Mind/Body/Spirit Societies
(Note: This post was originally written in January 2013)
I am back from the holidays and will try to get back onto my regular Tuesday/Friday posting schedule. I have a three-part post I will be doing covering Veronica Roth's Divergent, but before I get into it, I want to introduce the idea of mind, body, and spirit societies. I will use J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth as my example, here. The Hobbit is a well-known story, so I have no qualms including 'spoiler' information here.
In a mind-body-spirit society, one race or class of individuals is defined by its overall characteristic traits. One race or class is known to all as the keepers of knowledge, for example. They bring reason to the corporate discussion and their input is often the source of conflict in a story. In SF or Fantasy, they are usually long-lived and maybe even immortal. In Middle Earth, the mind race is the race of elves, and in The Hobbit, it is the elves who advise against retaking the Lonely Mountain. Their reluctance to participate, or even aid in the quest, is a primary source of conflict on the grander scale in the story.
The dwarves of Middle Earth are the body society. They make their living with brute force and valuable possessions. They eat and drink heartily - a fact contrasted beautifully against the elven society in Peter Jackson's production. The whole point of their quest is to take back what is theirs. While the elves fight on horseback and with bows, the dwarves prefer hand-to-hand combat with axes, hammers, and swords. If you want to prove your character to a group of dwarves, you have to prove it in battle, as seen in Legolas's and Gimli's 'death count' in The Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies.
Humans make up the spirit race. (Hobbits don't interact with the society of Middle Earth except on an individual basis, so they are not considered a part of the m/b/s society). In The Hobbit, the primary human interaction comes in the form of wizards, but the true leaders of the human race are depicted throughout the series as spirit characters, Aragorn chief among them.
Within each race, there may be individuals who are mind, body, or spirit characters, but the races in general can be characterized by their mind, body, or spirit qualities. This will be seen again in Divergent.
SF and Fantasy lend themselves more easily to this kind of societal development, but other genres aren't necessarily exempt. A western community may have a group of settlers who have been hardened by too many winters who make up a 'mind' class of people. A war novel may include a group of generals as a 'body' class (Paths of Glory comes to mind). A romance novel may have the heroine's entire family as a 'mind' class.
For Divergent, I will actually be talking about two 'mind' classes, two 'body' classes, and two 'spirit' classes, as well as certain characters within each of those. I will break it up into three posts, much in the same way as I did Hamlet. If you haven't read Divergent, do so. The layering of mind, body, and spirit from the grand, societal level all the way down to the internal level is nothing short of brilliant.
I am back from the holidays and will try to get back onto my regular Tuesday/Friday posting schedule. I have a three-part post I will be doing covering Veronica Roth's Divergent, but before I get into it, I want to introduce the idea of mind, body, and spirit societies. I will use J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth as my example, here. The Hobbit is a well-known story, so I have no qualms including 'spoiler' information here.
In a mind-body-spirit society, one race or class of individuals is defined by its overall characteristic traits. One race or class is known to all as the keepers of knowledge, for example. They bring reason to the corporate discussion and their input is often the source of conflict in a story. In SF or Fantasy, they are usually long-lived and maybe even immortal. In Middle Earth, the mind race is the race of elves, and in The Hobbit, it is the elves who advise against retaking the Lonely Mountain. Their reluctance to participate, or even aid in the quest, is a primary source of conflict on the grander scale in the story.
The dwarves of Middle Earth are the body society. They make their living with brute force and valuable possessions. They eat and drink heartily - a fact contrasted beautifully against the elven society in Peter Jackson's production. The whole point of their quest is to take back what is theirs. While the elves fight on horseback and with bows, the dwarves prefer hand-to-hand combat with axes, hammers, and swords. If you want to prove your character to a group of dwarves, you have to prove it in battle, as seen in Legolas's and Gimli's 'death count' in The Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies.
Humans make up the spirit race. (Hobbits don't interact with the society of Middle Earth except on an individual basis, so they are not considered a part of the m/b/s society). In The Hobbit, the primary human interaction comes in the form of wizards, but the true leaders of the human race are depicted throughout the series as spirit characters, Aragorn chief among them.
Within each race, there may be individuals who are mind, body, or spirit characters, but the races in general can be characterized by their mind, body, or spirit qualities. This will be seen again in Divergent.
SF and Fantasy lend themselves more easily to this kind of societal development, but other genres aren't necessarily exempt. A western community may have a group of settlers who have been hardened by too many winters who make up a 'mind' class of people. A war novel may include a group of generals as a 'body' class (Paths of Glory comes to mind). A romance novel may have the heroine's entire family as a 'mind' class.
For Divergent, I will actually be talking about two 'mind' classes, two 'body' classes, and two 'spirit' classes, as well as certain characters within each of those. I will break it up into three posts, much in the same way as I did Hamlet. If you haven't read Divergent, do so. The layering of mind, body, and spirit from the grand, societal level all the way down to the internal level is nothing short of brilliant.
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