Hello readers! This week will be the first in a series of writings following the theme Beginnings. The way it’s going to work is: I pick a popular fantasy series, read or re-read one of its books each week, and then write about it. For Beginnings, I am narrowing the scope of my writing to focus on the protagonist during each story’s introduction. What makes us root for a character? My goal is to inspire a dialog with other fantasy lovers while bettering my understanding of structure. In my own work I find this facet particularly challenging, so what better way to improve myself than to examine how successful writers do it?
First up, Christopher Paolini’s Eragon from the Inheritance Cycle! Needless to say, spoilers ahead.
To see how an author induces us to empathize with a protagonist, I look at how the protagonist is introduced. It doesn’t matter how interesting a plot is, or how cool a magic system is, if the audience isn’t on the protagonist’s side. That’s how we become interested in a story, by becoming invested in the characters. When I read a book, I want to envision myself as the hero. I don’t want to watch someone I don’t care about save the day.
Eragon is a typical 'hero’s journey' fantasy. You’re not going to see anything outside of the box here. Eragon is an orphan, his foster family dies, the old mentor appears, and Eragon must leave the world he knows to save the day. Yes it’s all familiar, but Paolini manages to separate his story from the sea of generic fantasies by making his characters and his world inviting. We are drawn to Eragon, plain and simple. He’s brave, he’s stupid, and he’s special.
Paolini geared the entire introduction of Eragon to make us arrive at this conclusion. He understood that liking Eragon is so crucial to his story’s success that he dedicated a fifth of his book to making it happen. By the time Eragon leaves Carvahall and his home on page 146, Paolini has subtly and not so subtly hardwired our brains to like Eragon. He does so by forcing Eragon to make moral choices that appeal to our sense of justice. That way when Eragon inevitably makes mistakes in the heat of the moment, the audience knows that his heart is in the right place.
There are a ton of moments to choose from in Paolini's introduction, and I'd like to try to keep these posts from dragging on, so I’m going to cherry pick a few of the more important highlights, and put them into two categories: what I liked and what I didn’t like. I’ll start with what I didn’t like.
Paolini makes liberal use of thought text. For a lot of the book we’re inside Eragon and Saphira’s heads. Telepathy plays a big role in the story, which is all well and good, but in the beginning before Saphira shows up, Paolini uses it for exposition rather than dialogue, and it doesn’t work.
For instance, right at the beginning, Eragon finds the dragon egg in the spine. His immediate thought is “Was it sent here by accident, or was I meant to have it?” (11) Paolini may as well have stopped the story and written a note to the reader saying, ‘Eragon is special, and this special stone is for him.’ Later on, Eragon reflects on his own origin, wondering why his mother left him as a baby, “I’m sure there was a good reason for what she did; I only wish I knew what it was.” (28) Again, Paolini beats the reader over the head with foreshadowing, practically telling us, yes there is a good reason and you’ll find out later. These are lazy ways of telling your reader that your character is special. Let us come to that conclusion on our own.
I grumble because in an introduction where Paolini otherwise does a great job injecting personality and importance into Eragon’s character, these quotes stick out like a sore thumb. In other instances, Paolini achieves his goal of foreshadowing much more subtly and effectively. For example, he has Brom recount an epic story about dragon riders and the past, right after which Eragon’s egg hatches. Immediately my mind jumped to ‘oh he could be a dragon rider!’ If he had tried to convey this same thing in a thought bubble it would have been so much less effective.
And as I said, once Saphira comes into the picture, these unrealistically insightful thoughts go away, but I would be remiss if I let them slide – anyway, now for what I liked.
When you examine Paolini’s word choices, it becomes very clear how he wants to shape Eragon’s morality. The first time we meet Eragon, he’s tracking game in the forest. “Eragon did not fear the Spine—he was the only hunter near Carvahall who dared track game deep into its craggy recesses…his family needed meat for the rapidly approaching winter and could not afford to buy it in Carvahall.” (9) These first words used to describe Eragon tell us much. Practically speaking, they describe his skill set, that he’s a hunter with tracking and survival skills. But more importantly, they tell us that he’s brave, that his family is poor, and Eragon takes responsibility in pulling his weight to feed them.
Family becomes the focal point of Eragon’s purpose, and it is the primary device used to gain our trust in the character. After all, what is more important than family. Garrow, Roran and the farm are the only things Eragon has ever known. They are what ground him at the beginning of the story. Paolini needs to build them up before crashing them down. When Saphira hatches, she becomes family too. In the wake of Garrow’s death, protecting her becomes Eragon’s priority.
Roran is more than Eragon’s brother; he’s his best friend. “They could not have been closer even if they had been real brothers.” (29) Paolini solidifies this sentiment when Eragon mopes about Roran leaving town. When Eragon meets the miller Dempton, Roran’s new mentor, he “sourly wish[es] that the miller had never come to Carvahall.” (94). You never like to see your main character mope, but in this case we can sympathize. His brother and best friend is leaving. Who hasn’t had to part ways with a close friend? But ultimately Eragon appreciates that Roran is entering the next phase of his life. He wants to marry and make something of his own, so Eragon resigns himself to be happy for Roran.
Garrow, the Star Wars ‘Uncle Owen’ of the story, serves as Eragon’s moral compass. When Eragon returns from town with purchased meat, Garrow is upset, echoing the reluctance that Eragon himself showed before. “You let him pay for it? I told you before, I won’t beg for our food.” (24) This sentiment echoes what Eragon says earlier when Horst purchases the meat for him in the first place. And Eragon isn’t happy until Horst offers him a job to pay off the debt. Paolini shows us Eragon and Garrow’s responses separately, so that we subliminally put the two together. Eragon respects Garrow enough to model his behavior after his. Both are proud and want to stand on their own, but Eragon puts the farm and family before all else, which is why he accepts Horst’s help. It’s unfortunate, but Garrow has to die for Eragon to leave. If Garrow didn’t die, Eragon’s familial ties would keep him in Carvahall, and the ‘hero’s journey’ would become a much more localized event.
The moment Saphira branded Eragon, she became part of his family. The first night he kept her outside, he couldn’t sleep. “That night he brooded on all the bad things that could happen to a small and unprotected animal.” Eragon has a sense of responsibility. He cares for Saphira from the moment she comes into his life. Although he starts out as a kind of parent to Saphira, she quickly becomes his equal, and often giving sage advice in many situations. As she says, “I may be younger than you in years, but I am ancient in my thoughts.” (629) With Garrow and Roran out of the picture, she becomes his priority. Eragon leaves Carvahall in an effort to keep her safe.
Eragon also interacts with several of the townspeople during the introduction. To some degree, particularly with Sloan, those interactions played a role in shaping Eragon, but they are more used as a way for Paolini to build his world. Even Brom, who is a vital character throughout the remainder of the series, only really becomes crucial to Eragon after the introduction. They certainly don't impact Eragon the way his family does, so I’ll leave them out of this post.
I'll say that Paolini did an outstanding job using supplementary characters to bring us to Eragon’s side, especially considering Paolini was such a young writer when this story was published. Even before we start Eragon’s journey we know that Eragon is brave, proud, caring, loyal, and makes an effort to do what is right. Physically and magically, Eragon is untested, but the reader leaves Carvahall confident that Alagaesia is in good hands.