Fantasy Fiction - Sacrifice

[Gwaimir Windgem]

For those of you who don't particularly like fantasy, you can't say you weren't duly warned. ;) Anyway, this is about something I've noticed regarding sacrifice in fantasy fiction. And I don't mean giving up one's life for a better cause, but actual sacrifice of goods to a higher power. I have recently started to notice that in fantasy, very rarely does the worship of any goodly Deity involve a form of sacrifice. Maidens were sacrificed to Torak, dragon eggs to Takhisis (though admittedly that wasn't the best series :p), and the Faithful on the altar of the temple to Morgoth built by Sauron. The only incident I can think of in a work of fantasy where a goodly Power has to do with a form of sacrifice is where it says that the firstfuits were offered to Iluvatar in the Hallow of Eru.

Thoughts, comments, input, anything related? :)

[IronParrot]

That's a good point that I hadn't noticed before. Or rather, I don't know any counterexamples off the top of my head...

Now, I don't read an extensive amount of modern (i.e. post-Tolkien) fantasy fiction, so do a lot of authors nowadays put some sort of personified higher power into their worlds?

[Arat-Falathion]

In The Dark Elf Trilogy written by RA Salvatore, the darkelves sacrifice to their godess, the Spider Queen... :D Now that is a sacrifice... they even sacrifice their own people, even the husband in the house... so that is sacrificing I tell yeh! And effective sacrificing as well for the story, it's tention, it's role and the whole setting.

So there is a sacrifice :)

- Falathion

[Gwaimir Windgem]

IronParrot: A fair amount (though I don't know about a lot) of the fantasy I have read does have gods. In the Belgariad/Malloreon, there are seven Gods, including Torak the evil God, and aside from UL, the Father of the Gods. In Forgotten Realms, there are literally hundreds of gods, most of which are in a manner of speaking "native" to various areas and peoples. In DragonLance, there are twelve Good gods, twelve Neutral gods, and twelve Evil gods. Not that DragonLance is the best of literature...:p

Arat, thanks, I forgot, that's another example of an evil Deity having sacrifice as a part of Her worship.

[Willow Oran]

Yes, almost every modern fantasy writer puts in god/goddesses and the only ones who have sacrafices are the evil gods or in some cases good gods with a corrupt priesthood. The only sacrafice made to a good god with his knowledge that I know of is the previous mentioned one to Illuvatar. Perhaps because He's all powerful Illuvatar counts as neither good nor evil and is thus allowed to be sacraficed to so long as it's not corrupt evil sorts of sacrafice.

[Coney]

Originally posted by IronParrot
Now, I don't read an extensive amount of modern (i.e. post-Tolkien) fantasy fiction, so do a lot of authors nowadays put some sort of personified higher power into their worlds?

Read Micheal Moorcock books (particularly the Elric series).

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally posted by Willow Oran
Yes, almost every modern fantasy writer puts in god/goddesses and the only ones who have sacrafices are the evil gods or in some cases good gods with a corrupt priesthood. The only sacrafice made to a good god with his knowledge that I know of is the previous mentioned one to Illuvatar. Perhaps because He's all powerful Illuvatar counts as neither good nor evil and is thus allowed to be sacraficed to so long as it's not corrupt evil sorts of sacrafice.

I don't think so: Iluvatar, the Valar, and the Maiar have always seemed to me to be Good, whereas Melkor, the Balrogs, etc. were the ones who rebelled against Iluvatar, or Good, and thus consequently were Evil.

[Lief Erikson]

Willow Oran, note that when Ilúvatar acts, his act is always good, or on the side of good. How he manages to be neither good nor evil and yet only do good is beyond me.

[galadriel]

I think it's the difference between sacrificing something under duress (in fear of what will happen if you don't make the sacrifice) and sacrificing something because you're thankful and because you want to. The sacrifices to evil fall in the first category, the sacrifices to good fall in the second.

However, I'd say that popular philosophy sees sacrifice as negative - something that only barbarians and masochists would do - and therefore assigns such acts to followers of evil.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

But it seems to me that in very little modern fantasy (the only ones I know of are two works which were written by Christians, and thus no doubt influenced (one of them quite heavily) by the ancient Jews) is there sacrifice to good, whether under duress or in a form of thanksgiving. Hmm...does this mean fantasy characters aren't thankful? ;)

[Lief Erikson]

I think they just have to express themselves in different ways, because popular culture, like Galadriel said, tends to look down upon burnt offerings. Like Christians nowadays do, rather than following the old customs of sacrifices. We still make sacrifices, but not burnt offerings.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Popular culture looks down on a number of aspects of Christianity, but that doesn't have anything to do with burnt offering no longer being a part of it. It is for another reason entirely (which I won't get into, so as not to bore other folk:p)

[Lief Erikson]

Yes, you're right.

[Willow Oran]

Willow Oran, note that when Ilúvatar acts, his act is always good, or on the side of good. How he manages to be neither good nor evil and yet only do good is beyond me.

No, when he acts it is always for the greater good. The sinking of Numenor wasn't exactly good but it was nessecary for good to survive. He doesn't do only good things because sometime bad things are nessecary for good to happen therefore he must be neither good nor evil.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Regardless of whether the destruction of Numenor was good or not (which I certainly wouldn't say it was evil), it was still done for the greater good.

He doesn't do only good things because sometime bad things are nessecary for good to happen therefore he must be neither good nor evil.

Regardless of whether His actions are good or evil, you still say that He works for good to happen, or for the greater good, and therefore can't be evil or good? I'm sorry, I'm rather confused here. :confused: If He works for the greater good, that makes Him good. If some of his actions are not good, that would make the actions not good, not Him.

[galadriel]

Originally posted by Lief Erikson
I think they just have to express themselves in different ways, because popular culture, like Galadriel said, tends to look down upon burnt offerings. Like Christians nowadays do, rather than following the old customs of sacrifices. We still make sacrifices, but not burnt offerings. I think I was trying to make the point that popular culture doesn't favor *any* sort of sacrifice to a god, whether a literal burnt offering or not. It seems like a violation of one's free will.

But perhaps we shouldn't continue on this vein of thought, unless getting into an possibly ugly and definitely unwinnable religious argument sounds fun to any of you.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally posted by galadriel
I think I was trying to make the point that popular culture doesn't favor *any* sort of sacrifice to a god, whether a literal burnt offering or not. It seems like a violation of one's free will.

But perhaps we shouldn't continue on this vein of thought, unless getting into an possibly ugly and definitely unwinnable religious argument sounds fun to any of you.
No, that's not a religious argument. You're not saying that sacrifice is wrong (As far as I heard) and that would be a potentially religious argument. However, you're saying that popular culture says that it's wrong.

I am not among the popular culture much, being pretty secluded in my living at present. I am inclined to believe that you're right though, about popular culture emphasizing self-serving rather than others-serving. That's human nature, and it seems to be prevalent at present.

Whether or not it's popular culture to oppose sacrifice to gods because of inhibition of free will . . . that I don't really think is necessarily true. I tend to think people think sacrifice to gods is old fashioned, pagan religious theology that is long outdated. It also seems pointless- destroying something that would be useful to you and benefiting nothing by your action.

That's why sacrifices of grain, food or other material things I think is basically non-existant in fantasy writing. It seems irrelevant and makes the main characters primitive, and it adds nothing to the drama of the story (Except in a very, very rare cases, like in some religion based books). That's why in fantasy writing the living sacrifice is preferred, because it inevitably adds drama to the story. It's unquestionably an evil practice, and demonstrates something important to the readers.

Sacrifice of animals like goats, sheep or birds isn't at all common in the story because like the food offerings, it adds nothing to the drama of the story.

The drama and keeping the action going is what's important to the author. I wouldn't be surprised if these normal, nondramatic religious sacrifices would be used in a historical fiction, though. That's natural, just like normal description of the place, surroundings and what's been going on in society is common in writing, fantasy or non-fantasy.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Whereas human (or similar) sacrifice certainly does add to the drama.

[Lief Erikson]

Yes, exactly.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

But one thing: in either the Belgariad or the Malloreon, it states in a form of "black scripture" something along the lines of "the fairest of the young men and women were offered unto Torak", whereas I do not remember ever having read except in Tolkien read something similar about sacrifice to a good god. And reading something in a form of scriptural scroll/tome isn't exactly dramatic.

Other than that, I would certainly agree with you. :) In fact, I did, until I just now thought of that :p

[Lief Erikson]

Is Torak supposed to be a good god?

And what I was saying earlier is that I wouldn't be surprised if in a work of historical fiction, there'd be that kind of sacrifice. Historical fiction writers try to bring the time period and place to life; they include all the customs and things like that that they know of. If one of those historical fiction writers is writing something in the time period of the Jews, I wouldn't be surprised if they included those sacrifices. That's for a different purpose than drama, and that's the only type of writing I can think of (historical fiction) that would use sacrifice for a purpose other than drama, and do it to a good god. Tolkien being the exception :D.

[galadriel]

Your points make sense... sacrificing humans *is* a lot more interesting and dramatic than sacrificing, say, a bowl of veggies.

I suppose Tolkien is using the sacrifice of the first fruits in the same way that a historical writer would be using sacrifices: as a detail to flesh out what sort of people we were reading about.