Farmboy Saves the World!

[Ranger REG]

All this, and not one one reference to "The Princess Bride"? I'm disappointed.

The only thing more memorable in The Princess Bride is Inigo Montoya and Princess Buttercup. Robert the Pirate, portrayed by Cary Elwes, come off a bit too cocky.

 

[Spatula]

Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn was another series with the "farmboy who saves the world story" that I thought was well done.

As I recall (though it's been awhile so I could be wrong) Williams narrowly dodges the cliche by having the farmboy as the central character, but not the one who actually saves the world.

 

[Tonguez]

Heck, if I recall correctly, Perseus was a farmboy, or at least a fisherboy, who went on to save the world.
Daniel

Um Perseus was a son of Zeus by the the daughter of King Acrisius, sure he spent time tending the goats but he wasn't really a farmboy (well except that most Greek kings during the period were farmers)

I think a better 'mythic' farmboy is the biblical David and his slaying of Goliath.

Pretty much the motif (in myth at least) is all about mortal mans struggle against the big bad world as represented by the 'Monster'. Jack and the Beanstalk, Red Ridinghood and the 3 little pigs all tell the same story.

 

[Arnwyn]

Anyway, do these types of heroes still appeal to people?

Yep, absolutely.

or are people enjoying the more comlex characters that come with some background already written into them like Elric?

Nope, not really. For me, it's the whole "badass" anti-hero nonsense that's lame. In my eyes, "complex" is simply becoming a euphemism for "teh angst!".

 

[jester47]

Its interesting. The tradition of the farmboy is fairly well established, but what is more interesting than that is the interpretations that have been put on it.

In Arthurian Romance, anyone of common descent that achieves somthing great is not really of common descent. it always turns out that they are a lost line of nobility that has be rediscovered and is no longer on hard times.

Also, fascists have used the farmboy mythology to their advantage. In fact they have traditionally borrowed from the Arthuruian Romances and pastoral mythology. As most fascist movements come from rural agrarian areas (esp Germany and Italy) the farmboy with destiny is the poster child.

It comes from the idea that the farmboy is not corrupted by civilisation, and that he has some legitimacy in saying how things are done because of that lack of corruption. He shows up and saves everyone and puts the city in order. The low extreme of this is Conan. The high lofty extreme of this is superman. Conan is not civilised and so is able to govern aquilonia well because he does not have the corruption of civilisation in his blood. Superman is simply not human. So he does not have human corruption getting in the way of doing the right thing.

The farmboy indicates purity and the saving the world/being the king indicates higher capacity than the common man. But his purity allows him to relate to the common man. Basicly the structure of savior requires that the person be uncorrupted and extraordinary. Aragorn fits this mythology also. He is of a higher race than normal men, but he has been born into common trappings.

I would agree that there are not nearly enough stories of saviors that do not follow this pattern. Elric is definately one of them. The lankhmar stories are posibly another. I think we need more common people saving the world but still being common.

It has been said that D&D is its own genre. Perhaps this is an aspect of it. That in most campaigns and novels, the PCs while they have powers (that more often then not are not extraordinary), are not pure or of a better line than anyone else.

Aaron.

 

[MaxKaladin]

In Arthurian Romance, anyone of common descent that achieves somthing great is not really of common descent. it always turns out that they are a lost line of nobility that has be rediscovered and is no longer on hard times.

I once read a book that poked some fun at this. I can't remember the title or even many of the details and the book is in storage, but the basic plot was more or less the usual farmboy makes good story with some twists but it had an undercurrent of mocking that tendency in Arthurian romance. In the book, it turned out that the farmboy was the son of a noble, of course, but the interesting part was the reaction of the various characters in the story. The protagonist had been struggling all the time up to that point to gain even minimum acceptance among the nobility in the face of being an 'upstart peasant'. Suddenly, all that was forgotten and the nobility started treating him as if he had always been one of them even though nothing else had changed. Meanwhile, the peasants he had grown up among suddenly treated him with the extremely careful respect they treated all nobles with and acted as if they had never known him and his former life had never happened. It was very much as if the author was taking the 'blood is what matters' theme in Arthurian literature and taking it to an absurd extreme to show it for what it was. It was a rather entertaining book.