Show and Tell: Crisis and Transformation Done Right and Wrong in Two Scott Card's Fantasies

"The Bully and the Beast" is my favorite Card story. It is a fantasy novella, set in a stock medieval setting with castles, a princess, and a dragon. It combines whimsey, biting satire, and a hard-edged look at the dark side of the human experience. Like many other of Scott's tales, much of the story is the biography of the main character, in this case, the bully of the title, an initially naive, and rather dim commoner named Bork, whose sole claim to fame is that he happens to be immensely large and strong. His childhood experiences leave him thinking little of himself, an opinion which is re-enforced by nearly everyone he meets. He has an idealistic streak, and is honest, but his low self-esteem and hunger for acceptance does, at times, make him vulnerable to manipulation by ambitious and unscrupulous people. Scott admitted that he had no idea where the story was going when he started it, but, in my opinion, that adds to its power, because neither does Bork. What's it all about?, we wonder, as we meander along with Bork. The appearance of the dragon ends the meander. During the course of the story, Bork undergoes a crisis and transformation, under the tutilage of experience and one of the most memorable dragons in fantasy. The power of that transformation, happening on stage, is really what gives the story its power.

Elsewhere, in Card's excellent fantasy series about Alvin Maker, his Joseph Smith surrogate, Card also tells another story of crisis and transformation. In Red Prophet, one of the Bad Boys of the American folkways makes a cameo appearance, Mike Fink, a burly keel-boatman. There, he nearly beats one of Alvin's brother's to death. In Prentice Alvin, Fink appears again, this time as a foil to demonstrate poetic justice and Alvin's prowess at wrestling. Alvin soundly defeats Fink, unmakes a magical tatoo that Fink's mother had given him, breaks a few of Fink's bones, and then, heals them so as not to leave Fink at the mercy of his enemies. Then in Alvin Journeyman, Fink reappears, and announces that he has reformed. Alvin's mercy to him had triggered a transformation, and now he wants to play Porter Rockwell to Alvin's Joseph. But Fink's transformation happened offstage, and is told in an aside. In my opinion, this could have been one of the strongest moments in the series, but it ended up being one of the weakest. For whatever reason, in the Maker series, regarding Fink, Scott chose to tell, rather than show.

Come take a look at Bork's on-stage transformation. He begins his career as a child bully unintentionally, under the malicious care of Winkle, a manipulative little weasel of the first order. Winkle befriends Bork, then get in fights and screams pitibly until Bork comes along and rescues him. He comes to realize that he is a bully, and as he gets older, settles into a career as the village Big Dumb Oaf. In the meantime, Card introduces us to the local count who has spent the treasury to provide a wardrobe for his daughter, and thereby precipitates a political crisis. The Count owes the Duke tribute, and has nothing left with which to pay. The Count shows his daughter to the his knights, by way of explaining the inevitable combat. Bork unintentionally ends up breaking the siege and defeating the Duke. Re-enter Winkle, and Bork becomes a pawn of the Count and his new counselor in a bid to make the Duke King. And then, with the Kingdom in hand, and Bork an inconvenient but indispensable champion, the dragon enters the story and kidnaps the Princess. Bork is dispatched to rescue the Princess. On his search to find the dragon, he meets crone who tells him something about dragons:

Fire is light, not wind, and so it doesn't come from the dragon's mouth, or the dragon's nostrils. If he burns you, it won't be with it's breath.

And this turns out to be the case. It is not the dragons formidable claws, or scales, or teeth that scorch Bork, but its eyes:

At the center of each eye was a sharp point of light, and when Bork looked at the eyes that light stabbed deep into him, seeing his hear, and laughing at what it found there.

Bork challenges the dragon to battle, boasting of his own strength as he imagined a knight should boast. In response, the dragon mocks him with sardonic verbal barbs. Bork gazes into the dragon's eyes, and to his horror, sees there the truth of his own life -- the manipulation, the false friends, himself not as a champion, but as a Bully who had never faced anyone able to fight him, and he realized that he is defeated before he starts. He fights all day until exhausted, while the dragon toys with him, and finally catches him in his jaws, and lifts him helpless into the air, and asks, "Well little man, are you afraid."

Bork replies that he is afraid, and the dragon lets him go, and mocks him. Other knights go to challenge the dragon, and they all die. Bork's shame grows. He tries to increase his skill at arms to better challenge the dragon, and fails. He tries to obtain magical help, but fails because the magic can only create illusions that would be no match for the dragon. Shunned by the court for his size and his failure, Bork goes and becomes the guardian of a village, thinking that he must soon go again to face the dragon. Before this happens, he is forced by his love for the village and the schemes of Winkle to fight for the King once more, but he in turn forces the King to show mercy to those he defeated. Then he goes again to face the dragon.

On his way to meet the dragon for the second time, Bork again encounters the Old Wife who asks him: "Of all the dragon's weapons, which cut you the deepest?"

Bork tried to remember. The truth was, he realized, that the dragon had never cut him at all. Not with his teeth or claws. . . . Yet there had been a wound, a deep one that hadn't healed, and it had been cut in him, not by truth or talons, but the bright fire of the dragon's eyes.

The Old Wife tells Bork that if he tells the dragon the truth, he'll live. Bork replies that he's not going there to live. When he meets the dragon, it asks if Bork if he's going to kill hom today. Bork answers, "I don't think so... You're much stronger than I am, and I'm terrible at battle." As he answers a series of questions from the dragon, answering each question with a calm resignation to what he believes it true, the dragon's eyes grow brighter and brighter, until finally the dragon asks Bork what he has learned from the dragon.

You taught me that I was not loved by those I thought had loved me. I learned that within my large body is a small soul.

Then the dragon's eyes dim a little, and the Princess accuses Bork of cowardice. Bork agrees, concluding, "I'm nothing and the world will be better without me."

At this. Bork feels the approach of the dragon, whose eyes have returned to normal. Bork and the reader at this point have begun to comprehend what what makes the dragon such a marvelous creation. If Bork speaks the truth, the dragon's eyes grow brighter. If he speaks lies, they dim. The physical conflict provides a backdrop as Bork wrestles with the implications of this notion. Bork, still determined to die at the hand of the dragon realizes that when he had confessed to being afraid, the dragon could not kill him. He had claimed that his life was meaningless, and that the world would be better off without out him. Struggling to find the lie in that, he decides that if he tells the dragon that the villages won't miss him if he dies. They'll get along without him. And again the dragon's eyes grow brighter, and the dragon withdraws his teeth, leaving Bork in more despair than ever. Finally, he cries out, "End the game dragon, my life has never been happy, and I want to die."

     The dragon'e eyes went black, and the jaws opened again, and the teeth approached, and Bork knew he had told his last lie. . . . But with the teeth inches from him Bork finally realized what the lie was, and the realization was enough to change his mind. "No," he said, and he reached out and seized the teeth, though they cut his fingers. "No. I have been happy. I have . . ." Bork remembers the happiness of his life, and realizes that "the reality of the pain did not destroy the reality of the pleasure; grief did not obliterate joy." When Bork has finished remembering, and comprehending, the dragon releases him, and lowers to the ground, and tells Bork that he can no longer look at him.
     "Why not?"
     "I am blind," the dragon answered. It pulled its claws away from its eyes. Bork covered his face with his hands. The dragon's eyes were brighter than the sun.

For me, reading with a Mormon background, perhaps I'm particularly receptive to such notions regarding pain, and joy, and opposition in all things. I find this tremendously moving. To borrow a phrase from Shakespeare's Glouster in King Lear, "I see it feelingly." The reader can share in this kind of ephiphany, and be changed by it, or draw strength from it. Card had done an artful job of creating a sympathetic character in Bork, showing his weakness, his strength, his defeats, his victories, his blindness, and his insights. Reader sympathy with the character carries on in such a way that Bork's journey becomes the reader's too. And so too, his crisis and transformation. Here is it done right, a potentially life changing way for a reader whose imagination is engaged.

But again, Mike Fink's transformation in the Alvin Maker books, off stage, is not one that we can see feelingly. I can imagine that it could have been done on stage. We can see, based on the explanations Fink gives, but we cannot feel. We don't travel with Fink. We don't suffer with him. What we see of him initially is monstrous and appalling. We are surprised to see him again. We can admire the irony of the plot turn, and can rationally accept his report of his conversion. It has a kind of logic to it that we cannot fault. But for all the strengths of the series elsewhere, here, fails as moving. Does it matter? Not much. I still love the Alvin Maker series. But if I ever get around to tackling fiction again, here I have a reminder of why it is better to show than to tell.

Kevin Christensen
Lawrence, KS