“Most romances end happily, with a return to the state of identity, and begin with a departure from it” (54). The idea of a happy ending is one with which we are all familiar. As an audience, it seems to be what we all beg for as we approach the final pages of a story. It is memorable and affirms our sense of right and wrong. In a word, it is good. Evil is vanquished, obstacles are overcome and the guy gets the girl, or vice-versa.
Happy endings are great. And they certainly are one of the keys to a successful story. But I'm more interested, at least in this blog post, in the journey it takes to get there. How do these characters lose their identities? How and where do they depart? This is the signature, the swerve that we have been talking about in class. But it doesn't necessarily just pop out of the author's head. A lot of planning must take place in order to get from point A to point B.
With this in mind, I recall the story of Daphnis and Chloe. This tale follows the romance model with precision. In Daphnis, we see two young people who seem destined to live happily ever after. But between the innocence of youth and outside forces, there is some dark force that seems to be tearing these two apart. These outside forces, I think, reflect the society in which the characters are placed. Their setting has much to do with how they grow up, learn and love.
Indeed, Frye reminds us that we, as (budding) critics of literature, we tend to look beyond the story into its deeper implications. Frye emphasizes that not only is the story important, but “what is being said about the society that the story is 'reflecting'” (45) is important. This, I believe, is what causes the departure. It is the essence of the conflict. Society's ills have built a wall between these two people who want only to be in love with each other and be free to act out that love. The middle of the story is how they attempt to scale the wall, how they fall off and how they get back up, eventually making it to the top.
John Irving, in The World According to Garp, gives this phenomenon a name. He calls it “The Under Toad,” a mistaken interpretation by Garp's child, Walt, of the word “undertow.” But what we learn is that both the natural environment and the world that man has created can be dangerous places. The Under Toad lurks in our oceans of stories like Khattam-Shud in Haroun. The Under Toad is what we fear most, and for Daphnis and Chloe, that fear manifests itself in the form of sexual naivete, a host of suitors, pirates, thieves, rapists, power and wealth.
So the romances that we read really go beyond just simple stories. They are a commentary on the settings in which they reside. As Dr. Sexson has pointed out to us several times already, there is indeed a point to all these stories. Each one is part of our greater story of human history. It is the best and worst of who we are. We are all born (the beginning of the story) and we all die (the inevitable last page), but what we do in the meantime is our swerve. We all follow this archetype of birth and death. It's the middle of our lives – how we deal with adversity and find happiness – that gives our lives meaning. What we do now is how our stories will be told. In this way, life really does imitate art.
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