The game revolves around the story of the hero, the
Dragonborn, and the return of dragons to the world. A hero using sword and
sorcery to fight dragons seems like pretty standard video game fair but the
game was a huge success.
It was not until 2017 that I realized the story of Skyrim
was more than just a game, but rather a retelling of a powerful older story
full of symbols that I knew but never recognized. This is the story of the hero
and his journey.
This significance came to me as I was replaying Skyrim and
listening to Professor Jordan Peterson. This is my attempt to untangle the
importance of the hero’s journey to the individual and society through the game
Skyrim.
The Hero’s Call
The game starts with the hero in the back of a cart with
rebels and criminals, bound, on his way to his execution. This is an odd place
for a hero to be yet this is how the journey starts.
The people with the Dragonborn are dangerous. This hints at
the idea that the Dragonborn himself must be a dangerous person as well. The
philosopher Carl Jung would say that the hero has integrated his shadow.
Meaning that to be a hero you must accept that you are capable of evil and
struggle against that capability.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn describes this more clearly when he
wrote in The Gulag Archipelago that “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating
good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between
political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through
all human hearts.” This is also seen in the Judeo-Christian concept of original
sin. Meaning that sin or evil is within all of us and that is something we all
must struggle with our whole lives.
Failure to recognize that you
are capable of evil (Pride?) or recognizing it and refusing to resist it will
cause an individual’s evil side to grow. It is this internal struggle within
ourselves that we see played externally in the hero’s story.
The Dragonborn is also bound and
on his way to execution. He was captured while wandering, seemingly without
aim. This points to the idea that without a goal and without responsibility a
person will find themselves in a bad place and on a fast track to death. This
is seen played out clearly in young men without direction joining a gang or someone
getting into drugs.
Humans have evolved our eye
sight in order to have aim so that we are better at finding food. On one level
humans have evolved the ability to aim in order to survive. Yet in order to aim
clearly on a conceptual level we need to be able to articulate what it is that
we want. It is hard to hit the target if you do not know exactly what the
target is. Speech helps us clarify the thing at which we aim.
The Dragons Return
The hero is taken into a town
and has his head placed on the chopping block. As the headsman raises his axe
you hear someone shout, “what is that?!” A dragon lands on a tower above you
and shouts, causing a hail of rocks. Chaos ensues.
It is this dragon’s shout
(Speech) that frees the Dragonborn. He is freed from the execution as well as
aimless wandering. In a very real, giant and dangerous way, responsibility hits
the hero hard and calls directly to him. It says I am the biggest problem here,
you need to deal with me or watch your world burn.
Dragons as a concept have been
around for a long time. Professor Jordan Peterson sees the dragon as an
amalgamation of predators of our early ancestors, combining the traits of
snakes, birds, and large cats (like lions). If that was not bad enough it can
also breathe fire and is intelligent. Despite the danger of dragons they
possess gold, meaning there is something of value to be gained by defeating
them.
Professor Peterson goes on to
say that dragons as a symbol are the problem of all problems. From an
evolutionary stand point the biggest problem our ancestors faced were predators.
The dragon, the ultimate predator, logically stands in for the idea of
problems.
It is from this reasoning that
you see hero stories. Of course people would tell stories of the person who
willingly went out into the world and killed those predators. Not only did they
end the problem that predator posed, but they would be able to bring back food
and perhaps a fir to keep them warm.
This is the reason dragons have
gold. If you extract the idea out farther it explains that within problems are
something useful and solving those problems will allow you to be rid of the
predator and to bring back something of value to make things better, for
yourself and society.
The society the Dragonborn finds
himself in is in the middle of a civil war. On one side you have the
Stormcloaks and on the other you have the Imperials/Empire. The motivations of
these two groups are complex but for now all we need to know is that they are
at war with each other, they were both at the execution and they both know that
the dragons have returned.
If you approach these groups in
the game it is clear that they are refusing to deal with the dragons and are
still focused on fighting each other. To them it is more important to battle
one another than it is to deal with the return of the dragons. They are blind
to the real problem, the dragons, and what it could mean for the world. Instead
it is up to the hero to take on this problem himself.
The dragons are returning all
across Skyrim, but as you progress through the game you find out that they were
not hiding somewhere but were in fact dead and are being brought back to life.
Relating it to the real world you can see these old problems coming back to
life.
The ghost of Communism has
spread across college campuses and work itself into a multi headed dragon (hydra).
Authoritarianism attempting to shut down free speech, people in masks looting
and rioting in urban areas, and religious extremists murdering innocent people
being excused due to Political Correctness. These dragons have been resurrected
and are currently running free across the world until a hero is willing to step
up.
Sky Shattering Thu’um
In Skyrim the hero has the power
of a Thu’um or a shout. This is a type of magic that allows the hero to do
amazing things simply by speaking words. The way the hero gains this power is
by slaying dragons, absorbing their power and reading words of power from the
past on dragon walls.
Words, spoken or written, are a person’s
attempt to manifest an idea into the real world. By reading these words on the
dragon walls, what the Dragonborn is doing is building his power based on the
foundations of what has come before. He is resurrecting the culture and giving
it new life.
The benefit of slaying the
dragons is to gain power in order to use additional words. When the hero finds
a dragon wall he cannot read all the words, only part of it stands out. This is
the logos revealing itself to the hero, who will carry it into the world.
Logos is the root of the word
logic and comes from a Greek word meaning, ground, plea, opinion, expectation,
word, speech, account, reason, proportion, discourse. Logos in the West is a
term used when describing Jesus as being the Word of God. Yet before that in
Western philosophy the term was used by Heraclitus to mean “a principle of
order and knowledge.”
It is a complex word and concept
which Jordan Peterson describes as meaning something like “the articulated
Truth.” (A YouTube video of Peterson explaining Logos here). When the
Dragonborn kills a dragon and gains the power to shout, the game is acting out
this idea. The idea that if you willingly go out and face down problems
(dragons) you will gain knowledge and power (logos) which you can bring to the
world to make it a better place.
Rescuing your Father from the Underworld
This is a common theme in
mythology as well as in video games. Beowulf goes into the depths and fights
Grendel’s mother, Pinocchio goes to the bottom of the ocean to save Gepetto, and
the Dragonborn makes his way to Sovngarde.
These are all great stories in
their own right and to dismiss them as superstition and fairy tale would be to
miss out on the essence behind the story. First we must look at what the
Underworld and the Father is and why the Father is in the Underworld.
The Underworld is the place you
go when you die, an unknown place, a place that cannot be known. The Father is
the old king or rather the culture built by those in the past. In these stories
death is not the end, but rather a turning point. It is same idea that is
represented by the tarot card death. Culture is always dying and being reborn
because chaos is always pushing against order and to maintain order change (or
chaos) is needed.
So the hero goes out into chaos,
brings a part of that chaos back so that the culture can change in an attempt
to maintain order. The hero going into the Underworld (chaos or the unknown) is
his attempt to bring back something of value that will, hopefully, update society
so that it will not collapse into chaos.
In Skyrim the main adversary is
Alduin, a soul eating dragon that can rain chaos from the sky with a shout. He
was defeated in the past through the use of an Elder Scroll (a fragment of the
divine), yet this was only a temporary defeat. The Dragonborn must use the
Elder Scroll and learn what the heroes of the past knew so that he can deal
with the problem of Alduin and restore order to the world.
The hero does not destroy
culture or society, but instead builds on it to make it better. He joins with
the old heroes to defeat Alduin, using their power and his own to defeat the
problem once and for all.
It is with the defeat of this
dragon that order is restored to the world. Yet when the hero returns from the
Underworld he sees several dragons flying overhead spreading across the world.
This means that there are still problems in the world but the world is a little
bit better with one less problem.
The Hero’s Song Lives On
The hero’s journey is the
journey of each individual. The man who wakes up at 5am and goes to work all
day so his kids will have a better future then he did is a hero. The mother who
spends countless sleepless nights caring for a sick child is a hero. The hero
is inside of us all and in order to access it we must understand that we are
both hero and monster. That both good and evil is inside of all of us and that
the first thing we must do is recognize that struggle and actively take part.
Each individual must use his
logos to find what he is aiming at and shoot. There is no guarantee that you
will hit your mark or that you are aiming at what you think you are. Yet by
speaking the truth as clearly and as best you can you will have a chance of
hitting the mark.
If society is falling apart the
answer is not to tear it down and start over. Rather it is to deal with the
problems by building on and renewing the foundation. Preserving the traditions
of the past while updating them to meet current situations.
The story of Skyrim and the hero’s
journey is so popular and powerful because it is the story of ourselves. We
must look honestly at ourselves, recognize the problems in us and in our world
and try to solve them by taking willing responsibility of them. It is in the
solving of these problems that we ease the suffering of life for ourselves and
those around us as well as in the world at large. The great thing about the story
is that anyone no matter how inadequate or useless has this potential inside of
them. That potential could be called the divine spark within us all.
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