Terry Pratchett: Discworld Series
The word: “Stories”
The world lost one of its greatest and funniest authors this year. Terry Pratchett died of Alzheimer’s disease at age 66. It seems only fitting that Books in a Word start by reviewing his long-running series of fantasy novels: Discworld.
Wikipedia lists forty published titles in the Discworld series and one still to be published posthumously. Almost all of these star one of several casts of recurring characters. There are stories about Rincewind, a wizard, and about Granny Weatherwax, a witch. There are stories about the adventures of Death, and about Sam Vines, commander of the City Watch of Ankh-Morpork. The more recent books have introduced two new recurring characters: the con-man Moist Von Lipwig, whose stories also take place in Ankh-Morpork, and Tiffany Aching, a young witch whose stories always include Granny Weatherwax.
There is one concept that underlies the stories of all of these characters, though each relates to it in a different way: the power of Stories. Or, as Pratchett called it, “narrative causality”.
Because stories are important. People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around. Stories exist independently of their players. If you know that, the knowledge is power. […] This is called the theory of narrative causality and it means that a story, once started, takes a shape. It picks up all the vibrations of all the other workings of that story that have ever been.
— Witches Abroad (1991)
Witches Abroad is, I think, the quintessential Discworld book. In it, three witches travel to a fairytale kingdom and find talking, anthropomorphized wolves, mice turned into coachmen and bakers being sentenced for not having rosy cheeks. Why? Because behind the scenes a rogue fairy godmother is using the power of story to further her control over the city. To save the day, they have to stop the girl from getting to the ball and marrying the prince.
Witches Abroad makes explicit what all Discworld protagonists have to face: they are part of a story that drives their actions. But each character chooses to react to that truth differently.
Take Granny Weatherwax for example. She is a witch. So she can either be a bad witch, which means cackling and shoving little children into your oven, or be the good witch, which means handing shining swords to heroes and helping lost travellers find their way. But Granny Weatherwax is stubborn. She refuses to be pressed into a role she did not choose for herself. And more than any other Discworld character, she is aware of the power of stories, manipulating them for her own ends.
Find the story, Granny Weatherwax always said. She believed that the world was full of story shapes. If you let them, they controlled you. But if you studied them, if you found out about them… you could use them, you could change them.
— Witches Abroad (1991)
We find the exact opposite reaction in policeman Sam Vimes. Sam Vimes is a parody of the stereotypical “hardboiled” detective from Noir novels and films. Sam Vimes knows the part he has to play and revels in it. He’ll be completely happy if you put him out in the streets, at night, in the dark, in the rain, smoking a cigar, trying to catch killers and thieves. But dress him up in fancy clothes and put him in a room full of nobles, and he’ll be miserable.
But there is a more fundamental part to Sam Vimes’ character. Having grown up in a lawless, rough city has given him a deep insight into the nature of violence, and he knows that those same dark impulses exist within himself. But he is a police officer, an agent of justice. Outlets that might be acceptable to common citizens, he can never indulge, even to punish wrongdoers. Some of the most profound passages in any Discworld novel are when Vimes confronts his inner capabilities for violence.
“I am the Watchman.”
“They would have killed his family!” The darkness lunged, and met resistance. “Think of the deaths they have caused! Who are you to stop me?”
“He created me. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchmen? Me. I watch him. Always. You will not force him to murder for you.”
“What kind of human creates his own policeman?”
“One who fears the dark.”
“And so he should,” said the entity, with satisfaction.
“Indeed. But I think you misunderstand. I am not here to keep the darkness out. I am here to keep it in.”
— Thud (2005)
Death, like Vimes, knows the role he has to play: he is supposed to be ominous and frightful. The problem is that he’s not very good at it. He keeps messing up his lines. Trying, for example, to make a little joke to try and lift the spirits (pun intended) of the recently departed. But because his delivery is so bad, the ghost in question has to ask Death to explain the joke, and all sense of Death being ominous is suddenly gone.
“You’ll be Death, then?” said Vimes, after a while.
AH, MISTER VIMES, ASTUTE AS EVER. GOT IT IN ONE, said Death, shutting the book on his finger to keep the place.
“I’ve seen you before.”
I HAVE WALKED WITH YOU MANY TIMES, MISTER VIMES.
“And this is it, is it?”
HAS IT NEVER STRUCK YOU THAT THE CONCEPT OF A WRITTEN NARRATIVE IS SOMEWHAT STRANGE? said Death.
Vimes could tell when people were trying to avoid something they really didn’t want to say, and it was happening here.
“Is it?” he insisted. “Is this it? This time I die?”
COULD BE.
“Could be? What sort of answer is that?” said Vimes.
A VERY ACCURATE ONE. YOU SEE, YOU ARE HAVING A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE, WHICH MEANS THAT I MUST UNDERGO A NEAR-VIMES EXPERIENCE. DON’T MIND ME. CARRY ON WITH WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING. I HAVE A BOOK.— Thud (2005)
The magician Rincewind finds himself in the role of the adventurer, but he doesn’t want to be. What he mostly hopes for is a warm meal and a simple, boring life. Instead people keep giving him quests and leading him into dangerous situations, which he then has to weasel his way out of again. Most of the novels that star Rincewind revolve around him trying desperately to avoid being part of the story, and failing.
He’d never asked for an exciting life. What he really liked, what he sought on every occasion, was boredom. The trouble was that boredom tended to explode in your face. Just when he thought he’d found it he’d be suddenly involved in what he supposed other people — thoughtless, feckless people — would call an adventure. And he’d be forced to visit many strange lands and meet exotic and colourful people, although not for very long because usually he’d be running. He’d seen the creation of the universe, although not from a good seat, and had visited Hell and the afterlife. He’d been captured, imprisoned, rescued, lost and marooned. Sometimes it had all happened on the same day.
— Interesting Times (1994)
Moist Von Lipwig is a con artist. He keeps telling the world stories about who he is, and is amazed when the world buys into it. One day he is captured and forced to employ his talents as a city official of Ankh-Morpork. He faces off against lawyers, bankers and corrupt business people. He recognizes them as fellow con-men, and manages to outwit them and turn their own lies against them. He tells bigger and bigger lies, and gets everybody to play along with him. Steadily, he falls into the role of hero for the people. He promises himself that he quit at any time and resume his former life, but in the end he never does.
I wonder if it’s like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it’s so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you’ll die falling.
— Going Postal (2004)
Tiffany Aching is just a little girl when she finds out she’s a witch. She becomes involved in ancient stories of power, of life and death. The problem is that she doesn’t understand the role she has to play in the stories, and has to scramble to keep up. She has one advantage, though: she’s level-headed, she things the way they really are and she thinks about why things are this way.
And all the stories had, somewhere, the witch. The wicked old witch. And Tiffany had thought: Where’s the evidence? The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you have no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch. If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about “a handsome prince”… was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called him handsome? As for “a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long”… well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories don’t want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told…
— The Wee Free Men (2003)
This is the core of every Discworld novel. It takes a well-known story, one that has been told over and over again. And then it uses a protagonist who is aware of the story. And by the way this protagonist reacts, the story is disrupted and turned on its head. And then we see how ridiculous the shape of the story really is, what strange assumptions underlie it, how unnatural the behaviour of the actors in it.
Pratchett accomplishes all this with a signature sense of humour, and razor-sharp observation of human behaviour, from the basest instincts to the most commonplace platitudes that fill our lives. To see the world as Pratchett does is to see it for what it is, rather than what we’re told to see. We’ll not soon see his like again. Good night, Sir Terry. May your stories live on for a long time to come.
