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17/1/13 22:57"For me, the hero's journey is not the voyage from weakness to strength. The true hero's journey is the voyage from strength to weakness."
--John Green, from his Q&A in the collector's edition of "The Fault In Our Stars."
I probably should not post that out of context, because out of context it can look as if it supports some of the things Green is most trying to explode in TFIOS -- the idea of people being enobled through suffering, the idea that the most important thing about dying people is the Important Lessons we can learn from them.
But I think that one of the reasons TFIOS is so ridiculously popular is that not enough people are saying this, and it needs saying.
Tolkien knew this. It's why Frodo is, in the end, unable to toss the ring into Mount Doom. It's why Beowulf doesn't end with Beowulf's defeat of Grendel, or of Grendel's mother. It's season 3 of Slings and Arrows -- the King Lear season, of course -- where one by one, everything gets taken away, even the hope that you can triumph ridiculously in spite of everything being taken away.
And all you have left is your naked heart, stripped bare of bravado and pretension, absolutely vulnerable.
We are so scared of that. And summer popcorn movies become about a series of increasingly badassy badasses, and the Crisis Point, the Dark Night of the Soul, is just something you go through on your journey to being a better badass.
We need something better than that.
--John Green, from his Q&A in the collector's edition of "The Fault In Our Stars."
I probably should not post that out of context, because out of context it can look as if it supports some of the things Green is most trying to explode in TFIOS -- the idea of people being enobled through suffering, the idea that the most important thing about dying people is the Important Lessons we can learn from them.
But I think that one of the reasons TFIOS is so ridiculously popular is that not enough people are saying this, and it needs saying.
Tolkien knew this. It's why Frodo is, in the end, unable to toss the ring into Mount Doom. It's why Beowulf doesn't end with Beowulf's defeat of Grendel, or of Grendel's mother. It's season 3 of Slings and Arrows -- the King Lear season, of course -- where one by one, everything gets taken away, even the hope that you can triumph ridiculously in spite of everything being taken away.
And all you have left is your naked heart, stripped bare of bravado and pretension, absolutely vulnerable.
We are so scared of that. And summer popcorn movies become about a series of increasingly badassy badasses, and the Crisis Point, the Dark Night of the Soul, is just something you go through on your journey to being a better badass.
We need something better than that.