Introduction
Fantasy has been part of my life as early as I can remember. My grandmother, a children’s storyteller, sang songs of the flying purple people eater and the troll under the bridge. My best friend and I were the pink and red Power Rangers, stopping the dangers of the tiny neighborhood in Louisiana. When I was younger, I saw fantasy worlds as a form of escapism, with life as an only child was often lonely.
For the better portion of my life, fantasy served exactly that role. It wasn’t until my bubble was burst with all the bad in the world, and after attending several discussions with my favorite fantasy authors, that I learned fantasy is not just a form of escape. To some, including the authors, fantasy is therapeutic. Bibliotherapy is an actual treatment used today. There are so many impossibly large injustices in our society that many readers and writers face these issues by writing them into worlds in which they can be defeated.
This method of slaying real world dragons in fantasy worlds is especially powerful in young adult and children’s literature. Half of the job of authors is respecting the age group for which he or she writes. It means acknowledging that young people are capable and have agency in their own lives.
The fantasy genre focuses on the major injustices of the world—such as sexual assault, human trafficking, war, etc—and manifests them into physical beings or missions that can be slain or accomplished. And children and young adults are the ones wielding the swords.
In this paper, I will be looking at three specific works, one a classic, and two modern—The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, and Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan. I will look at how the job of the genre has changed with time, as well as explore the therapeutic nature of reading fantasy and how effective it can be.
Bibliotherapy
Many readers joke about going to the bookstore for bibliotherapy. While we might make light of this term, bibliotherapy is an actual therapeutic technique utilized by therapists, and has been for centuries, going back to times when reading the Koranand the Biblewere prescribed for mental maladies.
It has been proven that reading makes people more empathetic. However, it is also proven that readers connect and identify with fictive characters. In the article “Reading Therapy” on treatmentcenters.net, they outline what bibliotherapy is and how they utilize it:
“Bibliotherapy means to use a person's connection to the content of a book, piece of poetry, or other written text as an additional form of therapy, particularly when combined with other therapies such as writing therapy, have proven to have long-lasting effects in recovery."
Essentially, therapists choose novels with content and characters with which their patients will be able to connect. This form of therapy can help with stress and allows patients to see themselves in strong roles with positive outcomes.
However, the question begs to be asked--why not non-fiction? It is simply because fiction allows readers to bring their own experiences to the story and cater it to themselves.
However, the question begs to be asked--why not non-fiction? It is simply because fiction allows readers to bring their own experiences to the story and cater it to themselves.
"The recovering individual has an opportunity to acknowledge their issues from an alternative point of view. Empathizing with the fictional character also allows the individual to reach an almost cathartic state of mind by gaining hope from the character's success and releasing emotional tension."
These realizations can help patients reach a desire for change as well as safe, anonymous ways to discus their own issues (Reading Therapy).
However, readers don’t need a therapist to prescribe them a certain book. It is almost a certain kind of book magic when a young reader experiencing trauma or another hardship stumbles across a book addressing their suffering. They delve into the new world and find themselves healing as the characters develop and succeed in slaying the wicked in the world.
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
The method of using fantasy as a way to give children power is nothing new. C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia is an early example of a series of children’s novels that give both children and young adults power they might not realize they had.
At the beginning of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, the Pevensie children are sent out to the country during World War I by their mother to keep them safe. They are utterly powerless in the face of the Great War and their strange new home. However, when Lucy discovers the world behind the wardrobe, they step into a reality where they are kings and queens.
However, the children are still children, and a bit naïve. The White Witch manipulates Edmund into thinking he’d be her little prince:
“I want a nice boy whom I could bring up as a Prince and who would be King of Narnia when I am gone. While he was Prince he would wear a gold crown and eat Turkish Delight all day long; and you are much the cleverest and handsomest young man I’ve ever met. I think I would like to make you the Prince,” (Lewis 45).
And thus with Edmund’s betrayal, the world shifts, and the Pevensie children must now face the White Witch and her army of cretins. They step from one war into another; however, in this war, they can pick up a sword and fight; they can slay the enemy.
Many criticize the Narnia series for its overt Christian messages, though Lewis didn’t mean for the series to be Bible stories. His biographer George Sayer explained:
“His idea, as he once explained to me, was to make it easier for children to accept Christianity when they met it later in life… ‘I am aiming at a sort of pre-baptism of the child’s imagination.’” (Hardy 170).
However, Lewis’s main objective was just to write fulfilling, effective stories that tickled children’s imaginations. While this book has more of a sense of escapism than therapy, any child who can identify with any of the four Pevensie children will be able to find healing and acceptance in Lewis’s words. They can mentally pick up the sword with Peter and slay the White Witch—whatever she might represent for them.
Six of Crows
Modern fantasy books now have moved more explicitly into the role of therapy, rather than total escapism. As Carla Greenwood wrote in her article “Reading as Therapy” for the World Literacy Foundation, “Writing is thought to be a valid form of therapy, especially for those suffering from post-traumatic stress or for those of us feeling overwhelmed by the pressure of modern day life.” We live in a world where news outlets shove bad news down our throats nearly every minute of every day, so how do we deal with that?
Leigh Bardugo ingests all this badness and deals with it by writing beautifully detailed, intricate Russian-inspired high fantasy novels. Her novel Six of Crows, based in the Grisha universe, follows a band of six criminals, all with very different pasts. The leader, Kaz Brekker, suffers from PTSD and copes with chronic pain in his leg. Inej, Kaz’s righthand woman, is the victim of human trafficking, stolen from her family as a young girl. Jesper, the gambling addict, struggles with his sexuality. Nina works as a prostitute in Ketterdam. Matthias deals with racial prejudice forced down his throat from his faith. And then there’s sweet innocent Wylan, who for years was the victim of his father’s vitriolic verbal abuse and no mother to stick up for him. However, I will focus on Kaz.
Six of Crows was reviewed by Natasha Razi for the website Disability in Kidlit, and she too honed in on Kaz’s PTSD, saying:
"Kaz is violent and often grumpy, but he also demonstrates PTSD traits that are often underrepresented in fictional depictions...he experiences frequent intrusive thoughts, his mind circling back to his trauma again and again. Intrusive thoughts are one of the defining characteristics of PTSD... Like many traumatized people, Kaz ties tremendous emotional importance to a single mission, stemming from his trauma."
Readers with PTSD can connect with Kaz’s struggles and find healing in his character arc. Bardugo makes sure to show that embracing what others see as Kaz’s weakness is actually his strength. The cane that supports him is his go to weapon: “Kaz flipped the cane in his hand and pressed the carved crow’s head against Helvar’s throat,” (Bardugo 143). He is not broken; he is a force.
After discussions we’ve had in class, I realize why Bardugo paired so many diverse characters together. On top of being a media heavy, bad-news spouting tea pot, our society is quite isolated. People try to deal with their issues and file traumas away.
At the beginning of the story, Bardugo’s characters mimic that. No one in the group trusts one another. Right off the bat, Bardugo writes, “To say he [Kaz] trusted Inej would be stretching the point, but he could admit to himself that he’d come to rely on her” (43). They keep all of their detrimental pasts to themselves, thinking it for the best. But Bardugo pushes her characters beyond themselves, beyond the isolation that society has created, and forms an unlikely crew of unbreakable bandits.
So Six of Crows, and its sequel Crooked Kingdom, illustrates to young readers that in order to heal from their traumas, they must open up to others. A community of support leads to strength and success. It leads to bringing down the bad guys and basically saving the world. If you face your own demons, you can most certainly face the rest of the world.
Girls of Paper and Fire
The debut novel by Natasha Ngan is taking the young adult world by storm. Most young adult books dealing with larger issues don’t explicitly state what they are writing about, such as in Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows. Natasha Ngan expels this convention with an opening author’s note that states exactly what the book is facing: sexual assault.
“While I realize these are hard discussions, especially for teens, it is of vital importance we have them. Books can be safe places to explore difficult topics. While we cannot always shelter young people from being exposed to sexual violence, whether through lived experience or indirectly, we can give them a way to safely engage and reflect upon these issues.”
Ngan later goes on to state what she hopes readers will get out of the story: “supportive relationships and friendships. The ability to find hope even in the hardest of times. The power of female strength. The knowledge that you can go through horrible things and not just survive, but live.”
I’m not quite sure how I feel about this technique. As we have talked about in class, authors work in equal partnership with the readers, acknowledging that they are intelligent and bring their own experiences to the work. In a way, Ngan steals that opportunity from the readers by stating what she feels the readers should get out of the story. And yes, these are important messages, however, if the writing speaks for itself, we don’t need this author’s note to tell us that. But let’s look at the novel.
Lei is a girl from a small village in the kingdom of Ikhaara. Several years ago, her mother was taken during a royal raid, and her family has never known what happened to her. At the start of the story, the bull king (a demon form) is choosing the eight human girls who will become his Paper Girls, aka his concubines. However, they are making an exception this year and picking a ninth girl—Lei.
At the palace, she and the other eight girls’ names are drawn night after night until the king eventually calls for Lei. And even though all the other girls have done their job and satisfied the king, Lei cannot. She fights him and runs from the palace, back to the Paper House, where she is chained up in isolation. But life goes on, and her job as a Paper Girl is not over.
As their training continues, Lei’s walls are taken down by another of the Paper Girls, Wren, and she finds love in an unlikely and dangerous place. However, it is the start of her healing: “It gives me satisfaction to know there are some things even the King does not have the power to stop. It builds my confidence that one day we’ll be able to rebel with more than just our bodies and our live. That we will find a way to turn our growing hope and bravery into action,” (Ngan 273).
Lei soon learns that Wren is not all she appears. She is actually an assassin aiming to kill the Bull King. After a brutal rape committed by the King, Lei is ready to do whatever it takes to help Wren achieve her mission. But when Wren is suddenly taken away from the Palace after her mother’s death, it is up to Lei to kill the king.
I find it extremely important that Lei be the character to kill the king. She was the girl who experienced the rape, the girl who had the most to lose at the expense of the king. For her healing and mental health, she had to be the one to kill him.
“It’s over. It is done.
Idid it.
The King is dead,” (368).
There are several topics that are not resolved in the story, but this one, the most important one, most certainly is. And after the mission is accomplished, she is allowed to start healing, through a feeling of safety and through Wren’s love:
“Because that is what Wren is to me—my wings. And with her love, she’s taught me how to use my own. To fight against what oppresses me…A war might be coming. But we have the wings to fight it,” (379).
Even though the ending is cheesy, it still accomplishes Ngan’s mission of finding strength in love. And she also demonstrates my question by manifesting the social injustice of rape as a physical demon that in a fantasy world, Lei is able to slay. She faces her demons, both literally and figuratively, and is then given the chance to start healing.
Conclusion
There’s no question that fantasy has changed over the years. As with all forms of society, it changes to adjust to what readers need. During Lewis’s time, young readers needed escapism. Now, readers have discovered healing through the written word, though escapism is a huge part of that therapy.
The world today is filled with terrible demons that seem unconquerable. That’s what books are for. Everything from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobegiving kids the power to end a war; to Six of Crows showing kids that their society proclaimed weaknesses are actual strengths; to Girls of Paper and Fire that allow victims of rape to face their demons both literally and figuratively, the young adult fantasy genre is working hard to help young readers see themselves as people of power, people with agency, people who can pick up a sword and slay. Yes, these books are fantasy. But they are also hope and inspiration and have the power to inspire change in a world of demons.
Bibliography:
“Reading Therapy.” Treatment-Centers.net: The Nation’s Best Treatment Centers. 2018.
<https://www.treatment-centers.net/rehab/methodologies/reading-therapy.html>
Bardugo, Leigh. Six of Crows. Orion: London, 2015. Print.
Greenwood, Carla. “Reading as Therapy.” World Literacy Foundation. 9 October 2016.
<https://worldliteracyfoundation.org/reading-as-therapy-carla-greenwood/>
Handy, Bruce. “God and Man in Narnia.”Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult. Simon & Schuster: New York, 2017.
Lewis, C.S. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe HarperCollins: London, 1950. Print.
Ngan, Natasha. Girls of Paper and Fire. Hodder & Stoughton: London, 2018. Print.
Razi, Natasha. “Review: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo.” Disability in Kidlit. 26 March 2016. <http://disabilityinkidlit.com/2016/03/26/review-six-of-crows-by-leigh-bardugo/>
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