At the beginning of most fantasy books, the hero is living an ordinary, rather boring life. Perhaps he is a hobbit named Bilbo who lives in a hole in the ground and enjoys eating second breakfasts and watching the sunset. Perhaps he is Harry Potter, living in a cupboard under the stairs and lorded over by his nasty aunt and uncle. Perhaps our heroes are Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, four children staying with an old man in a big mysterious house, waiting for the war to be over so that they can go back to their parents in London.

But this uneventful life won’t go on forever: Adventure is always waiting in the hands of a wizard or in the depths of a wardrobe and it is bound to start sooner or later—usually sooner.

An adventure can start in many ways. Harry Potter’s adventure starts when a giant barges in and tells him he is a wizard, and whisks him away to a world that exists right next to ours, only we can’t see it. In this story, our hero cannot wait to begin his adventure; he wants nothing more than to leave his life of drudgery behind and start a new life of wonder and excitement. He does not realize how dangerous this adventure might turn out to be.

For the hobbit in the hole in the ground, his adventure begins when a wizard (wizards again! I suppose wizards and adventures are a bit of a package deal) and several dwarves arrive and tell him that they are going to go steal some gold from a dragon, and the hobbit is to be their thief. Bilbo, a comfortable old fellow, does not quite want to go on an adventure, and yet there is something in him that longs for it. For many of us, this is the case with the adventure of life; it seems so hard, so troublesome, that we’d rather stay out of it, and yet at the same time it’s a magnet for our souls, and we cannot resist.

For as Pope Benedict XVI says, we were not made for comfort: we were made for greatness. We are meant for adventures, for quests only achieved with great difficulty, for great victories won on the battlefield. As much as we love the Shire, sanctification does not come there: the way to God is found on the forgotten paths up and down the misty mountains and past the dragon’s lair. And so, as frustrating as these adventures might be, we can’t stop getting ourselves into them.

In The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, the four children do not choose to start their adventure: they stumble into it by accident, quite literally, when they blunder into a wardrobe and find themselves in a whole different world. These children have gone through a portal.

Portals are interesting things, and many fantasy books have them. They are the point of entry between two worlds, the spot where our normal, mundane life crosses over something new and exciting, like crossways, or like the solution on a graph. Oftentimes these portals are mirrors, lakes, the flat surface of water: something that symbolizes passage into something that reflects the thing you left, and yet is completely different. Sometimes the portal is a book a doorway a tree, or a train; all of which are, of course, kinds of portals in real life as well: signs that you are crossing from something to something else. They are also often a point of no return. Once you’ve crossed through a portal, you can’t go back to your old life until your adventure is over and your quest achieved.

Even when the hero of a fantasy book is not literally going through something that allows them to pass from one world and into another, they are still in a sense crossing a portal. They are traveling out of the world that is familiar, comfortable, perhaps not very fun but probably not very dangerous; and into a world that is new and exciting, full of possibilities and adventure. Perhaps our hero doesn’t like it very much, perhaps he’d rather go home, but it’s too late now: He is on an adventure, and our story has begun!

The books begin on a night of riding stars when two squirrels—an old priest and a young captain—rescue a baby squirrel with honey-colored fur who has washed up on the Mistmantle shore. The baby grows up to be Urchin, hero of Mistmantle. Urchin, with the help of an adorable assortment of friends that include prickly hedgehogs, steady moles, and easy-going otters, saves Mistmantle time and again from threats both without and within.

The characters in this book are some of our dearest literary friends in the genre. There is nothing quite like the laughter and noble-heartedness of Captain Padra who mentors Urchin, serves his king faithfully, and fights to defend Mistmantle from evil. The goodness and humility of King Crispin are unforgettable, and the love, service, and safety he gives his subjects make him one of the most beloved kings we know. There is Urchin, the hero whose loyalty to king and captain is unshakable, and Fingal, whose daring heroics contrast with his lolloping humor in a rollicking combination that sings with life. And it is not only the animals who live and breathe, but the very Island of Mistmantle itself: from Anemone Wood to Watchtop Hill to the beautiful Mistmantle Tower over the sea, the dearly beloved island plays as pivotal a role as the characters.

The plot is also well done. All five books can stand alone because each has its own adventure and resolution, but in a deeper way, they build on each other as the characters mature and grow in their relationships. A banished captain, a lost heir, an evil host of ravens, perilous voyages, and heartbreaking sacrifices weave together in a story that holds the reader fast.

Finally, the truths woven into both plot and character are at once inspiring, uplifting, and achingly beautiful without being heavy-handed. These books are a joyous celebration of love and loyalty, heroism and courage. They display the value of home, the immeasurable gift of willing sacrifice, and the unfailing love of the Heart that holds us all.

It is easy to forget sometimes that not all fantasy has to be long, epic, dark; not all fantasy has to take itself so seriously. One can build a good bridge just as well while laughing as they can while crying. One can show the battle between good and evil in a way that inspires joy rather than seriousness. While The Mistmantle Chronicles do have villains, and while these villains commit terrible acts of evil, we’ve found that they don’t stick in your mind the way the heroes do. It is not darkness, but happiness that pervades the pages: The happiness of the children zooming down long staircases on pots and pans, exploring an underwater cave, racing up the hilltop to watch the stars shooting through the sky. The happiness of the captains of Mistmantle swapping jokes while preparing for a ceremony. The nostalgic joy of years passing, of the animals getting older, of young ones who were pages growing up to get pages of their own. The soft heart-wrenching happiness of a beloved character’s death, when the survivors recall all the good that character has done for Mistmantle. And when at last we finish the final book, we are reminded how good and joyous life is.

C.S. Lewis once said that “no book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally—and often far more—worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond”1, and so far these books have met this standard bountifully. As a family read aloud years ago, they delighted and inspired everyone from seven years to thirty, and continue to do so. Not long ago, one younger sibling returned to the first book and proceeded to read the whole series four times on repeat. If you make this a whole family read aloud or simply devour it yourself for the joy of it, you will be wrapped by the mists, welcomed by the island, inspired by the characters, and loved by the Heart that broke with love for us, yet loves us still.

The resonant beauty of the fantasy genre comes from its echoes of the eternal. The treacherous quest through the shadowlands echoes our life’s journey. The moment at the end of the long battle against darkness when the sun rises and help comes from beyond the hills echoes the hope of Christ’s return. One of the ways fantasy achieves these resounding echoes is through certain character tropes. One of them is the Everyman, as we have previously seen. Another is the King.

The King is the character who sacrifices himself to save his people or his kingdom from death. He is the Knight who rescues the Princess from the Dragon, and the figure who represents Christ. Usually he is instrumental in bringing about the necessary redemption and peace of the ending. The King trope can take many forms across the genres and even within fantasy, but he is easiest to spot within the fantasy genre because there he is often a literal king and his impact is greater.

Consider Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia, who is perhaps the most explicit Christ figure in all fantasy. He is the great lion who sacrifices himself to ransom the traitorous but repentant Edmund Pevensie, for, as Aslan says, “when a willing victim is killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”1 Not only does he die a sacrificial death, but he rises again—“shining in the sunrise, larger than they had ever seen him before, shaking his mane”2—and defeats the White Witch, ending the endless winter.

Another character of this trope is King Crispin from The Mistmantle Chronicles, a lesser known but greatly beloved king of fantasy. He enters the story by saving a life from the sea, and goes on to become a good and noble King who rules his island with justice, mercy, and wisdom. Through his sacrifice, one of his subjects, lost and close to death, is brought home and restored to life.

“You’ve already given your life for the island, every day. Now you’re giving your death.”

“It’s all I have left to give,” said Crispin. “And I want you to understand that if it only saved Sepia’s life, it would be worth it. But it isn’t just Sepia—it’s all she will bring to the island, and all and all our future as an island. … The Heart has a way of turning things around. Sorrow before joy. … It can only be right if I die.”3

Prince Smalls from The Green Ember is also a manifestation of this figure. The hope of The Mending is rested in him, and when he is carried off by the enemy while endeavoring to rescue prisoners, despair threatens to overwhelm his cause. For long he is thought to be dead, but healing comes and it is this resurrected king who strikes the final blow to end the evil Morbin Blackhawk and establish the Mending once and for all.

Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings is another such character. First the rugged and unpraised Ranger defending the Shire; finally the majestic King of Gondor whose hands bring peace and healing and life to his people. In this he echoes Christ’s first coming as a servant, and his second coming as the king. Aragorn also sacrifices himself to a figurative death when he traverses the Paths of the Dead, which no other mortal man could endure, to hold the forgotten people to their oath, rescue Gondor from certain doom, and grant them peace.

“Sing and rejoice, ye people of the Tower Guard,

for watch hath not been in vain,

and the Black Gate is broken,

and your King hath passed through,

and he is victorious.

Sing and be glad, all ye children of the West,

for your King shall come again,

and he shall dwell among you

all the days of your life.”4

However, the King is not always so explicit. Character tropes are not rigid: They overlap and interweave and can manifest in different characters in different ways. In many stories, the King and the Everyman both are represented in one character. Think of Janner Wingfeather from The Wingfeather Saga, who is a distinct Everyman, and yet whose sacrifice brings life and healing. Or Aidan Errolson from The Wilderking Trilogy, who defeats the giant, wins peace, and becomes the king. Or The Red Crosse Knight, who wanders from the path in Everyman fashion, but defeats the dragon as does the King. In each of these also, the echo of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice and our ultimate hope remains.

And so the King rides through the fantasy genre, bringing hope out of despair, salvation out of sacrifice, and life out of death. As we read, we are reminded of Christ’s sacrifice. We hear our yearning cry caught up and carried on in the longing of the soul for Christ’s Return, and we catch a fleeting glimpse of that joy which waits beyond the veil. In the shuddering crack of the Stone Table, we hear a faint echo of the rending of the curtain in the temple. In the ripple of the King’s standard upon the corsair’s mast, we hear in faint echo the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God.

“Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and thigh a name written:

KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.”5

A trope is a symbol or theme that occurs over and over again in literature. As we familiarize ourselves with specific genres, fantasy in particular, these common tropes become increasingly apparent. This is because, of course, all fantasy is telling the same story — the story of the Knight defeating the dragon and saving the Princess, the story of Jesus Christ defeating Satan and saving us. To portray this, writers use the same symbols, often unconsciously. Perhaps the most common character symbol, or trope, or archetype in fantasy is the Everyman. The Red Crosse Knight. Janner Wingfeather. Frodo Baggins. Beowulf. Harry Potter.

You might notice something about all these examples I mentioned. They’re all the main characters; they’re all rather likable, occasionally annoying, very brave people who make mistakes but whom we all relate to and wish to emulate.

This is because the Everyman is us: Just a normal person with flaws and virtues and a longing to be good, who is required to do things he is perhaps not equipped to do at first and yet accomplishes it in the end.

Like us, the Everyman always goes on a quest. If you look at it, you’ll see that all these quests are thinly veiled and terribly beautiful portrayals of the Quest of Life. Frodo Baggins making his weary way through fire and destruction to throw the Ring into Mt Doom hits home when we think of our own journey through this “vale of tears” toward sanctification and the casting off of sin. When we remember that we are Everyman, and that Everyman is us, it is easier to see all of life as it truly is: a quest to destroy darkness and embrace light. Household chores, attempts to defuse arguments, persevering on hard days, these are not simply mundane tasks. They are the steps and trials along a great quest. Every grace we are given is a sword, every fault we conquer is a dragon killed. Every step we take toward virtue is a step toward Mt Doom, toward the “Joy beyond the walls of this world,” to quote Tolkien.

For are we not also expected to slay, with the help of the Knight, our own personal dragons? This is why the Everyman always slays his dragon — but with divine help. Harry Potter slays the Basilisk with the help of a magical sword. Beowulf, in a bleaker take, can only defeat the dragons temporarily because he is still waiting for the Knight to come. Peter fights the White Witch with the assistance of Aslan. Urchin saves Mistmantle, aided by King Crispin. Janner Wingfeather achieves his quest through the guidance and example of Artham and Podo.

The Everyman — this symbol of us, of mankind — cannot defeat the dragon on his own. Like us, he needs the Knight to help him. But always, in the end, he overcomes his temptations and gives his all to overcome the darkness. The Everyman never has a tragic end, for the Everyman always, after much hardship and perservering, decides to follow the King. So, while the Everyman shows us our own humanity in all our faults, he also shows us the good that we are called to do and be in the name of the King.

The Everyman of literature is friendly and inspiring because he is us and at the same time better than us. We relate with Janner Wingfeather’s annoyance at his brother, and yet weep in awe of his sacrifice. We are humbled when the Red Crosse Knight falls, because we know we would have fallen too, and yet we are encouraged when he overcomes his trials and rides at last to victory. He has fallen just as we have, and yet he rises and slays his dragon just as we can also with the help of our King.

Beneath the mighty bridges we have been considering, side by side in the same genre, there is a grievous tangle of ill-formed, collapsing, and shadowed bridges that scarcely deserve the title, and yet often rise first to mind when the genre is mentioned. Of these there are two different kinds: First, because any clumsy wordsmith can write fantasy without having to do any sort of research or undergo much learning of the craft, many shallow, empty bridges are churned out of weak timbers that collapse at the first step, rudely dousing the brave adventurer in the cold flood below. The second kind are the sort of bridges that, though bad, are built well. These pose an even greater danger than the shallow and empty bridges aforementioned. Instead of collapsing immediately, they draw the adventurer on into a land of shadow that only pretends to be fairyland, marooning him on bleak and deceptive shores where knights are defeated by goblins and dragons and black magic, yet seeming so lovely all the while that, if the reader is heedless, he will barely notice.

And so we see that some fantasy is deserving of being cast out and unread — indeed, the worst debasements are often rooted in this genre. It is a sad thing that such degraded mimicry can drag down the glorious heights of the genre to manifold scorn and rejection. But it is interesting to consider why two such different kinds of story exist within the same genre.

Fantasy is probably the strongest genre, and this can be attributed to allegory, which is a way of speaking truth. When fantasy writers fail to understand allegory, their fantasy fails. If the dragon kills the knight and eats the princess at the end of the day, the story has told a grievous lie and defied eternal truth.

As we have seen, allegory is the elemental beams, strong and grand, that form fantasy’s bridge. Because the beams are so powerful, it is more detrimental to the bridge when they are used in the wrong way. Their weight is misunderstood, they are joined improperly, and their fall causes greater destruction than would a bridge of mere sticks. The sharper the sword, the better it will defend — but if ill handled, it will slay more easily than a dull sword. The hotter the fire, the better it will save a man from freezing — but if ill handled, it may burn down his house. Even so, if the sword is not sharp, where is the defense of the innocent? If the fire is not hot enough to warm the man in his hour of need, will he not lie dead beneath the ice? Fantasy, like any great power, can be terrible when in the hand of darkness — but in the hand of light, its goodness and beauty are unsurpassed.

So be wary of the broken bridges. They are many, and they are treacherous. But do not give up the quest because of them: seek ever more diligently for the true, good, and beautiful bridges that are the height of fantasy. And when you find the soaring span into real fairyland, bring with you the song of the fairies to sing to us, and the sword of the high king to lay at the feet of the true High King.

The fairy is without a doubt the world’s most underrated controversy. If that name were to be shouted this moment in a crowded street, the number of dissimilar associations it would evoke might range from tall majestic elves to sparkling Lilliputians with insect wings and scantily clad bodies. To neither of these in particular have I dedicated this essay. Contrarily, I have in this paper attempted to sketch a rough outline of the history of original localities in literature. That is to say, the books in which the author makes up a place to set the story without reference by name or description to one that had been used before. Such a thing, I argue, can be properly called fairyland, at least in the way that a great-nephew of our first president might still be called a Washington. The exact works I have cited as being the first or representative examples of various literary forms display only my own opinion of debates beyond the scope of this essay, but the reader will, I hope, accept them as providing a general outline for the progression of writerly conventions. In undertaking this timeline, I hope to lay the backdrop for a brief examination of the particular qualities of the fantasy novel, the literary form with which “The Bridge-Builders” is chiefly concerned. Before I begin, I would like to thank Fiona and Selah for inviting me to their lovely Substack and beg their forgiveness for a rather hasty essay. I hope the ideas presented will make up for any clumsiness in my writing and editing, both of which have been rushed as I struggled to complete this project before the chaos of December.

There are many literary devices, new and startling when first invented, that have become so commonplace by process of time that the modern reader hardly notices them. The realism of plot, which marks so many modern novels and which Northrop Frye terms a “narrative construct,” is totally absent from the fiction of previous ages. Although realism of character is a much older idea, Aristotle, in his “Poetics,” argues that it too is of very minor importance when compared with other aspects of the work. The character himself, inasmuch as he is the original production of the author’s mind, is a relatively modern invention. The advent of the “original” character in the West is disputed, but it is sometimes placed as late as Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.” Previous to this the famous literary names of the western canon were comprised of popular historical or mythological figures alongside stock characters. Otherwise, it was the common practice of medieval romances to create allegorical characters who often represented aspects of the protagonist himself and would not have been independently feasible as realistic or complete personalities. To differentiate between these and previous works, books that treated entirely novel characters were named, simply, “novels.” A similar development may be observed, albeit rather earlier, in the incorporation of the setting as a dimension of the plot.

In ancient Greece, the location of a story was as inflexible as its characters. The Greek playwright or poet would no sooner set a previously unheard-of stage for his drama than he would invent a new god to play a role in it. However fantastical they may seem, the Isle of Circe, Mount Olympus, the River Styx, and other such locations were not only established subjects of the oral tradition but also physical locations that one might still visit today. The exception, it could be argued, was Plato. Though neither he nor Socrates produced works of story independent of philosophy, it is perhaps in Plato’s writings that we first see the creation of fictional worlds as an imaginative exercise. In the Phaedo, Socrates repurposes the Greek mythology of the underworld to create a largely original vision of Earth’s subterranean depths, and in The Republic we find both The Allegory of the Cave and the city of Kollipolis as examples of purely speculative descriptions of places even the author does not claim to be real. As to the popularity of such innovations, the fertile soil of the Athenian imagination was ripe with hemlock for their originator. It is perhaps wise to clarify for the careful reader that I do not suggest that no Greek work of poetry or drama ever has even passing reference to a field or tree that can not be exactly charted, but merely that whenever such a place is given a name, it is sure to be one that is repeated in the given oral cycle elsewhere. In any case, it is not from the Greek or the Latin tradition that the fantasy world traces its lineage. That this is so can be seen even in modern works of fantasy, whose imaginative background is always so rooted in the Anglo-Saxon or Celtic modes that references to, and even sentiments of, the Greco-Roman seem to be extinct in them. Instead, the inspiration of the fantasy genre, and most particularly the nature of its setting, begins in fairytales.

The fairy story was, in essence, the introduction of a new world into literature. A world whose expression was finally breaking free from pagan rituals that had previously confined it and was beginning to express itself in universal terms. This was the world that came bursting from the hearths of homesteads across Europe like a wildfire, as evangelists came journeying across the world preaching of a God who, like the fairytale, was outside of time; a kingdom that, like a fairytale kingdom, had no place in the mutable world; and a prince who, like the fairytale everyman, was the death and resurrection of all. Similarly, we see in the Celtic tradition an analogous “parallel world.” Here the fascinating new medium of the fairy tale was set alongside the present world so that when a knight arose who was sick with a longing that the humdrum of everyday life was insufficient to cure, the author might catch him up to a plain above and treat with timeless truths the matter of a temporal illness. In such a mode, the pre-Christian could be faced with a descendant of Cain, and thereby the ephemeral misfortune of paganism could become one of the many antagonists to an everlasting truth. Eventually this newfound comfort for strange and unheard-of lands would bleed into the medieval romance, as well as the Imram tradition to the north. As Beowulf the pagan was faced with hell and could not defeat it alone, so too the legalistic Gawain with his Old Testament error was met with a monster from a mysterious chapel to expose his shortcoming. The connection between the romance and fairyland is perhaps strongest in “The Faerie Queen,” where the place of all its heroes’ adventures explicitly bears the name. However, the Romance did not generally seem to distinguish between the two geographies. Here no convenient portals marked the ending of the common world and the beginning of the fairy one. Until, that is, George MacDonald officiated a final marriage between the medieval romance and the Celtic fairyland in his book “Phantastes.” Traveling from fairytales to Tolkien, we find here a final milestone. Although he was inspired by the medieval romance, there are many innovations on their regular conventions present in Phantastes. Following the pattern of the Green Knight in Sir Gawain and the King of the Otherworld in Sir Orfeo, the character who represents the quest that brings Phantaste’s protagonist Anodos to fairyland appears to him first in his own world and his own home. This pattern, which we might term “the embassy from fairyland,” often provides context or instructions for the knight’s entering fairyland. The Green Knight persuades Gawain to swear that he will seek out his mysterious green chapel by the turn of the next year. Unlike Gawain, who finds himself battling giants and wandering across nations in search of fairyland, Anados is swept into it almost against his will and in a much more fantastical manner. Probably the most recognizable instance of such a portal to fairyland for the modern reader is found in the Narniad. Of course, McDonald’s influence on Lewis in this and other points cannot be understated.

So far, then, we have observed a progression in which the role of the otherworld and the role of our own common one are increasingly distinct. Beginning with the fairytale and the first purely imaginary worlds, we have seen the tie between the otherworld and our own established and defined with increasing clarity. The next innovation natural to this progression, then, would seem to be a story that took place not only in a location but also in a temporal reality of its own. A world which, rather than expressing, as it were, the Aristotelian forms of reality revealed in a simplicity specially adapted to them, sought instead to distill them into a kind of realism by the same process they incarnated themselves into our word in the first place. If the fairytale, by displacing time, was able to sum up timeless reality, the fantasy novel, by reintroducing certain habiliments of realism, revealed another facet of the same prism. Now that unique and powerful freedom the author wields when he is allowed to create the stage as well as order the characters of his drama could be exercised freely throughout the entirety of the plot. Literature, which had always been a world with laws of its own, found in this form a particularly potent expression. Such is my brief and generalized history of original literary geographies.

As to the form itself, the benefits it offers are indisputable. The structure of a story is difficult to imagine without the basic elements of ascent and descent. Drawing heavily from the tendency in fairytales to do likewise, Tolkien frames nearly every leg of his characters’ journey by their elevation. The two most essential elements in Middle Earth’s travel guide, it seems, were the sea and the sea level. One might as well suggest to Gandalf that he travel around a mountain as suggest to Tolkien that the fellowship bypass the whole adventure by riding the eagles to Mordor. Every day of travel leads the wayfarers of Middle-earth either up towards some climactic episode or down into dreary depths in which they must drown or be washed clean and return reborn. Obviously this imagery of elevation is shared across literary genres; however, whereas the symbolic contour of other forms bends around the shorthand symbols of mirrors, doubles, and clocks, the author of fantasy, in addition to these, may shape the world itself to conformity with his story arc.

The wider implications of this freedom are quite possibly the most defining feature of the fantasy. On the one hand the genre provides less opportunity for the sort of wit and genius that is required for other novelists, because for the fantasy author only the consideration of internal consistency restrains the plot. Conversely, this attribute contributes to the unique purity of fairyland. Even the cleverest realistic novelist must allow for some imperfections in either his realism or the value of his story. The construct of realism and that of story seem almost intrinsically at odds with one another, so that to satisfy one often deprives the other. Occasionally, of course, the genius of an author reconciles them for some period of time, as in Jayber Crow, when the protagonist’s name changes by a quite believable circumstance from Jonah to its titular state, thereby fulfilling a threefold symbolic purpose. For he is called Jonah while living in the town of Go Forth, thereby signifying both his identity and his first calling to preach, and later his name passes by natural stages to Jay-bird or Jayber, not only adding an additional layer of associative meaning to his previous calling as a messenger but also representing a critical change in his identity between the various stages of his life. Such a perfect construction, however, cannot be expected universally even from a great author, for it is as much a production of chance as it is of genius. Alternatively, the fantasy may name its characters according to any scheme it chooses and alter them for any purpose. In fairyland the prigs and realists cannot criticize with any validity the circumstances that would, for instance, find a man called at one time “the grey” and at another “the white.” For them to do so would be absurd, for any accusation waged against the realism of events in fairyland must either be based on the conventions of our world, to which the fairy does not answer, or else it will be founded on the laws of the world of which the book itself is the primary source. So long as it maintains internal consistency, therefore, nothing is far-fetched in fantasy.

Furthermore, to say that names and languages are ulterior to the subject of this essay would be to disagree with Tolkien himself, for whom philology was a particularly tempting literary avenue opened by the creation of imaginative worlds. Ultimately the significance of the road we have observed from fairytale to fantasy—looking merely for localities that do not appear to exist outside the author’s mind—marks the path of the whole literary imagination further and further into the great unknown. From the age of travel tales and their untenable lands and peoples, which attained such great popularity in 18th-century Europe, to magnificent forays of science fiction and the fantasy itself, the “displaced romance,” in all its forms, continues as it were the evangelization of fairyland in ever more alien and remote regions of the mind. That it offers a wide array of possibilities that justify its deviation from classical forms is, I think, apparent. What is universally evident, however, is that all these were no more or less the legitimate offspring of the Western literary tradition than any other of the forms that had their birth from it. The family tree of story has boughs that reach at least so far, and the fantasy bears real kinship with the stories that preceded it, although it seems to create a unique world. The heresy of originality is somewhat like a cloning factory. For by refusing to acknowledge any natural parentage, the purely “original” story, by a process of profound irony, finds itself indistinguishable from the rest of its kind. Only by relation does a story have identity, just as it is by relations and parents that a person takes their name and identity. Therefore I conclude that nothing is more akin to a soul than fantasy. Fantasy alone diffuses its literary inheritance into a body entirely its own, and the practice of classical authors to view their characters as “visible souls” has in fantasy an even deeper parallel. Namely, that in the ecosystem of the author’s imagination, the world itself is the soul of a story incarnated and visible to the reader. A soul whose expression is written across a map as a grimace or smile across a face, and which, by its central role in each of the characters’ lives, becomes itself the true protagonist. To upbear the knight on his spiritual quest, the very ground beneath his feet must itself possess a mystical dimension. If the medieval romance provided examples for the aspiring journeyman of fairyland, fantasy is his map. I conjecture, then, that this is the chief value of fantasy, that it tells in microcosm the story—not of everyman—but of every world. That longing for fairyland, which grips the artist like romantic love, has, in the geography of fairyland, an almost tangible consummation.

But in today’s day and age, many people fail to see this fundamental mystery when they read such tales. Many say that fantasy can be rather nice, albeit a bit silly: Good for kids who aren’t yet old enough to read “real” literature, or for adults who need a break and want to escape “real” life. Others say that there simply isn’t a use for fantasy any more: After all, with science and technology getting more advanced with every passing day, what need has anyone for fairy tales? Elves and dragons have been left behind by machines, and princesses and knights are the remnants of a slightly embarrassing childhood.

But machines are transient things that come and go as technology advances. Knights and dragons, however, are never out of style, never irrelevant: They symbolize the eternal fight between good and evil, which of course can never be childish or outdated. We would be committing what CS Lewis calls “chronological snobbery” if we were to set this or that piece of science or technology — which will cease to be applicable in five or ten years — above knights and fairies, which have always been fundamental and always will be. In today’s day and age, we need a resurrection of fantasy. Here’s why.

In the last three or four hundred years, we have changed our approach at looking at the world. Instead of searching for patterns and meaning in the whole of creation, we have narrowed our scope, focusing instead on small details and workings. We smash watches so we can see each individual part, examine books in a vacuum, and see school subjects like math and philosophy as being completely unrelated. We have forgotten that the individual parts of a watch are not so important as the watch itself; that books can be seen better in their relation to other books and to the time period in which they were written; that different studies are always connected in some way or other. We have turned from the medieval viewpoint — which could be likened to looking at a tree — to the modern viewpoint — which could be likened to looking at each leaf, without a good idea of what the whole tree looks like. And after so many hundreds of years, we have, so to speak, become so focused on the leaf that we have forgotten about the tree’s existence.

But Christians don’t have to wonder what the tree looks like, or whether there is a tree at all. There is a tree — the Cross. Believing in the power of the Cross, we know that there is something much bigger and greater than what we can see right now. We know that all the technicalities of life are indeed beautiful, but that everything must fall away before the splendor and majesty of God, who has made the world with inherent meaning and rhythm.

And so we know that the modern mindset must be broken. There are things that cannot be put under a microscope and examined, reasons that reason cannot prove, and people need to be reminded of this. This is why fantasy offers such a refreshing return to a straight-seeing mindset. This is why fantasy needs a resurrection.

Because fantasy, as we have explored in past essays, is the genre where we take a step back and see the whole story. These fantastical stories have the unique and beautiful power of showing us specific leaves — characters, places, scenes, funny one-liners — while also revealing to us the whole tree — the eternal battle between good and evil, and our place in it. It does not overlook the individual beauty of each little leaf — neither does it disregard the glorious whole to which every leaf contributes.

Through the darkness of atheism or skepticism, we should strive to be as good a testament to the faith as we can. Through example we should portray this cohesive view of the world to others. And one of the ways to portray the big picture of the whole story is to write good fantasy. Perhaps right now, writing good fantasy books is one of the best ways to share the Christian worldview, because, to paraphrase CS Lewis, it sneaks past the dragons. Fantasy, that life-changing genre, is disguised as children’s stories and fairy tales. In these simple tales lies the power to expand someone’s world and show them that there is more to life than details and equations.

So let us resurrect this sleeping genre. Let us return to knights and dragons. Let us remember the big and lovely secrets that lie just beyond the “fields we know”. Let us lift the veil away to reveal the great glory of the whole Tree of Life.

To begin, The Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece of art, beautifully crafted, worth reading simply for the depth and beauty of its passages. Who can surpass Tolkien’s pristine loveliness of the language? The descriptions are well-written and paint a vivid picture, the dialogue flows well, and there are lines that, according to CS Lewis in a review he wrote of The Lord of the Rings, “pierce like swords or burn like cold iron.” A passage such as this both engages the intellect and stirs the heart as almost no other book can:

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”1

Not only is The Lord of the Rings a masterpiece of prose, but it boasts a depth of worldbuilding which has inspired the setting of many fantasies. However hard writers try, no one can match the complexity, the depth, the realness of Middle-earth. Hobbits feel as real to us as men do, Beren and Luthien feel just as historical as Abraham Lincoln. Who doesn’t dream of cresting the hill on a snow white horse and seeing before them the shining tower of Minas Tirith? Or heading down to the Green Dragon to dance with the hobbits and gaze out over the green hills of the Shire? Tolkien has made for us a second world: New paths to roam, new castles to explore, new places to see.

Beyond prose and worldbuilding, consider plot. When the Hobbit Frodo receives his call to adventure in the form of the One Ring which the Wizard Gandalf tells him must be destroyed, Frodo sets out on his great quest with his loyal comrade Samwise, little knowing what lies before him.

So follows the sweeping epic set against the magnificent realm of Middle-earth, where heroes have trod for ages on end, where the Hobbits and their companions bring to a head their ageless tales and finish the battles they fought. In the face of overwhelming odds, a Fellowship is formed to carry the Ring to its destruction. Loyalties are tested, great sacrifices are made, and mighty deeds are wrought as the faithful few hold back the darkness. The great drama between good and evil that is so important to good fantasy is played out through these pages in deeply stirring power and unforgettable greatness. On every page the battle is fought, burning with hope and courage. In every line moves the mighty presence of God, working all things to the light even when there seems to be only darkness.

Moving and moved by this sweeping plot are the characters. Our hearts are warmed by the faithful little hobbits who hold to their friends and to their duties despite all that Sauron can raise against them. We are inspired by the courage and loyalty of the Dwarf Gimli and the Elf Legolas, who fight side by side as long as orcs roam the land and follow the King even into the Paths of the Dead. Our spirits are stirred in the might of the horse lords, Éomer and Theoden of the Mark, who ride into battle against hosts far greater than their own to “lord and land and league of friendship!”2 We cannot forget the cold courage and gradual healing of Éowyn, Daughter of Kings, who destroys great darkness and accepts great light. And we can only adore the enduring nobility of Faramir, who denies the temptation of the Ring and humbly surrenders his throne as Steward to Aragorn, the rightful King of Gondor.

Among these beloved characters are the aforementioned tropes the Everyman, the Mentor, and the King. The Everyman is a symbol for each of us, while the Mentor (who usually dies) takes on the role of instructing the Everyman, and the King is most often the character who represents Christ.

In Frodo we see the Everyman, resolutely carrying temptation to its destruction, slipping and falling and soldiering on into darkness, triumphing at last in his resolve beyond hope to carry through what he has begun until he dies or until it is finished. No less striking an example of the Everyman is Boromir, man of Gondor, who falls to the temptation of the Ring in the repeated tragedy of fallen man. Yet he is redeemed, rising from his failings, giving all to defend what is good, and conquering even in the face of death.

In Gandalf the Grey lives the Mentor, who sets Frodo upon his quest, whose words of wisdom resonate deep in the little Hobbit. It is Gandalf who guides the Fellowship in the beginning of their long journey, finally giving himself to save them from the fearful Balrog of Moria.

In Aragorn we recognize the King. First he is the weather-beaten Ranger of the north, anonymously defending the little folk with act after act of selflessness. Then he passes through the Paths of the Dead, the great symbolic death of the King that wins the salvation of his people. Finally he is revealed as the King of Gondor and Arnor, Renewer, whose hands bring healing, whose rule restores peace and glory to Middle-earth.

These inspiring characters, together with the masterful prose, plot, and characters of The Lord of the Rings, unite to form a beautiful vessel of truth. In these pages the battle of light against darkness—the battle that we all fight—is waged in height and greatness in a tale that echoes the hope of our lives: that darkness shall be defeated, that light shall triumph in joy beyond hope.

Amidst the thunder of war and the glory of kings, The Lord of the Rings is a cozy and beautiful celebration of the small, the simple, the humble. Bilbo smoking his pipe, Merry and Pippin singing, the sun rising over the round doors of Hobbit holes. There’s a reason that the trilogy begins and ends with the Hobbits, and a reason that Sam is almost everyone’s favorite character. Characters like Aragorn and Faramir are the ideals, who give us hope of the world to come. But if we are faithful and true in the little things of life, we can and should be as brave and good as Sam, or Frodo, or Pippin, or Merry. This great theme, so fundamental to the working of truth in fantasy, begins from the very first line.

“This book is largely concerned with Hobbits.”3

This is such a simple opening line at first glance, a very quiet way to introduce such a sprawling tale. This book, the vastest, widest, farthest-reaching fantasy epic probably ever written, is concerned with Hobbits: simple, quiet, unobtrusive little people living simple, quiet, unobtrusive little lives in the land of the Halflings, distant from the great kingdoms and strivings of the Big People. Over the course of the epic, these quiet little people are called upon to pick up the fight and to take their stand against the mighty forces of evil. In so doing, these faithful hearts and humble hands work, in great part, the saving of Middle-earth. In the words of the wise Elf Master Elrond, “Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”4

So the small is elevated, the low is raised, the humble made great. Such is one of fantasy’s greatest roles: to show the small in the grand scale; to see the world and it happenings the way it is seen from the heavens: in all its sweeping bigness, and yet “he who is least among you all will be great.”5

In short, The Lord of the Rings is one of those perfect bridges we like to talk about. It is a bridge that is beautiful in itself: Made out of good material, well and sturdily built, a pleasure to behold. This is the characters, the plot, the writing. But not only is it a beautiful bridge: It is a bridge that leads to glory, to some fair country like the one that Gandalf speaks of. This is the truth of allegory, which can lead us to God.

The Lord of the Rings has such an impact for a reason. The world-building interests us, the writing delights us, the characters inspire us, and the truth that infuses every page lifts our souls to God. The entire trilogy, from the simplicity of its beginning to the apocalyptic triumph and beauty of its unforgettable end, is a hymn of praise to the Greatest Storyteller of All. We love The Lord of the Rings because it shows us the consummate while also applying to everyday life. We are all Hobbits, doing “small things with great love”6, bearing our burdens and rejoicing in simple pleasures. The Lord of the Rings reminds us of that.

It is a sad thing that this important element often adds to the view that fantasy is unrealistic, escapist, and cheesy. Nothing is ever perfect in this world, say the critics. Terrible things happen. Not everything turns out the way we wish it would. To pretend otherwise is to try to escape from the hard facts, to portray life unfaithfully, and to be downright trite on top of it all. Grief exists, and is very much a part of fallen human experience.

But remember that good fantasy functions through allegory. And allegory, as we have seen in previous posts, portrays eternal truths and tells the timeless story of this world from beginning to end. It lifts the tiny insignificances of life into shining glory, and shows us at the same time the grand sweeping drama of God’s Story. Since it is fantasy and allegory, it must end with redemption. Because when you step back and look at our story in its greatness, we are all redeemed. We have all been saved. We are all destined for glory. If fantasy falls short of portraying this hope, it loses the vein of truth that threads through the allegory. To say that the ultimate end is sad when in truth it is happy is to lie. In short, it fails.

This is not to say that good fantasy can’t be dark or sad. It must be, for if there is nothing to be saved from then there is no salvation. To quote J.R.R. Tolkien in his essay On Fairy-Stories: “It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, as you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”

Indeed, fantasy’s low moments can be the darkest of all genres. Yes, it shows the glories of redemption and hope — and it also shows the depths of evil and despair. Book one can end sadly, but the story isn’t over so we read book two. Which ends in a devastating cliffhanger of blood and betrayal. So we read book three. Perhaps hope of salvation is brighter now, but still the characters fight and struggle with all their strength against the dragging forces of darkness; still they are that brave lighthouse in the midst of the sea which the storm can’t quite drown. And so long as the storm rages the story isn’t over, because all storms end. So we read the next book, and the next: The series isn’t over until the storm is! Anything that ends in grief isn’t the whole story, even as it isn’t the end in the world we live in. It’s just a cliffhanger.

Finally we reach those final pages. The storm clears. The waves calm. We squint through the rising mist in the calm preceding the storm, and we see — oh joy! — the lighthouse still stands, shining forth in greater glory than could ever before have been imagined. Now we know that sense of fulfillment and satisfaction. Now the story is complete. Now at last we glimpse that “Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world…”

It is worth noting that though there are different kinds of happy endings in good fantasy, some bordering on the bittersweet, there is always redemption and salvation. Consider The Lord of the Rings. It is sad in the old life that is lost and the beloved friends that sail away forever across the sea, but the ache of longing at its end is not unaccompanied by the magnificent Coming of the King, by the world-shaking downfall of darkness, by the manifestation of all hoped for in the salvation of Middle-earth. Consider also The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson. As heart wrenching as that final sacrifice is, it still bears the imperative truths of the Happy Ending: the kingdom is redeemed, the final grips of darkness pass away, and hope of further resurrection and healing is sown. Neither story ends with the perfect happiness of The Chronicles of Narnia or of The Green Ember, for example; but still the world is saved and the people redeemed.

How great is the glory of a bridge well built from beginning to end! Whose shining arch spans the void between worlds in a bow of light, whose one end is grounded in the reality of this world, whose other end is rooted in the timeless truths of wonder and joy, whose span connects the daily to the heavenly. What can compare to the perfect satisfaction of a well-built happy ending? The darkness overthrown once and for all; the people redeemed and lifted above death into life eternal and light undying; the broken world cleansed in glory. Long have they fought, long have they struggled; they have hoped and wept and died and striven for this light. And now it is here, and it is good, and it strikes echoing chords of hope and promise in our own hearts, for we also hope and struggle and fight for these things. Again to quote Tolkien, the master of fairytales, in his essay on the subject: “It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears, when the ‘turn’ comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art…”

This is it. This is the true happy ending. This is joy, and fulfillment, and glory, what Tolkien called the “consolation.” It resonates so deeply with us because it’s true: the Knight has rescued the princess, the King of kings has saved his people. We are redeemed. We were dead and now we are given life and life abundant, life eternal, life and light with the King forevermore. We are given hope in a promise that will never be broken: Christ is coming to gather us up. “The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God.” (1 Thess. 4:16.) Where is there greater wonder, joy, miracle? This is where fantasy can be used in its greatness. This is where the miraculous wonder of our world surpasses the fantastical wonder of fantasy, where fantasy is the only form of story that can get even close to the True Hope: Fantasy with all its fairy song and hope unlooked for and survival beyond comprehension and victory when all seems lost. May such victory leave us with consolation, with hope, and with joy. May such triumph echo those magnificent notes of the archangel’s voice and the thundering trumpet of God.

Here at The Bridge Builders, we think that fantasy is the most important genre.

This is a bold statement, yes. So before we continue, let us note what kind of fantasy we are talking about. When many people hear the word fantasy, they think of that tragic host of shallow, empty twaddle which masquerades under the word and perverts its true meaning. But when we use the word fantasy, we are not speaking of that overproduced abundance of heavy-handed, poorly written, distorted romantasy. We are speaking of High Story. The fantasy that breathes truth through allegory and lifts the simple mundanities into acts of heroism: The great sweeping epic of real life presented to us in its true wonder and majesty.

This kind of fantasy — true fantasy — is built on two things: Story and allegory. In a previous post, we talked about the importance of good story. We live stories. We are stories. We are characters in God’s epic drama of lions and swords, of miracle and mystery: The Greatest Story Ever Told. We are part of this Story, and we are called to live our part well. Consciously or not, we are reminded and regrounded in this truth every time we read. When we lay down our book, we set out into the tale the book reflected. We are inspired and encouraged anew from the time we spent with the hero, re-equipped to play our part well.

In our last post, we discussed allegory as the medium through which fantasy is told. Allegory is when the characters or plot in a story stand for something outside the story, usually something in heaven. An example would be the fairytale Snow White. Snow White eats a poisoned apple, and falls dead. The prince comes to find Snow White, and, as he brings her through the woods, he trips over a tree root. When the prince trips, Snow White chokes out the apple and comes back to life. One allegorical reading is this: Snow White represents humanity. Her eating of the apple is symbolic of humanity falling dead under sin. The prince is of Christ, and the root is the Cross. Through the Cross, he brought the church back to life. In the great fantasy books by such authors as George MacDonald, CS Lewis, and JRR Tolkien, every character, every object, every single thing that happens points to some heavenly reality. In this way, these books truly are transcendental: prayers expressed through fiction, miracles expressed through magic.

Story is a worthy vessel of truth. Allegory is a beautiful method of filling that vessel with truth. When they come together, Fantasy emerges.

Fantasy is a genre that is very focused on plot, on action, on Story. What true fantasy does not have a villain bent on destroying the world, and a mighty king or knight to destroy the villain and save the world forever through self-sacrifice in some form? In what true fantasy does the battle-scarred world not emerge whole and beautiful and healed, the battle won, the hero triumphant? This is the immortal story of Christ’s sacrifice defeating Satan, of the King coming in glory to claim his own, of our own hope. This is the story we live. We are the sidekicks and the soldiers, the healers and the warriors, we are the inhabitants of this war-ravaged world — a world which we know will be delivered. Story grounds us in our role as characters in the Great Story. It follows that fantasy is the highest form of story, because it accomplishes this on the highest level. Because it is story, it shares the deep truths of existence which come unconsciously, regardless of plot. Because it is allegory, the plot also expresses these truths.

Not only does fantasy convey these eternal truths, but it does so in a compelling way. We read of adventure, beauty, battle, riveting mysteries, and the enthralling echoes of the ethereal. We may not even realize the presence of these truths, but they are there, and they are speaking to us, and they are sinking deep. In the words of CS Lewis, truth through fantasy can “steal past those watchful dragons” of our time, and strike home more deeply and more effectively than many a Sunday morning sermon.

To illustrate fantasy’s transcendence, compare two books. The first is about World War II. The second is a fantasy about an evil man who takes over the world. The people of the free lands rise up against him and, even when many of them die, even when there seems to be no hope left, they keep on fighting until finally the villain is killed. On the surface, these two books look very similar, right? But the first book tells only about WWII. The second book, the fantasy story, is also about WWII. But it is also about every war ever fought. And most importantly, it is talking about the only War that really matters — the war that is going on between God and Satan, angels and demons, good and evil, the war that takes place within our own souls; the war we are fighting from the minute we wake up in the morning to the minute we close our eyes at night. I’m not criticizing the first book — WWII is fascinating, and there are many excellent and inspiring books about WWII, which are also important, and also have their place. But the fantasy book, which can apply to every earthly war and also to the spiritual War, is more fundamental to our humanity.

Because of this sweeping scope over all humanity, fantasy can seem, at first, rather daunting. It deals with such BIG things — battles between monsters and men, sprawling worldbuilding that includes multiple kingdoms, and main characters dealing with situations that will never come up in everyday life. None of us will ever have to deal with bad guys hunting us down, or realizing that the whole world depends on you to save it. None of us will ever see the fairies sing, or fight fate-defining battles side by side with the ancient heroes of legend. Right?

The thing about fantasy is that the whole medium relies on transferring little things into big things. Little things that we do in real life — washing dishes, reading the Bible, battling the temptation to yell at a sibling — are expressed in fantasy through big, epic things — fighting battles, pledging allegiance to kings, sacrificing everything you have and are. So, believe it or not, you do fight battles every day: You fight the battle to be holy, and to be strong, and to honor God. You do see fairies every day: You see the lovely whispers of eternity.

Let us now tell a ridiculous story that will surely wreck our reputations. One night, the two of us and our three younger sisters Libby, Elsa, and Greta, made dinner together. Well, they made dinner… we were mostly occupied with working away on our new books. When our younger sisters told us that they were going to take a walk while the french fries finished baking, they asked us to please flip the aforementioned fries in ten minutes? We sighed, not being (as yet) particularly skilled in the way of culinary arts, but reluctantly agreed. Eleven minutes later, feeling rather annoyed because our writing was just going so well, we got up and walked into the kitchen to take the french fries out of the oven and flip them according to orders.

“Look,” one of us said, sliding the hot pans onto the stovetop and calling to mind our favorite literary heroes. “This is actually pretty cool. I mean, it’s just like fighting orcs.”

“The spatula is even kind of like a sword,” the other answered.

At once we were over the bridge: light was smuggled back into the present situation. We both laughed, immediately feeling much more cheerful (not to mention heroic) about flipping french fries in the cozy little kitchen. And even still, many months later, we refer to this incident when we wish to feel that some little task is important and requires courage. We might not have many opportunities to fight orcs, but we do have opportunities to flip french fries, and take care of little siblings, and clean our bedroom, and apologize when we do something wrong. And we plan to make good those opportunities.

And so we see that fantasy is in this way even more true than the most carefully researched historical work. Instead of showing one moment in time, it shows all of time, as far as God has made it known to us. It does not illustrate a fragment only, but the majestic whole. Through the lens of fantasy, we can see the little things as they truly are in God’s eyes. To quote CS Lewis again, “The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of.” Fantasy shows us these little acts as the great strategic victories they truly are. Fantasy shows us the grand Story of time stretched out across the ages, reaching even unto the time yet to come. Fantasy shows us the world from above, from the eyes of the angels.

So, whether we are doing dishes or flipping french fries, we fight orcs. Whether we are weeping over our favorite books, or celebrating the birthdays of our favorite characters, we are living a Story of knights and dragons. The very intake of breath is a battle cry; the possession of a spatula is the possession of a sword. Let us embrace our complete immersion in the Greatest Story. Let us fall through portals. Let us build bridges and cross them. Let us seek for light in fairyland, and smuggle it back to turn the tools in our hands into elvish phials of star light to cast back the darkness.

First, I should explain what I mean by fantasy. When I use the word “fantasy” I mean, generally speaking, a book stocked with fantastical elements; a novel where things happen that could never really happen in real life. There are two kinds of fantasy that we will be referencing most: High Fantasy, where the whole story takes place in some alternate and magical world, and Low Fantasy, where there is some kind of portal between our normal world and another more fantastical world. Examples of High Fantasy are The Lord of the Rings and The Wingfeather Saga, while when you think of Low Fantasy, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Harry Potter Series rise to mind.

But the allegories that we find in these fantasy novels come from a tradition much older. Here we will also be talking about ancient myths, medieval poetry, and premodern fairy tales, which express, in different forms, the same truths.

Fantasy is one of the most popular genres of this age, and therefore has acquired a reputation for being made up of unsophisticated, melodramatic tomes of over a thousand pages long. Even people who really love fantasy might think that they are reading something silly, escapist, or unrelatable. They might enjoy fantasy, they might think it is interesting and thought-provoking, but there is a pretty good chance they will think something along these lines: “However much I might like fantasy, it isn’t applicable to everyday life. I can’t relate to the characters. I have never had to lead a battle, nor will I ever have to; my goal in life is not to fight dragons and save princesses. Therefore, fantasy cannot be important for me to read.”

Of course, this can be true of some — maybe even most — fantasy books; all genres have their badly written stories. But the whole of fantasy must not be condemned. People who do condemn fantasy as a genre often don’t realize this: That allegory is the medium through which fantasy is written and can be understood. If you don’t know what allegory is, you won’t understand why fantasy is important.

The truth is that fantasy IS applicable to everyday life; you SHOULD relate to the characters; and no matter how unlikely it might sound, your goal in life SHOULD be to kill dragons. This is because everything in good fantasy is an allegory for something real.

Let me now explain what allegory is. The word Allegory means simply “this means that”. Take fantasy at its most fundamental: The knight kills the dragon and rescues the princess from the cave. We can all think of stories like this, in different forms: The Faerie Queene. Orpheus and Eurydice. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. But the story that inspires each of these examples is the Bible. Yes, there is a knight in the Bible, and a dragon, and a princess. The knight is Christ, the dragon is Satan, and the princess is the Church, the body of Christ — us.

If you start looking for it, you will find allegory in many fantasy books — and in almost all good ones! In The Lord of the Rings, for example, the Ring can be taken as a symbol for temptation. Frodo is a symbol for every man. The orcs are a symbol for evil. Frodo trying not to succumb to the power of the Ring is a magical portrayal of every man trying not to succumb to the power of Temptation.

In this way, all of us CAN relate to the characters in fantasy books. In Frodo, we see humankind (no matter that he’s a hobbit!) on its simplest and most fundamental level, unhindered by the nuances and complications that real life brings to the image. Although we can relate to real people because they are like us, we can also relate to Frodo because he is us.

And if the characters in fantasy books are, at their core, us; and if the trials that they go through are the trials that we face; of course these books are not escapist or silly. In fact, when we read a good fantasy book, we are not fleeing daily life but plunging into the eternal truth that lies beyond our daily life. We afford a view through the fleeting moment into the timelessness of eternity.

I hope this makes you see that fantasy books can, indeed, be applicable, serious, and deeply true. But before we go on, I would like to quickly clarify that allegory is not found only in fantasy, nor does all fantasy employ allegory (although all good fantasy does). Today, we will focus on how allegory appears in fantasy particularly.

Of course, allegory is not a mathematical equation (although Bunyan might lean a little in that direction). In most fantasy books, allegory is a shifting, living device that will allow for context. Take, for instance, the Red Crosse Knight in the first book of The Faerie Queene. He is a symbol for all of us (this is called the Everyman figure, like our example of Frodo above), because just like all of us he makes his way through life, stumbling in sin, being forgiven, and slowly becoming more virtuous. But he is also a Christ figure in that, at the end, he slays the dragon and rescues the princess, just as Our Lord slayed Satan and rescued us.

Not only is fantasy not a mathematical equation, it is also not, in most fantasy books, supposed to be linked to real-life events and people. Although there are some exceptions in other genres — you could think of Orwell’s work, as well as many dystopian novels — this usually isn’t the case with fantasy, which deals with much more eternal and timeless truths about the world, as opposed to mundane realities that change with every couple of years. Grendel is simply a personification of evil, he is not a personification of any real person or group of people; nor is the war between Dumbledore and Grindelwald an exact parallel to World War Two or any other war.

In fantasy, Allegory is a device to better understand heavenly truths. When we read a story about kings and fair maidens and evil serpents, we can better understand God, and goodness, and evil. We might liken allegory to a stained glass window. Picture a bright, beautifully crafted window that portrays some noble scene. Picture the sunlight that is streaming through the window. You can gaze upon the scene on the window and marvel at the skillful glasswork, and the beautiful scene pictured thereon; but you can also contemplate the loveliness of the sun drifting in through the window. And as you gaze at the window, you would start to realize that it is the light streaming in through the window that makes the window beautiful. In this way, the beautiful plot and characters of a story are the window, but God is the light that makes it beautiful.

The thoughts that we’ll be considering in the future rely, for the most part, on an understanding of allegory. We will be building on the concepts of sub-creation, and magic, and the need for good fantasy. But it all comes down to the importance of the story of a knight saving a princess from a dragon. Because that truth never changes and never alters, a truth that people will always express through different forms — and in our times, especially through fantasy.

Fantasy, like any other genre, is trying to tell us something about the world. But unlike other genres, fantasy does not tell us explicitly. The way that fantasy makes its themes and eternal truths known is through allegory. And just as the knight must rescue the princess from the dragon, we must rescue allegory from the jaws of modernity.

Before we continue, it is necessary to define Story in the sense that it will be used in this essay. There are two kinds of Story: High Story, which is Story as it was meant to be, and fallen story, which is story that has been corrupted. The latter consists of false narrative where things are not portrayed as they truly are or were meant to be. Though the prose of such story may be shallow and lame, it may also be well-crafted, unduly honoring an unworthy subject, thus portraying it in a false light. This twisted form of story does hold its power over people, but in a destructive way which we are not now considering.

Here we are dealing not with fallen story, but with Story as it was meant to be: Story that echoes God’s Tale. This kind of Story is built of the deep truth of a glorious narrative; of high-crafted beauty and strength in plot, theme, and word; of noble characters who live and breathe upon the page, bearing hope and strength to all minds that come in contact with them. It is Story truthfully expressed and beautifully written, Story that stirs the soul, touches the heart, and moves the mind to greatness. It is Story written with the purpose of glorifying God.

As a testament to the truth and beauty of such Story, consider the Bible. What is not narrative is either poetry — which relates to the Story — or is the expounding and correction of the Author to his knights, so that we may understand and live the Story as we ought. It is all tied back to Story, and it is no small wonder that God would choose such a resonating form in which to make known His will, His glory, and His love for His children. The Bible is absolute truth: in subject, in word, and in form. Moreover, it is Story that is raised to its highest form. Because the Bible cannot be told through the medium of a lie, the very form of Story must be fundamentally true. 

The truth of Story’s form points to God also in the very act of its creation and existence. It is the sub-image of His Story, created by those whom He created to create, those bearing His image and creating in and of and because of Him. Made in God’s image, it is our gift to create stories out of the Story that He has written. Characters serve their author’s purpose, and we serve God’s — but on a grander scale. 

It is not only through creation and through the relationship of author and character that we connect with Story. All the highest and best aspects of Story belong to us also. We have souls: Stories are imprinted with the souls of their authors that flow into ours through the medium of words. We will be immortal: Stories are immortal through the glories they impart to us. Both, at our highest and greatest, have the same driving purpose: To glorify God.

And so, we are inextricably intertwined with Story: In existence, in creation, in spirit, and in purpose. But our identity is woven deeper still. We are stories. This is true in three ways: Firstly, Story builds us. We read to think, to contemplate, to ponder, and in so doing to strengthen our minds to receive and retain the good, the beautiful, and the true. Story builds our thoughts, which in turn build our hearts. We are what we are built of. Story forms our souls.

Moreover, we are Story in the sense that we are constantly telling ourselves the narrative of our lives. Memory, history, thought — it is all Story. It is how we were created to think. And it is what we were created to be: A masterpiece of God, deliberately conceived and created with a purpose, possessing a beginning and an end, a meaning and a beauty, a struggle and a hope.  

But not merely are we the main characters of our own small Story. In even greater glory we are the side characters in the Greatest Story ever told, caught up together in the grand Tale whose Hero is Christ. We are the characters in that great drama of God’s writing: That epic tale of light and darkness, of goodness and evil, of snakes and lions, gardens and towers, prophets and kings, songs and swords. We know the Hero: We are his knights and his servants. We know the Author: in Him we move and live and have our being (Acts 17:28). 

Because of this, Story helps us to understand the greatness of the Story God writes, which is the Story that we live. Another reason that man returns again and again to Story as a form of expression is because he feels the stirrings of glory that they portray in our world. We catch the threads of that Greater Tale which binds us to hope. And so we write to capture these threads of beauty before they fade beyond the reach of our understanding, to catch the whispers of heaven in enduring thought before they can be lost. And so they are not lost, but endure for others to see and to understand, to strike in other hearts the chords of distant joys beyond the reaches of the seen. In this way, Story helps us to understand the greatness of our own Story, which is great almost beyond our comprehension.

And so, we need Story. We live a Story. We are a Story. Every time we read a narrative, we are reminded, consciously or not, of truth, because these same principles of our purpose, existence, and identity are deeply woven into the simplest workings of Story. It is a mirror of the world as God created it to be. Through it we see our own plots woven by a skillful Hand. We feel the beauty of truth weaving through our own lives, and delight in finding it everywhere around us. We, also, wait in throbbing hope for the end of our Story. In every tale, we are immersed anew in the subordination of the side characters to the hero, of the darkness to the light, of the characters to the author. We see good winning, we see light rising above darkness in triumph, and we recognize therein the seeds of our own hope, and the truths of our own existence.

In an age of distraction, disconnection, and speed, we need to give our attention to Story because it shows us the beauties of life and the goodness of thought and being. We need to be reconnected with life as it was made to be, with our own identity, and with our deep hope in the King and in God’s enduring promise of an eternal happy ending. We need to be grounded anew in the rhythm of the way things are supposed to be: in our subordination to God, in our role as characters in His Story, as knights in the service of the King of kings. We need to slow down enough to think, to read, to exist, and to glory in that existence, to recognize our identity and to live as true masterpieces of the Maker. As Children of God. Children who love fairytales.

I’m always looking for that bridge.

I suppose you could call it a quest.

— Andrew Peterson, Adorning the Dark

Hello! Our names are Fiona Altschuler and Selah Cross. We are two friends who have known each other for almost half our lives now; we are both Christian homeschooled authors of fantasy who love to think and talk deeply about why we read, and why we write. In the last several months, as both of us embark on the journey of writing our own bridges into elf-land, we have thought a lot about why so many people are drawn to fantasy. Why is it simultaneously admired and condemned by modern culture? Why are The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Harry Potter series among the most famous books ever written? And can it be possible that, contrary to the beliefs of many, fantasy is the most fundamental and the most Christian of all genres?

Andrew Peterson’s beautiful quote above has inspired us to think of writing fantasy as building a bridge that will take us to fairyland. Fairyland, that shining land where men of great valor venture forth on daring quests; where dragons are vanquished; where fairies sing to the stars; that storied land we all wish to see with our own eyes because we recognize in its tales the glory of our own hope. The bridge that crosses into such a land must be beautiful, crafted with the skill of a fairy and the heart of a knight, so that it may not only lead into that land, but prepare the hearts of those who cross to meet the beauties they will find on the other side. And it must be strong as steel, to stand against the ages of time and to bear the feet of many men. 

We plan to write a short article (or perhaps a very long one, if we get excited!) every other week. Sometimes Fiona will write, sometimes Selah will, and sometimes perhaps we will collaborate or ask a friend to contribute. We plan to cover such subjects as why fantasy is important, what allegory is, and why we need good fantasy. We hope to review fantasy books, and share quotes from the Inklings. And we dream that, perhaps, we will help you to better understand the universal need for wonders that we cannot see, for truths so deep that they cannot be expressed except by metaphor, for a glory that lies beyond the next bridge. 

We’re searching for fairyland.

Come join our quest.

Yours,

Fiona and Selah

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