The Necessity of "Apparent" Death

While reading the stories of "The Pagan Hero and the Christian Saint," I came across, to my very great surprise, the answers to the questions that I had been trying to comprehend for the last few weeks in class. Why was it necessary for men and women to "die" in romances? Why did the heroes and heroines of the stories have to fall from grace, become as if dead, in stories that are supposed to have happy endings? It is not enough to say that the perceived death spurs the plot along, for there are many other devices that the authors could use if they so desired. Pirates and witches, pits and marriage all provide ample material that could keep a plot going. It would not be very profound, true. But there is so much material that can be added to the story-arch of romance that the apparent death seems at first glance a peripheral thread much like the marriage or the pirates. In the hopes of finding an answer, I first looked at "Beren and Luthien" another of my blogs which anyone is welcome to read. As I wrote, I noticed the beauty of the sacrifice of Luthien's immortality so that she might be with Beren, and they could die together. I felt that the greatest part of the romance came when the two came together to live in the brief brilliance of mortality that made the gods envious. My analysis, in other words, was that the apparent death of Beren was postponed by Luthien's sacrifice, and through that Christ like action, to steal an idea from Frye, I saw the greatest form of Romance. It was my belief that the apparent death was merely another obstacle which the hero and heroine had to overcome in order to show their true love for one another.

To my shame, I must now admit that I was wrong, as Dr. Sexson has pointed out, but I was wrong in a way of which I could not have, at the moment, even imagined. In reading "The Pagan Hero and the Christian Saint," I came across what I now believe to be the true answer for the necessity of apparent death, and the poetry of that moment is magnificent. Zimmer states of pg 44 sating that "[destruction]--death--is but an outer mask of transformation into something better or something worse, higher or lower." He goes on to say that the "unconscious intuitive forces" that guide us through life "understand that death, the dolorous sundering, is a prelude to rebirth, transmutation and reunion... they know, namely, that there is no death" (45). In other words, what we see as death in these stories is nothing more than the caterpillar slipping into a cocoon to become a butterfly. For all apparent intents and purposes, the creature is dead, unable to move or eat, oblivious to the world around it, buried alive in a tomb if you will. It  is only once the caterpillar emerges from its long slumber as the beautiful butterfly (for fun see here any connections you wish to Psyche and the soul) that we understand that the death was necessary for the transformation.

Zimmer is specifically referring to Conn-eda, and goes on to make the same general connections to the Christian St. John. His main argument being that the two innocent individuals, devoid of any amount of evil, needed to experience death in order to become the truly perfect leaders that they were meant to be. Conn-eda must understand the dangers of the world, of treachery and betrayal, and be able to make hard decisions in order to be the powerful ruler he is destined to be. John must understand sin and all that it implies before he can truly absolve people of their own dark deeds.

While this is true of the two characters in the stories that Zimmer puts forth, in order to truly understand the necessity of apparent death in romance, I have tried to use the same logic for each of the stories that I have read so far for class. The hardest, perhaps, is the first, that is to say The Ephesian Tale does not have much apparent death except that the two lovers consider the other lost. My only argument for the power of death as transformation would be the somewhat farfetched idea that a separation of two lovers early in their union, before they can even consummate the marriage if I remember correctly, is to test their love for one another, to drive home the understanding that chastity and fidelity are important characteristics of the individual that will lead the two to a long and happy life. It thus transforms their love from a spark that may catch fire for a moment and burn bright, only to die as suddenly as it sprang up, to the fiery embers that burn slow and hot throughout their lives.

In Daphnis and Chloe, the apparent death comes when the children are left in the pastures to die. Eventually they are returned to their parents and live lives of splendor and grandeur that they could never have imagined. I would argue that the apparent death comes as necessary in this story because it gives the two a taste of the purity and innocence of the pastoral world that helps to define their lives, and their love, in the urban community of which they later find themselves a part. On another, side note, it is only after Daphnis has learned the art of love from the widow that he can truly be the lover he wishes for Chloe. Interestingly enough, the little death (see orgasm) comes only after sex, and could therefore be seen as a type of death from which Daphnis emerges wiser in the world. (Just a fun fact some of you might enjoy.)

In Callirhoe, I would argue, the apparent death is quite obvious, though the lesson that we are supposed to learn from it may not be. If we remember, however, the events that lead to Callirhoe's apparent death, the answer may come more easily than we originally anticipated. After all, it is Chaereas's anger at his new wife's apparent infidelity that causes a reaction, he kicks her so hard she seems to die, that leads to the burial and Chareas's subsequent trial. It is only after the rest of the story that we see the change the death has caused in Chaereas. Threatened by the King of Persia, Chaereas is ready to go to battle with the man, but listens to his newly returned wife Callirhoe and instead acts wisely, giving the King his possessions back and returning to Syracuse with his resurrected bride.

Lucius or The Ass is also difficult, mainly because we do not receive from the shortened version the lesson that The Golden Ass proffers at the end. In trying to remember the lesson, I believe that it is the concept of man falling from his lofty position into the form of an ass, for all intents and purposes dead to those around him, that teaches the man the error of his lecherous ways and puts him on a path toward divine understanding to which he would have been blind otherwise.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories is perhaps the most like "The Pagan Hero" in that Haroun, dead through the state of dreams, learns the importance of both silence and storytelling, that both light and dark have their merits, much as Conn-eda learns the importance of both the kindness he holds throughout his life and the ability to kill in necessity, to be hard when the moment calls for it.

Interestingly enough it is only Abu Kasim who does not learn to change, and it is this inability to alter himself that leads to his ultimate destruction.

Thus, we come to the end of this long, and often rambling tale. I hope that the brief survey that I've just outlined goes in some way towards being helpful to anyone who, like myself, wondered at the importance of a death that wasn't even true to the larger narrative scheme of a romance. In the little while since I read "The Pagan Hero" my own perspective has been considerably altered. I now see death not as an obstacle to be overcome, a fiery hoop through which the hero must and does pass unscathed, but rather a fire that must singe and burn either hero or heroine or both in order to lead them to their ultimate goals, to make them the characters that they were born to be. They come through the fire singed and burned, altered beyond repair, but it is a repair that is unnecessary for in passing through the flames, they have burned away the fat so to speak. Scarred, yet somehow stronger for the experience, the moth emerges from its cocoon to the light of a new day, unfurls its wings and flies, seeing the world from a different perspective yet never forgetting its time as the caterpillar.