Over the last several days, Jenny and Abigail and I have at intervals treated with a lively contempt various cliches of modern literature. One of the many mentioned was that of the hero or heroine discovering that he or she possesses the capacity to tame and ride a mythical monster, usually a dragon. I am not saying that in every case this cannot be done originally or sensibly; merely that it has become such a common occurrence that, at least since Eragon, few readers anymore will find themselves taken aback by this "twist" in the story.
What has brought us to this point, where the taming of a fascinating and awe-inspiring beast of fantasy and mythicality tempts us only to yawn? Has mere overuse of a concept stolen all thrill from us? Is such a thrill to be attributed only to the novelty of a thing?
I postulate - nay, I would assert the ways of God to men, and justify eternal Providence, but Milton has done so already; so I shall in my smallish turn assert that the extraordinary fails to be interesting because we have ceased to be interested. What is humorous and entertaining, original and earth-shattering about the interaction between a man and a dragon are not scales nor tails nor claws nor the number of Kelvins contained within the breath of the latter. If the beast is able to converse, then the conversation catches our fancies by telling the tale of Persons everywhere conversing, their foibles and follies and faults. If the beast is dumb and raging, it throws sparks very like a fulfillment of the dominion mandate, telling the tale of reason with love exerted over bestial force. But whatever the size or anthropomorphisms of the dragon, it is not the dragon - never the dragon - that fascinates. The dragon draws the edge of the shadow of truth the tale tells, but it is the man who is most fantastical.
Writers and readers alike, I venture, have lost sight of this, and this is why dragon-riders and all similarly fantastical things wind up so tediously written and tiresome to read. Throw a dragon in merely as a fail-safe to make a story fantastical ("add one dragon and a pinch of villainye"), and the story will be only as fantastical as a dragon. This is why our tales of dragons (along with our sappy romantic novels) reek of tediousness and sawdust when they should ring like bells. And if the writer cannot see beyond the mere trappings of fantasy to the fantastical nature of man, rendered twice-fantastical by virtue of both its fantasticality and its reality, then the reader will not. Some books, as one author put it, tell the truth about its characters, whereas others convey a picture of its author; if the author is bored, the story holds true. A thousand ridden dragons will only multiply the dullness factor a thousandfold.
“It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin,
a creature who does not exist.
It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist
and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't.”
