Katherine Haylett finds that there are lessons to learn from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld
What makes us human?
‘Imagination, not intelligence, made us human’, said Terry Pratchett, in response to the allegation that fantasy was simply a form of escapism, commenting that fantasy focusses more on what he was escaping to, rather than from.
Fantasy is important
Fantasy is often downplayed as a less sophisticated form of literature (sometimes justifiably!), so why should we believe that reading and engaging with fantasy literature is important? We need look no further than Pratchett’s own ideas on the subject.
He was the UK’s best-selling author of the 1990s, overtaken only by J.K. Rowling, and is one of England’s most prolific authors, writing 40 books in just over 30 years. His final novel was published after his death in March 2015 as a result of his early-onset Alzheimer’s.
A whole generation has grown up with Pratchett and people continue to discover him even after his death. His imagination, wittiness and profundity have led to widespread appeal throughout his life. Take a gripping plot combined with an unparalleled turn of phrase, and you get Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, a parody of society as a whole.
A bicycle for the mind
‘Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.’ Pratchett has a love for taking the mundane and looking at it with ‘fresh eyes’. G.K. Chesterton, a Catholic apologist whom Pratchett frequently quotes, says the role of fantasy is ‘not so much to make wonders facts as to make facts wonders’.
This is manifested in the Discworld. As a grand allegory for the world in which we live, we are encouraged to criticise and engage with our own reality. Pratchett does-n’t stop at wanting to change minds; he wants to change society, and furthermore, believes that we can.
Why can’t we make progress?
The Discworld doesn’t just deconstruct human nature and culture, it attempts to rebuild it by showing that progress and reconstruction of ideals is possible, despite all the odds. This leads us to question why we, in our relatively normal society, are seemingly unable to progress.
The hypocrisy in our culture becomes more evident when we look at it through the lenses of fantasy, and this is exactly what Pratchett intends with his ridiculous metaphors. Imagination, not intelligence, makes us human, because intelligence has failed us as a society but imagination can help us recalibrate our thinking.
He appeals to our intellect through the emotional factor, a fundamentally manipulative approach. Art that does not seem to communicate a specific message is inherently more pleasing, because it appears natural rather than produced.
In contrast, we have an aversion towards art that seems contrived. Award-winning fantasy author A.S. Byatt commented that: ‘I never enjoyed C.S. Lewis, because I felt he was morally manipulating me as well as his characters. Philip Pullman… is writing against Lewis, and again runs the risk of becoming didactic and controlling. Pratchett, despite the slapstick, the terrible jokes and the very clever complicated jokes, is somehow wise and grown up. As a reader I trust him.’ Despite Pratchett voicing his own opinions on various issues outside his fiction, he uses the Discworld to disguise his social commentaries with humour. The reader feels more in control because they do not feel manipulated.
Accessible knowledge for all
His books not only appeal to the individual’s emotions and ego, but to the wider public community. A major theme that is explored through many of the books is that knowledge should be accessible to all, and not just confined to the intellectual elite. In one of his later books, Monstrous Regiment, the main character responds to the ardent evangelism of a religious fanatic with the thought that ‘the presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.’
Pratchett does here what he does so well. He begins with a premise we can all identify with – condemning intellectual snobbery and commending the search for knowledge – but finishes by leading us to criticise religion, since it claims to have access to absolute truth. The conclusion he draws is that because religion has claimed to have found the answers, it is intellectual elitism and holds back the quest for knowledge. As one of the witches comments: ‘It’s one thing saying you’ve got the best god, but sayin’ it’s the only real one is a bit of a cheek, in my opinion.’
Illogical leaps
Hypocrisy and religion seem to go hand-in-hand for Pratchett, which is made clear in his penultimate book, Snuff. ‘Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to’, says Samuel Vimes, one of Discworld’s protagonists. He makes the point that if our actions are not consistent with our words, then it doesn’t ultimately matter if we pray to a good God or not. We can applaud Pratchett’s view that those professing a belief should practice what they preach, but his reasoning that hypocrisy falsifies those beliefs is a leap. This is how Pratchett works – he makes a particular set of actions seem ridiculous through his absurd allegories and relies on the fact that we shall be in a critical frame of mind for his conclusion, even if it is an illogical one.
Desire for meaning
Pratchett is set apart from other critics of religion by his affirmation of the inherent desire for meaning that all humans have. In this extract, Death is talking to his granddaughter Susan about childhood beliefs such as that in Santa Claus:
Death: Humans need fantasy to be human... you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
Susan: So we can believe the big ones?
Death: Yes. Justice. Mercy. Duty. That sort of thing.
Susan: They’re not the same at all!
Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some… some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.
Susan: Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point?
Death: My point exactly.
Pratchett recognises that we need to have some form of justice in order to function as a society and pursue meaning in life, but it’s something we need to create for ourselves.
He rejects any divine, arbitrarily constructed moral order: ‘Only people can build a better world. Otherwise it’s just a cage.’ One of his characters, Vetinari, recalls a story where he witnessed otters eating a salmon alive, and comments, ‘That’s when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.’
Pratchett’s big problem
Pratchett makes the universal judgment that if ‘every world’, including our own, has a God, then he is not one worth worshipping. In order for us to find any kind of meaning in that kind of world, we have to create our own moral standards. Here lies Pratchett’s big problem. If we are the ones who make the rules, then how can we hold God accountable to them? He commits his own worst crime of hypocrisy by condemning God according to our own arbitrary laws.
In Pratchett’s world, even if ideas such as good, evil, justice and mercy are all lies, those lies function as metaphors that allow people to start living morally and harmoniously. This idea can even be applied to his own books; fantastical stories that nevertheless have moral truth in them. In The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, the titular rats discover that the picture book, from which they learned about humans and animals living in harmony, was in fact fictional. ‘It’s a lie’, said Peaches. ‘Maybe it’s just a pretty story’, said Sardines. ‘Yes’, said Dangerous Beans. He turned his misty pink eyes to Darktan and added: ‘Perhaps it’s a map.’
Careful about the directions
In Discworld, where gods exist but aren’t worth believing in, Pratchett gives an optimism to his characters who strive to create meaning and value in this universe. His denunciation of hypocrisy is commendable, but his judgments concerning character and morality are baseless without any ultimate meaning behind them. Perhaps the Discworld is a map, but we need to be careful about whose directions we are taking.
