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Degree Project Level: Bachelor Who Watches the Watchman? Degree Project Level: Bachelor Who Watches the Watchman? Terry Pratchett and the Postmodern Hero Author: Johanna Pethö Supervisor: Carmen Zamorano Llena Examiner: Billy Gray Subject/main field of study: English Course code: EN2028 Credits: 15 Date of examination: 28 May 2020 At Dalarna University it is possible to publish the student thesis in full text in DiVA. The publishing is open access, which means the work will be freely accessible to read and download on the internet. This will significantly increase the dissemination and visibility of the student thesis. Open access is becoming the standard route for spreading scientific and academic information on the internet. Dalarna University recommends that both researchers as well as students publish their work open access. I give my/we give our consent for full text publishing (freely accessible on the internet, open access): Yes ☐ No ☐ Dalarna University – SE-791 88 Falun – Phone +4623-77 80 00 1 Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………….1 The Classic Hero vs. The Postmodern Hero………………………...6 To Critically Engage with Narrative: Meta-narratives and the Truth………………………………………………………………....9 Choosing to do Good ………………………………………………17 Heroism in the Epic Quest or in Everyday Life?..............................20 Conclusion………………………………………………………….23 1 Introduction The genre of Modern Fantasy is generally defined by its focus on story, and the presence of elements that are unlikely, or even impossible in our world. There is a large variety of sub-genres within Modern Fantasy, which can differ substantially from each other in terms of style, tone and setting. For example, there is a sub-genre called Urban Fantasy which introduces fantasy elements such as magic and supernatural creatures into the urban setting of the 21st century city, or Steampunk, a genre generally set in a Secondary World where modern technology never moved on from the steam power used in Victorian times. The sub-genres of Modern Fantasy relevant to this analysis, however, are Heroic Fantasy and Comic Fantasy. The term Heroic Fantasy was coined by Lin Carter, and "emphasizes the conflict between good and evil, and often casts a reluctant protagonist in the role of champion’’ (Flynn 1). This sub-genre takes place in a Secondary World, that is a world or universe separate from our own, where impossible elements such as dragons and magic are not only entirely possible, but often even commonplace. This Secondary World also often has its own history, climate and landscapes, and natural laws. These often partially resemble the equivalent in our own world, with some notable exceptions (Pringle 35, 37). Moving on to Comic Fantasy, there is a common misconception about the genre, and indeed comedy in general, namely that there are no rules. Upon further inspection, however, it becomes clear that all authors in this sub-genre have established their own set of rules and dynamics in their respective universes. Comedy is, by its very nature, subversive, and most authors within the genre of Comic Fantasy create comedy by subverting common tropes and archetypes in other, often more established, genres of fantasy. Comic Fantasy originated in the 2 late 20th century, with Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series being one of the most successful and influential in the genre. Pratchett uses the Heroic Fantasy sub-genre as a foundation for his own writing, as well as subject for parody and subversion of its most common tropes (Luthi 3). Discworld is a long-running fantasy series that consists of 40 stand-alone novels, beginning with The Colour of Magic in 1983 and ending with Raising Steam in 2013, which have sold over 75 million copies worldwide. In line with the main features of Heroic Fantasy, the Discworld is a Secondary World, named as such because it is a flat disc on the back of a giant tortoise swimming through space. The Discworld series does not share a common narrative, or protagonist, and is only a series in the fact that all the stories are set in the same world. There are, however, several sub-series in the Discworld series that do follow a specific protagonist and an accompanying cast of characters, such as the subject of this thesis: The City Watch Series. The City Watch Series follows the policemen of Ankh-Morpork, the Discworld’s largest city, in their attempts to solve crimes and police the notoriously chaotic and crime-ridden city. The main character of the Watch series, Samuel Vimes, is also the main focus of this essay. In the first novel of the series, Guards! Guards! Vimes is introduced as a washed-up, alcoholic Watch Captain who has all but given up on policing the city. When a dragon threatens to destroy the city, Vimes is eventually forced to sober up and save the day. Throughout the novels, Vimes reluctantly rises through the ranks of the Watch until he eventually becomes Commander of the Watch, and manages to cultivate a reputation for honesty and justice that stretches far beyond the borders of Ankh-Morpork. There are eight novels in the City Watch series. This essay, however, will primarily focus on two of them: Night Watch, and Thud!. These two novels 3 were chosen because, although the themes studied in this essay are present in all City Watch novels, they are most obvious in Night Watch and Thud!. Furthermore, earlier novels in the series, and Guards! Guards! and Feet of Clay in particular, have already been subject of quite a few critical essays, whereas the Night Watch and Thud! have not been studied as much. By choosing these two novels, this essay will provide new insights into the series. Night Watch is the sixth novel in the City Watch series, and its main theme is how political and social conflicts are manipulated by powerful people. The main conflict in Night Watch is a people’s revolt against the corrupt leader of the city, Ankh-Morpork. However, this essay will mainly focus on how public perception and propaganda are used by Vimes, and several other characters, to control the turn of events. This ties into the postmodern idea that words and narratives have power. Jean-Francois Lyotard identified meta-narratives, as over- arching narratives of ideas and rules that most people in a society unconsciously accept. If we accept that meta-narratives exist, the ability to create or manipulate meta-narratives to control public opinion, and by extent people’s way of thinking, becomes immensely important and powerful. Thud! directly follows Night Watch in the series, and contains many similar themes, although this time the main conflict involves growing racial tensions between two minority groups in Ankh-Morpork: the dwarves and the trolls. In the Discworld universe, dwarves and trolls have historically been mortal enemies, and as the anniversary of the Battle of Koom Valley is approaching, tensions arise between the two communities in Ankh-Morpork.. At the start of Thud! new information about Koom Valley is discovered which would turn the long rivalry on its head. To cover up this new information, several dwarves are murdered.but one 4 manages to survive long enough conjure an old dwarven spirit called The Summoning Dark. This spirit possesses Vimes in order to bring vengeance on the ones who killed the summoner. The vast majority of the scholarly work concerning the Discworld novels involve Pratchett’s post-modern subversion of fantasy tropes. For example, in “Toying With Fantasy: The Postmodern Playground of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Novels” Daniel Luthi considers Pratchett a post-modern writer, as his novels contain many aspects of post-modernism, such as intertextuality, simulacra, meta-narratives and how they continually subvert some of the most common fantasy tropes (3). In said article, Luthi endeavors to discover how the Discworld series can be so successful despite Terry Pratchett violating a great deal of the rules of the fantasy tradition laid out in Tolkien’s On Fairy-stories, and concludes that it is Pratchett’s concept of narrative imperative that is the key. ‘’Tell It Slant: Of Gods, Philosophy and Politics in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld’’ by Gray Kochhar-Lindgren argues that the power of stories and language is central to the Discworld, as it has a profound influence on everything from politics and religion to scientific discovery (81-82). The scholarly work on the Watch series mainly focuses on the earlier installments in the series. For example, “At Times Like This It’s Traditional That a Hero Comes Forth’: Romance and Identity in Terry Pratchett’s Guards! Guards!” by Emily Lavin Leverett analyses the Vimes’ emergence as a heroic character in the very first Watch novel, and argues that Pratchett subverts typical narrative convention by not adhering to the typical heroic archetypes the narrative offers him by setting him up to save the city and his love interest from a dragon. This essay will, at least in part, further explore how Vimes continues to challenge the typical 5 narrative archetypes in the later novels, when his character has had time to evolve even further. Some scholarly work has also been written on the two novels subject to this essay: ‘’The Watchman and the Hippopotamus: Art, Play, and Otherness in Thud!’’ by Caroline Webb examines how Pratchett writes about racial conflict, and how the power of art, and stories, plays a large part in both perpetuating and solving the conflict in Thud!. In the article “Civil Discobedience or War, Terrorism and Unrest In Terry Pratchett’s Discworld” Eve Smith uses Night Watch to demonstrate how Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory regarding the carnivalesque can be applied to the breakdown of law and order in the novel, and also argues that the concerns presented in Night Watch regarding said breakdown of law and order, as well as individual responsibility, reflect similar concerns in our real world (30).
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