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Much of current fantasy fiction is concentrated on muscle-bound men wielding improbably large weapons, scantily clad women, ugly monsters and evil wizards. Yet has this not been true of legends and tales for thousands of years?

Let us compare any of the current heroes to Conan, to Beowulf, to Odysseus: each of these heroes provides an example of the finest of human virtues for the age they are written for. Always they are described as mighty heroes of the past, putting to shame the men of the present: It is worth remembering that Homer's heroes were often described as wielding weapons which "today's men" could not lift.

The ugly and evil monsters, be they Orcs, Dragons, Gorgons or anything else that the imagination of the author could create have a similar lineage, and represent the qualities felt most loathsome in the time they are written: they are, in a sense, a way to further praise the hero, for he must overcome these horrifying creatures by sheer courage and intelligence.

Women in older stories are typically either irredeemably wicked and self-serving, or nauseatingly sweet and self-abasing. The bad women are often given greater emotional complexity in modern tales, though the role as temptress and often as magic user has not really changed since Circe. Again, these serve as devices to demonstrate the moral power (or lack thereof) of the hero. Thus Parsifal resists temptation and is successful, thus destroying Klingsor. It is clear that a hero must be tempted and yet not give in to temptation before he can succeed, demonstrating his superior moral strength.

In more recent stories there has been a laudable change to the good women, making them strong and assertive in their own right. These Neo Amazons are often wiser than the men, and can fight at least as well as any warrior. Their function is to demonstrate that the hero is capable of forming a bond on equal terms with a woman.

Evil wizards who send all manner of enchantments against the hero are common in most tales, though in the older stories they tend to be demigods or even gods who wish to frustrate the object of the hero's quest. The function of these is to demonstrate that the hero has the virtue of persistence: that having decided upon the right course of action he will endure unto the end, despite opposition, betrayal and treachery.

Fantasy thus gives a current version of a message thousands of years old, an example of the qualities needed to become a hero; the intent being that the listeners will be inspired to emulate those qualities in their own life and thus make the world around them a little better. Such literature can only become stagnant if the society that produces it becomes stagnant: the pace of change however, can be rather slow, even as societal changes are slow.

Learn more about this author, Richard Sprigg.
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