Narrative

Animation – Narrative Short Film

For this group animation project, we told the story of stress and the benefit of help.

English – Lyrical Essay

For the Narrative Unit in English, we were tasked with writing a lyrical essay about any topic of our choice. Lyrical essays are essays written in a more poetic style than a standard essay. This could be done by playing with poetic devices such as rhythm, rhymes, and alliteration, or through poetic structure. I chose to write about fairytales, because I like telling stories and I thought it would be cool to learn about a form of storytelling that I was less familiar with.

Fairy-tales.

Faerie1 stories.

Adventures into the fantastical,
into the winds of the Faerie.

J. R. R. Tolkein said that he could not put the wind into words,
that to do so would defy the very concept.2

But the wind blew through his words nonetheless.

I agree that the wind of the Faerie,
the thing that most surely defines a Faerie story,
is,
in itself,
indescribable.

But it is something that can be felt throughout the stories,
blowing a magical bliss into the sails of adventure.

The air that blows through the Perilous Realm,
through which the story leads,
is as hard to see as air.

Air cannot be seen,
but the things which it carries and blows,
the things that billow and flutter,
the birds that glide,
the ships that sail,
can show us.

That is to say,
looking through examples of Faerie stories,
finding a common element,
can lead us to an outline of the wind.

If we dive deep enough into Faerie,
we may even be able to feel it blow around us.

1Faerie: used here and by Tolkien to mean the land of Faerie, the creatures within it, and its magic.
2John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” in Essays Presented to Charles Williams (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947), 38-89
***

Over the Garden Wall3
fits all Tolkien’s measures of a Faerie story4,
except perhaps its age.

In it,
we see two brothers venture off into the woods,
ending up on an incredible journey that touches on the nature of man.

The story gives a feeling of slowness,
of ease,
but an ease shrouded in mystery, 
something just out of reach.

But there is a necessity for patience,
to let go of the quick-paced narrative arc,
a relaxing of pace,
lulling the audience into a slow drift through the story.

The hint of something bigger,
hidden behind shorter,
peaceful adventures,
gives an ease to the unraveling,
like gently pulling on a ribbon and watching the bow come undone.

3Over the Garden Wall, created by Patrick McHale (2014; Cartoon Network, 2014), Streaming
4Tolkien describes Faerie stories as being a story of human characters adventuring into the Perilous Realm. This is a vague summary, and there are many other qualifying and disqualifying factors, but the wind is one of the most emphasized by Tolkien, and one that is surely present here.
***

The Golden Key5
is said by Tolkien to be a Faerie story6,
portraying the magical side of Faerie stories,
along with the mystical.

It tells the tale of Mossy and Tangle,
who went into the land of the Faerie,
found their way to adventure and to each other,
searched for one thing,
then another,
got split up,
then searched for each other,
kept on looking,
found their way back together,
and that for which they had been searching.

The story seems lost in itself,
at first.

Mossy and Tangle are part of the seeming nonsense that piles on like an overgrowth until the reader has to just accept the absurdity,
and wait for the knot to work itself out.

Only at the end does the path become clear,
do the events come together to mean something,
the rainbow,
the old man,
the older man,
the oldest man,
the land of shadows,
the aging of Mossy and Tangle.

Only then does the destination of the wind come into view.

5George MacDonald, The Golden Key (London: Alexander Strahan & Co., 1868)
6Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories”
***

The wind is not something to be rushed.

It blows as it blows,
with the stories.

It can fill our sails,
carry our wings,
we can find our own way,
but the wind will blow as it blows.

It can blow us somewhere new,
somewhere we can escape.

It is peaceful to see where it takes us,
let it take us,
and see where it blows.



Bibliography

MacDonald, George. The Golden Key. London: Alexander Strahan & Co., 1868.
	This is the story of Mossy, a boy who finds the Golden Key, and Tangle, the girl that follows him. Mossy finds the key at the foot of a rainbow which looks as though there are figures walking up it. Tangle gets lost after being driven from her house by fairies who do not like the unkemptness of her house. Mossy is named for the moss that would grow on him after reading on a mossy rock for long amounts of time. Tangle is thus called because of her unkempt hair. They are brought together, after being lost in the woods, by Grandmother and her flying bird fishes. Grandmother sends them on their way to find what the Key unlocks. They wander into a valley of shadows and begin to long to be where the shadows are cast from. As they emerge from the shadows, the shadows grow frightening. They emerge alone, and, by now, very old. To find each other, they decide to look for the land of shadows, for they know the other will try to go there, too. Tangle meets the Old Man of the Sea, who she sees as old. He sends her to the Old Man of the Earth, an older man, for he doesn’t know the way to the place from which the shadows fall. Tangle meets the Old Man of the Earth and he seems young to her. He does not know how to get to the land from which the shadows fall, so sends her to the Old Man of the Fire, the oldest man. To Tangle, he looks like a child. He does know the way and sends her to follow a white snake that will guide her. Mossy, after leaving the valley of shadows, meets the Old Man of the Sea, but sees him as young. The Old Man of the Sea thus gives Mossy the ability to walk on water and points him to a rainbow. When Mossy gets there, there is a keyhole. Beyond the door that it opens is Tangle, who is no longer old. There is one more door that the key opens and the walk up the stairs beyond it and up the rainbow beyond the clouds. I read this source because it was mentioned in Tolkien’s essay, but I kept it because of how it embodies the wind and how it all ties together in the end so that the symbolism behind it all becomes clear.

McHale, Patrick. Over the Garden Wall. 2014, Season 1, Episodes 1 – 10, “The Old Grist Mill”, “Hard times at the Huskin’ Bee”, “Schooltown Follies”, “Songs of the Dark Lantern”, “Mad Love”, “Lullaby in Frogland”, “The Ringing of the Bell”, “Babes in the Woods”, “Into the Unknown”, “The Unknown”. Aired November 3 to November 7, 2014.
	In this story, two brothers get lost in the Unknown and have to find their way back. This is something that I watched not long before this assignment. When reading Tolkien’s essay, this miniseries came to mind as a great example of a story with the wind blowing through the perilous realm. I also thought it would be interesting to consider fairy-tales from different eras and different media.

Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel. “On Fairy Stories.” In Essays Presented to Charles William, 38-89. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947.
	This source describes what makes a fairy-tale, what their origins are, what their uses are. Tolkien's discussion of the wind of the Perilous Realm is particularly important in his descriptions. This source provided other sources, such as The Golden Key. It also served as a guide of measurement of a fairy-tale. This source was my main source of inspiration.