What about the stone-giants? A user's guide to the giantic in Tolkien and elsewhere - Part 2

Have I mentioned the mole? Have I missed a giant? There's a rumblebuffin, Wimbleweather, Stonefoot is another one that's mentioned by name, so there seems to be, and this is interesting, because CS Lewis isn't as meticulous in his world building as Tolkien is. He kind of jams everything in there, but that's part of his methodology is being open to the gathering of a number of different myths and putting them all together in a little kind of play pen to have fun with. To say that all of that is imbued, all of these are essentially coming from the same great capital M myth when it comes to it. He felt free to pull from everywhere and keep those explicitly distinct in their original forms. But Lewis, I don't know if he's intentionally or unintentionally, he had almost sets up a few different categories of giants. You have the Narnian giants who are the ones that seem to be native to and live in Narnia are kind, generally speaking, but just not very right. But you have a few rogue giants that are part of the Witches Army in that initial fight that we have between those groups in line, Witch and the Wardrobe. But then once you get into silver chair, which is going north, then you have those, you know, the Etten's more, the Etten, these large, you know, they're huge. They seem to be, you know, unintelligent or violent, terrible aim, like you mentioned. But they, it's said, you know, they could have like additional heads and arms sometimes. They seem to be kind of more monstrous creatures. We're not told if they're speaking any sort of language. If they, if they are speak Narnian, something else or nothing at all. Whereas when you get to Harfeng, these, those giants appear to be kind of smaller in scale. Certainly, they seem different because they have a government system, a social structure, hierarchy, and they're not as massive at least. Right, right. They've been massively, they're civilized. Yeah, they're civilized. They have, they have, they have cookbooks. And so they're, so you have kind of, I don't know if it's, these are social distinctions between giants or if they're, you know, biological distinctions, these are different trajectories. But what's happening in Harfeng, a Harfenger is, is clearly kind of different from what's happening on Edons more, you know, when they're running from, from those, from those giants. So they're, they're, they're a little bit smaller, more civilized and they're devious, right. So they're, so they're intelligent. And you get kind of a wily, like you were mentioning, Julia with the green night where he's not a, a giant in the sense of the kind of o-fish, bumbling, just large size is kind of, size and strength being its largest, you know, largest defining feature. But rather, he's kind of this blend of, of cunning, right. And, you know, of, of intelligence, sometimes hyperintelligence in the way that they're strategizing. And you do have that more with the giants specifically that are in that castle in Castle Harfeng. So you have those, but then you have father time that they see sleeping underground there in Silver Chair. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on, on father time there. And what, what you think is happening there in terms of him being referenced as a giant and what, if they're shifting or what you think Lewis is doing with that. Yeah, so that's the kind of giant you don't want to wake up. Because he is, he's woken up, isn't he in the last battle and it's yet at the end of, that's the end of time. And that reminds me of some of the more folkloric giants. It's later, but there's a fantastic book called the Giant Under the Snow, a children's book by, I think it's John Gordon, which has this idea of there is a giant, they, they looked at the old earthworks, the Iron Age earthworks and thought this looks like human, a shape. And so the idea is that if you rouse the sleeping giant, you cause the end of an age or some sort of cataclysm. And I think that's what's going on there, the sense of, it's like the world started with the Norse god who was turned into the world. Well, it sort of ends with one as well, calling time, literally calling time. So I thought that's a sort of folkloric, northern giant, creeping into the world of Narnia there. Yeah, he, yeah, the father time was fasting. So when I first read Silverture, that's what I, I stopped on that. You know, sometimes, you know, there's certain ideas that you just kind of like stop and chew on for a minute before you kind of keep going. But then this idea of, you know, father time personified and that he'd, you know, once, you know, the, as the children are asking, you know, who is, who is this? What is that? And then you get this kind of quick snapshot of a backstory of where he ruled the kingdom somewhere in early Narnia and then eventually kind of sank down into the underland and put to sleep. And you have all these birds and bats and dragons and lizards there. But he's, you know, clearly massive and held in respect, which you don't have that sort of respect is, I think it does it, we're describing almost as like a chapel that he's kind of sleeping within the room is is there seems to be some sort of care that's that's given to him as an individual this kind of father time. And so that that like I that arrested me at first and then when it when that same character comes back in the last battle, just all of those sections, I had to you kind of keep reread each of those just the description of him. So it's clearly different in a different category from these other giants, right? So his face his description in last battle, his face was not like a giants, but noble and beautiful, right? So the assumption is that giants are ugly, right? Or hideous hideous creatures, but this one wasn't, right? He's noble. He's got this, you know, huge snowy beard and then a pure silver light rested upon him, though no one could see where it came from. So he's kind of illuminated from some unknown source. He's kind of this, this, this sense of kind of, I don't say a holiness, but certainly it's kind of like a mythic weight to him, even in the way he's lit is kind of sets him apart. And he, right, he ends up, like you were saying, it's really fascinating parallel between the Norse myths where the world is created from the body of this giant. And then here it's this giant that ultimately ends Narnia, right? And that particular world by squeezing squeezing the sun like an orange and brings an end to that. And presumably, right, he dies outside. He's left outside of, you know, the world as it dies, but then presumably he's kind of brought into the other, the true Narnia. Yes, but he also represents the physical, the physical property of time, doesn't he? So that the world that they go into in the last battle is a place outside of time, it's eternity. Yeah, so the question is yeah, so we don't. This is where we get into the philosophy of it. And also you reminded me that of course, of the biblical roots of giants and the idea of huge creatures that are sort of, as in the book of Daniel, there are lots of very large, we wouldn't call them traditional giants, but large prophetic creatures that are sort of instruments of God's power. So I feel that father time feels like a kind of instrument of asland's power in that world in a more almost biblical way that sort of fits with the revelation film feel of that last book. That's yeah, that's that's really interesting because yeah, you do have right in Daniel this figure seen in vision that you know, different parts of, you know, clay and you know, iron and all right, there's the different types of metals all representing successive kingdoms. And so that is yeah, so it's this person is a personification of time. And perhaps yeah, that you have, because Lewis is playing so fast and loose. And I think that's the fun of Lewis is that this creature could be an actual moving creature that can squish a sun in its hand, in its mass in hand, but also can serve as the embodiment of time itself, of linear time itself. And so there's kind of this interplay that is very mythic, right? So he's writing in that mode where you can be both and and it's not necessarily one specific creature, but it's playing with ideas as well as kind of reality with like more concrete realities. And you see this and where I think where I saw this when I saw this when I was thinking about giants in Lewis outside of Narnia thinking about the great divorce and that surreal kind of closing chapter where the narrator sees these giant creatures specifically, right, a great assembly of gigantic forms that are around these like it looks like a chess board and they're moving these little pieces on the chess board. And what the narrator is told talking with George McDonald, right, this is kind of psychopomp spirit guide is that the people, these these gigantic figures are actually human souls, right, they're the spirits, they're the the lived reality and that these kind of tiny ponds are like the physical manifestations of people so that each each person is so much larger and grander and it's part of something larger outside of time and that this board that's representing time, these people, these you know tiny small figures are just kind of being moved about but that's a separate realm and the experience that those people are involved with is different from the kind of transcendent reality outside of that kind of plane of time. So I absolutely agree with that. I'm not going to earn some bonus points here because what you just said reminds me of the place of the lion, the fascinating Charles Williams novel which had the idea of the platonic archetypes which are gigantic versions of so a lion is the essence of lion, a huge lion and the butterfly is the essence of butterflies and beauty which sucks everything, it sort of threatens the world, this giant, these giant creatures, a giant snake as well, they threaten our reality by sucking everything into them, that's sort of the dilemma of that fascinating novel. So there seems to be a philosophical level here which the giant form is working on in both Lewis and Charles Williams which I think I'm going to have to think about a bit more but there seems to be a connection. Certainly the sort of the idea of ending having the power to end reality seems to be a quite a strong correlation there. Okay so we've done quite a deep dive into giants in Tolkien, giants of CS Lewis dip into Charles Williams. Where do we think giants have gone now? We've seen them and it's a gauvin in the green night, we've seen them in and we can mention other Arthurian tales and just wave at them in passing. We'll see seen them in Gulliver's travels. I'm trying to think if there's any connecting hopscotch we can do here, I mean obviously there was fairy tales and the whole era of fairy tales that came along with Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson and others. But we have had an explosion of giants in contemporary culture if we think about it. So have at the idea of I've got one big franchise in mind. I'll leave the wizarding world to you then. Well done. I completely forgotten that. Yes let's do that. So we've got JK Rowling giants. Obviously we've got Hagrid as our fairy tales. Half giant, right? But we do have a connection here to the dim giants, don't we? The dim and vicious giants because they do tend to be on that end of the scale with the honorable exception of the head mistress of Bobaton school, which seems quite refined. But the others all seem quite persuaded by Voldemort. Right, yeah, that they're dull, right? Yeah, they grow up the Hagrid's half brother that's full giant is clearly dim and with that you see until kind of how giants can back to our point about how giants can be used symbolically and sometimes morally in a sense as we saw with the Greek myths giants kind of being used morally in a sense or philosophically. You have prejudice in the wizarding world against giants where they're treated as second class citizens. So there's kind of metaphor of being used again like the other and the you know our favorite, you know, Maxim the head mistress when Hagrid is talking to her and confiding, so it's finally nice to find somebody who is also kind of has the same heritage. She gets really upset and says like, are you suggesting that I'm giant in essence, right? So she yeah, so is she and this is something that I'm talking about this with with my wife who's who knows the Harry Potter books better than anyone. I know she's saying you know, she's saying that in a sense she seems to be trying to pass as non-giant and so once she's kind of called out as having that heritage. So there's then then then she gets very upset. She's extra defensive about that and so you have that almost giant kind of being used as a social metaphor for, you know, social classes that are seen as, you know, secondary citizens and that comes across in how giants are spoken of by other people in the wizarding world, Cornelius Fudge for instance. So anyway, so there's yeah, so wizarding world, you have those ones, other ones that I was thinking of, never ending story, Michael Enda, the rock bider, so kind of, I was thinking about that, especially in light of the, you know, our listeners referenced the stone giant, you know, this literally giant made out of stone who eats rocks. And that that creature, again, this like kind of more cosmic massive who dies, who's end up, you know, we see fleeing from the end of reality as we know it within this world of the story of the never ending, the titular never ending story. So that's another one that came to mind is one that, especially in the film version of that because I saw that film so many times when I was younger, that was kind of the quintessential massive cosmic giant was a stone, the rock bider from never ending story. So your turn. Okay, I'm going to just do one more stone giant. My absolute favorite is in galaxy quest, which also happens to be possibly my favorite film, it's certainly my desert island film, because there is a literal rock giant, which is used for great comic effect because the hero has to fight this stone giant and everyone's giving him advice and he's basically saying, well look he's rock, what am I supposed to do? It's a very, very funny sequence and it seems to go right back to the very origin of a rocks that become a giant, nice and simple, very funny, and has a great twist, I'm not going to spoil it for those of you haven't watched it yet, but put it on your, you know, to watch this, has a great twist in how it's used in a brilliant way as the plot unravels. Okay, no, the franchise I was going to suggest is the biggest pun intended of giant franchises is the transformer one, because the transformers, which also connect to toys and children's imagination and manipulation of vehicles, big trucks and things like that into robots, seem to me to be a huge, it always astounds me how the transformer movies make so much money every time they come up, but there must be something incredibly appealing in that very concept of something mechanical that is sentient and obviously got the good ones and the bad ones, but they can change and disguise themselves, and then you've got the problem of a big creature in a small space, so I think the one I watched most recently was the one that was called Bumblebee, which is one of the smaller of the transformers. The fun is most fun seen in that one is when the car kind of is inside the house trying to do things but doesn't have the fine motor skills and everything just gets trashed, like the worst kind of teenage nightmare where your house is trash while mom and dad are away, so the transformers have a lot of fun with playing on a sort of technological giant. That's good, yeah, I hadn't even thought of that when you mentioned that earlier that transformers as kind of a contemporary giant, but there's clearly yeah that there's something not all children, I can't say that, but I know with my own child of two-year-old and he just gravitated towards big trucks and cars, we don't teach him, we're trying to raise him on classical literature and he's just like obsessed with garbage trucks, so it's hard to feel like I'm succeeding as a parent when they're discarding Alice in Wonderland for dump trucks, but there's something, but I think there's something that to children's minds that's something that's large and I think why perhaps one of the reasons why vehicles in particular is because they're moving, they seem to be moving, they seem to be living in some way, shape or form that the child can't understand, they're not people, but they're large and they're moving around, and so there's something to be fascinated with, perhaps terrified and fascinated with at the same time, but then giving those a greater personification in the transformers, which again was one of my childhood, that's what I was raised on was transformer cartoons and toys, and that was my world, and so think about that as they become more anthropomorphic with the toys themselves and the creatures, because it's easier to relate to something that has ahead and arms and legs than it is to a four-wheeled vehicle, right? So I think that's one of the things you're right that like maybe tapping into something deeper with children that they're fascinated with that could account for the success of transformers, so bravo for thinking in that and that too. And you also, I feel like we're playing pinball and just little ideas are sort of flashing up with extra bonus points here because you just mentioned Alice in Wonderland, and I was saying oh what happens about perspective, Alice does this, she grows and she shrinks and she spends part of Alice in Wonderland being too big and that's a problem as she has to get small again. So that is another, I suppose that feels like the gull of a travel or experience brought forward into a famous, really the granddad of fantasy literature here in Oxford, so it's a wave to Alice in Wonderland as we go past, but we would be remiss of us if we didn't mention the sort of DC and Marvel universe of all of this. The one that I immediately thought of was the Hulk, because obviously that is a transformational thing of a human sort of relatively weedy, not really weedy, but a sort of normal man who then becomes this enormous giant and that's the giant fueled of rage and it's all clues into that idea of it's a primal side of us that is released, the kind of Mr Hyde version of us when we're doctor, when we spend most of our life as Dr. Jackal. So that was the, that seems to be a connection to those primal giants we mentioned, though of course what they've done with him since in things like Thor Ragnarok, you know, they're always changing in these comic series, so it's a moving target we're talking about. And that's what I think I think is fascinating with the Hulk in particular is starts out as, yeah, like you're saying this dimension of humanity, this just kind of the brutish, you know, unintelligent, you know, speaking, you know, monosyllabic creature and whereas then you have in the movies you have, right, this kind of fusing of the intelligence, you know, hyperintelligence of the scientist that the Hulk, you know, grows into to become as charmingly brutish, large green self, but in the comics you have different versions where you have this green Hulk and then you have a second iteration that's this gray Hulk where he has the Hulk size and strength, but retains the intellect of the scientist. So he's this hyperintelligent massive creature and that's kind of what they're kind of melding those traditions in the comic together in the films where you're current, you know, in the contemporary present day marvel timeline, you have this hyperintelligent large, you know, hulking creature. So Hulk is a great example, I think of playing with different dimensions of the giant trope. There's, you also have that with the sting of the Fantastic Four in Marvel looking at Marvel specifically, who's, you know, this brother, he's British. Yes, he's got right, he's right. Exactly, yeah, yeah, so good another connection to rock related elemental kind of creatures, but he's still, he's in his intelligence because he's a, you know, originally a football kind of beefy athlete, a college athlete who then develops this, you know, super strength and super rocky skin. So you have other, so, and you also have it bringing in both the comic books and the films Ant Man, right? So he's dealing with size. Again, when you when you mentioned Alice in Wonderland, the growing and shrinking, you have that same sort of trope in Ant Man, where he's, he can change his size, right? This is one of perspective. So he's, you know, tiny can go inside individual molecules inside human bodies, but then also can blow, you know, can become, you know, 10 stories tall, 20 stories tall, and completely massive, and it's one of perspective and size. So you have the creep, the, the superhero who is originally kind of as Ant Man in the comics becomes Goliath because he kind of reverses the process for becoming small, and then it lives as a giant for a while, and then you have that variance of size and perspective, and it seems like Marvel compared to DC is paying greater attention to the large skate issues of skin size with, with, here's the art. Most of the giants in DC are lesser known characters, not only of the kind of headliners, like you can say with Marvel, with Hulk and thing, and Ant Man slash Goliath, who he is in the comics at least when he's, when he's huge, but you have Giganta, who's this giant woman, Adam Smasher, Antimonitor, but they're all, they kind of like be, at the risk of offending fictional characters, they seem like B and C list, super heroes and super villains that get the, the giant card who draw that in their kind of creation. But one of the things that you did that kind of connects us back to, I feel kind of thematically to Tolkien and Lewis, Tolkien particular is DC's swamp thing, who is a creature that's made out of vegetation, right, who's this kind of embodiment of, who, who, who originally was kind of this horror creature, who is, you know, a human that became a walking tree, walking plant creature. But then in the comics itself, themselves, they become, he becomes this kind of avatar for the world of vegetation and trees, right? The green itself is this realm that he kind of inhabits, and he's kind of the go-between between the natural world and the world of humans. And this creature, he can change sizes as well. Sometimes he can be massive, there's one spot where he actually visits Gotham City to rescue someone and he grew up swells and sized to dwarf the buildings beneath him, but also can be smaller. It's variable because he's a plant at heart, but it's, I think it's very similar to the tree beard, right, as this kind of avatar, in a sense, a spokes tree. Is that the right word? A spokes tree for the natural world and the go-between, a go-between between the world of humans, right? We're talking with Mary and Tipin. Treebeard is kind of the, you know, our go-between our psychopath, if you will, helping them. In some ways, understand what's at stake for the natural world in these larger battles that are happening. That's what I think is, that you see that happening more thematically in DC with the swamp thing character and they're the parliament of trees that functions with its own mythology, but it's more evocative to me of talking and what he was doing with the giant tree figures than anything else. I bet a number of people listening to this are shouting Groot, Groot, because there's another character who seems very entished. So it's impossible obviously to mention everybody's favourite giant, but I think we should just do a quick nod to, there's a role dial world of giants, the big friendly giant. And that's a world where you've got giants as quite benign figures. So it's a picture books, for example, which my children, the one about George the giant who gives away his clothes. I don't know if you know that story, it's a wonderful. So he starts off finally dressed and he's the kindest giant and he gives away his clothes and he's able to close an entire village as a result. So there are those sorts of sweet benign giants as well, which may be a nice place to end up having seen some horrors on our journey. So we always have a wear in all the worlds. And the obvious question, Jacob, is which fantasy world is it best to be one of these giants? By the way, I also noticed there is a definite lack of female giants. I mean, the end wives are missing. Next to what we've been doing, there's sort of neutral sex or I mean to be fair Lewis has a whole castle of mixed gender giants. On the whole, it seems to be a masculine place to be a giant really. Anyway, where would you like to be a giant? It seems like the place with the least amount of underlying prejudice against giants is Narnia. That seems to be the place that seems most accommodating or open to dealing with giants in at least a semi-civilized way. So if I was a giant, that's probably where I'd have to land. Yeah. I hate to see that because I want to come up with something better. But like, well, it just seems, for my sake, purely selfish for purely kind of logistical reasons. Narnia seems like the only thing I can think of. I think I'd probably go quite old school. I think I'll go for the worlds of Sagoin in the Green Knight because he does have a whole castle that I call and sort of mystic powers. So I think I'd quite like to be, and also you've seen pretty eternal because you get your head cut off and you pop up again. I think that might be a good option. But on the whole, I think fancy worlds are pretty rough on giants. Yeah, they don't seem so they're typically right. So you rarely, I can't really think of many where you have giants held up as symbols of virtue, nobility, right, that they're true. Yeah, the Pilgrims Progress is the giant of despair. I mean, they really get a poor poor billing in that book too. I think that's a challenge for yeah, no exactly. And I think that I think that'd be a challenge for those of our listeners who are also authors and storytellers to come up with a scenario. I would love to read a story that kind of turns that tendency and trope on its head of a heroic, a giant who is held up, whose virtues are held up in some in some way. It'd be hard to do, I think just because of the kind of overwhelming cultural weight that's placed on giants. But I think that'd be worth seeing. I'd love to see it. Okay, that's the challenge. That's the homework. And a female and a female giant. A female, so this would be a female giant whose held up as a symbol of virtue, nobility, honor. I have actually done this in one of my books. So I've written a couple of books called the Mel Foster series. A Mel Foster teams up with E. Frankenstein, who is the author of Frankenstein. They sort of have an almost graphic novel feel to it these books. And she is the virtuous, she is the good guy in this. I only make her about seven or eight feet tall. So her logistical problems are not too big. Because otherwise you spend all your time working out how you get someone in a building. But she was my attempt to both correct the gender imbalance and also give giants a better billing. And I'm embarrassed that I haven't read that yet. So I would say yeah, so like that, where can we get, where can we find that? You can find it online, you know, in books. But that was my attempt. Anyway, what's the titles? Yeah, what are the titles of those? The first one is called Mel Foster. Well, the series is the Mel Foster's monsters. And the second one is very HD Wells inspired. It's Mel Foster and the Time Machine. So the first one is Mel Foster and the Demon Butler. That's it. Because that's about an evil Butler takes over Queen Victoria. And the second one is Mel Foster and the Time Machine. Yeah, I just struggle to remember. I've written over 16 novels, so sometimes get my titles a bit muddled. But they don't all have giants. That one does. Okay, good, we'll check it out. Thank you so much, Jacob. And yeah, that was really fun. I think we covered the cover the territory on giants. But I'm sure other people will have more suggestions about themes that we could tackle and we'll happily return and have a go at something else. Because we didn't even touch on giant creatures. King Kong, Godzilla. I mean, there's a whole other world of fantasy creatures out there. Thanks for listening to MythMakers Podcast. Brought to you by the Oxford Center for Fantasy. Visit OxfordCenterForFatasy.org to join in the fun. Find out about our online courses. In person stays in Oxford. Plus visit our shop for great gifts. Tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favorite podcasts worldwide. The following Zippercruder Radio Spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words. When you're hiring, we at Zippercruder know you can feel frustrated for Lauren even. Like your efforts are futile and you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine. Fortunately, Zippercruder figured out how to fix all that. And right now you can try Zippercruder for free at zippercruder.com slash zip. With Zippercruder you can forget your frustrations. Because we find the right people for your roles fast. Which is our absolute favorite F word. In fact, four out of five employers who post on Zippercruder get a quality candidate within the first day. Fantastic. So whether you need to hire four 40 or 400 people, get ready to meet first straight talent. Just go to zippercruder.com slash zip to try Zippercruder for free. Don't forget that zippercruder.com slash zip. Finally that zippercruder.com slash zip.