Even when the risk isn't physical, the communal pressure to remain can be tremendous. The underlying justification of all utopias postulates that it's so exactly what humanity needs, anyone who wishes to leave must be damaged in some way. The damaged person either needs to be fixed or expelled.
The practical problem--and one explanation for the knee jerk negativity--is that a loss of citizens requires restructuring of the remaining social order.
I propose a still older explanation. Utopias often bleed into the fairy realm, and leaving the fairy realm always requires payment:
Tasks often involve sacrifice. As Terry says in Chapter 18, "I was here in the tunnels to take risks."
I support this particular trope. A change in life brings along costs. It requires that the protagonist delivers up something of the self. Alim, a citizen of Troas in His in Herland, accepts that he may never be able to return. He "acts on the world," choosing to leave rather than simply follow Terry's lead (Terry sacrifices his reputation--such as it is--for the ability to leave).
Writing problems arise when writers don't want their protagonists to take this risk.
The writing problem doesn't appear to be attached to suffering. Suffering delivers cache. Rather, writers come across as reluctant to force their protagonists to live with a choice. Perhaps writers fear having their protagonists make the wrong choices. Perhaps writers don't want their characters to have to choose.
I recently read a disappointing Christmas story. In the story, the protagonist--who went into a series of foster homes when his mother died--learns that his father is a substitute Father Christmas, an elf who filled in for Santa one night.
Not a bad premise. (I'm not troubled by overdone premises.)
Unfortunately, however, the writer wanted the foster situations that the protagonist suffered to be horrible. Look at all that suffering!
Except then, the writer wanted to let the substitute Santa off the hook. The biological dad couldn't check in on his son because...ah...he was afraid he wouldn't be able to get back to Santa's world...except people can...so...he was afraid Santa would be mad...except Santa is a really swell guy...but it's nobody's fault and nobody's responsibility because the substitute Santa lives in another world...except the protagonist can visit...only the substitute Santa can't leave...except people do leave all the time...and by the way, the protagonist is about thirty, so the substitute Santa had three decades to overcome all the waffling.
 |
| And the telephone system blew too-- |
| amazingly enough. |
I was disgusted. The protagonist's father abandoned his son and had no good narrative reason not to check in on him for thirty years.
If a protagonist is going to abandon responsibility, the reason had better be a good one ("God" or "my clique" or "the social order told me too" or "I must for the sake of a perfect future" is not an acceptable reason). Otherwise, the protagonist needs to step up.
In a sense, I've come back to where I started with these posts: to keep people in (isolated), there has to be a reason--and it has to be believable. If people determine to leave, they must bargain with the world's rules or--in the case of Terry & Alim--the Fates.
As one of my Greek gods tells Terry, “Everyone’s story has to be checked.”
Terry arrived through the tunnel--Alim and Terry leave through the tunnel after paying a toll: Fantasy Writing 101.Chapter 18 & Chapter 19
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