Jesus, Girard, and Twentieth-Century Fantasy for Young Adults

In the first half of the twentieth century, fantasy stories for children and adolescents were often domestically oriented romps such as P. L. Travers's Mary Poppins (first published in 1934), or amusing but safe adventures such as L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (first published in 1900). In these early fantasies, the child protagonists were more or less safe under the watchful eyes of careful adults. After the Second World War, however, children's fantasy in the West underwent a decided shift in focus. The child protagonists could no longer rely on well-meaning adults, but had to confront danger themselves and resolve it. (1) These young protagonists faced battles, undertook quests, and struggled with concepts of heroism in a way that, while not completely new to the genre, had not been witnessed since the fantasies of George MacDonald in the Victorian era. (2) One particular motif that returned to the genre in full force after having been long absent was the idea of sacrificial death, or death that pays the price of something that cannot be bought in any other way. This motif first (re)appeared in the post-World War II fantasy by C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Many scholars have explored the religious significance of this text in relation to the author's own Christian belief, which distinguishes the use of this motif from those of earlier narratives in that its occurrence also marks the end of a sacrificial system due to the innocence of the scapegoat and victim. Undoubtedly, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a good example of post-war twentieth-century fantasy that proffers, through the motif, precisely such an ideological position as its theme, but it is not the only such work. During this period, fantasy stories with a comparable narrative trajectory, while not plentiful, were surprisingly popular, but were arguably eclipsed by the popularity of Lewis's work, at least within critical scholarship. Two such stories, which serve as substantial prototypical examples of the way the motif of sacrificial death is deployed according to this trend, are Lloyd Alexander's The Black Cauldron and Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Perilous Gard. (3) Intriguingly, the sacrificial deaths in both these stories seem to follow a pattern that the philosopher, historian, and literary critic Rene Girard has discussed in his various studies, most completely in The Scapegoat. This pattern, which begins with what Girard calls the "scapegoat function," has ostensibly shaped various ancient cultures and formed their mythological systems; its influence, moreover, remains felt up until the present day, if only in terms of how it continues to structure human relationships in an array of social situations. Since my reading of the scapegoat motif and the theme of sacrifice in these two fantasy writings for adolescent readers is heavily dependent on Girard's formulation, a quick explanation of his theory at this juncture is imperative. According to Girard, any conflict that leads to the sacrifice of a scapegoat, who is ultimately an innocent victim, always begins with desire. At the heart of desire is the motivation toward imitation, or mimesis: that is, an individual learns to want what another person wants, and as a result, tension ensues. The pursuit of a desire by two persons inevitably compels rivalry, and, as Girard explains in Violence and the Sacred, such a mimetic rivalry will subsequently spread quickly to the rest of the community that may only have a vague idea of the cause of argument. In fact, the original object of desire becomes completely forgotten as the rivalry escalates, since the opposing parties have now shifted their focus to the discord itself. As the mimetic rivalry soon reaches a crisis point, a violent altercation becomes unavoidable, unless something is done to allay the communal stress. To this end, a ritual is enacted whereby the community chooses a scapegoat to whom it will direct its anxieties in order to "deflect . …