28 March

Fantasy as Antifantasy: 10 Deconstruction in Antifantasy continued

In Ann Radcliffe’s decent gothic romance, it was promised that the heroine would not be threatened of losing her chastity no matter how horrific the danger of being kidnapped by the villains seemed, and in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, it was already a tacit agreement from the beginning of the story that the forces of good would triumph in the end. Tolkien did not want The Lord of the Rings to be read as a so-called allegory with some kind of meaning intended behind it, but the minimum “meaning” that exists in the form of an axiom system, which is indispensable as a condition for the existence of a fictional world in the form of a story, inevitably emerges in the process of the reader’s acceptance of the literary work as a possible world. As Tolkien himself says in “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien narrated the story of the magnificent historical world of The Lord of the Rings with the main purpose of fulfilling the absolute grace of a happy end. To use Tolkien’s own words, the raison d’etre of a fictional work was to be a place where the bliss of the “eu-catastrophe” could be enjoyed. This is the convention in the reception of literary works, in which the reflection of how actual facts are laid out in the real world should not have been questioned. Rather, it was the firm recognition that the real world in which we live was exactly like this that provided the impetus for the construction of the imaginary worlds. What is there is nothing but a conceptual contract agreed upon between the author and the reader. Realism in literary works should have been nothing more than possible realism, which is the plausibility of the fictional world, and technical realism as a method of presenting the finely constructed fictional world. The interesting thing about creating a story is that it sometimes distorts reality in a peculiar way and tries to experiment with various coordinate transformations in the real world. Some of the qualities of “science fantasy” that Attebery appreciated by giving them the term “speculative romance” were not limited to highly intelligent conceptual novels such as those created by Hawthorne and Poe, but were in fact the qualities of “fictionality” itself. (note)

note:
CF. Attebery, The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature, p. 163
The deeper implication of speculative activities must be considered focused on the function of consciousness, in the perspective of the wholeness of the universe and its guiding signal hypothetically grasped by the notion of “pilot wave.” Particular qualia making function of each subject of consciousness and attained results of fictional description are closely related in the configuration of phenomenality. The teleological issue of the argument on the relationship between consciousness and fictionality is developed in the author’s study “Identity and Individuality of Derivative Fictions: Fictional Archetype and Equivalency of a Movie to the Original Novel”, which is shared on Academia in four sections.

First section:
https://www.academia.edu/114744009/Identity_and_Individuality_of_Derivative_Fictions_Fictional_Archetype_and_Equivalency_of_a_Movie_to_the_Original_Novel_1


Also, as Tolkien pointed out, the very act of creating other worlds that are completely different from the real world should reveal the depth of the author’s perception of reality in the process of his construction of “other worlds,” precisely in the index that it is “different” from the reality in which we live. It is Barrie’s proposed game to bring this mechanism of tacit agreement to the surface of the narrative and to re-alter the terms of the contract in the open arena. Moving away from the description of the children returning to the Darlings family, the narrator dares to focus on Mrs. Darling, who knows nothing about the children’s movements.

If we had returned sooner to look with sorrowful sympathy at her, she would probably have cried, “Don't be silly, what do I matter? Do go back and keep an eye on the children.”


In this way, Barrie promotes his peculiar method not only to describe what happened in one possible fictional world, but also to describe various other possibilities that could have occurred. The result of his description is not a single world that coagulated in the mind of the author, but a bundle of possibilities in the process of being converged into a fixed mode. (note)

note:
The author has discussed on this peculiar function of fictionality, taking up the filmed version Peter Pan, together with several other works that depict the story of Peter Pan, under the title of “Identity and Individuality of Derivative Fictions: Fictional Archetype and Equivalency of a Movie to the Original Novel”. The argument on the identity of fictional existences is supposed to have reasonable significance in the study of fundamental awareness and the function of consciousness that is able to make disrupted discourses definitely deviating from actuality.


Barrie’s descriptive act does not specify the object as a single event, but sometimes allows several possible pathways co-existing. Therefore, such a counterfactual hypothetical in a possible world is also mentioned.

Why on earth should their beds be properly aired, seeing that they left them in such a thankless hurry? Would it not serve them jolly well right if they came back and found their parents were spending the week-end in the country? It would be the moral lesson they have been in need of ever since we met them; but if we contrived things in this way Mrs. Darling would never forgive us.


What is depicted in Peter and Wendy is not a linear story consisting of a chain of causal relationships presented as a fixed events accumulation. The depiction of the narrative world is similar to Feynman’s “historical summation method” employed in the attempt of quantum mechanics to describe the trace the existence of electrons, in that it allows a variety of contradictory possibilities to be described together. Borrowing Attebery’s words, the technique of storytelling of Peter and Wendy is developed with an awareness of “the uncertainty of meaning.” This is another quality that counts as one of the metafictional elements of Peter and Wendy. It is worth noting that the predilection of the author Barrie for Mrs. Darling, a character in the novel, is acting as a parameter for these metafictional effects. Mrs. Darling is the embodiment of the new “Savior” as a loving mother who forgives everything, and who is irreplaceable and special one to the author. The author is fully aware of his role as the “author” of the story, and mentions Mrs. Darling.

One thing I should like to do immensely, and that is to tell her, in the way authors have, that the children are coming back, that indeed they will be here on Thursday week. This would spoil so completely the surprise to which Wendy and John and Michael are looking forward. They have been planning it out on the ship: mother’s rapture, father's shout of joy, Nana's leap through the air to embrace them first, when what they ought to be preparing for is good hiding. How delicious to spoil it all by breaking the news in advance; so that when they enter grandly Mrs. Darling may not even offer Wendy her mouth, and Mr. Darling may exclaim pettishly, “Dash it all, here are those boys again.” However, we should get no thanks even for this. We are beginning to know Mrs. Darling by this time, and may be sure that she would upbraid us for depriving the children of their pleasure.


The author, who is supposed to be omnipotent, presides over the progress of the work world while considering the feelings of Mrs. Darling, who is one of the characters in the work. This is an obvious logical contradiction. The real world, which is the world to which the author and the reader who reads the work together with the author belong, is being interfered by the fictional world that is being narrated. Here we can detect a pair of propositions that deny each other, with a logical structure equivalent to the paradoxes that often arise in conjunction with self-references. What is revealed there is a peculiar sense that is similar to the Zen Koan paradox, which is obtained through the destruction of logic. This is reminiscent of the structure of the nesting boxes, which had previously been described as a mysterious feature of Mrs. Darling’s mind. Does the power of the maternal principle, which is summed up in the existence of Mrs. Darling, imply that it is capable of intervening relations between possible worlds that should have no causal relationship? Such is the author’s predilection for Mrs. Darling. Does the symbol “Mother” function as a miraculous latent force that can determine the cosmological constant of the work world at will and transcend the axiom system that governs the laws of the fictional world? Strangely enough, thanks to Mrs. Darling’s generosity, the children are free from obstacles in the real world, but at the same time they are forced to experience inconveniences in the imaginary world because of their leader, Peter Pan. A strange reversal between reality and the imaginary world is occurring. After enduring the hardships imposed by Peter as a representative of Nature, free from the shackles of society, the children are allowed to return safely to their petty bourgeois home, where a loving mother, Mrs. Darling awaits. It is Mrs. Darling’s love for her children that has the power to acquit them all. Here, Lewis Carroll’s slogan “love saves everything” introduced in Sylvie and Bruno is followed　obliquely. The omnipotence of predilection that overcomes the “paradox of redemption” is forcibly fulfilled here.
However, the author dares to play a false discord with Mrs. Darling.

“But, my dear madam, it is ten days till Thursday week; so that by telling you what’s what, we can save you ten days of unhappiness.”
“Yes, but what a cost! By depriving the children of ten minutes of delight.”
“Oh, if you look at it in that way.”
“What other way is there in which to look at it?”


It is this kind of ludicrous exchange between the author and one of the characters that makes the most of the fictional nature of the story, which reveals the true essence of Barrie’s work. The author falls from the position of the Omnipotent Creator of the universe to the role of a clown among the characters in the work. The narrator is playing the dual roles of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. After some interaction with Mrs. Darling, the narrator turns his words to the reader.

You see the woman had no proper spirit. I had meant to say extraordinary nice things about her; but I despise her, and not one of them will I say.


This way, the author, who wants to repay the rudeness of the cheeky children, cannot overcome Mrs. Darling’s affectionate feelings for the children. Mrs. Darling’s predilection for her children was stronger than anything else, and the author’s predilection for Mrs. Darling had already forced him to relinquish control over the world of his work. In the end, against the author’s will, the children’s sheets are properly aired, Mrs. Darling does not leave the house, and the windows are left open. It seems that the children will be able to return safely to their home after they have done everything they can do as they please. The author has no way of staying in the Darlings’ family house any longer to protest to Mrs. Darling. It seems that he has no choice but to return to the children’s ship together with the reader. However, the author speaks to the reader in a regretful manner.

However, as we are here we may as well stay and look on. That is all we are, lookers-on. Nobody really wants us. So let us watch and say jaggy things, in the hope that some of them will hurt.


At this point, the author is now nothing more than a bystander looking at the work world from outside the stage. The figure is reminiscent of the fallen descendants of an ancient god who has lost his authority as the Creator and now act as an outcast in the world he built. The omnipotent author, who was supposed to be a transcendent being in the universe of his work, has completely lost his authority, and not only has he lost the function to advance the story, but he has also been led to the division and dissolution of the personality of the all-encompassing one. This anticlimactic ending was the contraption often found in German Romantic’s literature. It may have been argued that this tendency was dismissed as a degradation of the ideological game of barren irony. It is a fact that we must sometimes admit that there is an element of repulsion like Attebery has shown in the way he has attacked the manner of Beagle’s way of proceeding the description of his work, which at times reveals this kind of metafictional pranks.