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Serpent Catch
Bantam (New York), 1991.
Paperback: x, 419 pages. | 
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Path of the Hero
Bantam (New York), 1993.
Paperback. | 
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Reviewed by:
Jonathan Langford | |
Worlds Without Number
Choosing Our Own Fathers
"Your father wanted you to have this, when you were old enough." -- Obi-wan Kenobi, on presenting Luke Skywalker with his first lightsaber, in the movie Star Wars"I am your father." -Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker, one movie later
How much does the identity of the parent contribute to the destiny of the child? Questions of identity and inheritance, of free will and parental influence -- both earthly and eternal -- are central both to LDS doctrine and to science fiction. "As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become" reflects not only a potential of divine inheritance, but also the indispensable power of personal choice in shaping that potential.
One of the best, and most subtly Mormon, treatments of this theme of parental influence and free will with which I am familiar appears in Dave Wolverton's two-novel science fiction series, Serpent Catch (Bantam, 1991) and Path of the Hero (Bantam, 1993). Wolverton, an LDS author with close ties to several AML-List members (and the topic of one of Scott Parkin's columns a month or two ago), creates a story in which a young man's choice among possible futures hinges on his responses to a series of figures who stand as potential fathers for him.
The young man, Tull Genet, appears at a crucial moment in his world's history. Originally terraformed by paleontologists as a preserve for Earth's prehistoric ecosystems, the world of Anee has reached a point of crisis that threatens both to destroy its ecological balance and to reduce the bulk of its human and Neanderthal populations to a state of slavery. Tull, son of a human father and a Neanderthal mother, must make choices about who he is and how he will act toward others that affect not only his own future, but that of many others as well. Four figures vie for his loyalty.
First is Tull's biological father, Jenks. Manipulative and abusive, Jenks represents a past that must be cast off before other options can open up for Tull's future. Tull consciously turns his back on the example represented by Jenks. And yet there is no easy cancellation of his childhood; Tull remains deeply marked by his past, disabled at crucial moments by his inability to cast off long-held emotions. By embracing other examples, however, Tull is able to envision other possibilities and enter into new types of relationships. Despite the damage from his past, these other models give him a power of choice.
A more ambiguous figure is Phylomon, the one remaining human starfarer, who has long defended the Neanderthals against human slave traders and who invites Tull to take part in his quest. Phylomon, seeing Tull's potential, opens up to him the secrets of the starfarer technology that he has long kept hidden. This scientific heritage speaks deeply to a part of Tull that has always been fascinated by the inner workings of things. And yet Phylomon's sense of justice untempered by mercy and almost inhuman loneliness cripple him personally and restrict his suitability as a model. The failure of his technology to fend off the slave lords reveals similar limitations. Both are valuable, but incomplete in themselves -- things Tull must experience and learn from, but then go beyond.
Strongest of the books' father figures is Chaa, the Neanderthal shaman, or spirit walker, whose son is Tull's best friend, whose daughter marries Tull, and who adopts Tull as his son in a formal ritual. It is from Chaa's family that Tull literally learns how to love. Looking into the future, Chaa sees that Tull holds the fate of the world in his hands, and begins teaching him the ways of the spirit walkers. Tull learns much from Chaa, who plays a strong role in shaping Tull's path. Yet before the end of the story, Tull has moved beyond the spirit walker's visions. Chaa cannot manipulate his future, and Tull must make his own choices.
Finally, there is Mahkawn, a Neanderthal who has come to a position of power in the corrupt slave lord society by suppressing the emotions he believes make him weak. Yet his wish to take Tull as an adopted son is rooted in a genuine desire for Tull to achieve what Mahkawn believes will be best for him. Tull must reverse the relationship Mahkawn offers, instead teaching the older man how to live and love. At the end of the novel, Mahkawn makes a trek to Tull's home to ask him to stand in witness, in the place Mahkawn's father would take if he were alive, while Mahkawn is married to the former slave whom he is now able to admit to loving.
Taken together, this set of relationships presents a view of parenthood which, while not overtly Mormon, resonates powerfully with LDS teachings and concerns. Tull's need to choose his own father reflects the centrality of choice in our acceptance or rejection of our status as sons and daughters of God. The fluidity of such roles reflects our sense of the temporary, transitory nature of earthly parenthood as an interruption of an eternity as equal brothers and sisters. And the fact that Tull, in order to grow into the person he wishes to be, cannot simply chart his own course but must find others who can show the way underscores the importance of the parental role, both as we fulfill it for each other and in its application to the eternal Father of Spirits.
Within our culture -- and particularly within the Church -- the emphasis on positive parental examples sometimes leaves those without such experiences feeling that the inadequacies of their childhood cannot ever be made up, that they will always lack some of the tools for successful emotional maturity. In my own case, growing up without a father, I felt a very real internal void which, for my own emotional healing, had to be filled, but which I knew no way of filling -- a source of instability in my personality that worried me as I contemplated becoming a father myself. Part of the answer, for me, has been the recognition that all of us have multiple parents; that (in LDS terms) even God himself saw the need to share the rearing of his children -- and therefore, that opportunities missed can be made up down the line, that our dependence on the examples of others is balanced by the power to choose which models we will follow. The story of Tull Genet both affirms our need for such models and effectively illustrates their transformative power.
This Was Meant to Be Only the Beginning of My Love for You (5 February 1997)
Marriage, and the relationship between men and women, involves many different, sometimes almost contradictory dimensions. There is the sexual dimension, with all the emotional resonances that come with pleasure of the body. There is, for Mormons in a particular way, a spiritual dimension. There are the raising of children, the mingling of lives, the growth of friendship, and the positioning of husband, wife, and the unit they form within the social and economic structure of the community. All these and more contribute to how we view marriage as a culture, in our literature, as Mormons, and as individuals.
In last week's guest column, I talked about father and son patterns in Dave Wolverton's Serpent Catch (Bantam, 1991) and Path of the Hero (Bantam, 1993). This week's column (timed to appear with Mike Austin's Critical Matters column on sex and the married Mormon) looks at a similar web of marriage patterns in the same two books, centering again on the experiences of Tull Genet, the young half-human, half-Neanderthal protagonist.
Tull's first major romantic interest is the human girl, Wisteria Troutmaster. She marries Tull as a ploy to go on his quest with Phylomon, the last remaining starfarer, so she can sabotage the quest and gain revenge on Phylomon for executing her parents, who had sold a townswoman into slavery years before. Tull, whose harsh past has led him to believe he knows nothing of loving, asks Wisteria to teach him, but he is often confused by her behavior: At times she is cold and distant, at other times passionate, demanding ferocity and danger in their lovemaking. Wisteria is herself confused in her feelings, with anger and a passion for revenge warring against her response to Tull's gentleness. At length, she confesses most of the secrets that have been a barrier between her and Tull, but the remaining secret, her seduction of a slaver to further her revenge, becomes a new barrier as she realizes that the child she is carrying is not Tull's, but the slaver's. Unable to forgive herself, in a moment of despair she guides the wagon she is riding over a cliff and dies, leaving Tull to mourn her death.
One key characteristic that sets Neanderthals apart from humans is kwea, a biochemically induced sensitivity to past emotions. As Phylomon explains to Tull, experiences with a strong emotional impact imprint themselves in a Neanderthal's brain. Typically, a Neanderthal who loses a spouse is so taken with grief that he or she is unable to eat, and eventually dies. Tull is saved from this fate through Tirilee, one of a race of dryads created to help balance the ecosystem of Anee by preserving the world's forests. During her Time of Devotion, a dryad's body produces pheromones that rouse intense desire among male humans and Neanderthals. After mating with Tirilee, Tull, overwhelmed by the kwea of his desire for her, prepares to spend the rest of his life with her; but when he wakes the next morning, she is gone. As Phylomon says, "she didn't feel up to taking any slaves today" (Serpent Catch, 323).
Both these examples are notable for what they don't offer. Tull's marriage to Wisteria is founded in deceit and ultimately founders on guilt and concealment. Tull's desire for Tirilee is powerful but involves no shared commitment or spiritual understanding. Neither creates a true partnership of the type Tull is seeking.
Over the course of the first book, Tull learns much about devotion, love, and selfless service, so that by the time he returns home, he is ready to marry Fava, daughter of Chaa, the Neanderthal spirit walker who has adopted Tull as his son. Life with Fava -- named after the pear, "most generous of trees," in marked contrast to Wisteria's showy but self-centered beauty -- Tull realizes, would be "all giving. . . . He had seen people grow together like that -- their lives and notions, desires and fears, all became so entangled that the couple began even to look the same. That is the way it would be with Fava, until in the end they would not even be two people in mind or body, but one. And along the way there would be some fiery passion, and some nights of long, slow lovemaking just for fun, and days and years of giving to one another" (410).
Much of the second book follows Tull and Fava as they attempt to turn Tull's dream into reality. Early in the marriage, Tull makes decisions and commitments without talking to Fava, hoping to "protect" her. Fava, for her part, must learn how to articulate feelings which, to a full-blooded Pwi, would be self-evident -- highlighting, in the form of a genetically based difference, the experience of most if not all new couples as they learn to talk and negotiate over matters that have until then been unspoken, even unquestioned in their lives. Then, when Tull is captured in a slave raid and Fava resolves to follow and rescue him, we watch them connect on a spiritual level and act in ways that are modeled after each other, so that even while apart they grow to understand each other better as they share each other's experiences. At the end of the book, as Tull lies dying, it is Fava who calls his spirit back to his body with the words of today's column title: "This was meant to be only the beginning of my love for you . . ."
On the surface, Wolverton's books, though deeply spiritual, do not seem particularly Mormon. Certainly there are many Mormon readers for which his fiction is not well suited: Wolverton has worked as a prison guard, and his depictions of violence reflect his firsthand knowledge of just how brutal people can be to each other. What is remarkable is the way that, despite this violence, his characters remain committed to living and loving, how they reject despair and, to use the metaphor of the ancient Pwi, "sing their world" into an existence of joy.
Jonathan Langford jlnrlangford@earthlink.net-- -- -- Jonathan Langford received his M.A. in English from Brigham Young University with a thesis on coming of age in Tolkien. He is currently working as a freelance technical, training, and educational writer. He lives in Riverside, California, with his wife Laurel and two children, Nathan (8) and Rowan (2).
| Reviewed: 29 January 1997 | Copyright © 1997 Jonathan Langford |