Epic Win

Ok, apologies before I start, because this post is kinda long. :)

Recently, my college did a (fantastic) production of Alexander Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo and that’s what originally started my thinking on this. For those of you living under a very dry and boring rock who don’t know the story of The Count of Monte Cristo, it is the story of Edmond Dantes, who was an average, run-of-the-mill sailor in France just after the deposition of Napoleon Bonaparte. In a horrible series of events, Dantes is accused of a crime he didn’t commit, jailed on false accusations on the day of his wedding, and spends the next fourteen years imprisoned in the Chateau d’If. After escaping, he inherits (from a fellow prisoner) an enormous treasure and begins tracking down the men responsible for his captivity. He masterminds this incredibly intricate plot to wreak his revenge—not in killing his enemies, but by taking away everything they care about and making them suffer as he suffered. Edmond sees himself as “the hammer of God” out to bring God’s justice on these men, but he comes to realize, as his plans fall into place and everything works out exactly as he planned it, that this isn’t actually the right path.

It was fantastic, for me at least, that throughout the entire play, Edmond is asked time and again “Who are you?” and he gives all sorts of different answers—“I am Prisoner 34, I’m Edmond Dantes, I’m the Count of Monte Cristo, I’m the Hammer of God, the Count of Providence,” etc, etc. So he has all these names for himself, but he doesn’t really know who he is, and he can’t figure it out until he learns to forgive.

The show absolutely captured my imagination—I actually went to see it three times out of the four it was performed—and it got me to thinking:

Why is it—what is it—that fascinates us so much about the epic stories that we love? Stories like The Count of Monte Cristo, like The Pirates of the Caribbean, like The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, like The Chronicles of Narnia. Or what about superhero stories? Name just about any superhero story and you’ll have an epic story of epic proportions with epic heroes and epic quests and epic villains…all that jazz. What is it that fascinates us so much? Why is it that we care so much about things that simply aren’t real, and aren’t really even realistic or have any bearing on our everyday life? Why do we care so much that Frodo must take the Ring to Mount Doom and save the world and so on and so forth? Why do we care? What is it about the “epic quest”—the epic story—that captures our attention so much and just draws us in and makes us desire that sort of adventure for ourselves?

I think I’ve mostly narrowed it down to two things:


First, I think we love these epic stories so much because everything is so obvious. J We can tell pretty easily who’s the Good Guy and who’s the Bad Guy. It’s like the old Westerns, where the goodies wore the white hats and the baddies wore the black hats, and the goodies rode white stallions and the baddies rode black stallions, and the baddy had a chewed cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth and the good guy was all wholesome and ruggedly handsome when he came striding through those saloon doors…We knew who the good guy was. It was obvious.

The Count of Monte Cristo blurs those lines a bit, I’ll admit. Who’s the “good guy” there? Obviously, the protagonist is Dantes, but he’s not really a good guy, per se, since his entire motivation in life is vengeance. But we recognize him as the “hero” because, really, his idea of vengeance is a blown-up idea of justice, which we can see as something good.

But most epics are far more black and white: take The Lord of the Rings for example. Big Fiery Eye = obvious bad guy. The heroes are the brave, noble, milk-and-cookies-adorable hobbits. The hero is the king who lives in secret, hiding in the shadows and waiting for his chance to return. The heroes are the ones who are trying to save the world—it’s obvious.

Take The Chronicles of Narnia. Good guy? Aslan, of course! Bad guy—or in this case, bad girl: Jadis, the White Witch. We’re not going to have any sort of confusion here, the person who keeps the land in eternal ice and snow is probably the bad one.

Or movies: Sher Khan versus Mowgli and his gang. Aladdin versus Jafar. Sleeping Beauty and the good fairies versus Maleficent. Flynn and Repunzel versus Mother Gothel. J These things are pretty plain—we know who to root for and who to boo.

Here’s the problem: we don’t see that in real life. Real life is a whole lot more like the potential moral tangle of The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s kind of…grey. There are places, things, events and people who don’t make sense. We can see people who act like “the villain”—say, an anonymous developer that demolishes the house you lived in as a child—but aren’t really evil: he’s just doing his job. Or people who seem like “heroes” until you find out a bit more about their backstory, or some scandal comes to light. Real life is not black and white. There aren’t Good Guys and Bad Guys, with everyone falling into those strict categories. People in real life are not as diametrically aligned as Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.

The reason we love epic, larger than life dramas is that things are obvious, and real life isn’t like that—or is it?

On the Grand Scale, it is. We know who the Hero is, and who the villains are. We know the Knight in Shining Armor, the King about to come into his own. We know the dragon, and we know—or at least, I hope we know—who’s side we’re on. We know who’s gonna get his butt kicked in the end. J There may be uncertainty among humans, but there’s not any uncertainty in the Grand Scheme of things.

Second, it’s the idea of something bigger than ourselves, the idea that there is a grand scheme around our lives, even if we may never see it. We feel that there’s got to be something bigger out there, outside of our little existence that makes everything worthwhile. We want to be the hero, and usually we’re not. We want to be part of something important and grandiose and significant…and it seems that it rarely happens that way. In “real life” there aren’t cape-wearing villains and hooded traitors and massive final battles fought in ridiculously implausible locations—the things we associate with “the epic story”. But we want that, don’t we? We long for this experience that is so much bigger than anything we’ve ever seen before in our lives.

I think it goes back to a sort of embedded realization in our very nature, something that God has put there, something that we were created with. It’s part of being made in the image of God. There’s a desire hardwired in our hearts to know something Bigger. We know that it’s there—we wouldn’t love these stories if we didn’t have that natural longing for it. C.S. Lewis talks about how we don’t have any longings that don’t have a natural fulfillment. We hunger, and for that there is food. We thirst, and for that there is drink. We feel a need for purpose, and for that there is work and family and serving God and others. We long for epicness (for lack of a better word) because we know that there’s a fulfillment for that somewhere.

God provides that epic story arc—we may only be side characters, innkeepers or merchants or Random Fellow Traveler Number 15, but there really is a bigger plot. There is an epic quality to creation from beginning to end; from “In the beginning God” to “Surely I am coming soon—Amen! Come quickly Lord Jesus.” There is a story arc through history. God has had a plan from before Creation, before Time, before Eternity began. He is the Author and Perfecter of our faith, the ultimate epic storyteller. And the main character is God. Not you, not me, not the guy at the next table or the girl down the street. What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever. That’s it. That, my friends, is the epic story of Creation. It’s God and his epic plan. The ultimate battle, the ultimate quest, the ultimate fulfillment of all of history is in God, and here’s a little plot spoiler: He wins. J

And I don’t know about you, but I’m on His side. I’m like one of the backup riders, also in a white hat, watching proudly from the sidelines while the Good Guy goes and kicks some black-hatted tail. I’m part of the epic story of God’s plan, and so are you.

What do you think?