Your proposition, that all stories are the story of the Fall and Redemption of
Man, is arguable, but so broad as to be meaningless in helping us understand
story. After all, most people feel there are many different stories. True, some
have said there are really only 2 or 3 -- and some only 1 like you and perhaps
Tolkien and Lewis -- but I feel we can go deeper than that in thinking about
mankind's need to tell tales.
In thinking about what it means to say all stories are of the Fall of Man, I
guess it means that man perceives that he has a higher power within himself
than the simple emotional wants and needs of all other animals -- what we might
call the power of higher reason, or from another angle, a divine spark or soul.
Yet we perceive that most human pain comes from the conflict between these two
forces within each individual. A paradise (Eden) would be where the two do not
conflict -- and perhaps because we do not remember that conflict affecting our
childhood, we yearn for that early paradise in a mythical past that echoes our
early lives as innocent children.
So the Fall is man's recognition that he does not fully live up to his
potential, given him as it is denied the other animals.
If this drama, this conflict, is within every human, then it seems clear that
talking about it is a universal topic among all people; it is the one thing we
all have in common as human beings. So story, a way of communicating personal
experience to other persons, focuses on telling, explaining, or otherwise
meditating on the human condition: The Fall, and the possibility, always
sensed, of Redemption.
By this thinking, the Christian story of the Fall and the Redemption, is just
one of many, many stories on this topic. It is very powerful and well known,
and goes back to the origins of our current civilization, so it is not
surprising that Tolkien might remark that all stories are it.
But it's so simplistic a remark! So what? How do stories differ, not how are
all stories alike, is what interests me -- and I would guess it is what
interests most people who think about story. All Tolkien is saying, as far as I
can see, is that all stories are human, or about what it is to be human. And
what else could they be, what else could they be about?
Tolkien and Lewis, I guess, are just reminding people who ignore the power of
religion, that it too is a story, and that the Fall represents modern life and
has meaning in their own times. A truth to be remembered, if some have
forgotten it. But not really all that powerful an
insight.
Farmer Giles of Ham - the complete text
squire online:
Footerama: "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
The Valaquenta discussion
