních, po němž následuje Elániovo vylučování sebe sama ze skupin osob třímajících osobní autoritu navzdory tomu, že on sám patří mezi ně, a nakonec práce zkoumá Elániovy názory vůči ostatním vnímajícím druhům Zeměplochy a jak tyto názory ovlivňují jeho přístup k faktu, že se tyto druhy stávají členy hlídky.

Klíčová slova

Terry Pratchett, Zeměplocha, Samuel Elánius, literatura, Campbell, monomýtus, hrdinova cesta, hrdina, tropy, já, jiní, diversita Annotation The focus of this thesis is to examine the use of two main themes in the series centered around the Ankh-Morpork City Watch which is a part of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series of novels. The themes in question are, firstly, the portrayal of the hero in a civilized, relatively modern city, how the Campbell’s created schema of the hero’s journey is adapted into this setting and Pratchett’s style of writing, and secondly, the application of the philosophical concept of the Self and the Other (the distinction of identity and the exclusion of those not meeting the criteria of the distinction, respectively) upon the fantastical species inhabiting Ankh-Morpork. This is accomplished through the character of Samuel Vimes, the protagonist of the series, who in the first part of the series serves as a subversion of the traditional hero narrative and in the second as the point of view, from which his definitions of the Other are observed.

The thesis is divided into two main sections, the theoretical section provides basic information about Terry Pratchett, the setting of the Discworld, Ankh-Morpork and the Watch, as well as recounts the schema of the transformation of the hero and hero’s journey as postulated by Campbell. The analytical section then compares the information from the previous section with the life story and Vimes’ development as a possible Campbell’s hero. The schema of the hero’s journey is then compared to the novel Guards! Guards! as it serves as a direct reference to it. Next chapters of the analytical section then examine Vimes’ view of the Other, first in a very general sense of himself against anyone else, followed by Vimes’ distinction of himself from the positions of authority despite him being a person possessing a great authority and finally, the thesis examines Vimes’ attitude toward other sentient species of the Discworld and how it informs his opinions of them serving as the members of the Watch.

Keywords

Terry Pratchett, Discworld, Samuel Vimes, literature, Campbell, Monomyth, hero’s journey, hero, tropes, the self, the other, diversity Prohlášení

Prohlašuji, že jsem závěrečnou bakalářskou práci vypracoval samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů, ve znění pozdějších předpisů.

Declaration

I hereby declare, that this bachelor thesis was done independently, using only the information provided by the sources cited in the text and included in the list of references in accordance with the Disciplinary regulations for the students of the Faculty of Education of the Masaryk University.

…………………………………………. Brno, 2019 Bc. Martin Linhart Acknowledgments

I would like to take the opportunity to express my deepest gratitude to Mgr. Jiří Šalamoun,

Ph.D., for his helpful advice, support and patience with me as my supervisor. Furthermore, I would like to thank everyone who helped me in any way to finish my thesis. Table of contents Introduction...... 7 1 Theoretical section...... 10 1.1 Terry Pratchett...... 10 1.2 Introduction to the Discworld...... 11 1.3 The literary analysis...... 14 1.4 Literary characters...... 14 1.4.1 Typology of characters...... 15 1.4.2 Varieties of a hero...... 18 1.5 Transformation of a hero...... 20 1.6 Hero’s journey...... 25 2 Analytical section...... 41 2.1 What makes a hero? - Vimes’ Journey...... 41 2.1.1 Before Samuel...... 41 2.1.2 Samuel’s Life Journey...... 42 2.1.3 Transformation of Vimes...... 46 2.1.4 Guards! Guards! - The Journey of Two Heroes...... 49 2.1.5 Tradition versus subversion: What makes Pratchett’s hero?...... 53 2.2 Vimes versus the Other...... 56 2.2.1 Vimes and others...... 57 2.2.2 Vimes and authority...... 60 2.2.3 Vimes and diversity...... 63 Conclusion...... 70 Bibliography...... 72 Introduction The Watch series of Discworld books by Terry Pratchett is centered around two focal themes – the initial focus being the examination of what makes a fantasy it and the second focal point being the exploration of the philosophical concept of “the Self and the Other.”

The focus of this thesis is to examine how these two themes reflect in the main character of

Samuel Vimes and the journey of said character through the Watch series of novels. First, we will examine Vimes as a hero from the literary perspective, the literal hero’s journey as postulated by Campbell, which will be a seminal source of information for the thesis. This will be followed by the examination of Vimes’ personality, opinions and the development of therein on the theme of the Self and the Other, in short, a concept used to identify an individual (Self) or a group of individuals (Us) by excluding them from the mass (Other) based on physical or mental characteristics, under the rationale of Vimes being the central protagonist and thus the person with whose opinions the readers should identify. Moreover,

Pratchett himself spoke in interviews about his identification with the character of Vimes

(The Guardian), therefore it could be considered not only the opinion of the character, but of the author himself.

Structurally, the thesis will be divided into two main sections: the first, theoretical section, will familiarize us with Terry Pratchett, the Discworld, more specifically, the settings of the novels. Then we will examine the structure and principles of the Hero’s Journey as first introduced by Joseph Campbell and later elaborated upon by Christopher Vogler. The second, analytical part, will compare the information gleaned from the theoretical section to the plot of the Watch’s series of Discworld novels, with special attention paid to the initial novel

Guards! Guards! (1989) as it was written specifically as a satire of the concepts of the hero’s journey and will compare Vimes’ journey with that of Carrot Ironfoundersson who in the novel represents the traditional archetype of a fantasy hero. The second part of the analytical section will examine the use of the theme of the Self and the Other, as reflected in Vimes’ view of himself influencing his views of others, from the general population of

Ankh-Morpork in general, followed by Vimes’ exclusion of himself from people of authority despite the fact, that he is a person of authority himself and his authority only grows throughout the series. And finally, apply the concept on how sapient species inhabiting the Discworld are viewed from the position of humanity represented by Samuel, with a sidenote on whether the concept of Other functions within the human race, and again how

Vimes’ identity informs his opinions of said species joining the City Watch under his command.

Over the course of the thesis, the word “hero” will be used for the sole reason that it is an unmarked form of the word, it is in no way dismissive of the female hero, as there are many in Pratchett’s works, with a considerable number of them being in some shape or form present in the stories of the City Watch, be it among the members of the Watch themselves

(sergeant Angua, Cheri Littlebottom, or Salacia von Humpeding), or even among the civilians, most notably Vimes’ wife Sybil Ramkin. Also, there is a greater use of footnotes in the thesis. Their use is intended as a nod towards the similar manner of use of footnotes by

Terry Pratchett in his novels and they will be used to clarify, note or in some other capacity reference additional information, that may not be fully relevant to the subject matter, yet it hopefully helps enhance the content.

As a personal note, when formulating the topic of this paper, I knew I wanted to make an analysis of a heroic character of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, where there are only three possible options with potential: Vimes, Carrot and Angua. Carrot was eliminated outright, even though he is the obvious hero of the first book, just setting out on his hero’s journey, but

8 he is too conventional a hero and he does not change that much over the course of his adventure, in other words, he is too boring. Vimes eventually won out of personal preference as he is the character with, in my opinion, the most depth out of all the other main characters present in the Watch series. That is not to say that the other characters are flat, far from it. It is precisely the depth of character that makes Pratchett such an extraordinary writer.

9 1 Theoretical section

1.1 Terry Pratchett Terrence David John Pratchett was born 28th April 1948. During his time at school, he was by his own words “a nondescript student” (Smythe), attending technical school without much of an idea of what he wants to be. In 1968, he married Lyn Purves with whom he had a daughter Rhianna eight years later, their only child.

His first literary work was a short fantasy story “The Hades Business” that was first printed in a school magazine when he was thirteen years old and later on, in a magazine named

Science Fantasy. His first novel was The Carpet People (1971), a re-imagining of sorts of the Lord of the Rings story set on a rug in someone’s home, twenty years after its initial publication, the novel was rewritten, due to Pratchett not being happy with his work.

The novel shared certain traits with the later Discworld novels – a world that is flat and a sense of humor that is both lighthearted and deep at the same time, the humor especially would become one of his signature features. The Colour of Magic which was published in

1983 was the first Discworld novel and served as the beginning of one of the bestselling fantasy series. According to the website FantasyBookReview.co.uk, “It is believed that 1% of all the books sold in England are penned by Pratchett. His books have been translated into 36 different languages and have sold over 60 million copies.”1 As a writer, Pratchett also cooperated with other authors, most notably with Neil Gaiman on the critically acclaimed book Good Omens, its adaptation is expected to premiere later this year.

From the scope of topics discussed in his books, it is apparent that Pratchett was a well- versed, renaissance man of sorts. From the very young age, he was a technical and computer

1 In 2015 (the year of the publishing of the article), other sources (Smythe) claim over 90 million

10 enthusiast,2 hobby astronomer, a radio hobbyist and, in his books, he showed a great understanding of various science disciplines.

In 1998, he received the title of the Officer of the Order of the British Empire and later, in

2009, a knighthood, both for his services to literature. He was awarded ten honorary doctorates from universities in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia. He also won numerous awards of literature, Hugo and Locus Awards (one of the most prestigious literary awards), to name a few.

In 2007, Pratchett was diagnosed with an early-onset of the Alzheimer’s disease, he became a large activist, donating large sums to research a cure for the illness and becoming the patron for Alzheimer’s research UK and a public face for those afflicted. He eventually succumbed to the disease on 12th March 2015 at the age of 66.

1.2 Introduction to the Discworld The Discworld series of books, by the late Terry Pratchett, counts 41 novels, a short story collection, several maps of various locales on the Disc (the in-universe name for the world of the novels), a tetralogy centered around the Science of Discworld, and other accompanying books, e. g. a cookbook written as a collection of recipes by the Discworld characters. Most novels can be divided into one of seven series based upon the group of central characters:

Rincewind, a failed student-wizard of the Unseen University of Ankh-Morpork, and/or the members of the academic board of said university, the Discworld personification of the Death, ancient civilizations of the Disc, Witches of Lancre, Tiffany Aching (a young adult oriented series of novels centered around a young witch that is under the tutelage of Granny

Weatherwax, one of the Lancre witches), various proponents of an industrial revolution, and the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. The world setting has been adapted into several movies,

2 He even contributed to mods for the Elder Scrolls RPG series (Maher)

11 games for personal computers as well as board games and a setting for a tabletop RPG game, novels became animated series, comic books and theater screenplays and the latest rumors point out towards a live-action adaptation of the Ankh-Morpork city Watch (Narrativia).

When Pratchett died due to his illness in early 2015, the decision was made by him and his daughter Rhianna Pratchett to not continue the series further with the Shepherd’s Crown being the final novel.

The series is set in a fantasy world similar to the way our own Earth was imagined in the ancient times: a flat disc sitting on top of four giant elephants who are standing on the shell of a giant turtle named A’Tuin. However, this is not the only parallel to our own world. Pratchett often took inspiration3 for his world from other literary authors, from the classical, such as William Shakespeare (e. g. the general plot of Wyrd Sisters references the plot of Macbeth (Breebart, 25)), to the well-known fantasy authors, such as J. R. R.

Tolkien (e. g. the portrayal of dwarfs as gold and gem obsessed miners and craftsmen

(Breebart, 52)) or H. P. Lovecraft (presence of eldritch entities of unfathomable power

(Breebart, 42)); from various folklore, mythologies, or fairy tales from around the world through the existence and portrayal of myriad of mythical races; or simply from our world and its history, e. g. the life and fate of the predecessor of Samuel Vimes, Stoneface Vimes, closely follows that of Oliver Cromwell.

Of course, as a humorous fantasy (Pringle, 31-33), there is magic, sentient races other than humans and ever-present gods sitting on the tallest mountain in the very center of the Discworld, manipulating the fates of people. However, there was also an intent to bring system and rules to the fantastical, e. g. magic cannot do everything, in fact, it would probably be easier (and safer) to achieve the end through some other mean (Colour of Magic, 48). Or the distribution of landmass on the Disc requires presence of a counterweight continent made

3 Or in other instances mocking and/or parodying his source of inspiration

12 of solid gold so as not to tip over, or the existence of a miniature sun orbiting A’Tuin to provide a day/night cycle and warmth to the Disc.

Still, the most important force of the Discworld is the narrative. This is where the author

(or, from the point of view of the characters, the natural order of things) usually subverts the expectations to serve the overall story or the comedic purposes of the scene, as is the case when for example an infant child found orphaned in a forest with a crown-shaped birthmark and clutching a legendary sword is expected to return to the lands of his late parents and bring with him order and justice. However, it is not stated anywhere he needs to claim the throne while doing so (Guards! Guards! (GG), 21). Or that a man dressed as a woman will due to the laws of the narrative inevitably become a romantic interest of another man, even despite the fact that the former is under normal circumstances considered by others so hideous that he has to carry a note from the city Patrician to prove that he is in fact a human being (Jingo,

364).

The Watch As the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is the focus of this thesis, we should first familiarize ourselves with this line of novels. Though the City Watch appears in practically any novel that takes place in the twin city of Ankh-Morpork, the organization is the sole focus of eight novels, with the Guards! Guards! being the initial.4

Gradually, we see throughout the novels the development of the City Watch from an army of three, lead by a disillusioned and often inebriated captain Samuel Vimes, to a respectable policing force the authority of which is recognized even beyond the borders of its jurisdiction.

With the prestige of the Watch, the status of its commander also rises. Samuel Vimes begun his journey as a poor child growing up in the Shadows, the worst part of the city, to eventually

4 Despite most of the events depicted in the novel Night Watch actually chronologically precedes events in most of the other Discworld novels, due to quantum which is the answer to all questions that cannot be explained through logic, magic, or the force of the narrative.

13 become the lord commander of the entire City Watch, the Duke of Ankh, and the second most powerful man in the city, exceeded only by the patrician lord Vetinari, the benevolent dictator of the city state.

The cast of characters also grows, starting with the original four, which included aside from the aforementioned Samuel Vimes also Fred Colon, a cowardly, fat sergeant who is despite his initial impression of him very street-smart, Nobby Nobbs, a petty thief with possible goblin ancestry, and Carrot Ironfoundersson, a two meter tall dwarf and the legitimate heir to the city throne. Eventually, more characters (and races) appear, such as Angua von Überwald, a werewolf with body image issues, Cheri Littlebottom, the first openly female dwarf and master forensic expert, Detritus, a troll drill sergeant and a one-man army, Reginald Shoe, a zombie and an avid social rights activist in general and of the undead in particular, and many more.

1.3 The literary analysis One of the better-known people in the field of narratology is professor Joseph Campbell, most famous for his publication Hero with a Thousand Faces that identified repeating patterns in religions, mythologies. folk tales and stories throughout the world. These patterns are being incorporated even into contemporary storytelling either consciously or unconsciously.

1.4 Literary characters As we are about to discuss the journey of a literary character, we should first establish a basic typology of both main and supporting characters. The work that proved most valuable when formulating this chapter proved to be Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey, which describes the various archetypes present in most stories of the modern fiction. The book itself began as an expansion upon the work of Joseph Campbell and provides not just mythological examples of the hero’s journey, but also those from contemporary popular culture.

14 1.4.1 Typology of characters Campbell in his presentation of the Monomyth, the underlying schema of the occurence of events during the hero’s journey (Campbell, 23), calls forward the idea of Jungian archetypes, or archetypal images (16) which are described as a patterns of personality innate in all members of the human race. Jung claimed that the archetypes are constant and emerge throughout all cultures both in ancient myths as well as in modern storytelling (though their presence in most productions since the idea of archetypal images has been put forward is in most instances deliberate) (Vogler, 23-24).

However, as Vogler points out, as these archetypes are constant, their connection with characters is not (24). In order to develop character fully, the archetypes should be perceived as functions or roles the character must perform at the moment of the story. This also follows the idea of the transformation of the hero, as will be discussed in a later chapter.

The archetypes are numerous, therefore, for the purposes of the thesis, four general archetypes relating to the literary characters have been selected and will be discussed in the following chapter. These have been selected based on the roles Samuel Vimes had performed during his tenure in the series.

Hero The most logical archetype to start with is the hero. The word hero is of Greek origin, the root of which comes from an Indo-European term for to serve or to protect (Online

Etymology Dictionary) (which is rather fitting given the focus character). After all, it is the archetype from which the alternative name for the Monomyth is based and the sole focus of most of the stories and myths: a hero’s journey.

15 The hero serves two important functions in the story: the point of view and identification for the audience, and the source and drive of growth and development for the story, both external and internal (Vogler, 30-31).

When approaching a previously unknown world, the hero may serve as “window into the story” to introduce them to the world, or to aspects of it the narrator, if present, may have

“chosen” not to (Vogler, 30). To best achieve identification, the hero should possess certain

“universal” qualities that would make them desirable or admirable to the members of the audience, while also having their own understandable flaws in order not to make them too unidentifiable or unrealistically perfect (Vogler. 30-31).

In some instances, it is difficult to discern the actual hero of the story, to which Vogler presents a simple definition: “The one who learns or grows the most in the course of the story” (31). Yet, it is not just the internal change that sets heroes apart from the rest of the cast, hero is also the character who takes the mantle of responsibility to propel the changes within the narrative (Vogler, 31.).

Mentor A very specific type of an Ally character is the Mentor, whose main purpose is to help the hero on his journey by providing guidance and/or gifts. It is also very closely connected with the role of a parent, at times even being a literal parent of the hero. Vogler describes mentors as a characters the heroes aspire to be through embarking on their journey (40).

Mentor in the mythical sense is someone who speaks with wisdom, which they gained through experience, or even more mythically through a connection to the gods themselves.

Another role the mentor may fulfill is the conscience and motivator. Mentor guides hero through the ordeal, at times directly pushing them in the right direction (Vogler, 40).

16 The important thing to note, that even though the image of a mentor is often a sagely old person sitting by the road (as Campbell himself called the role a Wise old man or woman (8)), the mentor character might be neither, in fact, the role of mentor might at times be fulfilled by the antagonist, or even by the hero himself, usually presented as the hero’s personal angel or demon, or their own inner code of conduct, that helps them guide their actions.

The word mentor originates in Homer’s The Odyssey where it was the name of Odysseus’ friend whom Odysseus trusted with care for his son Telemachus. However, it the story it was the goddess of wisdom, Athena, who later “took Sage Mentor’s form” (Pope) and told

Telemachus to chase away suitors of his mother Penelope and later to discover what happened to his father and even to complete the challenges meant to discourage the suitors in his father’s stead (Vogler, 120).

Herald Borrowing the Vogler’s metaphor (55) of herald as an individual announcing the arrival of a knight or another figure of great importance, the archetypal herald also announces both to the characters and more importantly to the audience an arrival, in this case, an arrival or need of the forces of change to upset the current status quo, which in most cases result in a metaphorical (or sometimes even literal) call to an adventure. Herald is often that which sets the story in motion (Vogler, 55).

The herald might not necessarily be a specific person, it might be an event – a very special person arriving into a city, a war, or a natural disaster; or it may be internal, a last straw that finally broke the camel’s back and changed the hero’s mind that they could not sit by any longer idly watching on what was happening. Connection of the herald to the main hero naturally depends on who or what the herald is, as herald is often an aspect of a different character (Vogler p. 57). Appearance of an antagonist who then challenges the hero surely fits

17 the role of a herald, yet its connection to the main hero will be quite different from an instance when the role is filled by hero’s mentor or an ally, and different still when the herald merely informs him of an issue that will cause the hero to set out on their journey, and then disappears from the story altogether.

Shadow The shadow represents anything and everything that the characters are afraid of or have for one reason or other rejected (Vogler, 65). In most cases, it will contain all the negative, the dangerous, the repressed, that has been driven from the rest of the world and the only refuge It could found was under the cover of the shadow. The reason for embracing this “dark side” is often what differentiates the heroes and the antagonists. Vogler (65) emphasizes that here lies the difference between the villain and the antagonist: the villain stands against everything the heroes stand for, while antagonists might have a common goal with the heroes, though their methods in achieving them differ. The former have no qualms of using the shadow to further their own ends, but the latter see it as a mean to an end, a necessary evil for the greater good.

This archetype may get more complicated when the shadow does not contain negative aspects, but rather aspects, even objectively positives ones, the hero shuns for whatever reason, be it their upbringing, some trauma in their previous life, their personal code, etc.

1.4.2 Varieties of a hero Just as much as there are all the different types a character can be, there are also different varieties of the hero itself. And just as characters can shift, switch their types to fulfill a different role in the story, so too the hero can be quite different between stories or even change mid-way through the story. Vogler lists many different varieties of heroes, however,

18 for the purposes of this paper, three types were chosen: the (un)willing, the anti-hero and the catalyst hero.

A hero can be mostly easily differentiated by whether they are a willing or an unwilling hero. The willing hero is the one that is motivated to drive the events of the story forward, self-confident and active. The unwilling ones are the heroes that are caught in the events of story, often doubting themselves and quite passive. In short, the willing heroes are making the story happen, while the passive ones usually happen to make a story (Vogler, 34).

The most basic meaning of the term antihero is “a main character (…) who is characterized by a lack of traditional heroic qualities,” (American Heritage Dictionary). Vogler distinguishes two main types of an antihero: the wounded antihero and the tragic antihero

(35).

The wounded antihero in Vogler’s definition may in fact possess the qualities that make a hero, contrary to the dictionary definition – a sense of morality or justice, kindness, or bravery, yet for whatever reason, they had rejected society or the society had rejected them.

They may become outlaws, or they rebel against the status quo in their own small way, but they almost always have the audience on their side, because they are doing the right thing

(Vogler, 30). The tragic antihero better matches the definition above – they are flawed protagonists, battling their inner wars. They may possess some positive traits but they still eventually lose their inner struggle, their negative qualities come to the surface and destroy the character (Vogler, 30).

Colville, in one of his video-essays on different kinds of heroes, recognizes a different kind of the antihero, different to either of the Vogler’s type: the villainous antihero. These characters may (though not necessarily) lack all the positive traits of the previous two, yet they still want the objectively good side to prevail. In their eyes, it might be the necessary evil

19 to eventually accomplish their goals, but in the eyes of the world at large, they are fighting for the greater good. They might want to thwart plans of a different villain, trying to enact their plan before the antiheroes can enact theirs, or the reason might be basic need for survival.

All antiheroes may lack the traits that would make them heroic: their traits may not be deemed worthy or desirable by the society, they may fall prey to their own foibles, or they simply do not wish to become heroes and do so only through necessity, they still possess one unifying feature – they still do the hero’s job.

Finally, there is the catalyst hero. The signifying trait of these heroes is that they tend not to change through their journeys, or they change only insignificantly. The idea of the hero’s journey is that the titular hero undergoes a series of changes on his way the same way as through their action of this journey, they change the world around them, yet this catalyst hero does not change. Their role in the story can be very much connected with the role of the mentor, their task, as it were, might be to help and guide people around them, setting them out on their own journeys (Vogler, 37).

1.5 Transformation of a hero In the previous section, we have examined the different roles a character might play in the story, the following section concerns itself with the subsequent stages of the character of the hero’s life from their respective childhoods to their various departures from the world.

As this part of the paper was heavily influenced by the work on the comparative mythology of Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, it is important not to take the images presented to be meant literally.

20 Childhood Even at the earliest stages of hero’s life, Campbell argues (294), there is frequently a sign of greatness to their origin: the hero might come from a noble house or might be of some other “divine” background (in many cases quite literally). This is to show that the greatness that awaits later in the character’s life is predestined rather than achieved by happenstance.

This does not come without its own problems, heroes must face hardships even at their young age. They are often banished, or somehow given up by their own parents, often to save their lives. Campbell lists many instances of hero having to leave their place of origin, only to return later, stronger from the experience (Campbell, 298).

Aside from the exile, the young hero faces the possibility of being ostracized from the rest of the people around them and are in some ways “irregular” to the natural order of things.

They may have lost one or both parents, and become orphans or found a step-family. Even among blood relatives, the hero can be excluded for being the youngest child of the family.

The reason for this exclusion can also be societal, the hero may belong to a noble house that has been previously disgraced (Campbell, 301).

To survive such ordeal, often an aid can come to the young hero’s side. This aid might be rather mundane, e. g. a person helps hero through their exile, to something more extraordinary, such as an animal companion, to a truly supernatural event, a divine intervention showing the hero’s godly origin or the god’s favor of them (Campbell, 301-302).

The reason heroes have to survive such hardship is to provide the first examples of them being in some way extraordinary, as only a person of great power of mind and/or body can prevail against these odds (Campbell, 302).

21 Hero as Warrior For many, the words of the title of this chapter are synonymous and indeed, according to

Campbell, warrior is the next transformation of the hero, following their childhood period of exile. Their opponent is also their opposite, the hero has spent their life up to this point living in seclusion, while their opponent, a dragon, a tyrant, a monster, is widely known, often holding a position of power and believing that their position, title, or strength has made them untouchable for anyone, securing their rule for eternity (Campbell, 311).

That is the second opposition of the hero and their enemy. The enemy is intent on holding power indefinitely, preventing any form of change, while the hero is quite the opposite, bringing change into the world, restoring the natural order of things. That is why two sides must come into a conflict (Campbell, 311-312).

In this conflict, the hero may use secret knowledge they have found in their exile.

The enemy believes his position to be unshakable. However, this belief is often “a shadow mistaken for a substance” (Campbell, 311) and precisely from this shadow of obscurity the hero emerges, bringing the end of their enemy.

Hero as a Lover The hero made their first steps into the light, the enemy is no more, this is where the hero usually comes face to face with the opposite sex5 and usually directly as a result of their previous actions – monsters of every shapes and sizes like to keep young, good-looking trophies or sacrifices (Campbell, 316), though this may not be the case. The hero’s lover can just as likely be the enemy’s child (and, by extension, the one who points out the enemy’s weakness to the hero) (Campbell, 318). The obstacle the lover’s captor (literal or otherwise) presents for the hero, is, in Campbell’s opinion, simply another example of the enemy from

5 As Campbell speaks about the traditional hero who (traditionally) is male, it may become impossible to maintain the neutrality.

22 the previous chapter forbidding the natural order of things from taking its course (Campbell,

318).

There is always a strong connection between the hero and their lover, Campbell calls the lover hero’s “other portion” (316) a notion dating to the Ancient Greece, where Plato in his Symposium speaks of the primeval man being of round shape with “four hands, four legs, and two faces” that was split into two by Zeus to teach them a lesson in humility (with a threat of dividing them further, should they continue their insolence) and from that day, each human walks the Earth, looking for their other half, wanting to become whole again. And to find their other half, the hero must surmount seemingly impossible odds, which then suddenly dissolve away in front of them, further signifying the connection with their lovers.

Hero as an Emperor, Tyrant or a Redeemer Campbell originally kept the information presented below in two separate chapters, however, since those chapters discuss similar matter – the eventual fate of the hero, and for the purposes of this thesis, it was decided to combine the information creating a single chapter.

After the hero has found their lover, their next adventure is often to seek out their father in order to receive his blessing and the last piece of the hidden knowledge necessary to truly bring about the world’s change. As many things before, the journey of finding their father is beset by danger and obstacles, yet much like with the journey for the hero’s lover, the obstacles vanish when the hero approaches them with courage (Campbell, 320).

The reason for this similarity is the same as with the case of the lovers, the “duality of the whole,” for “(the hero) and the father are one,” (Campbell, 322-323).

When the hero returns, having found their father, there are two usual courses their lives can then take, when they ascend the throne and replace the enemy they had overthrown. First is

23 rather a tragic one. Here, the hero gradually ceases to be the champion of change they once were. Instead, their reign becomes more and more reliant on the power the hero wields, the hero becomes the enemy they had defeated and the cycle of the hero begins anew

(Campbell, 321-322). This almost inevitable destiny stems from the fact, that the hero’s enemy is in many cases somehow tied with the father (the father shares similar aspects with the enemy, if they are not directly one and the same) who is then in turn connected with the hero, meaning the hero will in time surely succumb.

On the other hand, should the hero remain wary of the ways of his enemy, remains on the true path they had once set out on, often with the realization of the oneness with the father

(and so in turn, the enemy), renouncing the ways of the previous ruler, they resist the corruption of the lure of the power that had claimed their enemy. However, in order to do so, the hero must eventually relinquish the power they accumulated, in most cases, the hero must die to prevent themselves from becoming the tyrant. As Campbell said: “The hero of yesterday becomes the tyrant of tomorrow, unless (they) crucify (themselves) today,” (326).

Departure And thus, we reach the end of the hero’s life and story. Should the hero remain virtuous, they know what fate awaits them and so, they do not fear their end. (Campbell, 329). They may want (and be able) to postpone the inevitable a bit longer, but not forever (Campbell,

331).

Still, this departure should not be the end of the hero’s story, for in fact their death is merely a sleep, from which they may be awoken, when their time comes again, perhaps with a new face or maybe under a different circumstance, for the wheel of fate keeps turning and will eventually return to the place from which the story had begun (Campbell, 330).

24 1.6 Hero’s journey We have discussed the life of the hero as a whole from their birth to this world to their departure from it, this chapter will now take a closer look at the adventure this hero was born to embark on. Since the time Joseph Campbell formulated the basic schema of this cycle almost seventy years ago, various authors revised and modified the schema to better fit their concept of the journey. The main stepping stones, however, remain the same. The following chapter will therefore be a sort of amalgamation of various sources, attempting to present the main ideas of each stage. The names of these chapters will still represent the original designations as coined by Campbell.

The journey will be divided into several sub-chapters, but these can be grouped together into three greater wholes: the Departure, which will cover the first four chapters and concerns itself with the hero living in the ordinary world, to crossing the threshold towards their adventure; followed by the Initiation, consisting of the next six chapters, describing the hero’s encounters on their journey; and finally, the Return.

Call to Adventure The story usually begins in the ordinary world, one that has seemingly been stagnant for a considerably long time. This status quo is disturbed when something – a herald of approaching change appears. It may be a literal herald bringing news of an event of things brewing elsewhere, or it may be a portent of things to come: a comet foretelling a war or the death of the king, or the smoke on the horizon announcing invasion of plundering armies – possibly a mentor figure to the hero, a warning of approaching doom that will consume the land should no one stand in its way, or even dreams plaguing hero in their sleep. In short, it announces coming of times, that will need a hero to face the coming adversity (Campbell,

51).

25 The call for adventure might come from within the hero themselves, the world around has grown stale for them, and they believe that there must be something new outside the familiar.

The unknown can even tempt the hero with promises of not only change, but also with riches, fame and glory, or just with the promise of the adventure itself (Vogler, 100). And even then, hero’s answer to the call might be negative and then they will need further push for them to really begin, while other heroes will venture out immediately out of obligation, or because they cannot bear the stench of the ordinary world any longer (Campbell, 53-54), or they simply have no other options left (this last one might eventually become the reason the unwilling hero has to answer the call) (Vogler, 103).

According to Vladimir Propp (in Vogler, 101) the initial actions of the antagonist may also serve as the Call. By sending Reconnaissance (as is the term coined by Propp), and thus encroaching on the hero’s familiar world, endangering it, results in the hero taking action in order to protect their world.

An important concept of the Call to Adventure is the unknown. Hero must embark into the uncharted lands, face the unfamiliar (voluntary or involuntary). Campbell even references

Freud (in Campbell, 47) for the call to adventure is meant to evoke the feeling childhood dread of the separation from the mother, using a familiar feeling all of us have experienced in our lives.

Chance often plays a role in the initial impulse for the hero’s journey, hero coming across a person from their past or from the past of their parents, figure of importance seemingly randomly comes into possession of a vital piece of information, all this may set the events of the story into motion and the hero towards the unknown (Vogler, 100).

26 Refusal of the Call The hero is of course well aware of the hardships that lay waiting them on the journey ahead and it is therefore quite natural that they often refuse. We have discussed the unwilling heroes looking for a way to avoid this venture until they have to change their minds or fate presents them with no other option.

For some hero’s the refusal might be only a moments hesitation before they accept the call and are on their way facing the unknown, while for some, the fear of their own inadequacy might never leave their side, always be there to strike the hero at a moment of weakness, prompting the return of the Refusal even far into their adventure (Vogler, 113)

In many cases, the hero lists many excuses for the reason they “must” stay and postpone their journey. For fledgling heroes it may be the fear of the unknown, the tales of horrors of the world beyond theirs. On the other hand, the seasoned hero might be unwilling for a similar reason, for they truly know of the horrors mentioned, about the true brutality of the world, knowledge gained often through bitter experience that they do not wish to live through again

(Vogler, 108).

Even the willing heroes might undergo periods of refusal. These are, in their case, usually internal and consist of the hero doubting their readiness, for how can they alone measure against the strength of such a foe or such odds, they are afraid of their weaknesses that might proved fatal at the fateful moment, such as having the strength to, again, for the seasoned hero, make the hard choice or be prepared to sacrifice everything should it be required from them over the course of the adventure. Hero may ever continue forward on their journey, yet their resolve may at times waiver, even though they do not share their doubts with people around them, only the audience knows of their existence (Vogler, 100).

27 To strengthen the hero’s resolve and overcome their doubts, they often receive grim reminders of what is to come, should they remain as they are now and refuse the adventure’s call. Their refusal directly or indirectly leads to a tragedy – the villain’s first strike might destroy the hero’s home, kill a person close to them, or otherwise shatter their seeming of the stability and balance of their then current life – one that will make certain the hero’s full and uncompromising commitment to the quest (Vogler, 109).

On their way out of the door towards the adventure proper, the hero must often overcome the last obstacle, a Threshold Guardian, put there into place to test the hero’s determination one last time. The Guardian might once again use hero’s inner doubts against them, showing the severity of their decision, on how it might affect their life (or effectively end it in the process), but the hero will eventually always triumph and perhaps. with the first test behind them, with a strengthened determination be ready to face what is yet to come (Vogler,

111-112).

Supernatural Aid Also called “Meeting with the Mentor” (Vogler, 117) as the character the hero meets often during this step of the journey, one that provides them with various helpful items and information to make the following stretches of the way less perilous and safer for the hero to tread, typically fulfills the role of a Mentor. This meeting is in no way coincidental and rarely does a hero who had responded to the Call of the Adventure not meet with their Mentor figure, because it is often precisely this Mentor whose call the hero answered (on many occasions, the Mentor arrives as a herald of things to come and so their presence alone serves as the Call) (Campbell, 67).

In many instances, the gift-givers are usually thought-of as elderly people – sometimes seemingly helpless, but when the hero provides them with help, they reveal their true nature

28 and take the hero under their protection. These are the magical old men granting wishes in exchange for rather mundane acts of kindness, or fairy god-mothers saving the hero at their most direst hour. However, there might not be a need for supernatural Mentors, who can just as well be regular people or more experienced adventurers whose ordinary, yet equally vital piece of information or equipment, can still prove invaluable. In other instances, the gifts do not even require being granted by a person, there is wisdom to be found in books, or the hero might even look and find the key piece of information through introspection based on their previous experiences (Vogler, 118).

Though, the hero must always be cautious of their Mentor or the gifts they bring, for some might not be so altruistic as they might appear. We have previously discussed anti-heroes who act benevolently out of sheer self-interest (see Varieties of a hero) and the Mentor-figure may be driven by similar creed. They may at first glance seem that their only desire is to help the hero defeat the villain, yet the reason for it is that they intend on taking the villain’s position and power for themselves and the hero for them is only a helpful pawn that will make their bid for power far easier than taking it via the direct route (Vogler, 121).

Crossing of the Threshold This is the critical portion of the journey, the stepping over the horizon, crossing the line in the sand, the hero must prove that they are fully committing to the journey, after this step, there is no going back. This part is the culmination of the first act, the Call of the Adventure has been answered, all the doubts and the moments of weakness have been dealt with, the hero received everything their previous life and/or their Mentor could have offered them and now, before them is only the threshold and beyond it the land of “darkness, of the unknown, of danger” (Campbell, 71).

29 This threshold is usually watched over by the Threshold Guardians, they are the “watchers of the established boundaries” (Campbell, 75) ensuring that no unworthy will be allowed to pass. They can be very real, such as a monster demanding a show of force or cunning, something the hero must best to be able to pass. It may be possible to circumvent the Guardian (though that too might be part of the test) or the hero might take a leap of faith and quickly they realize that the threat was just an illusion, and all they have to do is to ignore it and soldier on. However, the Guardian does not have to be an external factor, it may only represent fear the hero carries with them of the outside world or what will happen in their own world, should they leave it. There, the threshold is represented by the hero’s courage, will, or curiosity finally overpowering the hero’s doubts (Vogler, 129-130).

When the hero finally crosses into the unknown, they may be shocked when they realize nothing is like what they might have expected. Their hope of a place to be able to live free is replaced by a constant struggle to live, or their desire to live outside the restrictions of his old world now mean they also have to live without its protection (Vogler, 130).

Campbell also identifies an interim step, set once the hero crosses the threshold, named “In the Belly of the Whale” (83) after the frequently reappearing mythological motif. In it, the hero must pass through the innards of a giant beast as a symbol of their rebirth into the new, unknown world (Campbell, 84-85).

The Road of Trials With the threshold successfully behind them, the hero now founds themselves in a completely new world that is starkly different from the one that they have come to know, far from the protection of their ordinary one, or so it may seem. Quite often, the various aids, equipment, or hints they gathered prior crossing the Threshold are more or less covertly

30 helping the hero adapt to the rules of the new world and surmount the Trials put into their path

(Campbell, 89).

One of these trials might just be adapting to the new environment, hero who grew up and accustomed to every whim of theirs being catered to will now have to learn to fend for themselves if they wish to continue. Or the fundamental rules of the new world may in fact be completely at odds with the rules that govern the ordinary world, where the originally quite benign acts could now carry a very harsh punishment with them (Vogler, 139).

Throughout the Road of Trials, the hero might encounter other people, and the way the hero deals with them is just another form of Trial – the hero must show good judgment of character and realize who is worthy of their trust and who might betray it later, should it prove convenient. By acting kindly towards people deemed worthy, the hero might gain an ally – to signify their completion and passing of the Trial – who then might join the hero on their quest or simply will be there to lend a hand should they need it. Over the length of the Road, the lonely hero, perhaps accompanied by only their mentor, may eventually find themselves creating an entire party of allied adventures. However, by not showing enough courtesy to those who might feel they deserve it, the hero may just as well create a rival or an enemy who they will surely see later on the Road. The main difference between these two is that, while the enemy wishes to cause direct and physical harm towards the hero, the rival only wishes to beat the hero at their own game, complete the same task as the hero first to humiliate them and making the hero recognize how wrong they have been to not show them the respect they so rightly deserve (Vogler, 137-138).

On the Road, the actual number of the Trials can vary wildly, but it quite often is the number three – number that frequently appears in mythology – and they should prepare the hero for their final challenge that awaits them at the end of their journey and as such, they

31 might reflect the components of the final Trial or they might symbolically reflect the different features of the hero’s personality, most notably flaws they will have to overcome should they wish to successfully reach the end of their journey (Campbell, 92-93) On the other hand, the nature of these Trials can be quite banal as they might only be traps or other obstacles put into place by the villain in order to impede the chances of anyone who wishes them harm

(Vogler, 137).

The Meeting with a Goddess, Woman as a Temptress In his book, Campbell greatly emphasizes these two steps on the hero’s journey, so much so as to grant each of them a full-length chapter (100-116), while Vogler in his work sees them as mere footnotes on what he calls the “Approach to the Inmost Cave,” (144, 145).

Though, they both agree that these occur before the Final Ordeal and their purpose might serve as the final Trial of the Road.

The imagery of the goddess represents the hero’s courtship. In his work, Campbell’s claims that the titular goddess is “incarnate in every woman”. Therefore, if the hero is male, the goddess is represented by his love interest, if the hero is female, she still represents the goddess aspect, mirroring the fate of Psyche being permitted to be with her love, Cupid

(Campell, 109-110).

The purpose of the Trial of such an encounter might be to once again test the hero’s commitment to their quest, but this time not against great adversity, but rather against great temptation and for the hero to succeed, they must not give in to it and to abandon their journey for the sake of their own pleasures of the body, but to resist and continue forth, for only “when he thinks of himself as pure, as the essence of the Good, and the Immovable, he becomes free.” (Campbell, 113)

32 Atonement with the Father and Apotheosis Just as the goddess in the previous chapter represented in some aspect the Mother, the hero must now convene with their Father figure. However, not even this step is made easy for the hero, for when the Mother-Goddess can prove to be too loving to the point of prohibiting hero’s further journey, the Father figure has gone mad and violent (Campbell, 119-120).

To face the Father is to face the hero’s greatest fear – they need to stand up to him. They were trained to do so throughout the entire Road of Trials, they were given aids before crossing the Threshold and made new friends and forged new alliances on their way, but to defeat the monster their father has become it may not be enough. For this is the stage where the hero has to cease to be the way they are, to die (metaphorically or literally) in order to become the true hero they were meant to be (Campbell, 120). Campbell cites the psychological component of this demise, the hero must sever their connection to the id and the superego, but also to their own ego to break the shackles that tie the hero “to their own limited existence” (Campbell, 135) If the courtship with Goddess were meant to prove that the hero has become “master of life” (Campbell, 111), than the Atonement is transcending life itself (Campbell, 126).

Even when the hero dies in the literal sense, it rarely is their true end, now that they have transcended their original self, they return, but changed by the experience and so, the death becomes another piece of knowledge, a further lesson the hero needs in order to gain the full knowledge, power and wisdom necessary to control the world around them, knowledge that usually resides with the father figure, though without the necessary wisdom, it may be a cautionary tale rather than example. The Father, who had not rejected their ego, proves what chaos ensues when someone unworthy tries to through their knowledge claim and wield such power (Campbell, 125-126).

33 The hero, however, having realized their connection to the Father, and what would mere usurping of the power without the necessary wisdom, strips themselves of all aspects of their mere human existence which also means stripping themselves of limits to their understanding, gaining the needed wisdom and becoming one with the Universe – Apotheosis (Vogler, p. 171).

To sum up and put aside the metaphors for now: On this step of the journey, the hero encounters and has to deal with a great foe (a Father figure, though the Father does not have to be necessary male (or even human for that matter) – only a person wielding great power).

By using whatever items, information or help from their allies the hero undergoes a greatly changing experience that shows him that there are no limits to what they can do and they should now be ready to be granted the Ultimate Boon (the goal of their entire venture) and wield it properly.

Ultimate Boon Now, the hero stands before that which he originally sought to find and is ready to take possession of it. It is the reward for going through the Apotheosis phase and reaching the other side safely. Naturally, the first thing the hero usually do at this point is to enjoy the moment of victory. Vogler also notes the re-occurrence of what he calls “Campfire

Scenes” (named after the frequent setting of such scenes, while also referencing the sacrifices made by ancient heroes to remain in favor with their respective gods (Vogler, 176)) where the hero and their cohort reminisce about the journey so-far, about their wins, losses, narrow escapes and it may be a chance for the hero’s allies to reveal some previously kept secret to signify how the groups has been brought together through shared hardship (176-177).

Now, let us discuss the nature of the Boon itself. As with many other instances of the Monomyth, the Boon might be quite symbolic and be represented in many ways. It may

34 truly be a physical treasure, long lost chest full of gold and precious gems, a dragon’s hoard, powerful weapons and items, but it can be much more immaterial such as self-confidence or a piece of vital information, or, for the hero, it could be a love (and even then, it does not necessarily has to be strictly romantic love) (Vogler, 178-179).

Another immaterial Boon that could be granted to the hero for their achievements on their journey could be the granting a position of power or importance – a squire completing a dangerous mission being given knighthood, a novice being initiated into an important order, gaining additional privileges, a simple, yet smart peasant becoming a king, or a legendary hero being accepted for their extraordinary deeds among the gods as their equal – the true meaning of the Apotheosis (Vogler, 179-180).

The hero could have also set out on this adventure to bring to their home lands an item that would save a dying family member, friend, king, or even the land itself. For this reason,

Campbell also calls this section “the Elixir Theft,” as the Elixir is a liquid that has the power to heal or even to restore back to life, which is in itself a repeating motif of a life-giving liquid

– water of life, blood, (mother’s) milk (Campbell, 160) – but that which must be taken, for it cannot be granted or given, the hero must steal it, much like the Titan of ancient Greek legends Prometheus stole the fire from the gods and gave it to humanity, or Eve taking the forbidden fruit, both symbols of the start of the human progress, one of the technology and the other of the mind (Vogler, 179).

As the hero achieved higher level of consciousness through their death and rebirth, or perhaps, through them also drinking from the source of the elixir, the Boon extended upon them could be one of limitless sight, they could now be able to see through any lies, deceptions, or illusions, to speak or understand any language, including those of animals, or to

35 see beyond the limits of time, to look deep into the past, or predict possible events of the far future (Vogler, 180-181).

Rather more mundane alternative to the unlimited perception could be the gift of epiphany.

During the Ordeal or their rebirth, the hero can come to a sudden realization of some vital piece of information, through briefly becoming one with divinity or through some implication by events during or following the ordeal: such as being able to draw and wield a sword, feat only a true heir to the kingdom can accomplish. Or it could perhaps be something the Enemy divulges during the fight (Vogler, 181).

However, Vogler also warns us against the chance where the journey can go all wrong

(182). A meeting with their own mortality and chance of demise, which was supposed to be a humbling experience instead proves to the hero, who is, perhaps, confusing their luck with fate, that they are the divinity incarnate and so should be treated as such, the ego they were supposed to left behind during their Ordeal now only grows and the power they wrestled from the hand of the Father now begins to corrupt them. Maybe in order to win, the hero had to sink to the level of the enemy, and the champion of life and justice was now turned towards a life of killing and immorality (Vogler, 182). But this might not be permanent, for ahead of the hero is now the journey back.

The Return It is quite natural for the hero to initially refuse to return, on their journey so far, they have done so much more than they could have possibly expect, the great power they might have come to possess, the elixir of life within their hands, a party of friends forged and tempered in battle, the love of their life by their side, why should they return? This Refusal to Return mirrors in some aspects the initial Refusal of the Call, where the hero did not want to leave

36 the familiar for the unknown, as opposed to here, where they do not wish to leave the Special world full of possibilities they discovered to return to the Ordinary one (Campbell, 179).

Eventually, though, the hero may remember the importance of their mission, the lives of important people, possibly even the entire land depend on their return with their Boon, or the hero needs to be reminded of their responsibilities and how pressing those responsibilities are by their Ally, or the hero might be put into their rightful place of mind by the opposing force. Perhaps the Enemy they thought to have destroyed during the Ordeal was not destroyed completely and is now gathering remnants of their forces for a retribution, or what the hero though of as the ultimate Enemy was only a lieutenant and the act of killing them only brought unwished attention from their superior – a powerful dragon thought to be the Guardian of the golden hoard is revealed to be a wyrm whose mother has now returned to the nest, found its slain hatchling and wants revenge. Especially the brush with an even greater force than before can help hero to realize their previous victory may have been only a stroke of luck and their perceived greatness has only been a folly. Whatever the reason, the hero finally found the resolve and crosses yet another threshold, this time, on their return journey (Vogler, 189-190).

If the Boon was granted, this journey might be rather pleasant, for the hero travels with the favor of the one who have granted it, but should it be stolen rather than received, this return may turn into a flight. Indeed, Campbell speaks of the so-called “Magic Flight” (182) where the hero must do their best in order to stop or at least for a moment delay the pursuing force. In order to do so, a sacrifice is typically needed, the hero has to permanently give up gifts they have previously received, these gifts, when thrown at the pursuers, turn into unavoidable barriers which slow them down, sometimes an ally can serve as the sacrifice, willing to offer their life in the hope that they could occupy the pursuers. At this moment,

37 the hero often comes to their senses and realize what is truly important and rather their Ally having to lay down their life or freedom, they part with their treasured possession.

Alternatively, as another humbling experience, they have to abandon their bloated ego, with its notions of hero’s power and importance and ask for an assistance, as they would not be able to deal with the problem on their own. One another, rather grimly possibility, they might be without any other means of delaying the pursuit and the realization might be that of the importance of the success of their mission and so they will have to face the hard choice of having to sacrifice a life of one of their companions in order to succeed (Vogler, 191-192).

When all seems lost and the hero is certain that there is now nothing that could save them from the retaliation, the rescue might come from an unexpected direction – from the ordinary world. Campbell refers to this as the “Rescue from Without” (192) and it also describes another way the hero could be pulled back into the ordinary world, should they be unwilling:

“Society is jealous of those who remain away from it, and will come knocking at the door. If the hero (…) is unwilling, the disturber suffers an ugly shock; but on the other hand, if the summoned one is only delayed (…) an apparent rescue is effected, and the adventurer returns.” (Campbell, 192).

Now the hero stands at the line once crossed at the beginning of the journey, one that they have to cross once again – the first threshold (also referred to as the “final” or “return” threshold (Vogler, 207, Campbell, 201, respectively)). However, where once was the difficulty of entering the unknown world, there is now the difficulty of bringing the wisdom found there back into the Ordinary world, as the two worlds somehow cannot understand each other.

Knowledge gained at the other side now seems as if there are inconsistencies within it when examined through the logic of the ordinary world, the hero may even grow frustrated and in some cases abandons further attempts to try to persuade anyone in the Ordinary world to heed

38 the advice of the Special one. Other heroes could start to doubt whether there even was any journey at all and all the memories are only remnant of a dream, or even possibly signs of a mental illness – in such cases, there are usually some tokens of the journey for the hero to anchor their beliefs. These will not persuade others, but they assure the hero about the validity of their experience. (Campbell, 201-202, 204) Other still may wish to return to the Special world, finding the Ordinary one needlessly “noisy and banal” (Campbell, 202), rather leaving it to its fate.

The repeating motif of Crossing the Return Threshold is a disproportional rate of passage of time, hero thinking they were gone from the Ordinary world only for a short while find they were in fact gone for a significantly longer period, perhaps longer than is possible for a single lifetime, usually a hundred years for every year spent in the Special World, however, it can reach as high as three hundred and sixty in case of the Hindu (Campbell, 207). Other heroes can live entire lifetimes that occupy only a few second or a one night’s sleep.

The reason for this disparity is that in the perfect world of the undying, time has no meaning and without any means of orientation, the hero, in their eventual connection with divinity, loses any sense of time progressing return to the Ordinary world they barely recognize or one they expected to be long gone by the time of their return (Campbell, 207-208).

Furthermore, Vogler develops this idea of the Return Threshold in a way that in order for the hero to successfully transition from the Special World into the Ordinary one, a new resurrection or rebirth is needed, citing even real world cases of cleansing of the ancient tribes performing cleansing rituals, or other reintegration procedures for their warriors and hunters to “purge the blood and death (…) so they can become peaceful members of the society again” (198).

39 In the similar way, the hero has to endure a second Ordeal – perhaps one connected with the Magic Flight – they have to face death once again before the coming of the Rescue from

Without. Possibly, the hero may be mortally wounded or lose consciousness when the Rescue arrives, only to awake, now back in the Ordinary world, further emphasizing the motif of death and rebirth (Vogler, 199). This second Ordeal is the final test of the hero’s change to see whether they will return to their old ways or whether the change reached during the Ordeal has become permanent. Or, in case of the corrupted hero, they receive final chance to reject the corruption and become who they truly are supposed to be (Vogler, 210-211). This test may be represented as a choice between the hero’s old self with all its weaknesses, and the new self that has transcended its former weaknesses during the Journey (Vogler, 201).

40 2 Analytical section In this section, we will apply the information presented in the theoretical section on the specific case of Commander Sir Samuel Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch.

First, we will examine the journey of the character of Vimes himself, first of his life as a whole, then we will quickly summarize his journeys in each respective book in which he plays a major role and then we will undergo a more rigorous examination of his journey in the initial novel Guards! Guards! as it has been written specifically to reference the concept of the hero’s journey. Having done so, we will examine what actually constitutes Pratchett’s hero.

Following that, we will discuss the portrayal of the theme of Self and Other that became prominent in the later Watch novels with Vimes representing the Self and his view of the Other, (the sum of individuals through physical, mental or other distinctions distanced from the Self) referencing first other people in general, followed by the specific people of authority and finally his opinion on diversity in the city and in the Watch.

2.1 What makes a hero? - Vimes’ Journey

2.1.1 Before Samuel To truly understand the journey of Samuel Vimes, we must first search his family history, most notably for his ancestor Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes, nicknamed “Old Stoneface” who lived three hundred years before Samuel and was a nobleman and the commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Militia, a precursor of the City Watch. His most notable deed is the regicide of the last king of the city, Lorenzo the Kind, who was anything but what his name would suggest, a sadistic, immoral and cruel monarch and also with a very specific fondness for children (Men at Arms, 78). This act brought disgrace to Vimes family name,

41 even though it was in a sense justified, as Vimes was supposed to be a “defender of the crown”, the execution was performed without a trial (as no judge would preside over such a case) and by Vimes’ own hand. Having effectively overthrown the monarchy, he became a city ruler for a short while, before being betrayed, executed, quartered and buried in five separate graves, his family name became banned, property and titles confiscated and family members were banished to the worst parts of the city (Feet of Clay, 107).

Most male family members still enlisted into the City Watch, and most of those managed to reach an officer position within its chain of command. Even after many years, the family is still certain of the justifiable nature of “Old Stoneface” Vimes’ act, for when questioned about the execution, Samuel responded with: “It wasn’t even execution. You execute a human being.

You slaughter an animal” (FoC, 52).

2.1.2 Samuel’s Life Journey Samuel Vimes was born into a poor family, as its reputation had not yet recovered from the Suffer-Not-Injustice’s treason, in the poorest and the worst part of the city. He has no memory of his father Thomas, who was also member of the City Watch before his premature death – he was run over by a cart when he was crossing a street – Samuel surmised that his father was in fact a drunkard and by his own words his father’s fateful cart “was probably a brewer’s cart, which had ‘run him over’ a bit at a time for years,” (Snuff, 66).

He was therefore mostly cared for by his mother. She made him visit a local dame school – in short, a very poor quality school, mostly meant to be a sort of daycare, so the children would be under at least some semblance of supervision – on which he still has very fond memories, here Samuel also first tasted position of authority, as he was appointed the blackboard monitor (Thud!, 79-80). He stayed at the school for nine months, following that, he gradually joined several street gangs, most notably the “Cockbill Street Roaring Lads”

42 where he meant eventual patrician’s secretary Lupine Wonse (Guards! Guards! (GG), 59).

At the age of sixteen, he joined the City Watch, where he shortly after came under the tutelage of Sergeant-at-Arms John Keel, who taught Vimes everything he knew, including his cynical outlook of the world, but also provided him with a strong moral center he managed to keep in spite of the environment where being corrupt was normal and expected (Night Watch).

Very little is known about Samuel from that point until the events of Guards! Guards! only that he rose to the rank of captain of the Night Watch – an institution that has over the course of the years lost much of its importance with the rise of the Thieves Guild, which effectively legitimized certain forms of criminality under its regulation6, Vimes lost most of his illusions, his young boy’s naivety turned into cynicism, while he himself became a drunkard, throwing most of his leftover money on alcohol and the barest of living expenses (though he was donating much of his salary to widows and orphans of deceased watchmen (MaA, 239)).

The change of public opinion on the Night Watch comes with the arrival of a dragon, where the Watch uncovers a plot of using the creature to usurp the control of the city from lord

Vetinari, and establishing a puppet king. It is then, when Vimes quits alcohol, starts to be more pro-active in his duties as a Watch officer and during these events, he meets lady Sybil

Ramkin with whom he establishes a relationship.

In Men at Arms, the Night Watch investigates a string of murders done using a strange device propelling metal slugs using some sort of controlled firework. Eventually, they discover that the perpetrator is a member of the Assassin’s Guild that had discovered the truth about Carrot being the last descendant of the king of Ankh-Morpork and had taken it upon himself to assassinate the patrician and make Carrot the new king. By the end of the book,

6 Thieves would receive a Guild issued licenses that allowed them to demand a certain amount of money from their chosen targets. The amount was based on a statistical calculation of an annually declared crime level and the targets would receive a note stating they were robbed, so as not to be bothered by other members of the Guild. Should the Guild find someone robbing without a license or exceeding their allotted quota, the organization would undertake swift internal actions ensuring it would not happen again. (GG, 57)

43 having stopped the assassin, the patrician grateful for saving his life merges the two branches of the Watch and promotes Vimes to its commander as well as knights him, as the knight is the traditional title of the Watch Commander, granting Vimes title of his own rather than one he received in marriage with lady Sybil which occurs at the end of the novel.

During the brewing war, as told in the novel Jingo, between the city and its neighboring nation of Klatch over a newly resurfaced island, as martial law is declared and the patrician steps down, Vimes resigns as the commander of the Watch and as any patriotic nobleman starts gathering soldiers for his own private regiment (consisting exclusively of other members of the Watch who resigned along with Vimes). However, this was all a ruse to stay independent from the command of the new de facto leader of the city, to investigate an attempted murder of the prince of the opposing nation in an attempt to prevent the war altogether. Succeeding, Vimes is rewarded a title of the Duke of Ankh, making him the second most powerful men in the city.

This new title also comes with other duties, such as in the novel The Fifth Elephant, where

Vimes must travel to the land of Überwald as a diplomat to represent the city at the coronation of the new Low King of Dwarves. After yet another attempt at the life of nation leader, Vimes is imprisoned, but he escapes and must fight for his life against the true conspirators – a noble family of local werewolves – a fight he eventually wins and having attended the coronation and establishing friendly overture with the king, returns back home. (Interestingly, during his absence, the crime rate in the city severely plummeted, even despite the sheer incompetence of the acting-captain Colon, as the criminal population feared Vimes’ wrath upon his return.)

Shortly before the birth of his first son in Night Watch, Vimes is transported back in time along with a psychopathic criminal Carcer, to the time of the Great revolution. Upon arrival,

Carcer kills John Keel, Vimes’ former mentor, and to ensure the correct course of

44 the continuum, Vimes has to replace him for a period of time, technically becoming his own mentor7, while Carcer joins a special branch of the co-temporary Watch, that was known for its cruelty, sanctioned by the city’s paranoid patrician, before him and Carcer are transported back into the present and Carcer is arrested, tried and presumably executed. By this time, the Watch and Vimes has gained such a renown, that even foreign police forces wish for their officers to be trained in Ankh-Morpork, these are called Sammies and many people around the Disc know the term while never having heard about Vimes or the city.

In later years, as his notoriety and responsibilities grow and change, so do his deeds. By the events of the novel Thud!, he and his wife have opened a hospital that is free of charge for anyone who cannot afford to pay the fees. In Thud!, Vimes also managed to establish a diplomatic relationships between the dwarfs and trolls, ending the centuries of mutual hatred and war by finding a proof of dwarven and troll kings making peace in Koom Valley, which had been believed to be a location of a major battle between the two races. It is here, where he also encounters an entity known as the Summoning Dark, that attempts, but ultimately fails to control Vimes and persuading him to surrender to his baser urges.

Even when Vimes is forced to take a leave of absence, he manages to find himself investigating and eventually uncovering a slavery ring that captures and transports goblins from the countryside to participate in a drug making operation abroad. His working with the local goblin community actually contributes towards the emancipation of the goblin kind to be considered among sapient species, as they were until them regarded as vermin.

And this is where the story of the life of Samuel Vimes ends, as there are no other books, where he makes major appearances, this is the entirety of what will be known about the protagonist of the Watch series of the Discworld novels.

7 Though, according to Lu-Tze – one of the order of monks with the ability to manipulate time, both version of events had become equally true – a version of young Vimes was tutored by John Keel, while a different version was tutored by his older self. (NW, 303-304).

45 2.1.3 Transformation of Vimes Much of Vimes’ life mirrors that of the transformations of the hero as presented by

Campbell. He comes to the world as a descendant of a disgraced house of nobility, shunned by the society and having to reach adulthood in seclusion in the worst part of the city, never really knowing his father and his mother dying before the events of the first book (however, she is supposedly alive during the portion of Night Watch which takes place in the past).

He eventually becomes a watchmen, as close to a warrior a poor orphan boy can be, but before that, he learns to fight in street kind of combat in order to just survive in the Shades district of the city, style that has saved his life in his line of duty on numerous occassions

(Night Watch (NW), 279). However, even the Night Watch proves to be yet another place where they discard unwanted people, based upon the questions Nobby has for Carrot about the reason that forced him to join them as Vimes’ reason for his posting is thought to him having “(spoken) his mind. Spoke it once too often to the Patrician, I heard.” (GG, 72).

The opinion in question he shared with the Patrician was on the Thieves’ Guild being nothing but a pack of thieves (GG, 72). His intents to do right by his city and follow the proper spirit of the law clashed with the reality where the thieves were legitimized officers of a sanctioned city guild and so, by extension, a city official just as he was supposed to be, and to twist the knife further, it was the thieves that were encouraged to prosecute lawbreakers, rather than the Watchmen.

That all changes with the arrival of a dragon, “for what is a Knight or Hero without a monster?” (Shepherd in Murray, 62). Along with Watch’s new recruit, who coincidentally also sees Thieves Guild equally as Vimes and ventures to arrest its head (GG, 60), Vimes begins undergoing internal changes from an impassive drunk to an active watchmen who is not afraid to face Wonse, the man of whom he was afraid at the beginning of the book. This confrontation corresponds to the letter to confrontations between the hero and their enemies

46 in Campbell’s work. Wonse is a high-level city official, a right hand man of the city ruler, and also the mastermind behind the arrival of the dragon, which Wonse wanted to exploit in order to seize power, while Vimes is a descendant of a disgraced house, living in a literal exclusion as a member of a powerless police force. Wonse might be the one who brought an actual dragon into the city, but for Vimes, he is the dragon he has to eventually slay. During these events, Vimes also meets with the woman that will be his eventual wife, fulfilling another steps in the supposed transformation of the hero, according to Campbell, from the Warrior to a Lover.

Next stage of the transformation should be encountering with the Father to become a

Tyrant or a World Redeemer. There could be multiple possibilities for this: for instance

Vetinari could be thought of as Vimes’ Father figure, as Vimes eventually rises in importance to become Vetinari’s second-in-command. Vetinari is a literal tyrant, which would support this reading and as Dannell observes in his essay “Terry Pratchett, the Watch and the Blurring of

Genre”, Vetinari performs the duties of a Mentor, advising and testing Vimes as and if needed.

In Feet of Clay, Vetinari freely admits that he had found the identity of his poisoner before

Vimes and still he chose not to disclose it to the Commander, for “I couldn’t let our gallant policeman know I’d worked it out for myself, could I?” Dannell further likens Vetinari to a “supernatural presence,” as he very rarely takes action personally and rather acts from the shadows. However, the most obvious instance of Meeting with the Father would be in

Night Watch, which not only has Vimes meeting his first and most influential mentor. It also, in a very literal realization of the concept of the oneness of the Hero and the Father (As in the chapter “Hero as an Emperor, Tyrant or a Redeemer”, where Campbell spoke of the hero possessing the same qualities as their Father figure, effectively being parts of the same whole, here, they literally become one and the same) and the fulfillment of the aspirations of the hero to one day become like their mentor (Vogler, 40). Vimes has to take on the moniker of John

47 Keel in order for the history to take proper course. In his role as Keel, Vimes has the opportunity to become in a sense a tyrant – he could rebel, force his will upon the fate, save the victims of the regime of the corrupt patrician, make the future that is better – his idea of better. Instead, he willingly accepts his fate, plays the role as he is supposed to, knowing that, in the end, Keel and six others must die to redeem the world through this sacrifice. And following this experience, Samuel Vimes truly becomes a Father as after his return, he receives a Boon of his son Sam that he will now care for, much like he cared for a young boy named Sam in the past.

Yet his story does not end there. As Father is, according to Campbell, often connected with aggressivity, Vimes has to, in the following novel, literally wrestle with his violent side that was supercharged by a malevolent entity taking on the appearance of a Shadow – a Summoning Dark – and Vimes is still capable to tame this entity and turn it into a tool to use. The feat as well as the mark of the Dark grants him a great deal of respect from the dwarfs and in the final novel, the Boon of the Dark allows him to see in the darkness and speak with goblins, creatures of the dark, without knowing their language.

Beginning with the novel Night Watch, we see the change of Vimes’ role in the story, he still is the proactive hero on a Road of Trials before he can reach his Boon that is his firstborn son, but he also fully accepts the mantle of the mentor. In fact, we can argue that his journey in the novel serves as a proof to become a father to his son. The change of roles is completed later in Snuff, where he not only mentors another fledgling countryside policeman, but he no longer changes over the course of the story as was the case in previous instances and as is

Vogler’s rule of heroes. Instead, he rather becomes a catalyst hero, inspiring change in others as is then demonstrated in the closing pages of the book, where the characters Vimes came

48 into contact showcase how he inspired them to improve themselves and the world around them (Snuff, 506-507).

2.1.4 Guards! Guards! - The Journey of Two Heroes Leverett posits that Guards! Guards! combines two genres – fantasy hero’s journey and a noire detective story (158), though one might argue (most notably Vogler) they are in fact one and the same. There is a great amount of references to various noir and detective stories.

To name one example, the motto written on the wall of the Watch House on Treacle Mine

Road is “Fabricati Diem, Pvnc,” supposedly meaning “To Protect and to Serve” (GG, 64) which is in itself reference to the motto of many a police force around the globe; while the direct translation from Latin “Make my day, punk” is in turn a callback to Clint

Eastwood’s character of Dirty Harry (Breebart, 36).

The story structure follows the pattern of the hero’s journey, we begin with one of the citizens living under the curious dictatorship of Patrician Vetinari, foreshadowing an arrival of a hero – king who will smite the tyrant, kill a dragon, sit on the throne and

“Protect and Serve the People with his Sword” (GG, 17) and the hero comes, an orphaned boy found under mysterious circumstances, adopted and cared for by a kindly couple as if for he was their own child. On the other hand, we have a child of the streets, being captain of a law enforcement unit that is not enforcing the law, wondering why he seemingly cannot fit into the society. Both of these are examples of the hero archetype.

Carrot’s Call to the Adventure was when his adoptive parents sent him from their dwarf mine to be with his own kind and become a proper man – enforcing law as a city watchman.

He was reluctant at first, but when he arrived to Ankh-Morpork, he immediately started with his somehow irresistible charisma making friends practically with anyone he met after his arrival, but also enemies, when he, after consulting the “Laws and Ordinances of Ankh-

49 Morpork,” apprehended the president of the Thieves Guild for the “Conspiracy to commit

Crime” (GG, 60) which could be thought of as his first major Trial on the Road.

Vimes’ Call to the Adventure came when people are starting to be burnt to ash by an unknown creature that vanishes just as quickly as it appears. At first, Vimes is hesitant to accept the Call and investigate still unwilling to take matters into his own hands, while later, when he is ready and sure it is the right thing to do, he comes across the Threshold Guardian in the form of Vetinari who forbids him to investigate. Still, he persists, passes the Threshold and sets out on his own Road of Trials – his investigation – where he makes allies in the primate Librarian of the wizard university from which the book describing how to summon dragons was stolen, and a dragon breeder, lady Sybil, who he saves from a mob of people who somehow mistake her tiny inbred swamp dragons for a giant, flying, fire- breathing one. For this rescue, Vimes receives as a gift one of her lesser developed dragons to be the Night Watch’s mascot, and later on, when the bigger dragon burns down Vimes’ Watch

House, lady Sybil provides them with one of her family’s properties as the Watch’s new headquarters. One of the meetings with lady Sybil, following the destruction of the Watch

House, serves also as the Meeting with the Goddess, as Vimes comes to know her better, he realizes there is a certain – not necessarily attraction, but at least an affinity as they are in many aspects similar (GG, 168-170).

Then comes the Ordeal, the dragon which was summoned by a group of conspirators manages to break from dragon’s plane of existence on its own, seizes the rule of the city as the new king and demands a tribute of gold and virgins – the first of the virgin is supposed to be lady Sybil. When Vimes confronts Wonse regarding the sacrifice, he is thrown into the dungeon next to the former Patrician. To his rescue comes the Librarian who helps him escape and the two rush to prevent the sacrifice. Meanwhile, Carrot along with the rest of

50 the Night Watch is trying to slay the dragon by shooting the supposed weak spot in its armor

(as all dragons naturally have one (GG, 317-318)), however, they fail.

At the last minute, the situation is saved by the Watch’s dragon mascot who seemingly attacks the greater one, only to be revealed that the king of the city is in fact a female and the fight was a mating ritual, resulting in the two dragons flying away from the city, following the steps of the Magic Flight, as a gift of one of the allies removes the obstacle, in this case a dragon. Vimes, Carrot, the rest of the Watch and freed Vetinari then confront Wonse who they discovered to be the leader of the conspirators. When Vimes tells Carrot to arrest Wonse by “throwing the book at him” (GG, 390), Carrot, due to his dwarf upbringing, interprets the order literally and throws the canon of the law at Wonse, causing him to stumble and fall to his death. The main antagonist of the story was killed not by a sword – the weapon of a hero, but by the laws of the city – the weapon of a police officer.

After the order and Vetinari’s rule is restored, Vetinari asks the Watchmen what they wish for as a reward for their great service to the city - “a petty wage increase, a domestic utensil

(…) and a new dartboard” (402). A far cry from the traditional hero’s reward of a half of a kingdom and the hand of a princess in marriage, or even the original bounty of fifty thousand Ankh-Morpork dollars for killing the dragon.

The Vimes’ storyline in the novel ends at a dinner date with lady Sybil, while Carrot is with his colleagues in a pub, discussing whether having a king would be truly better(and how all his clues to being the rightful king of the city actually do not mean anything), further deconstructing the beliefs of the conspirators who created the entire situation and possibly summoned Carrot as well as the dragon in the first place.

Leverett postulates that as the initial novel of the series, Vimes as the hero contradicts the classical trope of “a questing knight or a returning king” (160) as those are being fulfilled

51 by Carrot instead. However, as the story developed in later novels, Vimes was shown to be just so through his family history. From the very start, Vimes was portrayed as the Unwilling

Hero, Leverett (161) refers to an instance where two conflicting opinions fought inside Vimes when even one of his own men was fighting alone against an entire pub of drunken patrons and one of his inside voices pressed him not to intervene, the voice “which had nevertheless enabled him to survive in the Guards these past ten years” the one who was trying to persuade him not to speak his own mind, a “flaw” that lead to his current penal posting.

Leverret links Vimes’ change of attitude to his attitude towards city as a representation of

Hero’s duties as a lover (161). It is a common and perhaps a bit trite saying that a captain loves one thing foremost, that being either his ship or the sea itself. Our (then) captain Vimes seemed to be no different. When we first meet him at the beginning of Guards! Guards!, he is drunk and in his thoughts, he turns to the city thinking of it as “Woman. Roaring, ancient, centuries old. Strung you along, let you fall in (…) love, with her, then kicked you (in) teeth.”

(5-6). Later, when the watchmen are discussing their captain, corporal Nobbs repeats a notion of sergeant Colon, that Vimes “was brung low by a Woman.” (GG, 72). Of course, we can still assume that it was a living woman, one Mavis Trouncer could be a possible candidate, as when Vimes is having a near-death experience and his life is flashing in front of his eyes, his last thought is whether he can “skip the bit with Mavis Trouncer…” (Thud!, 416). Perhaps there is a slim chance that she was the woman who brought Vimes low, but it is unlikely, as it is the sole instance where her name is mentioned, in a different book and without context why the memory connected to her is unpleasant. If she truly was the Woman with a capital “W”

Colon spoke of, her presence would be more pronounced.

Over the course of the novel, Vimes’ attitude change towards the city and he begins to take more active stance towards the events that are happening in it. Leverett illustrates it on his

52 multiple declarations of the city: “As he becomes more willing to accept the mantle of a hero, his declarations become more powerful, deliberate and assured” (161). Later, when met with lady Ramkin, his expression mirrors his opening scene, however, where once the city was a woman, now, “the woman was a city” (GG, 410). And much like Campbell remarks in his work in the chapter of Meeting with the Goddess, this is when the Hero becomes the master of life, so does Vimes truly takes matters into his own hands.

And while Vimes changes a great deal, Carrot is almost exactly the same at the beginning of the story as he is at the end, perhaps a little bit wiser about the way the world works. He could be perhaps thought of as the Catalyst Hero, as regarded by Vogler, or, in the greater scheme of things, Carrot could be thought of as a Herald, as his arrival could have served as a foreshadowing of Vimes embarking on his journey, one where he had to battle his own inner demons (be it the alcohol, or the ever-encompassing passivity).

2.1.5 Tradition versus subversion: What makes Pratchett’s hero? Based on the discussion in the previous chapter, it may seem that Vimes is the typical,

“Campbellian” run-of-the-mill hero, with “Pratchettian” twists thrown into the work for the sake of amusement and parody. Perhaps, Vimes could be considered an anti-hero, tragic figure fighting against his Shadow. However, Haberkon postulated that there is far more complexity taking place than it can be seem at the first glance, in his opinion, Pratchett initially mocks the hero-genre to then completely subvert it (319).

The first instance of it according to Haberkon was already mentioned, the hero with the sword and the birthmark, and unbelievable charisma appearing just before a crisis strikes, just as it has been foretold, instead of coming to sit on the throne of Ankh-Morpork and bringing justice to the city, is doing so by patrolling the city with a copper badge and the living wage of thirty five dollars (GG, 401). In fact, the seemingly destined hero is often at

53 the sidelines and what would otherwise be his job in most other stories is left to a former drunk, with nine months of education that we could refer to as formal if we were very, very generous. Haberkon even notes that “if anything, Vimes is usually the wrong person in the wrong place” (334). Yet Vimes still manages to perform the heroic duties and succeed, mostly through sheer force of will that has been battling his own inner demons for so long that it has created its own inner watchman that keeps Vimes’ behavior in check. Rana, in her introduction into the Pratchett’s Discworld, in fact formulated the mantra that Pratchett’s protagonists, such as Granny Weatherwax or Tiffany Aching, according to her, follow: “This I choose to do” (7). Vimes is not the hero because the laws of narrative that govern events on the Discworld made so, he is the hero because he chose to be one. He stumbles and, as

Leverette points out, his heroics do not necessarily lead to immediate victory (as when Vimes tries to save lady Sybil and nearly gets himself killed in the process (GG, 228)), but it is exactly through his determination to do what is morally right regardless of the possible repercussions that makes Vimes who he is (Leverette, 164-165). And through his persistent effort, he eventually reaches his goal.

The second way of subversion, according to Haberkon, is the setting. Most heroes are set away from civilization, while Vimes and his companions are policemen, they are the civilization (330). Yet, at the same time, they are, at least in the beginning of the series, still set apart from the greater whole of the civilization presented as the biggest city on the Disc as the group of outcasts that is the Night Watch. Haberkon further cites the work of

Edward James who regards Pratchett as a writer attempting a democratic fantasy (332). Ankh-

Morpork is the only place on the Disc that does not have some sort of a monarch and the citizens of the city create associations in order to promote welfare of their particular group which are frequently recognized by the Patrician.

54 Furthermore, Simon Dannel in his thesis on the Pratchett’s subversion of the fantasy genre, notes that the fantastical is often considered as “(a) fragmentation of normal perception,

(used) to deny the sense of order, to insist that logic and order are themselves fantasies”

(Apter in Dannel), Dannel himself emphasizes Pratchett’s representation as that “of an illogical place, filled with illogical beings, all being very logical.” To illustrate, Dannel provides the example of a member of the perfectly legal and publicly well-regarded Assassins’

Guild trying to persuade the heads of said Guild to sanction the inhumation8 of the Patrician in order to restore the monarchy. This proposal is met only with the question whether “Ankh-

Morpork, at this point in time, require a king?” (MaA, 16-17).

Even Vimes’ damsel is not the typical image of the hero’s Lover. He describes lady Sibyl when they first meet using the image of “toweringly big (…) great chain-mailed, armor-bra’d, carthorse-riding maidens who swooped down on battlefields and carried off dead warriors on their cropper to a glorious roistering afterlife (…). Lady Ramkin could have been one of them.

She could have led them. She could have carried off a battalion” (GG, 122). Leverette connects this image with the “real noble women of the Middle Ages, Sybil is desirable for her physical strength and social power, not her beauty. To Vimes, who is practical, she is impressive” (163). However this too fulfills the notion of the Hero and their Lover being part of a greater whole, as both Samuel and Sybil are “getting on with (their) life while all that soppy romance stuff had been happening to other people somewhere else” (GG, 167-168).

Sybil much like Vimes is not keen on playing the role expected of her, in this case the damsel who is usually passively waiting for her hero to arrive or entering an arranged marriage, she instead focuses her love elsewhere. Nor is she a young naive little girl, the fact of which actually poses a problem in Night Watch, where her relatively advanced age leads to complications during the birth of her first child. As Leverette posits, she “rejects both of

8 Their preferred term over assassination.

55 the stories given to her – the young romantic and the old maid – and writes her own” (163) much like the focus of her later affection.

2.2 Vimes versus the Other As was already mentioned, the novels of the later Watch series shifted its focus more towards the exploration of the theme of “Self and Other”. To reiterate, the Other is a philosophical concept created in the 18th century by the German philosopher Georg Hegel and used as a way to identify oneself by excluding it from the Other. This could be done for an individual to identify them from the collective, or to separate two groups of people. (The

Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 1, 76). Throughout history, this concept and the act of

Othering (excluding individuals by labeling them as members of a particular group separate from the Self or Us, thus alienating them and pushing them from the center of the society to its fringes (The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, 620)) has been at the heart of nationalistic and colonialist tendencies (Key Concepts in Political Geography, 332). Fantasy is often viewed as “concerned with the revealing and exploring the interrelations of the 'I' and the 'not-I', of self and other” (Jackson in Dannell) and Pratchett used this concept in novels set in Ankh-Morpork to explore the relationships of its inhabiting races (most notably between the Dwarfs and the Trolls), factions, as well as relationships with its neighbors (e. g. with the Klatch Seriphate).

Therefore, in the following chapter, we will explore this concept by, first, examining the Self of Samuel Vimes as individual and his view of the Other, meaning of the people around him and the probable causes for his views. Then, we shall center our attention on how

Vimes relates or distances himself from authority both in terms of politics and nobility, as he became a prominent political figure over the course of his novels as well as an influential noble. And finally, as the city of Ankh-Morpork is a cosmopolitan place and the Watch has

56 under Vimes’ command became quite a diverse organization, we will examine how the concept of the Other influenced the Watch membership of non-human species, the representation of women in the Watch and how Vimes himself views the Otherness of the non-humans in general on the Disc, or in particular in the Watch.

2.2.1 Vimes and others

Self versus Others If we would sum Vimes’ view of the world in one word, it would be “cynical”, firstly from the advice of his mentor (Night Watch) and secondly, from the many bitter experiences over the years as a Watchman which had always led Vimes to seeing the bad side in everyone. He is of the opinion that “everyone is guilty of something” (FoC, 329) “the possibility that they were not guilty of anything was one that he didn’t even think worthy of consideration.”

(Jingo, 82). The other reason for such a negative outlook on life is Vimes’ acute awareness of his own darker side, or as he calls it the Beast (NW, 79). Vimes is prone to quick and violent outbursts of anger, usually when cruelty and children were involved, perhaps a trait inherited from the Old Stoneface (a nickname Samuel also came to be called). In most cases, however, his will prevails – in Man at Arms, the semi-sentient weapon called Gonne suggest Vimes to use it to combat criminality, yet Vimes eventually (with small assistance from Carrot) manages to overcome its temptation. In Night Watch, insane serial criminal Carcer goads him into killing him, thus breaking the law and a promise Vimes gave to his mentor whom Carcer killed, yet even then Vimes overcomes him and sends him to be tried. And finally, in Thud!, a dark entity known as the Summoning Dark possesses Vimes during the events of the book, infecting his mindscape that has, after years of patrolling the city streets, come to appear exactly like Ankh-Morpork, when he finally unleashes his anger on dwarfs he suspects of attempting to assassinate his wife and child, only for the Dark to be thwarted by Vimes’ own inner guardsman, his Guarding Dark who prevents his from killing defenseless old dwarfs

57 (Thud!, 428-430). In Night Watch, Vimes notes that the Beast could be a valuable tool if kept on a leash (501), in Thud!, we finally see the one who holds the leash, for Guarding Dark is not meant to keep Vimes’ Shadow out, “(He’s) here to keep it in.” (Thud!, 430). The phrase

“Who watches the watchmen?” and its Latin counterpart “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” has been present in the series from the very beginning (though in a quite mangled form) (GG,

374), until it is answered in a later novel:

‘Who watches the watchmen? Me, Mr. Pessimal.’ ‘Ah, but who watches you, Your Grace?’ said the inspector with a brief little smile. ‘I do that, too. All the time,’ said Vimes. ‘Believe me’ (Thud!, 26) Vimes’ protection from the darkness is the Watchman and Vimes’ badge which as he notes is shaped like a shield (NW, 321), but he also notes that not everyone has the same shield and if such darkness can be hiding inside of him, man of the law, how can he expect others, whose job is not to literally uphold the law, to battle their own inner darkness, leaving it waiting for the right moment to strike, when their shield weakens. And his job as a Watchman does not bring much evidence speaking to the contrary. There, he sees the worst humanity has to offer, people like Carcer who do not bother with keeping a shield in the first place, or people who

“burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality” (GG, 298). How can he not see the rest of us, the Other, with anything but mistrust and cynicism?

Vimes’ Vices Vimes’ cynicism has been often portrayed in the novels as a state of utter sobriety under the explanation of most people making their own natural alcohol to be able to survive living their lives full of contradictions and moments of unfairness. However, Vimes is among the few people who are unable to make their own inner alcohol, in fact “The Watch was generally of the opinion that Samuel Vimes was at least two drinks under par, and needed a stiff double even to be sober” (MaA, 240). To counter this state of utter sobriety, or

58 “knurdness” (GG, 301), Vimes has become a drunk by his own admission, as he would have had to be richer to be alcoholic (The Fifth Elephant (TFE), 257). Murray, in his thesis on the character of Vimes, uses Vimes’ addictions as a metaphor, positing he is unable to perceive and cope with the world in other way than through the “corrective lens of the bottom of a bottle” (59). As Vimes, however, gained more confidence during the incident with the dragon, he eventually sobered up, though there have been occasional relapses during episodes of depression (MaA, 227). After he married Sybil, he quit drinking altogether, though he still occasionally reaches into his drawer in moments of stress out of old habit (FoC, 289-290) and he apparently visits meetings of the Discworld equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous (FoC,

319). Luckily, his servant is somehow capable to prepare cocktails that offer all the required effects of alcoholic beverage without a drop of alcohol in it (Snuff, 33-34). His replacement vice were cigars he started to smoke as a promise to his wife for not touching alcohol, though he had to eventually give it up too, at least in the house, probably for his infant son’s health sake. On these occasions, he instead has to satisfy his addiction with snuff (Snuff, 31-32).

Should we uphold the metaphor of his addictions being the corrective optics Vimes needs to view the world and have it make sense, we can infer that him casting them aside is him finally deciding to rather actively participate on transforming the world to a more bearable place, than to passively continue having to rely on unhealthy comping mechanisms.

Self and Others Yet Vimes is not all cynicism, from the books, we know that he also tries to voluntary help others in whatever small way he is able to. In Man at Arms, he is found to be sending half of his meager salary to widows and an orphan of deceased watchmen (239). Similarly to his emotional outburst when confronted with a child-murderer, he despises any form of classicism and the idea of disposable people, in Feet of Clay, when confronted with

59 a perpetrator who unintentionally killed a baby and an old woman and then asked whether they were important, Carrot notes how lucky he was that commander Vimes was not there

(373). Indeed, Vimes is always trying to look out for the downtrodden, for if the city is working like a machine, which would be “fine except for the occasional people who got caught in the wheels” (FoC, 157). In his own way, he showed compassion towards fledgling students of the Guild of Assassins, for if they were students sent by their teachers to be taught a lesson in humility, he was in many respects disposed kindly towards them as he ordered his servant to tend to them after they fell for one of his traps (FoC, 20). This stand in a stark contrast to his dealing with the more experienced full Guild members who he in the better case painted pink and tied to a fountain, or put in chains and paid with the assassin’s own money from the inhumation contract to have him ship to a distant part of the Disc (TFE, 181-

182). In all of the cases, he then took the rest of the money (usually tens of thousands of dollars) and donated it to charities such as the “Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons” that is run by his wife (TFE, 182) or the “Widows and Orphans Fund” (FoC, 27).

In Snuff, he takes newbie country policeman Feeney Upshot under his tutelage much like

Keel once took him and like he had to, due to quantum circumstances, do the same for his younger self. He saw a young boy being perhaps unwittingly an accomplice to crime through his incompetence. Yet Vimes realized the boy only lacked direction, someone to show him the way how a true policeman should behave as no one had done so until then.

2.2.2 Vimes and authority Even before becoming quite and important political player, Vimes had plenty of opinions on politicians and other people of power. His topic of most importance is, for obvious reasons, the idea of monarchy which he speaks of in terms of a “hereditary disease” (Haberkon, 333).

And time and time again his views are justified by the events occurring around him. There

60 were at least three unsuccessful attempts to re-establish monarchy in Ankh-Morpork, each only lead to innocent people being killed in the process. He managed to maintain a great deal of his anti-authoritarian attitude despite becoming a great authority, feat that Vetinari describes as “practically zen” (FoC, 275). Vimes openly despises any symbols of wealth or high position, especially when he is forced to wear them, he harbors particular feelings of loathing for golden armors and feathered helmets. He has therefore become quite inventive in the various means of disposing of them or rendering them otherwise unusable. Yet, he is still aware that he no longer represents only himself and submits to wearing them when the situation demands it (NW, 11-12). Neither is he especially fond of his various titles, which by the end of the series comprise of the impressive “His Excellency His Grace the Duke of

Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, Lord of Ramkin

Estate, Blackboard Monitor9, King of the River” (Snuff, 41) as he personally thinks of Duke as a job description and insists on being addressed as commander by most of his subordinates, with Mr. Vimes being reserved for a select few, usually long-serving members of the Watch or others who had fought alongside him(Thud!, 262), or at least on some occasion saved his life, such as A. E. Pessimal (Thud!, 317). His titles may have allowed him to enter the noble circles as one of their equals, yet this only deepened his disdain for nobles as “the women made his head ache and the men made his fists itch” (MaA, 35) The only instances when he demanded his title to be recognized were when the vocative “Mister Vimes” was used to

“remind” him of his common origins by another member of nobility (Jingo, 34).

When it came to diplomacy, his diplomatic prowess, (read: “threatening the ambassador directly with personal harm should his army cross the river by, quote: “sending him home in

9 It would not be Pratchett if the seemingly out of place title of the “Blackboard Monitor” had not carried a great importance, in this case with Dwarfs who believe that words are sacred as the world was, according to their ideology, written and when one is given the ability to erase them, they are given a great power over the world. (Thud!, 185). Vimes actually becomes a sort of boogeyman figure for dwarfs, especially following his victory over the Summoning Dark that has left him carrying the brand of it on his wrist. (Snuff, 163).

61 an ambulance”) (TFE, 29)” led to an army threatening the country’s borders to pull back so far so as to threaten to invade a completely different country. This Vimes’ no-nonsense attitude towards negotiating only made Vetinari employ him in further diplomatic procedures

(TFE, 29). He was greatly opposed of the idea of wars being the “continuation of democracy” especially now that, being part of the city’s nobility, he saw the diplomatic corps continuing to enjoy life of luxury and civility even from the supposed enemies, while there were armies preparing to attack one another (Jingo, 202).

Among his personal philosophies appertains the opinion that when people are trying to kill him it means he must be doing something right, mostly “annoying the rich and arrogant people who ought to be annoyed” (NW, 10). This does not mean, however, that he would be idly waiting for a member of the Assassin’s Guild, as the Watch headquarters and his home are beset by various traps designed for maximum humiliation of the attempted assassin (NW,

9-10). In the early days, he bought a shaving mirror warped in such a way that instead of having a good look at his face, he had a perfect view of situation behind him (FoC, 12). After he was dubbed the Duke of Ankh, Vimes was deemed too important for the smooth working of the city and in turn, the Guild no longer accepted inhumation contracts on his head. Vimes’ first thought was whether he could be allowed to appeal to this decision, to still be ensured about the correctness of his actions (NW, 11).

Even once he was engaged to lady Sybil and was offered more luxurious lifestyle than his current one, he still refused, for example, when his wife-to-be offered to buy him new shoes so that he would not have to make replacement soles for his current ones out of cardboard, he was even offended by the offer. In fact, based on his experiences with the way the rich population of Ankh-Morpork lived, Vimes even formulated his own Theory of Socioeconomic

Unfairness, which shall be presented in its entirety:

62 The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. Men at Arms, 36-37 However, after he himself become nobility, though not by marriage, but by his promotion to the position of Commander of the Watch, he acquiesced to some features of the noble lifestyle, yet he still preferred his boots having thin soles and under no circumstance would he allowed himself to be shaved by another person, as he claimed “he’d spent too many years trudging the night-time streets to be happy about anyone else wielding a blade anywhere near his neck” (FoC, 13). Though the real reason was that his egalitarian worldview clashed with the notion that he is someone to be cared for, to give in to the idea that the world is divided into “those who shave and those who are shaved” (FoC, 13). In Vimes’ eyes, everyone is equal and thus should be treated equally. He would be happy to invite his personal steward

Willikins to share a drink with him with the only thing preventing it from happening is

Willikins’ own adherence to his code of stewardship, but on the other hand, “well, obviously a sergeant wasn’t as equal as a captain and a captain wasn’t as equal as a commander” (Snuff,

33).

2.2.3 Vimes and diversity

...of race Many fantasy worlds boast a high degree of diversity in terms of sentient races, often with their disagreements or even all-out hostilities, Discworld is no exception, it is home to myriad

63 of species from the (near)humans such as dwarfs, orcs or goblins, to the more inhuman in terms of appearance, e. g. living boulders of trolls or more sculpted gargoyles, the differently alive zombies, vampires, werewolves and the like, or even artificial sentience in the form of golems and to a lesser extent (in terms of artificiality, not sentience), Igors – the ever-present, stitched-together henchmen of vampire clans and other evil masterminds. In most fantasy settings, these races would be occupying their own domains throughout the world, however, here, representatives of all of these races can be found living in the relatively small area of the twin city, having to coexist with one another. Washington also posits that Pratchett endowed these races with their typical characteristics found in most other novels, including prejudices against each other, yet he also adds his own “twists”10 (65).

Which results in situations of “us versus them” where the groups in conflict are not

“people” of different color, but of a different species. In fact, so much so, that racism as we know it from our world barely exists on Discworld and even then mostly in terms of nationalism (as is the case in Jingo), for humans, speciesism is far more interesting. “Black and white get along in perfect harmony and gang up on green” (Witches Abroad, 146). That does not mean, however, that Pratchett had not addressed this issue in his books, as Gibson, who studied the topic of multiculturalism extensively in the book Terry Pratchett’s Narrative

Worlds, notes, captain Quirke who is the commander of the Day Watch “voices many of the most typical comments made by British racists” (63). As the Narrator points out “Quirke was the kind of man to whom it comes naturally to pronounce the word negro with two gs”

(MaA, 254).

Still, Quirke’s disdain in not exclusive to those of different color, as constable Angua observes following one of his comments on dwafs: “although words like halfpint and

10 Such as the brains of trolls operating exactly like a computer that requires cooling, meaning the higher the ambient temperature, the lower their intelligence, leading to the prejudice of trolls’ perceived stupidity (MaA, 221-222).

64 gritsucker were offensive, they were as terms of universal brotherhood compared to words like “people of their type” in the mouth of men like Quirke” (MaA, 255-256). Nor the Night

Watch is without its “resident racist” in the form of sergeant Colon, who Pratchett describes as

“(being) to the School of My Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands to Reason, and was now a postgraduate student at the University of What Some Bloke In the Pub Told Me”

(Jingo, 44). However, Gibson emphasizes Pratchett’s use of corporal Nobbs, Colon’s patrol partner and inseparable sidekick, who always deconstructs bigoted and often contradicting opinions of his superior (63). Gibson further states Pratchett’s avoidance of portraying his protagonists as openly and irreversibly bigoted, they may at times spout something bigoted, but then immediately provide proof of a much greater understanding of the topic (62).

At the start of the series, the Watch is exclusively staffed by humans, gradually, over the course of the series, more and more races come to be members of its ranks, some due to various diversity outreach programs mandated by the Patrician, always much to the chagrin of

Vimes, in Men at Arms, the Night Watch is forced to admit its first dwarf, troll and werewolf members, while the werewolf was also Watch’s first female. Vimes only agreed to this mandate since he was supposed to retire from the Watch by the end of the week. Thus, the situation would no longer be his problem noting, however, that he was not a speciesist, only perhaps old-fashioned in thinking that the Watch was a men’s job (MaA, 26). Eventually, each of the new members show their worth and present their unique skills that work toward betterment of the Watch. Showing the development of his character, in the following novel, a dwarf is recruited into the newly merged City Watch, with only merit required is being an alchemist – another skill so far sorely lacking in the Watch, the dwarf is even surprised by

Vimes’ knowledge of the different Überwaldic dwarf clans (FoC, 30). In Vimes’ own words on the subject: “I can’t say I like dwarfs much, Littlebottom. But I don’t like trolls or humans either, so I suppose that’s OK (…) If troll officers call you a grit-sucker they’re out, and if you

65 call them rocks you’re out.” (FoC, 31-32). He, despite his own misgivings of others, wants to give his recruits a fair chance to prove themselves regardless of their species based only on their skills and the content of their character, and will ensure they will receive the same treatment from the rest of the Watch, perhaps in hopes that Vetinari assurances were correct, if the Watch shows that the species of Ankh-Morpork can cooperate, maybe the rest of the city will be more open to the idea of doing the same (MaA, 5).

…of gender Having mentioned sergeant Littlebottom, during the events of her inaugural novel, she not only spearheaded an entire forensic division, she also openly revealed herself to be female, being the first ever dwarf to do so, due to rather complicated nature of dwarf perception of gender, suffice to say, dwarf language has no female pronouns (TFE, 52), earning much ire from her dwarf colleagues, even including captain Carrot, who had been in all other cases incredibly open-minded (FoC, 277), yet when encountered with Vimes, all he ever felt to note was that she is wearing eye shadows, mascara and lipstick (FoC, 227) and later on, that she had grew taller as she was wearing high heels (FoC, 348) though some of it was also due to his own confusion over the unexpected behavior. When taken his behavior into account with his knowledge on Überwaldic dwarfs, one would assume he is fully aware of the implications that stem from the actions of his new recruit.11

The other members of the Watch itself are a bit more complicated matter, as observed by sergeant Angua, when she was discussing the issue of gender with Cheri:

“You can be any sex you like provided you act male. There’s no men and women in the Watch, just a bunch of lads. You’ll soon learn the language. Basically it’s how much beer you supped last night, how strong the curry was you had afterwards, and where you were

11 Another interesting thing to note, Cheri is in the novel addressed even by the supposed Narrator as Cheery, as it was the name she gave Vimes upon her joining of the Watch. After she “comes out” to Angua, she does so with a list of names she thought of calling herself. Angua selects the name Cheri (on the account that with that many barely literate people in the city, no one would notice the change, unless she would point it out to them) (FoC, 254), it also becomes the name she is addressed from that point on in the narration.

66 sick. Just think egotesticle. You’ll soon get the hang of it. And you’ll have to be prepared for sexually explicit jokes in the Watch House. (…) Mind you, that seems to have ended now. (…) After I joined in it all seemed to stop. And, you know, they didn’t laugh? Not even when I did the hand gestures too? I thought that was unfair. Mind you, some of them were quite small gestures.” This sentiment is also extended to the way members of the Watch are being addressed uniformly as Watchmen with only one exception in Feet of Clay, (305). Perhaps when Vimes proclaimed “Watch was a job for men,” (MaA, 26), he was not speaking generally of humans.

...embraced? Even the original diversity outreach program forced upon Vimes by Vetinari was extended over the Night Watch only, perhaps due to the bigoted nature of captain Quirke not allowing it in Day Watch, or the still not completely salvaged reputation of the Night Watch, with Vimes about to retire and thus more willing to let it happen, or perhaps due to the fact that as members of Night Watch, these new recruits would not have to “appear” among the city’s population during the day, lessening the impact of the outreach program on the rather speciesist populace. Still, one must wonder whether it all was not the intention of the Patrician, as he is known to be a skilled manipulator and having taken all of the above into consideration in order to promote Ankh-Morpork as a truly cosmopolitan city.

By the end of the series, the Watch had sworn in members of almost every race living in

Ankh-Morpork and each race came to fill in a valuable role – Gargoyles can be found all around the city, making them an ideal informants and witnesses, werewolf Angua is her own

K9 unit, even in her human form her sense of smell is far better than that of any other member of the Watch, which allows her to provide additional pieces of information that would not otherwise be found, gnome Buggy Swires is, thanks to his small body, so light he can serve as a fast aerial unit, Igor is a skilled medic able to provide his unmatched skills even under less than optimal conditions and the list could go on.

67 Still, Vimes proclaimed his dislike for these and other undead races, as their nature prohibited a policeman to effectively subdue them when necessary. Vampires were among the last to be admitted, again with many Vimes’ protests, even though the vampire in question is a member of a group of abstinent vampires called League of Temperance. Dannell links this mistrust to a Vimes’ own problem with abstinence, citing Vimes’ meeting with another member of said League: “‘One bite would be one too many?’ said Vimes. He recognized the mangled mantra,” (TFE, 314). Of course he recognizes the mantra, as he himself visits abstinence meetings and surely recites a similar saying. However, even this prejudice was eventually overcome, as constable von Humpeding proved her ability to turn into a swarm of bats and scout areas ahead, her superhuman strength and sensing the presence of the living to be a valuable assets to the working of the Watch, to even have Vimes overlook the fact she was sent to originally spy on the Watch and him (Thud!, 464). In fact, the Watch under Vimes’ command had become the most racially diverse organization in Ankh-Morpork, second only to the Post Office which employs golems as their workforce, with the “minorities” represented even in high command positions of the Watch – there are werewolf and possibly vampire captains12, a female dwarf founds and manages the forensics department, a troll becomes the best drill sergeant Watch ever had, also leading to the great renown of the Ankh-

Morpork trained Watchmen. And Vimes is always supporting every one of them, there is a saying in the Watch: “When your back’s against the wall, Mister Vimes is right behind you”

(TFE, 135).

However, Watch is where most of Vimes’ tolerance begins and ends. He is not above knowingly appearing at a meeting of highly religious and overzealous dwarf fundamentalists with a troll and an openly female dwarf – both instances of a complete affront to their entire

12 There are conflicting sources. Judgment Day: Science on Discworld states that Sally von Humpeding managed to reach the rank of captain, skipping the ranks in-between (198), however, novels themselves never refer to her promotion.

68 worldview (TFE, 196), or making said troll a cultural attaché to said fundamentalist dwarfs

(TFE, 289). He openly fights against any organization that tries to promote one race, such as the Campaign for Equal Heights (FoC, 329), claiming “Just because someone’s a member of an ethnic minority doesn’t mean they’re not a nasty small-minded little jerk” (FoC, 329).

Yet he still makes no distinctions when a member of an ethnic minority becomes the victim of a crime. Even when the victim belongs to a race that is generally being perceived as a pest rather than a person, i. e. goblins, he still wishes to investigate it and punish those responsible.

One possible explanation for this could be what he had learned when he was as a small child terrified of a picture of a smiling goblin, only for his teacher to tell him to look closer and explain “I hear that they are wretched, badly made mortals. Half-finished folk, or so I hear.

It’s only a blessing this one had something to be jolly about” (Snuff, 199). In other words, he was told to confront one of his biggest childhood fears and realize there is more to the perceived monster than meets the eye at first, “Stare it down and it lost all its power to frighten” (Snuff, 199).

69 Conclusion This thesis was meant to explore the two major themes of the Watch series of Discworld novels written by Terry Pratchett. The themes in question, the Monomyth otherwise known as the hero’s journey and the concept of the Self and the Other, were viewed from the perspective of the series’ protagonist and the Commander of the Watch, Samuel Vimes.

Pratchett does work with the features and concepts of the monomyth when crafting the life story of Samuel Vimes, their use is, however, overshadowed by their far more blatant all-too- perfect hero Carrot Ironfoundersson, where Carrot’s obvious flouting of the Campbellian hero archetype masks the progression of the real hero of the stories. And all that is covered further still under a thick layer of humor and parody. The image of the myth is there, but, as with everything on the Discworld, or with all of the Pratchett’s work for that matter, the image is distorted (and it looks like it is sticking its tongue at you).

Pratchett had created a new kind of hero, one who does not come to save the civilization from without, but one who works to make the civilization better by being an inseparable part of it – a police officer. Their tools are no longer swords, but the laws. Pratchett’s hero will not save the day because it was foretold by a prophecy or destiny, or because they are descended from a special line of ancient heroes, they will save the day because they believe it is the right thing to do and they will do their very best to make it so. Even when they are not saving the day, they nevertheless strive to make the world a better place by performing small acts of kindness, offering encouragement, counsel, or help to those who would otherwise find none.

For the people around them, they provide an example to follow or an ideal to strive towards.

As for Samuel Vimes dealing with the unknown, he views others with mistrust, but only because he does not fully trust himself. However, from a young age he learned that the unknown is only temporarily not understood. He may appear distrustful, cynical,

70 conservative even prejudiced, but once he learns the Other can be trusted, he will gladly make it a part of the Self.

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