Skip to main content

Conan: The Frost Giant's Daughter: The Platypus Reads Part CCXXXVI

We continue our discussion of Robert E. Howard's Conan with the second story in the chronology: The Frost Giant's Daughter.  The chronology and the versions of the texts used in these posts follow the Del Rey three-volume edition of the complete Conan Stories.  Anyone who wishes to remain spoiler free should not read on.


*Plot Material Ahead*


The Frost Giant's Daughter was not initially published as a Conan story, though it was written as one.  Howard later retconned the adventure into the cannon with a sly reference to it in The Scarlet Citadel.  In this second Conan story, Howard is already switching genres, moving from the fanciful historical-fiction feel of The Phoenix on the Sword to a tone more appropriate for a folk tale or one of Lovecraft's "weird tales."  The Frost Giant's Daughter also switches abruptly from the later third of Conan's life to an event sometime in the first third during his time among the Nordheimr (building carefully on what Conan has said about his early life to Prospero in The Phoenix on the Sword).  This radical shift sets the pace for future stories which will move back and forth in time with anchoring points for the reader to use in determining where in the chronology each story is taking place.

The tone of the story, as mentioned earlier, has an increasingly surreal and dream-like quality that comes to an abrupt and startling crash right at the action's climax.  Following Poe's short-story dictum, the result is the achievement of a single effect: eerie wonderment.  The final scene of The Frost Giant's Daughter invites us not to make a judgement on the supernatural so much as to experience a sense of awe.  This abrupt shift in style and effect probably helps explain why the story was initially rejected by the editor.  In retrospect, what it shows is the versatility of Conan as a character and the integrity of his world.  He is "heavy" enough for reality, and reality can be narrated in vastly different modes.

Finally, this second Conan story serves to enhance the character's prestige.  Wounded and dying, Conan is ferocious enough for minor deities to fear him.  Whatever fate awaits, we know that we are not following the adventures of any mere mortal.

That's it for today.  The next post will feature another abrupt shift in genre as we take a look at The God in the Bowl.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...

California's Gods: Strange Platypus(es)

We've noticed lately a strange Californian dialectical twist: there, freeways take the definite article.  In other parts of the country one speaks of I 91 or 45 North.  In California, there's The 5, The 405, The 10.  Each of these freeways has its own quirks, a personality of sorts.  They aren't just stretches of pavement but presences, creatures that necessitate the definite article by their very individuality and uniqueness.  They are the angry gods to be worked, placated, feared, for without them life in California as we know it would cease.  Perhaps that's fitting for a land whose cities are named for saints and angels.  Mary may preside over the new pueblo of our lady of the angels, but the freeways slither like gigantic serpents through the waste places, malevolent spirits not yet trampled under foot.

Seeing Beowulf Through Tolkien: The Platypus Reads Part CXCIX

After spending a few weeks wrestling with Tolkien's interpretation of Beowulf , I found myself sitting down and reading Seamus Heaney's translation of the text during a spare moment.  I came to the place where Beowulf presents Hrothgar with the hilt of the ancient sword that slew Grendel's mother.  Hrothgar looks down at the hilt with its ancient runes and carvings depicting the war between the giants and God and meditates on the fortunes of men.  In a flash of insight, I thought: this is the whole poem! Let me explain.  Tolkien believed that the genuine contribution of the Northern peoples to European culture was the theory of courage.  The Northern heroes, at their best, were men who fought for order against chaos -a battle they knew they were doomed to lose.  If they were true heroes, their souls would join the gods and aid them in the final battle against darkness and its monsters and again go down fighting, spitting in the face of the meaninglessness...