Because everyone loves a good story
“On Fairy-Stories,” Part 4: Escape
What do you do when you need a break from the grind of everyday life? Binge on Seinfeld reruns? Take a bubble bath? Enjoy some comfort food? Read my blog? Tolkien’s remedy was even better, although it wouldn’t be the default for most of us: he suggested escaping into the world of fairy-stories.
As a quick review, we’ve already mentioned the four purposes of fairy-stories: Fantasy, Recovery, Escape, and Consolation. By “Fantasy,” Tolkien means that fairy-stories can be a form of verbal art when the author sub-creates something with his or her imagination. When he talks about “Recovery,” he means that fairy stories can cure us of a snobbish dislike of what’s beautiful simply because it’s old. And this week we’ll take a quick peek at the idea of “Escape.” While Tolkien does point out that Escape and Consolation are closely related, I’d rather look at them one at a time. Then I won’t get too carried away, thereby sending one or both of us into mental conniptions.
What Do You Mean, Escape?
In typical Tolkien fashion, he wants to redefine the popular connotation of the word before he goes on to tell you what he intends to say about it. In the case of the word “Escape,” he takes offense at the negative tone that literary critics (or those who parrot the critics) use when talking about his beloved fairy-stories. They dismiss them as stories either for children or for adults who want to keep thinking like children. The critics refuse to acknowledge any real value or benefit from a story that ends “happily ever after.” In his use of the word Escape, Tolkien rejects this negative tone and redefines the word in its original sense of breaking free from confinement.
Far from denying that fairy-stories offer a kind of Escape to modern readers, Tolkien heartily affirms it. “Though fairy-stories are of course by no means the only means of Escape,” he says, “they are today one of the most obvious and (to some) outrageous forms of ‘escapist’ literature” (147). But to those of us who, like Tolkien, feel that the modern world is lacking in moral goodness, creative freshness, and artistic beauty, the fairy-story’s promise of Escape is not a child’s trinket but a jailer’s key.
What’s Wrong with Escape?
As I said, Tolkien doesn’t deny that fairy-stories offer a form of Escape. Instead, he denies that there is any problem with wanting to escape. “In what the misusers of Escape are fond of calling Real Life, Escape is evidently as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic. In real life it is difficult to blame it, unless it fails; in criticism it would seem to be the worse the better it succeeds” (148).
If you were to wake up and find yourself in a prison cell when you hadn’t done anything wrong, wouldn’t you be justified in wanting to escape? Could anyone blame you for thinking and talking about things other than the cell, the bars, and the cot? This is the analogy that Tolkien gives for the imaginative mind imprisoned in the modern world. When critics accuse authors and readers of fairy-stories with being escapist, “they are confusing…the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter” (148). We aren’t betraying the United States of Reality; we are breaking out of Modernism Penitentiary.
Escape from What?
Although I’ve hinted at several things from which the writer or reader of fairy-stories would like to escape, Tolkien gets even more specific: he cites modern, electric street lamps. If you’ve read much by Tolkien, you know that he despises recent inventions that favor speed, uniformity, and efficiency over quality, beauty, and craftsmanship. For proof of this, just contrast the fiery forges of Isengard with the tranquil paths of Rivendell.
But why street lamps? Because, to Tolkien, they are just one more example of how ugly, modern conveniences are replacing lovely, traditional ones. Refusing to include such inventions in a fairy-story often proceeds “from a considered disgust for so typical a product of the Robot Age, that combines elaboration and ingenuity of means with ugliness, and (often) with inferiority of result” (148). He sees nothing wrong with crafting a story that doesn’t parade all the modern aspects of reality. Since we’re surrounded with these things in our everyday lives, Tolkien prefers to read and write literature that provides some variety in the form of beauty.
Escape to What?
So he proposes escaping from the drudgery of ugly technological conveniences by means of literature. I think we could all benefit from this kind of Escape once in a while. But does this mean that we all have to read fairy-stories, or fantasy tales, in order to escape? Definitely not!
Tolkien points out that your preference doesn’t always have to be for dragons and witches and fairies. You can enjoy escaping to ancient times when you read historical fiction. You can escape to the imagined future when you read science fiction. In Tolkien’s mind, the destination doesn’t matter, so long as it takes you out of our age of ever-increasing technology and the grim tide of progress.
“It is indeed an age of ‘improved means to deteriorated ends.’ It is part of the essential malady of such days—producing the desire to escape not indeed from life but from our present time and self-made misery—that we are acutely conscious both of the ugliness of our works, and of their evil” (151). Notice one distinction that he makes here: it’s not good to desire escape from all reality or from life itself. To live perpetually in a fantasy realm, to dream your life away like Miniver Cheevy, and to despise this world to the point of trying to leave it are all unhealthy reactions. Tolkien’s alternative is to make the best of the world we’re in while enjoying the Escape that well-written literature provides.
Today’s Question: What is your favorite kind of “escapist” literature?
Check out the next post here!
Source:
Robinson, Edward Arlington. “Miniver Cheevy.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44978/miniver-cheevy
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. London, Harper Collins, 2006.
2 Comments on ““On Fairy-Stories,” Part 4: Escape”
Want to leave a comment?
Pingback: "On Fairy-Stories," Part 3: Recovery – Past Watchful Dragons
This is sad to say because it’s not dense literature but Calvin and Hobbes is a great escape literature for me. I think because it’s basic and it takes you back to the simpler days when you were a kid and you could easily get lost in your imagination. I love the idea of Escape as described by your article and Tolkien! Because it reminds us to enjoy the escape not in a bad way but in a good way. To see for a moment outside of our modern life and imagine a different world entirely. I feel it must broaden your mind to do that and exercise it. That must be another reason Lewis and Tolkien enjoyed doing it. Great post!