Excellent points! But let’s explore a bit deeper this business of the dragon, which represents evil. In Revelation 12 we have St John’s vision of the woman and the dragon: “…Then the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth…Michael and his angels battled against the dragon….” It’s fair to say here that the woman is involved in a fight against the dragon that ultimately ends in hurling it into the lake of fire, certainly not taming it. So the woman participates in the fight, but not by wielding a sword herself but by giving birth to a son who will rule. Whatever you make of this, it’s clear that individualism doesn’t fit. (What do you make of it?)
The hero's journey does not necessarily involve a dragon. The dragon stands into the discussion as a convenient guardian of the hoard. The hero's journey is not simply about defeating the evil; it is about returning to the village with the hoard. It is a cyclical pattern. To extend Lindsey Bruno's point one step further, the man returns with the hoard, the woman tames the man, the child is born, and the child grows up to be the hero who must again go out into the wild to fight the dragon. The victory is thus never final. The battle is eternal. The hero's journey is a pattern drawn from myths, and many myths are cyclical.
Christianity is different. It is not a cyclical story but a linear one. The final battle is final indeed. The child, the new Adam, is the final and eternal hero. The defeat of the dragon is the final and eternal defeat. The hero does not return to the village, except to make his victory over death known. He ascends into heaven. The church is the final and eternal bride.
In this sense we might ask whether Catholic authors are asking the right questions when they write a hero's journey story. They tend to ask, does the hero behave like a good Christian as he goes on his quest to slay the dragon and return with the hoard? Does he keep his trousers zipped and his language clean? Does he say his prayers? Should they instead by asking, is this a Christian quest at all?
As Lewis posits in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, he who helps himself to the dragon's hoard becomes dragonish himself. It is not, therefore, the return of the dragon's hoard as a gift for the village that matters. The hero feeds the village himself of his own flesh and blood.
To the wider theme of whether man and woman are, in stories at least, of different kinds, we can at least say that they are more different in kind to angels than they are to each other. But men don't have a role in that fight. The woman and her child remain at the center, but this is a dragon of a different stripe, a dragon that cannot be tamed, and this fight belongs to angels, not men.
Or something else entirely that may occur to me tomorrow.
The cycles and the linear movement are connected in the Church Universal: we are all in the same fight and somehow persevering in it from generation to generation. But what really interests me is the notion of the feminine choice to listen to the serpent (Eve) vs listening to the angel Gabriel (Mary). Is there a distinctively feminine role in terms of letting in evil (and thus its effects) or instead letting in good (also with disruptive effects but in the opposite direction). Either way the men seem to get saddled with the consequences.
An interesting question. I think perhaps there is a trope of the woman who opens the door. I suppose one could see it as the female belief that the dragon can be tamed and the male belief that it must be killed. And I suppose there are really two tropes here: the one where the woman is right and the dragon is tamed, and the one where she is wrong and everyone gets singed.
Excellent points! But let’s explore a bit deeper this business of the dragon, which represents evil. In Revelation 12 we have St John’s vision of the woman and the dragon: “…Then the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth…Michael and his angels battled against the dragon….” It’s fair to say here that the woman is involved in a fight against the dragon that ultimately ends in hurling it into the lake of fire, certainly not taming it. So the woman participates in the fight, but not by wielding a sword herself but by giving birth to a son who will rule. Whatever you make of this, it’s clear that individualism doesn’t fit. (What do you make of it?)
An interesting question. A few thoughts.
The hero's journey does not necessarily involve a dragon. The dragon stands into the discussion as a convenient guardian of the hoard. The hero's journey is not simply about defeating the evil; it is about returning to the village with the hoard. It is a cyclical pattern. To extend Lindsey Bruno's point one step further, the man returns with the hoard, the woman tames the man, the child is born, and the child grows up to be the hero who must again go out into the wild to fight the dragon. The victory is thus never final. The battle is eternal. The hero's journey is a pattern drawn from myths, and many myths are cyclical.
Christianity is different. It is not a cyclical story but a linear one. The final battle is final indeed. The child, the new Adam, is the final and eternal hero. The defeat of the dragon is the final and eternal defeat. The hero does not return to the village, except to make his victory over death known. He ascends into heaven. The church is the final and eternal bride.
In this sense we might ask whether Catholic authors are asking the right questions when they write a hero's journey story. They tend to ask, does the hero behave like a good Christian as he goes on his quest to slay the dragon and return with the hoard? Does he keep his trousers zipped and his language clean? Does he say his prayers? Should they instead by asking, is this a Christian quest at all?
As Lewis posits in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, he who helps himself to the dragon's hoard becomes dragonish himself. It is not, therefore, the return of the dragon's hoard as a gift for the village that matters. The hero feeds the village himself of his own flesh and blood.
To the wider theme of whether man and woman are, in stories at least, of different kinds, we can at least say that they are more different in kind to angels than they are to each other. But men don't have a role in that fight. The woman and her child remain at the center, but this is a dragon of a different stripe, a dragon that cannot be tamed, and this fight belongs to angels, not men.
Or something else entirely that may occur to me tomorrow.
The cycles and the linear movement are connected in the Church Universal: we are all in the same fight and somehow persevering in it from generation to generation. But what really interests me is the notion of the feminine choice to listen to the serpent (Eve) vs listening to the angel Gabriel (Mary). Is there a distinctively feminine role in terms of letting in evil (and thus its effects) or instead letting in good (also with disruptive effects but in the opposite direction). Either way the men seem to get saddled with the consequences.
An interesting question. I think perhaps there is a trope of the woman who opens the door. I suppose one could see it as the female belief that the dragon can be tamed and the male belief that it must be killed. And I suppose there are really two tropes here: the one where the woman is right and the dragon is tamed, and the one where she is wrong and everyone gets singed.