Eragon as a Sociopath

[The Sixth Wizard]

Hi everyone, how's it going?

I found this article just now. Not only did it satisfy me by really demolishing Christopher Paolini's Brisingr, (and really, I need not go into detail about what an absolutely shockingly awful failure his latest book was; not to mention the millions in retch-inducing royalties he receives for it! ) the article also had some interesting stuff in there about the relationship between Frodo and Gollum, so it deserves posting here.

Rob Oakes apparently also wrote a scathing review of Brisingr, here.


Just in case you're too lazy to click the link, here's the final paragraph of the article:

Tolkien may have written in perilous times when the flame of light and wisdom appeared to sputter and there were armies at the gate. But as the events of September 11 and the 2003 Iraq War show, there are still threats to our culture and democracy. This time, though, they are internal. We are not threatened by exterior conquest, but by the risk of losing our souls as we attempt to provide for our security. In that struggle, Eragon, Eldest and Brisingr will not help. Paolini reduces questions of good and evil to points of convenience. He attempts to show that sometimes genocide is justified; it’s okay to co-opt justice in the name of vigilantism; and that murder can be acceptable if it is convenient enough. In the struggle to keep civilization’s collective soul, why would we emulate a hero who has already lost his?

edit* You know what, this paragraph is cool too:

In Brisingr, however, we are presented with another person. Eragon has little mercy or understanding for anyone around him (either friend or foe). This trend only gets worse as the novel progresses. Steadily, we proceed from actions which are merely foolish to those which are profoundly disturbing. Consider how Eragon acts in the first few hundred pages of Brisingr. In the opening chapters, Eragon commits genocide. He later circumvents justice in order to condemn and abandon a man in the desert. Last, he kills a child in cold blood while the boy is begging for mercy. In this essay, we will look at these three scenarios in detail and show that Eragon has lost his way, his conscience and his soul.

On other matters, I have not been to the Downs since, what does that say ... April? How ya been?