copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman
Why did you throw the jack of hearts away?
It was the only card in the deck I had left to play. -- The Doors
During the O. J. Simpson trial, observers claimed that, on his defendant’s behalf, attorney Johnny Cochran played the “race card.” Dancing with the Stars critics said that, in an effort to endear herself to the show’s audience and judges, contestant Marie Osmond played the “sympathy card.” Historians claim that the cards that Wild Bill Hickock was playing, which contained aces and eights, comprise the “dead man’s hand,” because he was shot to death while gambling with them.
These allusions are based upon the old analogy that compares one’s personal attributes and assets to the hand that one is dealt at birth. Life, according to this view, is not just any game; it's a card game. It’s a gamble. The stakes may vary, but the goal is always the same: to play the cards one has been dealt to one’s best advantage in the hope of winning the pot.
Even before poker, the life = game equation was popular. The Tarot deck is based upon this notion, and, as a result, its devotees claim, the Tarot hand that one is dealt can foretell his or her future, or fortune.
Beowulf, a poem that is interesting for many reasons, shows us the same thing that a study of Greek mythology discloses: humans, like the gods themselves, were subject to the whims of fate. To paraphrase Alexander Pope, Zeus (or Beowulf) might propose, but it was the Fates (or fate) who disposed of the issues, or determined the outcome of the events, of the day. In the days of ancient Greece, the Fates, envisioned as three sisters, were the ones who decided how events would play out. In Beowulf, the Fates have become fate, an impersonal force, much as the Norse goddess Hel became the impersonal place, hell, in Christian belief. Nevertheless, in both the worlds of the ancient Greeks and of the medieval Norsemen, Geats included, it was not the gods or humans who had the final say as to how incidents or actions, including their own, would turn out. There was a power higher than theirs, to which their own wills were subject.
Beowulf was told and retold for centuries before it was finally committed to paper. The person who wrote it down for posterity was a Christian, and, upon the pagan folkways and beliefs evident in the poem, the scribe overlaid references to Christian faith and doctrine. As a result, there is an uneasy alliance between the pagan and the Christian world views that is incompatible and conflicting. Some may suppose that this duality of vision weakens the poem, but it may be argued that the juxtaposition of these two Weltanschauung, in fact, enriches the narrative. The poem shows what the Norse philosophy of life and social values were before their Christian conversion and what they were becoming during, and would be after, this conversion. For example, before, Beowulf attributed his victories over his foes to fate; afterward, he credits them to God’s will. This twofold attribution of success indicates that, gradually, the idea that it is an impersonal fate that determines the affairs of humans was being replaced by the belief that God’s will is the determinant of such outcomes. In other words, fate becomes God's will. The doctrine of predestination develops this idea with rigorous logic, making humans little more than automatons whose behavior consists of little more than actions that are programmed from the beginning--that is, from eternity--by the will of God.
In the pagan world, the cards one is dealt would have been said to have been dealt by the Fates or by fate. In the Christian world, it is God who deals the cards.
These allusions are based upon the old analogy that compares one’s personal attributes and assets to the hand that one is dealt at birth. Life, according to this view, is not just any game; it's a card game. It’s a gamble. The stakes may vary, but the goal is always the same: to play the cards one has been dealt to one’s best advantage in the hope of winning the pot.
Even before poker, the life = game equation was popular. The Tarot deck is based upon this notion, and, as a result, its devotees claim, the Tarot hand that one is dealt can foretell his or her future, or fortune.
Beowulf, a poem that is interesting for many reasons, shows us the same thing that a study of Greek mythology discloses: humans, like the gods themselves, were subject to the whims of fate. To paraphrase Alexander Pope, Zeus (or Beowulf) might propose, but it was the Fates (or fate) who disposed of the issues, or determined the outcome of the events, of the day. In the days of ancient Greece, the Fates, envisioned as three sisters, were the ones who decided how events would play out. In Beowulf, the Fates have become fate, an impersonal force, much as the Norse goddess Hel became the impersonal place, hell, in Christian belief. Nevertheless, in both the worlds of the ancient Greeks and of the medieval Norsemen, Geats included, it was not the gods or humans who had the final say as to how incidents or actions, including their own, would turn out. There was a power higher than theirs, to which their own wills were subject.
Beowulf was told and retold for centuries before it was finally committed to paper. The person who wrote it down for posterity was a Christian, and, upon the pagan folkways and beliefs evident in the poem, the scribe overlaid references to Christian faith and doctrine. As a result, there is an uneasy alliance between the pagan and the Christian world views that is incompatible and conflicting. Some may suppose that this duality of vision weakens the poem, but it may be argued that the juxtaposition of these two Weltanschauung, in fact, enriches the narrative. The poem shows what the Norse philosophy of life and social values were before their Christian conversion and what they were becoming during, and would be after, this conversion. For example, before, Beowulf attributed his victories over his foes to fate; afterward, he credits them to God’s will. This twofold attribution of success indicates that, gradually, the idea that it is an impersonal fate that determines the affairs of humans was being replaced by the belief that God’s will is the determinant of such outcomes. In other words, fate becomes God's will. The doctrine of predestination develops this idea with rigorous logic, making humans little more than automatons whose behavior consists of little more than actions that are programmed from the beginning--that is, from eternity--by the will of God.
In the pagan world, the cards one is dealt would have been said to have been dealt by the Fates or by fate. In the Christian world, it is God who deals the cards.
A person might be dealt any of the 22 Major Arcana cards or the 14 Minor Arcana cards of the Tarot deck. All of these cards signified and brought about particular things. Today, people don’t usually think of a person as having any particular set of cards of such a predetermined nature in the hands that fate or God deals to him or her. Instead, whatever personal attributes and assets a person has or accumulates are usually considered the cards that he or she has been dealt. Over time, the cards in a person’s hand may change as one is lost or another is acquired. Were we to apply this concept to Beowulf, we might say that his cards included courage, unusually great strength and stamina, martial prowess, longevity, wisdom, loyalty, compassion, great wealth, popularity, and kingship. When circumstances warranted his doing so, he might play one or more of these cards. In his fights with Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon, he played his courage, strength and stamina, and martial prowess cards; as king, he played his loyalty, compassion, and wisdom cards.
Human destiny is complex and impossible to know in advance. Life seems to be a gamble. We also sometimes do not know the full extent of our personal attributes and assets until we are, as it were, called upon by circumstances to use them. We are not always privy to every card in our hands; sometimes, some must be played from a face-down position. Luck (in pagan terms) or divine will (in Christian terms) has a role to play as well. By using such metaphors and analogies as life = gamble, life = game, and one’s personal attributes and assets = a hand of cards, we reduce these complex sets of incidents, circumstances, and actions to simpler, more understandable ideas. Whether any of these ideas is objectively true is perhaps unknowable, but they are, at least, true to one’s sense of how things are and of how things work. They seem to explain. They make sense to us emotionally, if not rationally.
What does all this have to do with character and setting? Writers play God (or fate) when they write stories. The writer is the one who deals the cards that the characters must play, giving or withholding this personal attribute or that individual asset. It was the writer--and the group of storytellers before him--who gave Beowulf his courage, unusually great strength and stamina, martial prowess, longevity, wisdom, loyalty, compassion, great wealth, popularity, and kingship, just as it was Charles Dickens, for example, who gave Ebenezer Scrooge his greed and stinginess, his callous disregard for others, and his capacities--at first unrealized--for compassion, sympathy, and love.
The cards that writers deal to their characters represent the genetic inheritance of these imaginary persons. But genetics is only one influence, as scientists remind us, that affects--and determines--behavior. We’re products of our environments as much as we are the products of our genes. Both nature and nurture make us who and what we are and who and what we become.
If the personal attributes and assets of the individual character represent his or her genetic inheritance, as it were, what represents the character’s environment? In fiction, the setting is the time, the place, and the cultural milieu into which the character is born. The setting may be past, present, or future. It may involve a tyranny, a theocracy, a monarchy, an oligarchy, or a democracy. It may be secular or religious. It may be amoral, moral, or immoral. It may be a universe or the microcosm of a total institution, such as a boarding school or a prison. It may be a metropolis or an island. It may be urban, suburban, or rural. It may be a rain forest or a desert, a castle or a shanty, this world or another planet in a galaxy far, far away; it may even be heaven or hell. Obviously, if a character were born into or lives in any one of these settings, his or her development would differ--in many cases, radically--from his or her development in another setting. Beowulf, both because of the cards he’s dealt and the time and place in which he lives, is a very different character than Ebenezer Scrooge!
By giving characters specific attributes and assets and by setting their lives in particular times, places, and cultural milieus, writers mimic the genetic and environmental aspects of human existence, providing their imaginary people with the gifts of nature and nurture that actual humans receive from evolution, geography, and culture. Whereas, for people, these gifts are likely to be seen as the effects of accident, luck, or grace, there’s no doubt as to who provides them to fictional characters, and they are given deliberately so that each character can fulfill his or her role in the drama the author has determined to create. The writer, depending upon one’s perspective, is, for his or her characters, fate or god.
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