Weapons in Literature: Symbols of the Hero's Journey

Weapons in Literature: Symbols of the Hero’s Journey

Preface

I’ve always loved fantasy stories. Magic, forests, mountains. Symbols, talismans, including special weapons. My favourite part was always when the hero, lifted out of his ordinary world and into the magical, is training up and mastering skills. Not the most exciting part really, but it was to me. It’s the part before the danger, when there are still mentors, and a clear path to mastering new skills. But that’s not the Hero’s path. The Hero’s path is to face the unknown, do what’s never been done, that which only they can, and must, do. It wouldn’t be much of a story if Harry Potter went to Hogwarts, stayed in school, and maybe followed Dumbledore into battle against Voldemort. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always kept coming back to these stories.

Introduction

Three heroes in three stories: Harry Potter of the Harry Potter series; Eragon of the Inheritance Cycle; and Aragorn of The Lord of the Rings. In each of these stories, our heroes find their way to their weapon but don’t necessarily connect with it at first. It’s only when they change their relationship with their destiny that the bond is truly forged and our hero fully wields their weapon in the world.

Harry Potter

Harry’s wand is made of holly, with a phoenix feather core. The phoenix who gave the feather for that core gave another, just one other. And that feather forms the core of Lord Voldemort’s wand. Harry learns this fact on his first trip into Diagon Alley, his first steps into the wizarding world.

From the beginning, Harry’s fate, inextricably linked with Tom Riddle’s is representing in the wands’ twin core relationship.

Harry’s wand acts of its own accord several times to save him from mortal peril. The first time Harry’s and Voldemort’s wands clash a golden beam forms between them, from which ‘ghosts’ of Harry’s parents issue forth who then protect him in a narrow escape.

The series overall places a high degree of emphasis on the bond between witch or wizard and wand, and rightful command of a wand. ‘The wand chooses the wizard, Harry,’ Ollivander tells him on that first visit. Not only that, spells simple don’t work as well with someone else’s wand, as Hermione experiences with Bellatrix Lestrange’s. This comes into full highlight with the lore around the Elder Wand, the mythical wand that bests all other wands. That Voldemort would desecrate the grave of Harry’s closest mentor, Dumbledore, for this wand but ultimately it was Harry who bested Malfoy as its rightful master, that this forms a key to the crux of the whole story shows just how much significance is placed into the symbol of the ‘weapon.’

Harry’s own, personal, wand is broken in the seventh book. This book sees Harry at his most lost. Loss of loved ones, loss of direction, loss of hope for a time, and loss of safety. No plan, no mentor, no wand he had to find his own way to destroy all the remaining horcruxes and defeat Voldemort.

And he does just that; in the final duel Harry goes in with confidence, without even his own wand. He reckons, correctly, that in fact he himself, not Voldemort, is master of the Elder Wand. It didn’t matter that Harry’s own wand was broken, nor that the Elder wand was in Voldemort’s hand. Harry finally understood the sacrifice that his mother made for him and who he was as a wizard.

And in the end, Harry chose very wisely to use the all powerful wand to repair his own and before casting it away forever.

Of course, this is the story as the author chose to write it. JK Rowling chose unquestionably for good to triumph over evil, love over power. Real life often doesn’t work that way, at least at first glance. Still, we tell these stories for a reason.

Eragon

The Inheritance cycle is a young adult fantasy series, written by Christopher Paolini. Paolini draws some criticism for leaning heavily on Tolkien’s world building, but hey, the world of literature is all the more rich for building on top of what Tolkien wrote. The story Paolini tells though, is much more coming of age, less epic. Less epic in the sense that it’s not so much about the incarnation of the forces of good and evil, rise and fall of kingdoms, closing of karmic loops that have lasted an age. It’s a much more intimate story, about a teenage boy who doesn’t know who he is or where he comes from, a boy who comes to know himself (quite literally, Eragon discovers his own True Name on the cusp of the final battle) and save the world.

Eragon is a Dragon Rider, a once flourishing group formed from a pact between Dragons, Elves, and Men. The weapon of a Dragon Rider was a sword, forged by the Elf Rhunön in the colour of their Dragon’s scales. Over the course of the story, Eragon first is given the sword of another rider by his mentor, Brom. This sword is taken back by its rightful owner, the heir of the man who once owned that sword. That man was his half-brother, Murtagh. Bereft of a sword, and a mentor, and a friend, Eragon receives a prophecy to find the material needed to forge a new Rider’s sword. He seeks the aid of Rhunön and forges the sword Brisingr, deep blue, hand-and-a-half hilt, and a Sapphire set in the pommel. Eragon named the sword Brisingr, using the first spell, and first word in the Ancient Language that Brom had ever taught him.

The first sword that Eragon wielded was Zar’Roc, the blade of Morzan. Morzan was a Rider who turned on them, and sided instead with Galbatorix, who lead an insurrection and plunged the kingdom into war and tyranny. It was given to him by his mentor Brom, who had defeated Morzan in battle. Brom taught Eragon sword fighting, which they first practiced with sticks. When wooden swords no longer sufficed, he presented Eragon with Zar’Roc.

Eragon would later go on to meet Murtagh, a young man and rebel. Unbeknownst to Eragon, Murtagh was the son of Morzan and his half-brother. Eragon had never known his father, and his mother died before he could know her. Eragon was raised by his uncle, his mother’s brother, as a farm boy.

Although briefly befriended, Murtagh betrayed Eragon. Murtagh had rebelled against the tyrant king, Galbatorix, most of his life, but was resigned to fighting for him. In a clash with Eragon, he defeated him and took Zar’Roc as his rightful inheritance. Murtagh was deeply bitter that their mother, Selena, had escaped Galbatorix and provided for Eragon a life outside the confines of Galbatorix’s grip.

Now, with Brom dead, Murtagh an enemy, and no sword, Eragon is lost.

Eragon is told a prophecy, and finds under the Menoa tree the special brightsteel needed to forge a new sword. Rhunön and Eragon forge the sword Brisingr together. During this time, he is also receiving formal tutelage as a Dragon Rider.

The weapons of a Dragon Rider are not only physical. They do battle also with magic. And to command magic requires mental fortitude and knowledge of the Ancient Language. By speaking the Ancient Language and providing the energy to enact its truth, Riders and other spell casters perform magic. The Ancient Language is comprised of the True Names of things, such as fire, light, stone. All beings have True Names, composed of words in the Ancient Language.

In order to prepare for the final battle with Galbatorix, Eragon must find his True Name. Meaning, he must know himself. He must see himself as he is, not how he wishes to be nor how he judges himself to be, but how he is. Eragon ponders this and finds it. Sword in hand and in heart, Eragon confronts Galbatorix and ushers in an age of peace to the land.

The weapons that passed through Eragon’s hands symbolized his eponymous Inheritance. The unfinished business of his mother’s flight from Morzan and the half-brother left behind, the unfinished business of his father Brom. In a way, Brisingr was a reincarnation of Brom’s sword, his dragon also being blue and named Saphira. Most of all, the weapons symbolized Eragon’s coming into himself and out in the world.

Aragorn

Note: There is an abundance of supremacist allegory in The Lord of the Rings. Nonetheless, I think Aragorn’s journey is a valuable story in fated purpose and choosing to live in it rather than run away from it.

Aragorn is the heir to Numenor, a legendary race of Men that have been all but forgotten. He is the heir of Isildur, the man who cut the Ring of Power down from Sauron’s hand, ending the Great War of the Second Age. Isildur however was enraptured by the Ring and failed to destroy it. Aragorn carries this failure, this weakness, as his own. This causes him to deny his destiny as King of Gondor, leader of the race of Men.

As a sub-plot in this story, Frodo faces his destiny as the Ring-Bearer. Though neither talented nor particularly able, it is his destiny to carry the ring to Mordor. Frodo’s story mirrors the themes of Aragorn’s. At some point, he wishes ‘the ring had never come to me, and none of this had happened at all,’ or that Bilbo might have slain Gollum so that the Dark Lord had never come to hear of the Shire. Similarly, Aragorn spends decades of time wandering the North as a lone Ranger, as if he could be just another Numenorian man and not the heir to the throne. But, he is not.

Aragorn knows this, and he carries with him the shards of Narsil, the sword that shattered as Isildur cut down the One Ring. (This is, in my opinion, a major difference between the books and the movies, where we see the shards being held in Rivendell, in care of Elrond.) It’s as if to say, he knows his destiny, he hasn’t given up on it, but he wasn’t ready either to set it down for good or to go for it, for real.

The reappearance of the One Ring presents a turning point for Aragorn. At this point, he asks Elrond to reforge the sword. It is renamed Anduril, Flame of the West. Aragorn joins the Fellowship of the Ring and begins his quest to reunite the Kingdom of Men in earnest.

Aragorn is tried repeatedly as he travels across Middle Earth towards the throne in White City, in Gondor. Having taken up the sword, he now must live up to the post and earn the respect and loyalty of men across the kingdom. He does so in Rohan, and the battle of Helm’s Deep.

Reaching farther back into history, Aragorn is tested again by a pact formed in the last age. With Anduril, Aragorn closes a karmic loop formed in the last War, where deserters of Dunharrow were cursed to remain ghosts on Middle Earth, unable to pass into the afterlife. In fact, it is with Anduril that Aragorn stakes his claim across Middle Earth as the Return of the King.

It may seem that the most exciting parts of the story are the major battles, and pulling through them in the nick of time. Yet it was the alliances formed, the answers to the rallying cries that were made that won the battle. It was every moment that Aragorn leaned into his destiny as he travelled Middle Earth, finally coming out of the North, out of Rivendell and into the Kingdom of Men. Across Rohan, through Dunharrow, to Gondor.

Hero’s Journey

The weapon is a symbol for how we show up in the world. How we assert, how we interact with and modify the world around us. The imagery itself is phallic and this is a masculine archetypal energy. The outward ‘I do’ is paired with the inward ‘I am.’ We’ve seen in these stories that there is no potency, in other words there’s impotence without integrity. Without knowing one’s self, one cannot effectively do anything. The weapon is symbol of this connection to the outside world. Our heroes aren’t sitting in monasteries mastering their inner worlds in isolation, they are journeying out in the world and the quality of their weapons and relationship with that weapon, their ability to wield that weapon is linked with the parallel inner journey.

It should be noted that although this piece is about an archetypal masculine quality, self assertion, it applies equally to human beings across the gender spectrum.

Conclusion

The study of myth has always fascinated me, and I’ve not always understood why. I’ve come to appreciate myth and fairytale as the cultural inheritance belonging to all, born from the journey of the human psyche and self-image through the ages. Though the incarnations may evolve, the symbols are eternal.