Here is the second post in the series, written by my husband and filmmaking partner, Vasant Samudre. I hope, once you’re done reading the article, you’ll respond in the comment section about specific characters you’ve really gotten to over the years. 

-Sarah

From Arthur to Aragorn: The Evolution of My Favorite Character

Guest poster: Vasant Samudre

When Sarah came up with the idea for this series, I knew that, when I wrote my post for it, I wouldn’t be able to write about just one story. I have always been extremely fascinated with stories, telling them, listening to them, watching them and playing them out.  But for me, no one story caught my imagination, more than one particular character has: King Arthur. I discovered him as a child and I’ve found every story having to deal with him equally fascinating. Every Arthurian legend instantly hooks me and it’s not so much the type of story, but the hero at its heart that draws me in. As I grew older, Aragorn in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings fed became part of the fascination for this particular character.

My interest in Arthur actually started with an incredibly cheesy cartoon called King Arthur and the Knights of Justice that aired in the early ‘90’s. It was a short lived show, but at eight years old, I fell in love with the character of Arthur- everything he stood for, what he fought for, how he fought for what he believed in and above all, fought and ruled with selfless-justice for the people. The notion of fighting for a greater purpose is something that resounds within me on a deep level.  I bought books that were meant for kids which synthesized Arthur myths into an easy to read format. I waged pretend battles with Arthur at the head of them. In my mid-twenties, I read T.H. White’s The Once and Future King and soon after Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Artur and found myself just as captivated with the king as I had been so many years ago. Within the last couple years, I’ve read Tennyson’s Idylls of King and read through the wilder myths surrounding the British King in The Welsh Triads. No matter how different the story, the image of the king battling for his people fanned into flame the sparks of my imagination.

It’s never mattered to me whether Arthur was a plastic figurine, a customized Lego character, watched on TV or read in a book. I’ve been drawn to all aspects of his character, to every story and every plot (which is unfortunate at times because a lot of Arthurian movies are awful).

I rediscovered Arthur long before I delved into the books surrounding him in my mid-twenties. I was introduced to Aragorn (a.k.a. Elessar, a.k.a. Strider) in The Lord of the Rings in 2001 (yes, I watched the movies before reading the books- I’m not ashamed to admit it).  The added characteristic of a king who refuses to be a king because he is afraid of his own weaknesses hits me to the core still today. 

Aragorn, to me, embodies all the complexities of character that are found in multiple Arthurian tales. He is as reluctant as T.H. White’s Arthur, as headstrong as the Welsh Arthur, as mighty as the Malory version, and as noble and chivalrous as Tennyson’s. Both receive swords that are destined to be wielded by them and only them, and with these swords they command great power. Both have encounters with goddess figures (The Lady of the Lake for Arthur and Arwen/Galadriel for Aragorn). Both return from exile to accept the roles that they were destined for.

Both heroes descend from an evil king. Arthur, in most tales, is the son of the ruthless Uther Pendragon and it was the fault of Aragorn’s forefather, Isildur, that the evil ring of Sauron had survived .  His forefather’s corruption brought war upon to an entire world. The interesting thing is that Arthur’s lineage is almost always just a stated fact in most myths. It rarely comes into play in any plots or presents a problem for Arthur. Aragorn is haunted by his family failure.

Aragorn fears that he could be corrupted and fail his people, just as Isildur did. It’s this fear I admire in Aragorn the most.  It keeps him humble, keeps him in line and focused on the greater good.  But this fear isn’t something that Aragorn could hold onto. For the sake of Middle Earth, he had to “put aside the Ranger and become the man” he was meant to be. He had confront his fears, answers for his failings and rise up to the task of being the warrior king who would mend the world.

Arthur captured my imagination as a child because he embodied the strength and purity of heart that I wanted in my life.  But as I grew older and dealt with my own darkness and father issues, I began to fear that I’d never be the man I wanted to be. Enter Aragorn, an Arthurian character who answered my fears by simply acknowledging them. He was broken down with guilt and self-doubt. He was honest with the weakness and fear within himself. The strange thing was that none of that compromised the purity of heart I’d grown up admiring in King Arthur. So, with this tale, a childhood character evolved in my head into one I could identify with as an adult.

Joseph Campbell writes in A Hero with a Thousand Faces of the universal hero’s journey (the hero found in every culture) has a three step phase: separation-initiation-return.  It’s here, as Campbell explains, that the hero must journey on his own, find his accomplishment and return a changed man (or woman).  As I’ve grown into my manhood, I’ve seen this cycle of separation-initiation-return something that is used in films.  The main character must leave his current situation in order to grow, that is to learn and become something more by initiating the “there’s no going back now” moment.  Once the point of victory is reached, the main character of the story must return, changed, to bring to the people a forgotten aspect of their humanity (freedom, love, peace, etc). 

I think a good story is an adventure in itself. It gives you the same opportunity as the hero has. You get to retreat into it, exiled from the real world for a moment. The narrative initiates you: you experience things within the realm of the story that real life doesn’t give you the time or the right way to think about. Then you return. You turn off the TV. You close the book. You walk out of the theater. You grow too old for Lego battles (not there yet, I’ll let you know when that happens), but the story sticks with you, on some level. For me, Arthur and Aragorn have stuck with me on the deepest level, I love being able to return to their stories as an adventure of my own, hoping that I will, again, be changed for having gone through the stories with them.