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Wilderness As a Space of Becoming in Tolkien's the Children of Húrin and Whedon's Firefly and Serenity

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Wilderness As a Space of Becoming in Tolkien's the Children of Húrin and Whedon's Firefly and Serenity View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Valparaiso University Journal of Tolkien Research Volume 10 Issue 1 J.R.R. Tolkien and the works of Joss Article 6 Whedon 2020 Peril and Possibility: Wilderness as a Space of Becoming in Tolkien's The Children of Húrin and Whedon's Firefly and Serenity Philip J. Vogel [email protected] Kenton L. Sena [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Vogel, Philip J. and Sena, Kenton L. (2020) "Peril and Possibility: Wilderness as a Space of Becoming in Tolkien's The Children of Húrin and Whedon's Firefly and Serenity," Journal of Tolkien Research: Vol. 10 : Iss. 1 , Article 6. Available at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol10/iss1/6 This Peer-Reviewed Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Christopher Center Library at ValpoScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Tolkien Research by an authorized administrator of ValpoScholar. For more information, please contact a ValpoScholar staff member at [email protected]. Vogel and Sena: Peril and Possibility: Wilderness in Tolkien and Whedon PERIL AND POSSIBILITY: WILDERNESS AS A SPACE OF BECOMING IN TOLKIEN’S THE CHILDREN OF HÚRIN AND WHEDON’S FIREFLY AND SERENITY INTRODUCTION Wilderness has long preoccupied the Western mind, and for just as long, competing views on the nature of wilderness have vied for predominance. While they have ebbed and flowed through time, George Stankey proposes that these competing views have promoted an ambivalent attitude towards wilderness: “Throughout history, the conception of wilderness as the locus of evil has been countered, if not offset, by the conception of wilderness as sanctuary” (24). Both conceptions of wilderness have deep roots in Western culture. In the Bible, wilderness appears as a place of desolation, condemned by God, but also as a place of purification and refuge (Stankey 12). While God condemns Israel to wander in the desert for 40 years, He also prepares them for the Promised Land during this time. Although Satan tempts Jesus while he fasts in the wilderness for 40 days, angels surround him to bring him comfort. These conceptions also have roots in classical tradition. For Oedipus, the wilderness represents a place of condemnation—where his parents leave him to die and where he later flees as an adult to avoid his prophesied doom— and a place of deliverance—where the shepherds find him (Fimi 44-45). Early European and Colonial American conceptions of the wilderness generally follow this trend. Beowulf, in which the monster Grendel is the mearcstapa (literally, “border-walker”), imagines wilderness as a place of peril (Flieger 95, Stankey 14). The apprehension of wilderness made its way into the New World through the Puritan colonists. When they landed, a veritable wilderness stretched before them: “Besids, what could they see but a hideous & desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts & willd men? And what multituds ther might be of them they knew not” (Bradford). The famous Puritan minister Cotton Mather described wilderness as a habitation of “Dragons,” “Droves of Devils,” and “Fiery Flying Serpents” (Manning 25). As scientific knowledge of the world develops, later intellectual traditions, in particular Romanticism and Transcendentalism, hold wilderness in a higher regard, understanding nature as sublime (Stankey 15-16). For example, Henry David Thoreau believed nature is God’s purest creation; in order to draw near to God, one must draw near to nature. The tension between wilderness as a place of peril and as a place of purity has persisted throughout the history of Western civilization, but the exploration of this tension has been nuanced. For example, the monster Grendel in Beowulf is a prototypical Wild Man, who shares a kinship with Enkidu from The Epic of Gilgamesh and King Nebuchadnezzar from the Book of Daniel. In “Tolkien’s Wild Men” Verlyn Flieger describes the Wild Man: “A refugee from civilization, he is a Published by ValpoScholar, 2020 1 Journal of Tolkien Research, Vol. 10 [2020], Iss. 1, Art. 6 prowler lurking both actually and metaphorically on the borders of society. His home is the forest, the wilderness outside the boundaries set by civilization” (95). Flieger also notes that the archetype of the Wild Man encompasses a wide range of characters—everyone from werewolves to the noble outlaw Robin Hood (98-99). Through these wide-ranging expressions of the archetype, stories make various claims about the nature of wilderness, how man inhabits wilderness, and how wilderness shapes man. In The Children of Húrin, and Firefly and Serenity, J.R.R. Tolkien and Joss Whedon contribute to the nuances found in the literary traditions of wilderness by emphasizing wilderness a place of becoming, rich with possibility and fraught with peril. A GEOGRAPHY OF WILDERNESS The geographies of The Children of Húrin, and of Firefly and Serenity, share similarities that allow each work to unfold in a setting characterized by being on the border. In Shepherd Book’s monologue, Whedon maps the ’Verse: After the Earth was used up, we found a new solar system and hundreds of new Earths were terraformed and colonized. The central planets formed the Alliance and decided all the planets had to join under their rule. There was some disagreement on that point. After the War, many of the Independents who had fought and lost drifted to the edges of the system, far from Alliance control. Out here, people struggled to get by with the most basic technologies; a ship would bring you work, a gun would help you keep it. A captain’s goal was simple: find a crew, find a job, keep flying. (“The Train Job” 1.2, “Bushwhacked” 1.3, “Our Mrs. Reynolds” 1.6) The ’Verse contains three distinct regions arranged in concentric rings. The central planets comprise civilization. The border planets, characterized by a mix of civilization and wilderness, lie beyond these. While the Alliance maintains a presence, the border planets provide enough anonymity for less-than-honest people to conduct business without the scrutiny of the Alliance. The rim planets occur in the outermost ring of the ’Verse. Here, Reavers rule the skies, terrorizing the nearby border planets. With the exception of some stops on Alliance-controlled planets, most of Firefly and Serenity occurs either in space or in the outer rings of the ’Verse. The Children of Húrin shares a general geography characterized by civilization surrounded by a border region where monsters press in from beyond the frontier. The Elven kingdoms of Menegroth and Nargothrond represent civilization (Fimi 47). Beyond the woods of Doriath, “men had dwelt in scattered homesteads; they were of Haleth’s folk for the most part, but owned no lord, and they lived both by hunting and husbandry. […] But most were now destroyed, or https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol10/iss1/6 2 Vogel and Sena: Peril and Possibility: Wilderness in Tolkien and Whedon had fled into Brethil, and all that region lay under the fear of Orcs, and of outlaws” (Tolkien 98). These scattered homesteads, built on the more primitive technologies of hunting and husbandry, stand in contrast to the “marvels of Menegroth” where Túrin learned “much lore, hearing eagerly the histories of ancient days and great deeds of old” and “woodcraft and archery and (which he liked more) the handling of swords” (Tolkien 76, 81). Dimitra Fimi describes this wilderness setting as “threatening, infested with orcs and other creatures of Morgoth and harbouring people that have been corrupted by darkness, like Eöl the Dark Elf, or bands of outlaws and criminals” (48). Both Whedon and Tolkien create geographies that set the stage for the drama of their stories to unfold on the border, resulting in an interesting examination of how protagonists outside of civilization face the opportunity to become monstrous or heroic. LIVING ON THE BORDER Both Serenity Captain Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds and Túrin choose to live on the border rather than in civilization. While Mal makes the choice that leads him to the border before the events of Firefly and Serenity, flashbacks, as well as events and conversations that take place after he has made the choice, clarify his decision. Mal obviously disagrees with the Alliance, who he says wanted to “unite all the planets under one rule so that everybody can be interfered with or ignored equally” (“The Train Job” 1.2). When the Alliance mobilized to conquer the other planets, Mal joined the Browncoats, a group of resistance fighters who defend their independence. Even after losing the war, Mal chooses independence by purchasing a ship, finding a crew, and making a living by doing jobs of questionable legality. He prefers to pass his days in space and among the border planets rather than among the civilized planets under the rule of the Alliance. When Inara says to Simon “You’re lost in the woods. We all are. Even the captain. The only difference is, he likes it that way,” Mal interrupts, “No, the only difference is, the woods are the only place I can see a clear path” (“Serenity” 1.1). For Mal, the border represents the opportunity to maintain his own perspective. Like Mal, Túrin exhibits pride and stubbornness in his choice to leave Doriath. Throughout his time in Thingol’s domain, Túrin chafes at the hesitance of the Elves to wage open war against Morgoth and spends most of his days in the North-marches fighting Orcs (Mitchell 92). Jesse Mitchell sees this as Túrin’s raison d’etre: “The only clear objective that Túrin consistently maintains is his desire to affront Morgoth” (Mitchell 104).
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