Slaying the dragon

Fairy tales don't tell children that dragons exist... Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.

G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton

The distinction G.K. Chesterton makes in the above quotation is an important one, I think, and not just for children.

Most of us prefer happy endings. You don't have to be a child to want the dragon to be slain, to want the bad guy to be stopped, to want the lovers to marry and live happily ever after. We would rather finish a book with a smile than a tear — unless it's a happy tear.

In classical theater there are tragedies and comedies. Shakespeare wrote both. The difference may be evident throughout, but the essential difference is that one has an unhappy ending and the other a happy ending.

In real life, of course, tragedy is at least as common as comedy, probably more so. Everybody dies in the end. "Happily ever after" lies in the realm of heaven, not earth. And so our most serious writers often prefer tragedy. Comedy may feel forced, unrealistic, dependent upon coincidences and remarkable good fortune.

Yet just as clouds can have silver linings, so unfortunate endings of stories can have something positive about them, and this is often the case in the best novels. I think of some recent novels I have read — such as The Stolen Child by Ann Hood, Heft by Liz Moore and When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzen — in which main characters die or problems remain unresolved. Still the authors give their readers something hopeful at the end. Lessons have been learned. Behavior has been changed. The future looks more promising, at least for some, than it once did.

I think of the Nick Hornby novel A Long Way Down, in which a group of people meet on New Year's Eve at the top of a tall building, all planning to jump off. They agree to meet regularly to talk over their problems. For each the problems that made them consider suicide remain, yet when they go to the top of that building a year later, they do so to admire the view, not to jump.

The importance of slaying the dragon, as Chesterton recognized, is that it leaves the reader with hope. With confidence. With the will not to give up, not to be a victim, not to surrender before the fight.

Sometimes slaying the dragon can mean something as simple as not giving up.