Imagine: Dragons

Campfire embers inviting interpretation

Sparkling shards, brittle but imposing, adorn a town succumbing to darkness. A deep freeze has arrived in Prince George; the translucent icicles emanating white even as the night settles. The snow’s shimmer a mirror to the frost lining trees, structures, and vehicles dashing between.

I am glad during times like these that I can hunker down and have my imagination whisked to warmer locales. Today marks the start of a highly anticipated Test series between Australia and India. That is where my eyes will be for the next several days: Perth under a scorching sun, as cricketers wage war. Many modern icons among them, amidst swan songs and battling dragons. Media circuses, pitch demons, and the political context of a sport losing the plot. A place in the world championship on the line as legacies are writ atop a twenty-two-yard-long parchment.

Speaking of dragons, there is somewhere else my mind travels today. A fond memory, of a children’s story read in adulthood, stirring joy.

– / – / –

Reading for fun was something I was introduced to in Canada. Our English tuition in India revolved primarily around building grammar. We would come home, study things like Math, Science, and Writing (Hindi), before eating dinner and heading out near sunset as the weather cooled to play with friends. There was no time for much else. When we did seek entertainment, it was on the television, in the form of VHS tapes or broadcasts, though power outages were common and many films were left unfinished.

It was not until September 1999, not soon after our family emigrated, that I found myself at the end of a school day in a Mississauga classroom huddled along other Grade 3s in anticipation. It was regular practice for the teacher to spend the last fifteen minutes of each day reading part of a story. A way to encourage us youngsters to visit the library and discover for ourselves the many worlds imagined by others. On that cool day at 2:45pm, the teacher opened a new book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and in so doing a new chapter in my life. One centered on finding pleasure in the written word.

Thirteen orbits later, while I was completing my undergraduate degree, I took a course in Children’s Literature. Having spent the first eight years of my life in India, I was mostly unfamiliar with pre-adult English canon. Only major fairy tales filtered by Disney made their way to Indian homes in the nineties. Of these, I could claim familiarity with very few. I wanted to acquaint myself in greater depth with the stories and parables that most peers had grown up with – and understand their connections to myths and legends of antiquity (I was also enrolled in a Classical Lit course at the time).

The course’s coverage was publicized on its university webpage, which was an additional selling point. In general, I did not engage much with fantasy. I struggled to find it appealing and usually leaned towards non-fiction or science fiction, and hardly ever did I pick up novels aimed at youth. Aside from Harry Potter and the first few books of So You Want to Be a Wizard, my scholarly backbone did not consist of much within the genre back then.

I was immediately engaged and eager to dive in. We began with Alice in Wonderland and The Magician’s Nephew. I recall that the philosophy behind children’s literature was a particular focus – what kids should be exposed to, how they should be entertained or taught through fiction, and what context the fantasy should provide. The Inklings, a group of writers led by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien who regularly met for pub discussions near Oxford, were given a fair amount of time. Lewis and Tolkien disagreed greatly on a great number of things, including how accessible imagined worlds should be. Lewis, who would author The Chronicles of Narnia, believed the realm of fantasy could be a closet away. All one had to do was cross a threshold to enter domains awash in splendor. This was sacrilegious to Tolkien, for whom invented lands existed within their own, unreachable dominion. Solely purviews of imagination, filled with magic and behaviors at their author’s discretion.

We arrived, eventually, at Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Written before Lord of the Rings and with simpler prose. The story, within its first few chapters, had strongly affirmed for me its place in the canon. Easy to digest yet filled with clever wit, something for old and young to identify with. On the surface, an adventurous tale of an underestimated, unremarkable individual set a task against every odd (like so many British literary archetypes). But ‘neath that recognizable shell, a notable exploration of linguistics, class, and tutelage. As mentioned before, I was encountering these stories as an adult without too much exposure to fantasy. And though I had watched the LOTR films, I knew nothing about The Hobbit. Including its most surprising and satisfying instance (spoilers ahead).

I was making my way through the twelfth chapter:

“It was at this point that Bilbo stopped. Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterward were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait. […]

There he lay, a vast red-golden dragon, fast asleep; thrumming came from his jaws and nostrils, and wisps of smoke, but his fires were low in slumber. Beneath him, under all his limbs and his huge coiled tail, and about him on all sides stretching away across the unseen floors, lay countless piles of precious things, gold wrought and unwrought, gems and jewels, and silver redstained in the ruddy light. Smaug lay, with wings folded like an immeasurable bat, turned partly on one side, so that the hobbit could see his underparts and his long pale belly crusted with gems and fragments of gold from his long lying on his costly bed.”

 

Dragons have a celebrated place in mythology. They are among the long list of creatures and legends that have independently been dreamt across civilizations, in oral and penned histories. Given the ubiquity of lizard-like reptiles on our planet, this is not unexpected. But the way their depictions have transformed over the years is a journey worth embarking on. Now imagine reading the above passage and encountering your first literary dragon through Tolkien. In stellar fashion and at pace. (For those who have not read the book and only watched the films: Smaug plays a small part in the story, but the memory of his presence and the lingering imagery of a dragon, a wyrm wriggling over a mountain of treasure, has defined this story for so many.)

“Smaug was still to be reckoned with. It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. Dragons may not have much real use for all their wealth, but they know it to an ounce as a rule, especially after long possession; and Smaug was no exception. He had passed from an uneasy dream (in which a warrior, altogether insignificant in size but provided with a bitter sword and great courage, figured most unpleasantly) to a doze, and from a doze to wide waking. There was a breath of strange air in his cave.”

 

And then it came, a moment that caught yours truly – previously steeped in expectation of strange creatures uttering nonsense in the kitschiest of sci-fi – off-guard:

“Smaug certainly looked fast asleep, almost dead and dark, with scarcely a snore more than a whiff of unseen steam, when Bilbo peeped once more from the entrance. He was just about to step out on to the floor when he caught a sudden thin and piercing ray of red from under the drooping lid. of Smaug’s left eye. He was only pretending to sleep! He was watching the tunnel entrance! Hurriedly Bilbo stepped back and blessed the luck of his ring. Then Smaug spoke.

“Well, thief! I smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to spare!” […]

[H]e snorted, and the light of his eyes lit the hall from floor to ceiling like scarlet lightning. “Revenge! The King under the Mountain is dead and where are his kin that dare seek revenge? Girion Lord of Dale is dead, and I have eaten his people like a wolf among sheep, and where are his sons’ sons that dare approach me? I kill where I wish and none dare resist. I laid low the warriors of old and their like is not in the world today. Then I was but young and tender. Now I am old and strong, strong, strong. Thief in the Shadows!” he gloated. “My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!””

 

The speech of a dragon, trading riddles with a halfling, a totally welcome jolt for this entrapped reader. Smaug spoke. It remains one of my favorite memories of reading anything over the past twenty-five years. Here I was expecting descriptions of a dragon as part of a hostile environment, moving about as it attempted to eviscerate our protagonist, no more impressive than an animal with limited intellect and agency. Instead, I was introduced to an enticing character, one that was removed from the narrative too soon for my liking.

I had clearly missed out by cutting fantasy from my diet. The Hobbit was the text I enjoyed most during that course, and the one that stays with me to this day. Towering above the rest as so much of Tolkien’s work does.

This pre-WWII fantasy’s iconic visions re-emerging each decade since its publication, like a dragon awakening from slumber.