The Aging Hero Finds Peace or Satisfaction

EVEN THOUGH writing popular fiction should be a hardheaded,
intellectual business in which the writer calculatedly
gauges his market and produces accordingly, the writer
nonetheless cannot help looking into his own experience
and his own current concerns for suitable subject matter.
It is so much easier to create a sympathetic hero if the
writer himself can be that hero. It is so much easier to discover
just those little details which provide that tone of
authenticity that slick stories need if the writer can recall
them from his own history.
If a writer needs nothing more than a take-off point
in reality-an anecdote, some momentary glimpse into the
lives of strangers, some vague memory of a face or situation-
the necessity is no limitation. But if he can write only
autobiography, the chances are he is classed out of the
popular fiction field.
Some writers, it is true, have the kind of personal history
which lends itself to slick treatment. They can spend the
last half of their lives writing about the first and do very
well. But this is rarely the case. For writers who are not
so endowed or so limited there is a considerable specific
opportunity: Old Age.
Despite what magazine publishers will tell advertisers
about their readership being made up almost entirely of
young married men and women who must spend their
money like crazy, slicks have a large audience among the
aged and the near-aged. This segment of the magazine ' s
audience does not represent, proportionately, much percapita
buying power. Slick publishers do not brag about
this audience, but it exists and increases the magazine ' s
circulation figures. Consequently, editors are interested in
keeping and enlarging this audience; consequently again,
stories will regularly appear in most of the slicks which
the average reader finds bearable but unexciting, and the
older reader very interesting, warm, inspiring, or what
have you.
Without naming it or even alluding to it, these stories
deal with death. Death lurks under the bed and around the
corner. Without ever showing itself, it gives meaning to
whatever happens in the story. Death may not seem a
likely subject for the slick sweetness-and-light treatment.
It is, though, by virtue of the fact that death is the starkest,
most uncompromising evil of life, and anything nice that
can be said about it will be greatly appreciated.
The fabulous success of the Reader's Digest, from statements
made by those responsible for the magazine, seems
still to be a mystery. Perhaps one reason for the success is
the magazine's use of the simple formula of taking the
sting out of every evil reality of life. Slick magazines which
depend for their revenue on the advertisers are not permitted
to take the sting out of worldly failure, out of poverty, out of ignorance, out of social, intellectual, and economic
inferiority, simply because manufacturers thrive
on discontent. For the advertiser, to make the poor and
indolent content would be to deprive himself of a market
and of labor. The Reader's Digest, by carefully sorting out
the few it's-not-so-bad-no-matter-how-bad-it-is pieces that
the slicks and sub-slicks will slip in and by packing them
together in one handy pocket-size balm-bomb, hit the
jackpot.
When the writer treats of the aging hero finding peace
or satisfaction, he is drawing on this basic formula. This
theme found one of its most engaging literary treatments
in that part of Galsworthy's wonderful "The Forsyte Saga"
called Indian Summer. Any writer anxious to develop
these aged-hero stories might read that marvelous recounting
of an old man's thoughts immediately before he slips
quietly off into death.
Remember, these stories deal with death without ever
mentioning death. Here's a good example.
A man, well into his sixties, has been working in a department
store most of his life. The day he is to be retired, the
executives of the store, all younger men, stage a little celebration
for him. Because of their thick-skinned insensitivity, they
turn it into sardonic mockery. They present the old man
with a rocking-chair as his parting present. The narrator of
the story is a lady shopper who has witnessed the demonstration.
She sees the pain in the old man's face at having his
long and faithful service to the store treated so cavalierly.
She immediately takes herself to the competing store
across the street, asks to see the president, and proceeds to
tell him what she has just seen. She explains that she has
been courteously waited on by this particular salesman for
many years and that he, the president, would be doing his
own store a service if he would hire the man himself. The
president marches across the street to the salesman's store
and hires him on the spot.
The sense of final failure and defeat, which debility and
approaching death sensitizes all aging humans to, has been
overcome. Or take this even gentler story about an old,
retired sea captain.
In his small, comfortable skiff the captain has traveled to
a beautiful island cove somewhere in the near-tropic belt
where the weather is always mild and the living easy. He
supports himself by doing what he most enjoys: roaming the
shore and collecting odd and handsome seashells. He is living
this idyllic life, when a wealthy matron from the nearby
mainland steers her yacht into the cove and begins importuning
him with invitations to join her and her crew for breakfast,
lunch, and supper. All the old captain wants out of life
at this point is freedom, comfort, and solitude. He waits for
her to leave, continuing to decline her advances as politely
as he can. But she seems set on drawing him into her gay and
busy way of life. In desperation he slips out of the cove one
night and hovers nearby, until the matron takes her yacht
away. Then he returns to take up his shell-collecting once
more.
Old heroes never die, nor do they fade away in the slicks.
That is, if they are old human heroes they don't. But
occasionally, our aging hero will be an animal. In such
cases, it is quite proper for him to die.
A wealthy sportsman has a faithful old dog who doesn't
seem to have much time left. For sentimental reasons, the
sportsman continues to take the dog out to hunt. One day,
the sportsman finds the dog in such a weakened condition that
it seems certain he can't last much longer. Nonetheless, he
takes the dog out. The dog, as if aware that this will be his
last hunt, leads the sportsman to their favorite blind and
there expires.
The dog's going at the end to the sportsman's favorite
blind, of course, has given a reassuring sign to his master
and to the reader that he has had a good, full life and now
is perfectly adjusted to death-or, as the sportsman puts
it, to his last sleep.
The most frequent animal dodge, one which the motion
pictures have worked into the ground, is the replacement
of the aging, faithful animal with a younger, stronger
animal, usually a blood relation to the hero. The appearance
on the scene of the young stallion, filly, greyhound,
gorilla, etc., naturally represents the continuous aspect of
life. It is the death-making way, the passing-of-the-scepter,
the king-is-dead-long-live-the-king type of thing.
In reference to animal stories, the general readership
magazines like occasionally to run tales which deal either
exclusively with animals or with animals and humans in
such a way that the humans on the scene enter into the
action only when they affect the fate of the animal protagonists.
Such stories are, of course, off-beat pieces, and consequently
do not need original plotting.
The problems of animals are made meaningful to readers
through the writer ' s ability to "personalize " them, give
them those human characteristics that their animal natures
will allow of. This anthropomorphism, though, must be
of just the right strength. Too strong and the reader will
know he is being fed a Walt Disney opus; too weak, and
the reader will be unable to identify with the animal characters
or see in them any attributes worth more than
mild intellectual interest. Remember, any animal hero
the writer creates must be as potent a sympathy-getter as
a human protagonist.
An interesting piece appeared in Collier's recently which
dealt with the adventures of two beavers. They were man and
wife, as much or more so than most human couples. They
were taken away from their idyllic home to be attractions at
a fair. After the fair, they were let loose in an unfriendly
environment, where they met many enemies, had difficulty
getting food, and found it impossible to build dams (which
activity seems to be necessary to beavers' well-being). After
many adventures, close calls, separations from each other, etc.,
they finally found their way into the promised land where
they can spend their old age in peace and contentment.
category:plot lines
Category: transformation.