Dealing With Immortality In Fiction

(Originally Posted on Live Journal — Dec. 6th, 2009 at 7:33 PM)

There was a discussion on sartorias ’ LJ some time ago about Elves in current fantasy. What makes them different than being “ordinary humans with magical powers”? This led to mentions of Elves being immortal. (I’d meant to get this written and posted for weeks, but better late than never.)

Now, one of the things that has always fascinated me is the huge differences between the experiences of immortality and mortality. And certainly, Tolkien’s choices in his works have something to do with my outlook. But I was always left feeling that he had not resolved the matter of what happened when an Elf had his or her body destroyed in some fashion. It wasn’t clear in Tolkien: there apparently was some sort of “reincarnation”, but it was not clear how it worked.

So, when I started constructing my own fantasy world, and chose to include a race of beings who were, well, cousins to Tolkien’s Elves and would be “immortal”, I had to consider what it meant to be Mortal — what was the ultimate fate of a mortal soul? Being Christian, I do believe in a “life eternal” — but for me, the eternal is outside the material world and outside time. Which meant, to me, that if I was to call someone “immortal”, they would need to be immortal inside the material world. Basically (using the terms of my own faith), the immortals in the world cannot die and “come into the presence of God”. Instead, they are still stuck in the world.

Which forced me to consider the matter of ghosts. Mortal souls don’t stick around (in my fantasy world, Arveniem), so they wouldn’t be ghosts. But if the body of an immortal were slain, what then? The soul becomes disembodied. But I didn’t like the idea of lots of disembodied spirits blowing around, so I decided they would become “refleshed”. The word “reincarnation” does actually mean the same thing, but it comes with the whole baggage of “being reborn as a baby”, and that was some place I did not want to go. For me, I believe that each new life is unique, which leaves me ambivalent about the reality of the general perception of reincarnation. So rather than drag that ambivalence into the fiction, I looked for a different solution.

My solution was that if my “elves” – I ended up calling them the Fynlaren – were somehow “killed”, that is, had their body rendered non-functional, separating the spirit from the body, the “dead” body would disintegrate (dematerialize) within three days. And in the meantime, the spirit would once again take on a material form. But this time, the form would reflect the reality of the spirit. So, if an adult “died”, the refleshed form would be adult. A consequence was that if the Fynlar’s spirit/soul had somehow become warped, the new body would reflect that. But that was a secondary consideration.

With that decided, I could then say that a Mortal’s spirit when his or her body was killed would go right out of the World, and into the presence of God, totally separated from those inside the world.

This very basic but crucial difference in their fates gave me grounds for much potential tension between the mortals and immortals. And yet, I don’t start the story with it blatantly evident. But it underlies a lot of what happens in my story.

Because so much fantasy I’ve encountered in recent years has “immortals” thrown into the story, but the authors don’t really seem to have considered what that means. In one book (by a friend, actually), her elves don’t seem to be immortal, but they are supposedly very long lived. Yet, it does not seem to play out that way – her heroine is taken into an “elven” family, and they all seem to be aged the way an ordinary human family would be, and they behave that way.

Even if the children of an immortal race go through the stages of infancy, childhood and adolescence at the same rate as a mortal race, once they reach adulthood, aren’t things going to be drastically different for them? For one thing, since they may have an indefinite expanse of time, matrimony is not something they would rush into. After all, what’s the hurry? As long as he or she is not marrying a mortal, of course.

Which is one of the main issues in my novel, The Ring of Adonel – one of the Fynlaren has married a Mortal woman, and they have a son, who has just reached adulthood. What happens next? Because Gwyric, the Fynlar, has been very much in love; he hasn’t considered what will happen as his wife ages or dies, he hasn’t considered the nature of his son.

That too was something I had to evaluate. What does happen to the children of a Mortal and Immortal? I made an arbitrary decision that any such child would be Mortal; that person would possibly have a much longer life-span than an ordinary Mortal, but that was all.

Anyway, the point of all this explanation is that having spent so much time working out the consequences for my own writing, I tend to get impatient when I read books where it is obvious that no thought has been expended on the issue of the differences between Mortal and Immortal.

I’m left wondering why that is so. If an author makes the statement that his or her “elves” are immortal, and yet does nothing to really make them different, what was the point? What do they get out of it? What does the reader get?

ORIGINAL COMMENTS ON LIVE JOURNAL

calimac wrote: (Dec. 6th, 2009 09:17 pm (local))

What are the authors trying to do? They’re trying to push buttons. Same as with authors who copy other aspects of Tolkien, like references to ancient lore and evocations of myth. They see it done well by other authors; they treat it like a plug-in feature that they can use to. The fallacy is in thinking this will automatically create the same effect.

The fate of Tolkien’s Elves is not discussed in LOTR, but it’s a lot clearer in the posthumous works. They are naturally immortal, this much we already knew; that they can be reborn if killed is newly-learned, but they retain their self-identity, so it’s different from normal accounts of human incarnation.

But what’s most critical is the ultimate fate. Elves are immortal, but only within the world. They do not have the kind of immortality meant by a Christian “life eternal.” They know the world’s temporal extent is finite, and thus so is theirs. Men die, but their spirits go outside the world. The Elves don’t know what happens to them there, but the Christian reader does.

Brilliant evocation by Tolkien of his own religious beliefs here.

scribblerworks wrote: (Dec. 6th, 2009 10:41 pm (local))

I agree.

This was one of the things that was very important to me – that issue that the Elves do not know what their fate is at the End of the World. They don’t know if they will get to share the fate of Mortals or if they will cease to exist entirely.

And again, I had to make a decision for myself about what will happen to my Fynlaren. But they don’t know what that is.
😀

As a consequence of all this, for my characters, it led to the Fynlaren being very studious in avoiding war in general and the killing of Mortals as much as possible. They would rather move away then be responsible for ending the life of a Mortal. At least, that has been the way they have acted up to the point of this story.
😀

As for other writers, again I agree that far too many use immortality as a plug-in, without considering the real consequences. It’s rather frustrating to me to encounter it. Especially when one can see that otherwise, the writer is actually rather competent.

degaston wrote: (Dec. 12th, 2009 03:46 pm (local))

I think calimac’s point about pushing buttons is well-made, and it’s likely you’d find comparable buttons or issues in any genre when the fiction gets generic.

I understand your frustration when you say “what’s the point,” but maybe you expect too much of us! After decades of D&D, video games, and best-selling fantasy novels, we all know what elves are like: tall, slender, blonde, good-looking. Good fighters when you push them. Rather snooty and stuck-up around lesser races. But it’s nice to have them nearby when the generic Shadow Wraith Spectre things attack, or when you have Scroll of Annoyingly Ambiguous Ancient Lore to decipher. Oh yeah, and they’re immortal. Did I mention that?

As for what we get out of it, for authors I’d say a shortcut and for readers an expected comfort level. I mean, you’re not asking us to think about this stuff, are you?

So I share your pain. A couple years ago I re-read the Silmarillion for the first time since the 1980’s. From this somewhat-more-mature perspective I was deeply impressed by the nuances of Tolkien’s portrayals of the elves, and even more so by the complexities of their relations with the Houses of Men in the First Age. So much ambiguity, resonance, misunderstanding, glory, and tragedy – in “real life,” as it were, nothing’s simple when mortals meet immortals and become their allies. And yet despite the conflict and anguish it was only through that fragile connection that Middle-earth was redeemed.

Of course, Tolkien had the advantage of studying ancient source materials for decades in the original languages. These days some might call that cheating.