I agree about it Being a false dichotomy but I think the point of the video and essay was that it’s one that characters (men) often find themselves straining to sort out for themselves. They invent a problem by desiring to only live in the hero role forever, that was their expectation, but it’s ultimately unrealistic. There are seasons in life for heroic individualism and seasons of happy humble collective service and I think LeGuin‘s point is that the transition from one to another often trips heroes up due to their latent ego and familiarity with only having one of these seasons modeled as respectable by their society at large. It’s a dichotomy that exists only in the mind of those who haven’t figured out how to move between them but it’s definitely real to them, I think
In reality, yes of course there is no reason why a husband or hutbuilder cannot be heroic. But that's the point. That the narrative model of the hero's journey fundamentally constrains how we think about the world in a way that skews our ability to recognize that truth. Think about all of the stories left untold because they begin where the hero's journey says stories should end. Think about all the young soldiers who leave believing they are heroes and come back broken to a home that has no capacity to receive their trauma. Think about all of the untold history that is neglected and missed because we see through the lens of Great Man Theory. Think about all the mental health problems caused by young men who cannot find fulfilment unless they are worshiped as heroes. We have so much more capacity to understand life as a conquering of obstacles, and so much less in understanding it as an acceptance of experiences and circumstances. The hero's journey tells us that growth and fulfilment comes from metamorphosis caused by struggle that continually makes us better. But I think it is just as accurate and perhaps even more useful to say that all experiences morph us for better or worse, and the beauty of humanity is in being able to find and extrapolate our own definitions of heroism from that. And I think that's what Le Guin is getting at in her essay.
Great video (as usual)! I constantly come back to the Carrier Bag Theory and Kishōtenketsu Plotting when I work on stories. The world has plenty of Hero's Journeys. We need wider perspectives and more complex understandings ... of everything.
Thank you kindly. And I agree. Literature can be complex. Readers are certainly complex and perhaps game for scaling other peaks in the range once they've crested Story Mountain a few times :)
Looking at it makes me think of Tolkein, like how after the Scouring of the Shire Sam lead the rebuilding with the help of Galadriel's box of earth, or even better how the Hobit ended with Gandalf talking to Bilbo about how it turned out prophesied events came true due to his actions, but he was still just a little figure in the scope of the world and Bilbo responded, "Well thank goodness for that!"
Right? Rings means a lot to me for reasons that would take time to explain. But while the dashing heroes are doing their best to keep Middle Earth from utter desolation, the Hobbits are are putting one foot in front of the other, and the one does not matter without the other. It's simultaneously awing and humbling (if you happen to be a compulsive metaphor projector who can't help but see fiction as a mirror for life, not that *I* would know ;) ).
Being quite old, and watching a lot of youtube, it is rare that I find something that is completely new to me. This is. I am fascinated and have immediately added the essay and Oedipus at Colonnus at the top of my To Read list. I especially resonated with Much Ado, one of my absolute favourite Shakespeare plays. Subscribed. Thank you.
Good deal - Thank you. I'm pretty sure Much Ado About Nothing was my first love in Shakespeare. Heavens above, there was a time I didn't know who Denzel Washington or Emma Thompson *was,* wasn't there? When you get to Oedipus at Colonus, remind me we had this conversation, please, I'll be curious if it made you happy or if I exaggerated its awesomeness :)
I'm so very happy that the algorithm brought me to this channel. I'm an admirer of Le Guin and believe she offers a much-needed counterbalance to our cultural fixation on the hero's tale. I am looking forward to viewing more of your videos. Like, right this minute!
*waves vigorously* Lovely to see you - Glad you spoke up :) If you seek antidotes to the hero's tale, The Heroine's Journey has legit saved my life before. Whether you learn more about it through my stuff or elsewhere, I think The Heroine's Journey might be worth your while in that it picks up in a seriously useful way where the Hero's Journey ends.
@@RigelDeneb172 The Virgin's Promise is one book on the Heroine's Journey and I really appreciated the way it put things into words and helped me understand various stages in life.
I'll buy that. I've become a sucker for slice-of-life stories, m'self. And while I can't presume to know why the post-war crowd resonates with slice-of-life stuff, I started grooving on gentler stories with personal stakes once I started recovering from my first jail job. After, seeing / going through some drastic stuff, my appetite for gritty realism never really came back, but reassurance (albeit in fiction) that little things still matter was amazing.
I would say that conventional heroic fiction tends to feature a world that is separate from the hero and must be shaped by him, like a great sculptor and his marble. His virtue comes from his natural strength and skill. The inverse of this is a story in which the hero is shaped BY the world. They must react and change. Their virtue, by contrast to the conventional hero, comes in the choices they make in response to the circumstances they encounter, how they choose to live and who they choose to be. Instead of carving out the world according to their will, they are weaving the self out of innumerable threads.
The image of the sculptor is an evocative one :) I got a buddy who is an artist, a dad, and a farmer who speaks of growing up in fear of strength. When he was a boy, he went out of his way not to become physically stronger because he didn't want to accidentally hurt someone. It wasn't until much later that he understood restraint is *also* a strength, and as a farmer, he had to both be able to strongarm Billy goats and gingerly safeguard eggs. The strength to hold Baby as long as it takes for comfort to set in and the gentleness to cradle Baby needs to abide in the same dude, or neither works.
This was excellent. I've never seen a deep dive into the Carrier Bag Theory before, and this answered so many questions I have about my own writing. Immediate follow; I'm keen to watch more of your videos!
Your intro immediately made me think, hilariously, of the plot of The Incredibles. Anyway great food for thought. Thank you for the recommendation to listen to some talks by Le Guin!
Good deal :) Also, Sneaky Video Editor Me Just realized I haven't nipped any clips from Incredibles for my Hero / Heroine chats. Ah well. Maybe I'm showing my age some.
I think this is why I loved Wheel of Time so much. The world wanted/needed Rand to be a Hero, but all he ever wanted to be was a husband and hutbuilder.
@chaircheck2424 also, they have the bond. They know he's safe and where he is and can travel tk him at any moment. The point is They're all powerful people with important roles in the rebuilding world (queen of two nations, wise woman and leader for the Aiel, and soothsayer (?) of the Empress of the Seanchan. Rand is just a guy at that point who may or may not have the true power at that point who gave up 2 years of his life and sanity to save the world. He's allowed to have a vacation.
I found an audio of the The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by The Anarchist Audio Library here on YT. Hearing it in full, with the opening bits reminded me that Le Guin grew up with anthropologists and her point about how hero stories might have started, with hunters making their stories more exciting than their actual experiences, really resonate. It was the gatherers who saw the plants and sewed the seeds for the next year's crop who planted the first beginnings of farming after all. Books that might fit the theory: The Harper Hall trilogy by Anne McCaffrey? Maybe. There is conflict, but it's at ground level, where you and I could conceivably be in the thick of things - people treating others poorly, abuse - physical and verbal (unfortunately), bullying, etc. as well as the big stuff happening out in the wider world.
I don't think conflict would keep The Harper Hall books from being Carrier Bag :) I get the impression Le Guin was grumpy about the notion that the conflict *is* the story. Therein lies the tunnel vision for plot which can lead to some *good* plots, but lean too far in that direction, and the characters become interchangeable. *metaphorical light comes on, albeit a small one* Kinda like putting one's script in the faces of appropriately cool-looking action figures, really. Maybe that's why juvenile readers (often male ones but not exclusively) enjoy plot-heavy stuff / think character-focused stuff is silly? The action is certainly a lot more fun than the action figure alone to someone with a background of playing GI Joe or Ninja Turtles.
@@SelfWriteousness And the growing popularity of cozy fantasy stories like Legends and Lattes and Howl's Moving Castle, etc. I think we, as a collective, just need the quieter plot or fantasy that isn't so driven by the big dramas. Sometimes it's nice to tuck in and read about everyday dramas. I've never read any of the Babysitter's Club books, but I can relate with Trixie Belden. 🙃🙂
If you read Megan Bisele's Women Like Meat, you will find that in the stories she collected among the oldest continually existing people in the world, it is women who idealize the male hunter in the tales women tell women.
I feel like often it is this desire to answer the question "What happens after the hero returns?" or to see the story as a container of rearrange-able elements that people write fanfiction.
I once had this idea of writing a series of fanfictions about what happen after the horror movie ends. Like, does anyone actually believe the characters? how do their lives progress, etc... Unfortunately i have a lot of idea to write and very little actual writing done.
This was lovely, subscribed! I’ve read several Le Guin novels but very few essays… I will be checking this out and letting it simmer. Thank you for such a thought provoking video.
Very good - I think you'll like it. If you understand the whole thing on the first try, please don't tell me, 'cause I did *not*, and I need all the vanity I can get for future projects ;)
So many of her essays are powerful and worth reading and rereading. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas and Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons spring to mind.
If you haven’t read Becky Chambers, I think you’ll find her work fits in well with Carrier Bag Theory. Her Monk and Robot series fits quite well into that quote about the purpose being neither resolution or stasis, but continuing process.
I'll have to keep my eye out for Becky Chambers. Robots and monks are two of my favorite fictional things :) Process is a happy place. Process offers hope that we can change a little at a time, not just *be* the hero, villain, mentor, or sidekick innately and forever.
@@SelfWriteousnessIn that case I think you’ll like them a lot! Her Wayfarer sci-fi series is great too, she has joked that they are sci-fi where nothing happens because of the lack of battles in her stories, and has also called them Working Class Star Trek.
I've only read her first wayfarer book, and although I did not found it to be "great", I do think it is good, and more: it has all the potential and authenticity most current sci fi simply lacks.
I read that treatise decades ago in college and had forgotten about it. Thanks for helping me remember an old tool box. Hopefully this can assist in bringing the spark back to my writing.
I think the image that captured me about the Carrier Bag Theory is the idea of a story as a container of life. Like, you have this bag. You put in a bunch of oats. They rattle around in there as you do, but then they settle. Eventually you give it a bit of a shake, and things shift. Then they settle. There's another shake, things shift. Then they settle again. Sometimes, you write Totoro and the shakes are gentle. Sometimes, you write Game of Thrones, and you set the bag on fire, throw it from a cliff, and laugh with the hubris of a false god as the horses of war trample across it and crushes the content, the grains chafing against one another as some fall on the bottom and some are on the top. Sometimes it's not rattled as hard, and the content begins to settle. Then it gets another kick. That's life.
*nods* No shortage of life happenings to test the tensile strength of our bag. And I expect the contents flux is part of what makes it all go, right? Can't move as fast or well with a bag filled to bursting. Sometimes, divesting is good and necessary :)
This made me think a lot. My favorite story, Watership Down, definitely resembles a Hero's Journey, but a lot of the focus is on how the rabbits help each other and form a community, using knowledge from their adventures to change how they live. It's notable that the main character, Hazel, pretty much never accomplishes anything on his own. The little-known sequel, Tales from Watership Down, while inconsistent in quality, does seem to fit the carrier bag idea, and I always appreciated that it's about small conflicts that the rabbits face rather than trying to be a bigger, grander journey. Also, it is weird how much society focuses on trying to make everyone the main character. I remember leadership was always a huge emphasis in school, and I thought it was odd that they seemed to want as many people as possible to be leaders. In terms of Watership Down, I could never be like Hazel, but I feel like I could become more like Pipkin.
Neat! I am sorry to report I have not yet read Watership Down, but it is one of the publisher's favorites, so you're in great company :) There's a long-standing believe in writing circles that every character believes he / she / they are the main character of the story, but I'm not sure how true that is among IRL people. Like, we can't really get out our own heads, sure. But do most of people see themselves as the MC? I feel like reporters (and maybe writers in general) see themselves as Moby Dick's Ismael, recording the exploits of the fabulous characters they've met with little regard for personal recognition. I think comedians see themselves as the loveable sidekick, making someone else's story better one self-depreciating witticism at a time... These are not the thoughts that keep me up nights, but they are riddles I occasionally think slightly too hard about.
Oh my god I’ve been craving a story structure like this for ages! The closet I could find was kishokentetsu, but that never felt like an adequate answer. Thank you for sharing!
Wow, I’d never heard of this theory before, and Ms. Le Guin articulates it so evocatively! Thank you for introducing us to this. As further possible examples of this in action for ehat it’s worth, I feel like I’ve noticed some of this, and in the process remedied some of that ‘vitamin deficiency’ in types of narratives for myself accidentally, by reading fanfiction: canon itself may be expressly built around The Hero to whatever extent, but in fic, people often write about their favorite side characters, about offscreen more ordinary moments, envision what happens next after ‘the end’, and so on. Even where the narrative imposes unquestioned artificial linearity, people’s imaginations seem to include the impulse to make up that difference and draw in the margins.
Pleasure. *tips hat* I feel like fan fiction must have come a long way since I took my crack at writing it in the 90s. Gad, those memories are old enough to vote, drink, negotiate a lower insurance premium on their family sedan, aren't they? Yikes!
1:02 the slight hitch in your excellent androgynous voice on Le Giun's name matched so perfectly with the image of the tree falling, i thought it was a sound effect!
I think there are a lot of slice of life anime that would fit this model. I suspect this might be broadly more common in East Asian literature, but I’m not versed enough to do much more than speculate about this.
Kishotenketsu. Eastern story structure (as opposed to western story structure) doesn’t necessarily require conflict; it is introduction, development, twist, and conclusion.
*ponders* Neat! I'll bet a lot of good stories would fit that pattern nicely, but the two items that immediately spring to mind are Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and just about all my favorite westerns which would have absolutely copied their homework from Akira Kurosawa (The Magnificent Seven is a big one, certainly. But also pretty much every episode of Have Gun, Will Travel).
Frieren can't be a more explicit example of this concept. The story follows the mage that defeated the demon king, years after. And the whole point of the story is learning to choose what to value and treasure in your life (its people, btw).
@@ardidsonriente2223 Yeah, Frieren: Beyond the Journey's End is the one that really popped into my mind. There are episodic conflicts, but the purpose of the story is for Frieren to explore her own feelings, and learn from the people around her.
I just finished reading 'The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction'. It's a place I think I find myself in more and more. Thanks for this video, that led me there.
Me too - Good deal :) Carrier Bag Theory and Heroine's Journey seem to have found *me* at just the right time in my writerly and personal life to make it meaningfully better. If they do the same for others, better still
Wow! I'm so happy that I tripped upon your channel. I'm a writer and a philosopher, and this whole video touches on some deep points for both. I feel that so much philosophy in the western tradition is built upon "main character syndrome", which is very much the hero's journey IRL. It assumes the importance of the individual perspective and life over that of the community. While there is a sense that we can only control ourselves, and we must focus on that which we can control, there is an extreme pursuit of it to the point it often becomes myopic. I suppose we could use a carrier bag theory of philosophy. Thanks for sharing your lovely thoughts. I'll be rewatching this a few times, as well as reading Ursula K. Leguin's essay.
I'd argue the problem lies less in focusing on the individual perspective and more in a limited focus while doing it. Empathy, feelings of belonging and community are (for most humans) fundamental needs. You cannot comprehensively discuss self-interest without discussing group-interest because there is so much overlap between them.
*ponders* For reasons that would take time to explain, I've had an awful lot of self-destructive people tear through my life like a whirlwind, and almost to a human, they are self-isolating do-it-yourself types who were raised to whole-heartedly believe in hero myths and tell themselves the unhelpful lie that they should be able to do it alone, then implode when they can't. I wonder if a more community-focused mythos would have helped them: brought them up to believe, "No, of course I can't do it myself. I'm a social creature who needs to help and be helped by *other* social creatures."
Hi there! I'm happy you tripped into my channel as well. *waves vigorously* "Main Character Syndrome" is right. I have absolutely fallen into the isolationism trap before and thought, "I should be able to handle this. Why is life kicking my butt this bad?" I think at the time, I had framed it to myself as accountability, but in many cases, I didn't cause the problem single-handedly, so thinking I could *fix* them singlehandedly was pretty dumb. Weirdly, thinking one can do it one's self is a dumb thing smart people think all the time. I think the AA crowd might have pinned this phenomenon down pretty good as a fight for control: "If I caused this, I can fix it. If I didn't cause it, I need help, and I don't want to need help. So I drink." Accountability to / help from other humans is good. I feel like embracing that more often in fiction might let us do that more often in life.
This is why there are a million DragonLance novels. Every character got their own series or mini series. We knew every character and their journeys. And their stories all are intertwined up close and far away. Even underground. 😊
I feel like it's harder to find mentions of because it is less well known and fewer people set out to write or do critical analysis with this in mind, but i think the idea fits really well with the recent trend of "cozy fantasy" as a genre.
Right? I'm not the most avid reader of epic fantasy, but I've attempted to write using the archetypes, and the gravitas / limitless stakes are rough when trying to shrink the focus down to a couple characters with relatable joys and sorrows. I absolutely see the appeal of reading where the Gondor street cleaners go after work for cheap breakfast and friendly waitstaff :)
@@SelfWriteousness just doing some writing and venting for my sanity at this point. But I might get into making something for the internet again eventually.
I had never heard of this theory thank you for the introduction! I think a good western example of ‘ carrier bag theory’ would be ‘Little house on the Prairie’ by LauraIngalls Wilder. I agree with some of the other commenters that I would characterize. This as slice of life and really almost every sitcom fits into this theory as well. They almost never do anything super extraordinary, but we are very invested in them as characters and what they’re doing in their every day lives.
*ponders own ancient memories of Little House on the Prairie* Wandering tribe, multiple protagonists, shaped collectively by things, happenings and incremental progress both separately and as a team... Yep. That is a solid example in western literature I wouldn't have considered if you'd not have mentioned it :) (Extra shame on me, come to think of it, 'cause the show is quite old. I could've totally nipped footage without holding my breath on what the copyright bots thought of the Disney clips. Ah well. Maybe next time)
This essay is fascinating. Thank you for bringing attention to it. I feel like (because I’m a nerd) that this theory applies well to video game storytelling where linear “hero does plot points” stories feel too rigid.
Valid. I hadn't considered it for video games, but now that you mention it, I reckon Carrier Bag would work nicely for video games, RPGs, or anything with a keen focus on worldbuilding and backstory :)
Thanks v much, a wonderfully thought provoking video essay. One thing I would say is to refrain from constraining it to a homecoming/return sequel and could also be applied to plots where any new 'home/tribe/temporary stoppage' may also lead to recognizing that the world shapes the characters as they interact, cooperate, play their part and let others have their fair share of the capital H pedestal. Much like the earthsea cycle, reconciliation may be with home/tribe but sometimes if that's the not the case it may just be a reconciliation with one's own nature.
And that's fair. My godmum occasionally points out that if we make peace with ourselves completely enough, we stop craving a homecoming because "home" becomes where ever *we* are, even among less-than-fantastic people and places. I reckon if it can apply to her lived experience, it can apply to fictional mentors / future mentors :)
Thank you - I hope so. I've been second guessing my take on Carrier Bag Theory a *lot* to tell the truth, so if you end up reading it on some slow day for literary stimulation, it wouldn't hurt my feelings :)
This is lovely. I hadn't heard of this before, despite liking Le Guin's works. I have a question: You mentioned Kiki and Totoro but not Kishōtenketsu, the commonly used 4 act structure which does not require conflict. Did you plan to go into it later? (It's a great story structure, as it thrives on a new understanding in act 3. I often see it called a twist but I think this gives the wrong idea in English as that word implies a thriller-type reveal, where as this "twist" might just mean gaining understanding. Like learning something new, or an emotional epiphany which allows a character to either move on, change, or recontextualize things they have experienced. Which I frankly think is a much more excellently broad concept for a story to hinge and shine from than either plain violent conflict OR shock based thriller-twists.)
Very truly, I had not heard of Kishōtenketsu before using Kiki and Totoro, but I'm glad it exists and look forward to learning more. Many thanks for making me smarter / perhaps pointing me in a direction for future videos :)
I think this sheds light on a part of a lot of stories that is usually packaged in with most narratives, but even in the most foundational ones, is often forgotten. Life isn't just about constant adventure---even if you think about the natural flow of going from a youth, to an adolescent, a young adult, then a parent, there is an inborn arc of adventurer to teacher/husband/wife/hutbuilder/homemaker. The Hero's Journey addresses this, but it makes it the tail-end of the Journey, rather than a concurrent adventure which the hero/heroine goes through. To be fair, many narratives make a point to demonstrate how the Hero/Heroine must realize the value of home, and give back to the place they came from while reclaiming the spot they once left, but again, this is more of a final reward or step rather than something that usually feels built-towards and integrated into most narratives. I welcome the emphasis of this oft-forgotten second part! The quieter, simpler parts of adventures may seem so on the outside, but are often just as vital, significant, and harrowing as the external trials and tribulations. If we began to teach people to go on exciting adventures while also tending to their carrier bags, it may promote a healthier frame of mind and state of being for many people, and remind us that there is more to life than coming home after a long journey, dropping off what you've found, and then anxiously searching for the next adventure. Really great video, and I can't wait to read the essay! Thank you so much for sharing! Job well done!!
Thank you kindly. I agree. I myself have fallen prey to the idea that if I haven't made it even so far as the "Transformation" part of the Campbell model, I'm a failure and taken that quite personally. The Last Unicorn mentions rather flippantly that it will *not* have a happy ending "...because nothing ends," but that's the gospel truth. The notion of "continuing process" as a challenge to the mandatory perfection of the Hero and the "happily ever after" can be one of the most freeing things on earth.
Wonderful video! I love LeGuin! How have I missed that essay?! I need to read it immediately. Another Miyazaki film that fits the carrier bag theory is "Whisper of the Heart." It's people doing people things, and finding joy in it and each other.
Indeed! I grieve slightly that I once had it on my external hard drive and must have deleted it to make room, because I specifically wanted to nip footage of the library scene for this video and couldn't. Good job, Past Tense Me -_-
Oh it's been a minute since I've been so thoroughly charmed by a video! Though this is by LeGuin herself, I think that Tehanu is perhaps the best example of Carrier Bag Theory I've ever read, particularly in the context of following The Farthest Shore. Tenar and Ged's journeys are to become less rather than more, but no less powerful, no less worthy of attention, just less active. And they handle this in remarkably different, believable ways, with Ged having a lot more hold-ups after his time as archmage, as a 'doer.' If pressed, I think I might draw a distinction between novels that fall into strong carrier bag theory and weak carrier bag theory. Weak carrier bag theory is signified by the non-linearity of personal development and a focus on the nuances of individual emotion/experience. These can still be highly dramatic stories; internal conflict is no laughing matter, as I'm sure we all know. There are many more pieces of media that fall into this category, including all the ones mentioned in this video. Some other examples I might argue for would be Jane Eyre, The Giver, and, oddly enough, I think Candide also ends up here. Strong carrier bag theory has all the elements of the weak version, and goes a step further. It disavows the assumption that a story needs high emotions or intensity to fuel the attention of its readers. These stories are compelling simply because they feel so true to our own everyday life. They run on the beauty of the mundane and the special wisdom that only comes from long hours focused on the smallest tasks. I scoured my reading list and the only book I could find, not written by LeGuin herself, that I feel I can defend as truly belonging here is The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I'm sure there are others, but they are few and far between.
*ponders* You know, The Secret Garden and Our Town might be 2 stories that go the extra mile in the celebration of simplicity and intimacy from reader to characters (?) Like, The Secret Garden lets Mary discover contentment / how to *not* be mad at the world through the explorations she makes while bored and confined. And Our Town has a lot of mundane in it to be paid off in Act iii when the MC learns just through hindsight how miraculous even the ordinary steps of her journey really were. *smirks* Candide is my champ for "Man vs. Narrator" and in fact "Man vs. Everything" narratives. I reckon it counts as Carrier Bag Theory even when the Carrier is kind of oblivious :)
Hi, loved the video and I will definitely be checking out your channel! Just a word of advice, you might want to rethink your microphone setup. I'm far from an expert but I'm hearing a lot of sibilance that you could probably clear up without changing any hardware, I bet just messing with the mic positioning and maybe a little more sound dampening right around your mic.
Very interesting video. As I was listening, it occurred to me that Le Guin's novel Always Coming Home could be her own best example of a carrier bag style plot.
I'll buy that. Always Coming Home is still on the ol' TBR somewhere, but it came up by name in my research for this video, and she spoke of it specifically as representing consistencies that were important to her in *all* her writing up to that point :)
Thank you for bringing this delicious and explosive concept to my attention. This is a huge conceptual sandwhich and has so so so very many important ramifications imo. May I recommend to you The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama? Or more recently The Space Person by Catherine Kuo?
Absolutely. *jots them in phone-bound reading list* It is lovely to find book recommendations from the folks who visit the comments section. Confidentially, I don't think the folks who get shouty with me about the hornier videos are quite so literate as the ones who have struck up conversations about *this* one.
My biggest take away is some of my favourite movies over the years are featured as examples in this. Makes me look at my media tastes a little differently and helps me to understand that preference a bit more. Time to read Le Guin's writing on this.
This is how I'm writing one of my current novels. I fell into a trap with the Hero's Journey in that the supplemental characters were flat but once I saw them each as the hero of their own story that by chance or design wove into that of the main protagonist, the story blossomed. And I'm always asking myself what's next with each of them, using their connections to develop their character. That's enough about me. I'll shut up, now.
Nah, nah, nah, don't be modest. Suppress that instinct as often as possible, please. If you think your characters are awesome and get comfortable telling other people *why* they're awesome, the odds of becoming a successful matchmaker between readers and your books goes up a bunch. I want you to become a successful matchmaker, fellow author
Hey, so glad the algorithm brought me here! I love Le Guin's work, and this gave me yet another fantastic way to analyze it. Also, I had a thought while listening. Le Guin famously took a lot of inspiration from Daoist philosophy, which places a great deal of importance on "soft power". To my understanding, the Daoist believes that the result of shaping the world to your will with your strength is always less permanent than the effect of a flexible, mindful approach. To this end, the Daodejing offers: "Clay is kneaded to form a pot. But it is the emptiness inside it That makes the pot useful." I find this to be a complement to Le-Guin's metaphor of the bottle or the carrier bag, and might be a direct inspiration for it. The "emptiness" inside a story's protagonist, their ability to shift and change their opinions and reevaluate themselves, that makes them a character worth following. I will continue watching other videos from this channel, thank you for the great work!
All hail the algorithm! *waves vigorously* Excellent point. My knowledge of Daoism is pretty scant, so I appreciate your making me smarter / being patient while I (maybe) catch up :) The idea of a vessels being important comes up a lot in storytelling, it seems. The first I encountered was actually in *The Heroine's Journey* early last year (an idea Maureen Murdock might have realistically gleaned from eastern sources, come to think of it. She quoted a lot of smart people from various cultures). And when she wrote of it, it was in contrast to people inclined to disparage "the vessel" and woman along with it: The vessel," think some unenlightened people, "is disposable. It might be capable of *holding* something worth while (i.e. babies), but it otherwise has no inherent worth." And for some reason, Ms. Murdock - Author, Philosopher, Force of Nature, and Mother - seemed weirdly invested in assuring the misinformed that vessels are amazing, beautiful, and worthwhile regardless of what they do or do not hold.
@@SelfWriteousness That's super interesting! I remember that I read something Le Guin wrote somewhere, where she stated she had issues writing female heroes (sorry that I can't point it out; it must have been an introduction to one of her sci-fi novels). She stated that she feels that her female heroines always feel to her like male heroes, borrowing their thinking patterns and process. If the character that carries the bag is a female archetype, it makes the choice to apply it to men a lot more interesting. I think Le Guin invites us to read her work through the lens of gender binary and non-binary, so I'd love to reread her work with that in mind ☺ I noticed a video about the The Heroine's Journey on your channel, I'll check it out to get a primer!
Say what you will about the algorithm, I’m glad it brought me to your channel! ❤ I had to rewatch the quotes from LeGuin several times before I understood them even on the surface level but I just love this concept! I want different story structures in my life; I am a little suspicious of elevating one above others - if stories are how we make meaning of our worlds, it seems to me too proscriptive to allow only one type of story as the “best”. Also appreciated how mild you are. We live in a bit of a shouty world and this is an elixir. :). I’ll be checking out your other videos for sure.
Right?! The whole essay is like that: nutritionally dense but slightly harder than average to chew. I'm delighted the algorithm brought you here as well. *waves a friendly hello*
Love LeGuin and I clearly have another essay to check out! I liked your analysis and thoughts here. One thing that crossed my mind is that this idea of the return is something Joseph Campbell considered (assuming I've remembered correctly). I believe that Campbell thought that in these traditional narratives, the hero was unable to return to normal life, and that was an important part of the story. The hero remains forever changed after exiting into the unknown and being transformed in the "belly of the whale." For example, the Lord of the Rings shows that Frodo, changed by the journey, is sadly not able to readjust to life in the Shire. So I think there might be an interesting exploration of what other aspects of these various stories align with a successful or unsuccessful return and assimilation back into a "hut builder" role.
And that's a fair point. Journeys absolutely change the journeyer and sometimes make it tough to go home. *warning: incoming backstory* As a grizzled old jail nurse, I've run into a larger concentration of veterans / former military lads than some folks. And if they were seeing *me,* they probably weren't assimilating well, regardless of which side of the bars they were on. However, I have also met veterans in the wild who are well adjusted, good to women, jolly when drunk (as opposed to the sullen, rage-filled time bombs I'd generally encounter at work), and all around thriving on the home front. As an outsider, I can't presume to know the difference between them and their less resilient brothers-in-arms, but the ones who do okay-est seem to be the ones who did not let that season they spent as warriors define the rest of their lives. We generally hope war is temporary, right? But if one's identity becomes "warrior" and then he suddenly has to make other plans, I guess I'd be surprised if that didn't precipitate some uncomfortable identity questions. In an article from 2008 entitled "Why the Hero's Journey Sucks," a writer called CharlieJane criticized Campbell's model, asserting it is "...unrealistic and spreads the idea that war is therapy," a reasonable conclusion to draw after hearing the downright loving way Campbell talks about war in The Power of Myth, a talk over which Bill Moyer's people play clips of such warriors in the hero's "Call to Action" on trucks and helicopters bound for Saigon. *ponders* I guess if Campbell was looking a the Hero's Journey as whatever part of a young man's life is (subjectively) the most heroic and reckoned that is the making of a man, his storytelling model is perfectly nice. To someone looking at the young man's entire life as the Journey, Campbell's model will likely feel short-sighted and incomplete.
Would "Little Women" be a good example of a mega-popular novel that fits the carrier-bag model better than the hero's journey? Or am I misunderstanding the point of the essay?
I think a solid case could be made for Little Woman as Carrier Bag Theory with its multiple multiple protagonists and focus on community and what-not. Very truly *I* might have misunderstood the point of the essay, so please - oh please - trust your judgement. I wouldn't trust a person like me if I were you :)
Thank you kindly. I hope I got within spitting distance of what the author *actually* meant. My reading comprehension sometimes feels like it peaked with 5th Grade Me blowing off Little House on the Prairie assignments.
I think Moby Dick is a heroes journey, perhaps antiheroe's, as told by a carrier bag, uh carrier. We don't learn a lot about Ishmael but we learn a lot about the things in his bag: ideas, feelings, science and sailing trivia, theology, and also the larger than life characters he met. It also sheds an interesting light on why the themes are so ambiguous. Imagine, this guy comes back to the village and hes had this absolutely harrowing experience, but not one where he came out the hero, or where there was a hero at all really. So both teller and audience wonder what it all means. All he can do is pull various things out of his bag, to make little anecdotes, comparisons and metaphors to help begin to speculate on the meaning of his time at sea and his near death experience with a giant whale and a mad captain.
Apt analogy. I cannot disagree :) I sometimes think Ishmael missed his calling as a journalist or a comedy writer in that he sees himself as - more or less - a straight man among fabulous characters, and he doesn't feel the need to embellish his role because he doesn't want to distract from this massive thing that happened around him.
@@SelfWriteousness I like this notion of Ishmael as a journalist, like his motivation for telling the story is the story itself, and the events being both understood and known. I've more often tended to look at his lack of a strong identity in his own story as a conspicuous lack. As though he doesn't really know how to make sense of what happened and therefore he also doesn't know who he is in relation to what happened, just like it's basically impossible for any individual to make sense of their place in the universe. Either way, journalist or existential crisis haver, Ishmael is a story teller and not a hero. A heros story is one person imposing meaning on a universe forced to submit. But a story tell picks up random stuff from all around, dumps it out on their coffee table and tries, and very possibly fails to trace any coherent meaning between the pieces of junk. I read Leguins essay a while back, but I hadnt considered before now that journalism is a culturally mainstream form of narrative making that is essentially carrier bag-y. Find, gather, compile, collect, put together, are all reporter verbs.
Crawling out of my cave to say, I had no idea this existed and thank you for bringing it to my attention! I definitely fall into the camp of enjoying character-driven narratives and often feel that a book can be perfectly enjoyable even if little to nothing happens...a prime example being a little diddy called "The Metamorphosis" by Kafka. Recently, I've had a hankering to write characters that fit this model and feel more authentic so it's good to know that Le Guin wrote a handy guidebook for just such a need! Hope you're well ~Laura
Hey, I know that avatar! *waves vigorously* Also, same. Character-driven narratives are lovely. I reliably think of my youngest godson when the topic comes up because of his sublime lack of forgiveness toward Animal Farm. At all of 11 years old, he was grumpy at Orwell, wanting him very much to know in the Great Beyond that economy of words / story isn't everything and ya gotta give me enough to *care* about your characters. I am giddy and slightly ego-stricken when smart kids say smarter things better than I could.
Also, hugs if you need them. I got excited about literary chatter and didn't think 'til after I hit *reply* that caves can be nice, depending on the reasons we retreat to them. I hope yours are pleasant. If they are not, extra hugs
If you want character, you should definitely read Huysman's Against the Grain. Top shelf stuff from the late 19th C. It broke the Naturalist's mold in the best way ever, using their attention to minute detail (think Emile Zola or Kate Chopin), but turned it on its head by applying to such an outlandish character. It's a fairly short read. Enjoy
Nice vessay. I'd hesitate to call these templates "theories". (Is the theory about "what structure makes a novel readable?") I'd say templates are templates, and Campbell's one is great for certain moods (especially a movie), while LeGuin's is proper better for more diverse moods because it is more generic and can "fit" far more intricate stories. There was also Kurt Vonegut's version of story "rise and fall or flat" structures which seems overly geeky topological, but hard to deny is generic enough to fit most singular volumes in any particular novel series. Paired with LeGuins template type a novice author can have a vision to guide their writing. But there could be the odd rare literary works and films that just go a bit "ape mental" so-to-speak - like beyond Ulysses, or Infinite Jest, and so on - and are anarchic sorts of products of _seemingly_ no artistic vision at all, most of which are flops, but then on occasion there is maybe an untemplated gem. No hero, no container bag. Can't say I know of one from memory though personally, since I'd probably never get past the first pages/minutes.
This is the kind of storytelling used in table-top role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. Because many people are telling the story together, there is no central Hero, distinct and separate from the group and, in a very real way, the bigger world. You're all here, you're all important, you all have a part to play in the big adventure, but you also have smaller goals, every day challenges... You have things you're not good at, and the group steps up to fill those gaps for each other. I think this is one of the reasons people love not only playing DnD, but watching others play it. It's why Critical Role, Dimension 20, NADDPOD and many, many other actual plays are so popular and have such invested audiences. There's room for everyone to be heroic without everyone else being relegated to a background character or having to bear the burden of success or defeat all alone. It acknowledges sonder, the recognition that everyone around you has a deep, complex experience of their own that you may never get to know, but realize is just as important as yours. Anywho, I enjoyed the video and it really got me thinking. Thank you!
Good deal - Thank you for bringing up some similarities thoughts on the RPG experience in relation to Carrier Bag. I am not the most intuitive gamer, but I try for my godkids when they invite me, and I actually had the way *they* construct characters in mind while typing portions of my script. I chickened out about including it though, because I reckoned I wasn't well-versed enough on the subject to speak with authority. I am genuinely glad you spoke up. I feel a wee bit less like I was imagining things :)
*looks up Frieren* Neat! This is the first time I've heard of Frieren (as I am an old person and if it is hip I don't usually know about it first). My godkids love these kinds of narratives. I bet they'd chat with me about it and make me smarter if I talk to them sweetly :)
If I’d never read any of UKLeG’s works, I would have definitely felt offended by her Carrier Bag Theory, at least as I understood it upon first listen to this video. I’m not an overly masculine man, yet my whole life I’ve felt, internally, the draw to adventure and heroism, the desire to live and die in a meaningful and memorable way. The Hero’s Journey is something which I would argue lives naturally in the hearts of most boys and men. But maturity and experience has taught me that that heroic impulse is one which is not one which actually creates a meaningful and memorable life. It is the accumulation of small moments and personal relationships, of learning and mentorship, of long-suffering and thankless service, which truly build the character of a Man. Such a Man is respected greatly in life and missed terribly in death. Yet, the Boy’s desire for heroics is not an unnecessary part of their process. And it is absolutely not a regrettable or toxic desire. It is natural. It is the fundamental of our play, and the foundation of our motivation. We do need the Hero’s Journey. We cannot fully understand the importance of all these smaller and seemingly less significant things in our lives unless we have the perspective of larger things we once believed to be so poignant. We need the Hero’s Journey, but we also need the “Princess” and “Old Man” afterwards so we learn humility and how to become teachable. All in all, I think Le Guin is right, but I hope not too many people decide that the validity of the Carrier Bag Theory somehow discredits the Hero’s Journey.
Cool. Carrier Bad Theory doesn't discredit Hero's Journey in the slightest. Alternatives are good and necessary, and if the Hero feels threatened when he's not the only game in town, he is unworthy of the name.
Yay Reading List!! This came just in time to be what I am looking for. I have been struggling to build this kind narrative for half a year and finding out that it has a name, And Literature! Wonderful?
Good deal - Good energy on your head and your project(s). My current narratives are currently on ice, so I wave my pompons in your direction. *encourage, encourage*
I think there are some good examples within TV and other more serialized forms. For example Bojack Horseman seems to have themes directly confronting our urge/need to narrativize our lives and how damaging the expectations that sets can be for growth if you aren't careful.
I'll buy that. The wee bit I've seen of Bojack Horseman strikes me as an MC who would absolutely struggle with people and situations that go off-script / need to work through what real life looks like. *Boy* can I relate to that these days.
When I was a kid, there was a live action fairytale retelling show whose name I have long forgotten that did a Carier bag story. The protagonsist must rescue a prince from a magician's tower and is given a nightly task of horribleness that she needs to complete. There were three but I only remember two- tame the wild dog and next the wild horse. Turns out both beast just need some food, grooming and compassion. She recieves gifts for each task- a comb, a mirror and a ring. after she tames the horse, she and thr prine ride off with teh magician in pursuit. First she throws the mirror behind her and it becomes a alake. The magician turns into a fish and swims it, so she throws the comb behind her to become an impassable forest that the magiican becomes an axe to chop down. The last gift is a ring that becomes wrapped around her pusruer. In the show, he's only chasing her to thank her for taking the assinaine prince away and looking after his pets. I only JUST lerned of the carrier bag theory and this little 80s rendition of a story I cant't remember the title of seems perfect- experince gives the herorine her tools to take with her and instead of a big Final Boss Fight, we get evasion/entrapment. as a kid, it was so different than the other stories. I hope somone can help me name this little show and its very big story.
That's wild. It's not live action, but it reminds me a wee bit of a Hungarian story called Janko Raven with the helpful co-op of critters and magic objects. Janko Raven was awesome in that he chose not to marry the princess in the end but go home and take care of his parents.
Two comments Id like to make. One: I would expand your rorschach analogy and say that life itself is subjective, but fiction can provide more focus to define that subjectivity. Two: There's a massive difference between traditional western and eastern storytelling. The 'heros journey' is very comman in western literature throughout antiquity, but eastern fiction often focuses on a situation or event rather than an individual person. And its this eastern style of storytelling that I think the Carrier Bag method is closer to in theory. You see it all the time in anime, especially the older classics like Death Note. The draw of Death Note wasnt about the conflict between Kira and L, not at first anyway. At first it simply proposed a scenario and demonstrated how one character would react to it. And even if you remove the conflict with L, the story still reverts to the Death Note and its impact on mortal life.
I imagine one could say life is a Rorschach without much exaggeration. The best I've ever heard it put was by Paul Simon who once observed "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." Confidentially, I might not be the best at separating fiction from real life (a personal failing about which my therapist will no doubt sigh mightily and redirect me toward attachment styles).
Wow, VERY glad I came across your video...I have several thoughts I'd like to share. First, Ursula LeGuin's essay, The Language of the Night, if you haven't already read it, draws excellent distinctions between real and muggle fantasy writing. Second, the distinction you/LeGuin make between the gender-biased hero's journey and everyone else, just helped me put my finger on a struggle I've been having with choosing between a career that is about personal enjoyment, not giving a F#!k about public opinion (but sacrificing things Society values as meaningful and more important), versus going for the harder thing, that I don't enjoy as much, but is more valued by history. And I am realizing the gender bias embedded in that, of not valuing the little, the immediate, the personal things. The third thing I wanted to share is an epiphany I had while listening to Joseph Campell's "The Hero With A Thousand Faces", which (for those who haven't read it) is all about the hero's-journey thing, mapping the stages as: getting the Call to Action, but refusing it; getting it again, this time not being able to refuse it, and it usually involves leaving the safety of one's home; meeting a power ally on the journey who accompanies one; going into the darkest moment to wrestle with the greatest fear; coming out of that victorious, exalted; having a benefit from the struggle to bring back to one's tribe, along with the risk of losing it on the way back; and finally, the tribe may or may not be receptive to the gift brought back. My realization was, it describes the dream arc! Sleep is resisted at first, then yielded to; there are spirit guides in dreams, with help and information to share; the fears embedded in nightmares are dealt with, yielding wisdom to be brought back to waking consciousness, but is in danger of being lost to not remembering the dream; and finally, the world may or may not listen to what one has realized. What this means is, EVERYONE is on the Hero's-journey arc (exactly what you've said); but the feminine arc indeed hasn't been heard from enough, and is still being filtered through a masculine lens. When I look at the Tarot, the Crone isn't even in the deck, except by scattered implication. Anyway, sorry this was so long-winded, but thanks again for provoking new trains of thought.❤
That is a most thoughtful take on The Hero's Journey, and I'm glad you are finding something that works for you by and by :) I won't presume to tell you about what path you should or shouldn't take, but I would like to point out that if whatever you choose turns out to be a poor fit, you can choose something else, and you won't have failed in your quest. That is why I groove on The Heroine's Journey quite a bit more than The Hero's Journey. The pressure of thinking we only have one shot to get this right is far less a thing because it's *expected* that we head down more than one in our lifetime and that we learn to be kinder to ourselves / others through our various steps and missteps.
inspiring video for me. i‘m writing a slice of life historical fiction story and this may also fall into the carrier bag theory. i’m glad that you show footages from Tales from Earthsea as it is overly hated film. i believe it is a decent film with stands on its own compared to the source materials
Thank you kindly. Yeah, Tales from Earthsea was a bit of a letdown, but *man* are the visuals pretty. Also, it doesn't get a pass for having Timothy Dalton in it, but it does get points.
i wonder what stories we can come up with that follow other types of trajectories. Partly out of academic interest, but also out of a desire to read. some i have in mind are those by Kazuo Ishiguro (especially Pale View of Hills and Remains of the Day), Steinbeck's The Pearl and Grapes of Wrath, Yasunari Kawabata's Sound of the Mountain, and Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness (though there is 'poking and prodding of sticks, but not centrally in that one) as one's i've read and can think of quickly. I wonder how much of Le Guin's Tales of Earthsea are this (I think Tombs of Atuan for certain). Really interested in what other novels/stories people have in mind that might fit the model to offer some out-of-the-box examples to grow storytelling into.
Those sound like plausible leads. In the spirit of potentially offering you more, I just took a cursory glance at TH-cam to see if I could find one of the interviews to which I listened while preparing for this video or if I'd have to dig for it. I turns out I'd have to dig for it, but the robot governors of the ol' search engine *did* let me know that Le Guin's *The Lathe of Heaven* is available as a free audio book, if you seek free material for furthering your literary quest :)
Neat! Playwrighting was my first love in storytelling 'til I learned I was rubbish and had no knack for corralling actors, so I envy you in the nicest possible way :)
I've not heard of the Carrier Bag Theory before, but then I've not been interested in writing until comparitively recently. I was looking for an ttrpg to run that didn't seem mostly killing and looting. Running one more like Carrier Bag Theory sounds much more interesting to me than The Hero's Journey.
Very truly, I think you'll have a more enjoyable time with Carrier Bag Theory at the heart of your ttrpg than Hero's Journey. Facts be known, longtime gamers seem to intuitively understand the concept of items and experiences informing a character's actions, then build on those :)
I wonder if Diana Wynn-Jones' "Howl's Moving Castle" series would fit this. Sophie wants to have the hero's journey, but while she leaves home and has adventures, most of the story and conflict focuses on Sophie's inner world; her self-confidence, her feeling surrounding the curse she's under, and learning to move beyond story-book stereotypes in her perceptions of herself and others. It really is a book about learning to see others for who they truly are.
Could be. Very truly, I hadn't thought of Sophie's journey in those terms before you mentioned it, but she does make some choices that allow her to bloom where she is planted. And I'm certain it was more fun to spend one or several book's worth of discovery in *her* head than it would be in Howl's.
I'm not sure if I completely grasp it, but the first novel I thought if was John Steinbeck's East of Eden. There is very much a central character, Adam, who's life we follow from beginning to end, but the book is- if not actually than by feeling- mostly concerned with the goings on of friends, family, things only peripherally related to Adam, that he's not even privy to. Even the narrator's memories and expierances make their way into the story. Countless stories are introduced in the novel, we meet characters who have overcome more, suffered more, learned more than him. The 'hero' goes from son, to adult, to father, to ailing old man, but the story is the essence of everything human about the American experience. I can think of a few other stories that make their emphasis the stories surrounding/other than the hero, but East of Eden's the first one I remember overwhelming (and delighting) me to such an extent. I might be off though, so I'm gonna go read the essay.
As much as I admire Akira Kurosawa, he had a contemporary whose movies were often shown as double features with Kurosawa's. These films were by Mikio Naruse. They are almost entirely "women's films" but that category doesn't do them justice. Kurosawa is a story-teller, but Naruse chooses his situations, lets them evolve naturally, and shows you where the buck stops! 1964 film _Yearning_ is one of Naruse's last films.
Interesting. I had not heard of Mikio Naruse, and will have to keep my eye out for his work. Gosh, "Woman's Films" cover a lot of ground. Like, Thelma and Louise, 27 Dresses, Wonder Woman, and *technically* Triumph of the Will are in that category somewhere. It makes me slightly sad that thoughtful, historically significant works can be so easily dismissed with such a label as "woman's films." Maybe patriarchy really *does* hurt everybody (?)
@@SelfWriteousness That's an old-fashioned term, of course, referring to films that addressed issues specific to women, and then in postwar Japan, the struggle for equality, freedom, and acceptance in general. Naruse chose women's struggles as his subject for good reasons, as it seems to me, and his best screenplays were based the novels of a woman (Fumio Hayashi). Yes, _Triumph_ is a woman's film (Leni!), but most definitely not a women's film! Yes, patriarchy does hurt everyone, I always refer to Engels' _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_ about that. Patriarchy regulates everyone in every aspect of their life, from birth to death. The strictest conformity is required to maintain the sort of monolithic individual identity that forms the basis of a dynasty. It's the very antithesis of freedom!
I hadn't come across the notion of "carrier bag theory" before, but it's an interesting question to ask for sure, and one that I've never really sat and thought through. I'm not sure if I 100% grasp the concept, but I feel like one series that might fit this model would be Kino's Journeys (Kino no Tabi), which features a main character, but one that is primarily the vehicle for the viewer to glimpse a variety of different societies and situations. It's definitely one of my favorites, and one I'd gladly recommend, but I'm otherwise unsure if I've really come across any other series that fit the model. I'll have to think on this one, thanks!
Thank you kindly. Also, fear not. I'm not 100% sure I grasp the concept myself. I'm actually super curious if the folks who go and read Carrier Bag Theory will come bag here and let me know how silly my interpretation is. Which will be an ego blow, but it'll make me smarter :)
This is making me think about my favorite genre, horror, and how it both does and doesn't fit the two storytelling models. You can roughly divide most horror stories into either heroic fiction--this being the classic type people think of, where someone's trying to stop the monster(s), and regardless of whether they succeed, the story is generally about that hero-focused man versus evil--or, the general model I prefer, a story that focuses on a distinctly non-heroic protagonist or group of protagonists. The latter is much less an us-versus-them story: the violence is destructive and nonheroic, and the main characters almost always experience loss even if they prevail. The horror in the latter model is often much more internal, as well; even if the threat comes from outside, it's what's already in us that lets it in, as it were. Thinking about the latter model in terms of bag theory, it's interesting to think of non-heroic horror as a moment in an unseen bag story where the lives of the affected reach a crisis point. It becomes a sort of "anti-bag" story, where the horror is so destructive and disruptive that is essentially tearing the bag open, as it were. Even if the source of the horror is external, it brings out something internal--something in the bag--that can no longer be comfortably internalized. It reveals something to the protagonist(s) that they can't turn away from. Their bag is torn open; and even if they manage to fix themselves, they will never be the same. That scar will always be there. That's not to say that all horror stories divide neatly along those lines; most of them have elements of both models. John Langan's The Fisherman is a great example of this: both the frame story, and the extended tale that forms the bulk of the novel, have both elements of bag stories, where there is no one clear hero, and the main characters in both stories are distinctly unheroic husbands and homemakers first and foremost; and yet, the course of the story forces them both into a heroic, battle against evil storyline. But because they are decidedly not heroes, they completely fail to be the victorious conqueror that the story imposed on them is demanding them to be. There's violence aplenty, but it is disruptive and destructive; even when the "heroes" try to commit heroic violence, the results are awkward and messy at best, and at worst get their friends hurt and killed. That, incidentally, is the kind of violence I find myself increasingly drawn to in fiction as I get older. I'm a dude, I like violence. But I find it harder and harder to just relax and go along with heroic violence; more and more, I find myself lumping violence in with the same fascination I have for the grotesque and horrifying. (Not that I don't still enjoy fascist violence sometimes. Nobody's perfect, and I love trash.) That's probably why I have found myself increasingly drawn to horror, both as a reader and a writer, as time goes on. I dunno, maybe this was all a bit much, but Le Guin does get me thinking, even when she pisses me off ("From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" is elitist trash, and I'm kinda shocked that not only did Le Guin write it, but that it's probably her best known essay.)
Bags getting torn, mended, and carried with greater caution is a nicely poignant metaphor :) And I agree. A lot of horror isn't terribly impactful for the sake of the monster but how the characters react: if they fight, if they don't, how they carry on despite gruesome and often absurdly unfair happenings. Open-mindedness to learning from stuff that pisses us off is healthy. Aaron Sorkin once recommended, "If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people, and if you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you." I like that - I respect that :D
This reminds me of what used to be my favorite novel as a kid, which nearly everyone seemed to hate. The first book of The Last Dragon, it was called The Fire Within. Technically fantasy, but the fantasy amounted to the faint possibility that the clay dragons this guy's landlady makes _might_ be sentient and keep the house tidy. He never even sees them move. Really, it's mostly about him being something of an older brother to the landlord's daughter and... taking care of a squirrel? By our usual metrics it's a nothingburger of a plot but that's why I enjoyed it.
Interesting. I tried to help a squirrel who was caught in fine netting this last year. He was most irate and unhelpful. If protagonist of The Last Dragon is signing up to help take care of a squirrel, he is nothing short of hero material :)
Delightful. I have always thought it strange that we should find our characters and give them an inciting incident to get them going. But we are going, every day, at all times, incidents present or not: there is no need of exigence in existence. Many of my greatest joys in life came not from circumstance, but from self: wrought not by effort, but by chance of thought. Many of my highest terrors in life came not from a grand quest, with its most dreadful stakes… but from the demands of living in a day packed full of capacity to surprise. For every deathbed confession, there are ten thousand deaths that go unseen, unheard, and unfelt. For every newborn person’s worldly introduction replete with trumpets and steadfastery come ten million with screaming in two part harmony as their only music, or silence… on the part of one or the other participant. There is too much of this world that heroism does not touch, nor villainy reach. This world does not come with answers easy and understanding simple. This is a world where my choice to butter my bread brings me immense joy, and where to chart my hieroglyphic representation of a word in all languages is an exercise in immense frustration… And I would not trade either for the simplicity and ease of heroism. Writing about heroes isn’t fun to me; there is nothing about combat which is fun. It has a tempo, yes, a fast and blurrier pace, and violence is easy to hold our interest - being plenty inherent to humankind and our second language after smiles - but it is vapid to write; absolutely worthless. What changes about a person amidst a fight, a battle, a war? Much of fiction tells me that the characterisation exists somewhat outside this place, that there are rules to which violence between any two persons or ten persons or twenty thousand must follow if it is to be interesting to an audience on a narrative level. I, vehemently: disagree. I think there is no interesting fight that does not resolve based on character evolution. Introduce a character to a fight which makes them change inside of it… or you have created a splendid and sophisticated dance, and left it meaningless. But it goes beyond this; the journey, bah! The journey? I change ten times a day, yet I go no further with my bones than a half mile to work and back in that time! A work which will be there tomorrow, like as not the next day, until my fragile weekend where I shall again likely not travel far or learn much, and will still change considerably. What is so uninteresting about mundanity? The presentation, only. Thank you for the video essay, it was interesting to hear of this different way of looking at narratives, and thank you again for the opportunity to better understand what it is that I desire to tell in a story. I shall have much to think of in tangential lanes.
Thank you boosting the property values of my comments section with your thoughts on life and writing. It's nice when change can find us, if not slowly, perhaps in a somewhat less intense way than that experienced at either end of a flashing sword :)
@ It was fun; to watch, and to get my head screwed on. Had I a lightsaber, my biggest question becomes: what would I even do with it? Frying my eggs with a lightsaber is top banter and all, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Based on the nearness to my watching this video, and putting out a chapter yesterday after a long month of not writing at all: I can say doubly that I am grateful to have seen this video when I did.
I NEED to read this essay. You know, listening to this, as a fanfiction appreciator, it occurs to me that a lot of what fanfiction does often is turn a hero’s journey (canon source material) into a carrier bag story: what happens when they got home, who took care of the injuries and how did they address their trauma? How do the travel companions bide their time in times of stagnation and waiting? How do they handle the crushing mundanity and absurdity of being a parent? Can they cook? Are they likely to live an alternate life as a barista or a barber or a banker? I think the carrier bag stories exist in tons over in the hero’s shadow, along the margins, taken as unseriously as their material assumes itself to be; but they really are often some of the best stories. That being said, do stories like “The babysitters Club” count? I guess that’s still a children’s story though. Is there a written form of soapies?? 😂
The Babysitter's Club counts. Relatable stakes, continuing process / character development, *not* all about one protagonist around which all the other characters are in orbit-- Children's stories totally count. We're all somebody's kids :)
Cheers back - Thanks for the tip. I've been fighting for some time to get the gain as beefy as possible without overblowing the whole thing. I'll certainly snoop and see if I can't better acquaint myself with the compression tools at hand :)
Right? 's not quite the same, but one of the realest, distressingly apt adaptation choices *ever* was in Prince Caspian, seeing the guy who once was Peter the high king of Narnia unable to keep from coming to bloody noses on the schoolyard. Like, "You didn't *used* to be somebody, Buddy. You *are* somebody. But it sure doesn't feel like it right now, does it?" I've seldom wanted to hug a fictional character more.
honestly I wish I knew but Ive never made videos. The essay and presentation youve done here is wonderful it was just really hard to hear! @SelfWriteousness
Gosh, I hope that's good. This is the second video I've made recording in a suitcase in Brazil to try to dampen the sound, so if the voiceover is acceptable, that is information that genuinely makes me happy :)
The way you describe the theory, it reminds me of fanfiction in a way? I might be misinterpreting this, but many fics tend to occur outside of their "hero's journey", either between it or after it or outside it entirely. There is still conflict, but it tends to not be shaped by plot, but more on a focus on character interaction, if that makes sense? Like, for example, I just finished a fic where the two main characters reunite after the ending of the plot. There was a lot of discussions and reconciliation about how the plot shaped them, and what that means for their relationship. They aren't trying to reshape the world, their "world" is each other!
Thank you so much for this. I think this is why when I write, I think less about the hero's journey and think more about the basic structure put forth in Aristotle's Poetics. The Hero's Journey doesn't really fit what I want to say unless I abstract every step to the point of meaninglessness. Well, honestly, I don't really think about any of it until I'm editing. I don't think any of these things were meant to be prescriptive. They were just observations, and they give us a vocabulary to help us make sense of the stories we read and write. Well, I'm off to read The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, now.
I think that's what a lot of fanfiction does. The ok now what? The what happens after this? How does the happy ending look like in the long term? Or what happened before this? What is in all those beloved characters carrier bags? What do they share? With wich community? With what intent? And what of love? What is it in absence of the pointy things? What is it when they are abound? How do they reconcile both with each other? Fanfiction might not be published to sell work, but it is still profound storytelling. (And often exactly because there is not monetary risk or gain it is without this certain bias if the easy and fast to produce heros story narrative) Something to consider...
Indeed it is. I hadn't heard it mentioned up to now, but fan fiction would definitely be a genre for hitherto unexplored details and story potential :)
I just finished watching The White Lotus, and I think it might fit right into this theory 🙂 It’s definitely not about heroes lol but very much about people and the baggage they come to the resort with (pun intended) and what they take back home with them, for better or worse…If they get to go home, that is.
I'll buy that. The notion of *un*packing is one I'm slowly learning m'self. And some folks never acknowledge the weight of what they are carrying, so they cannot get better. I wouldn't mind if that trend changed in my lifetime.
I am surprised you didn't mention the Odyssey. It's the story of an already-actualized Hero who must return to home, hearth, and husbandry. It's the "but what happens after" for a story that the author doesn't bother to tell.
Very truly, I thought about the Odyssey while drafting my script. But it's been a long time since I spent any quality time with it, and I reckoned I might get something wrong. Glad to know the instinct was sound, if not my follow-through :)
Never heard of the Carrier Bag Theory before and I can see why it spawns so many arguements. You have to heavily abstract Hero's Journey to get most type of stories out of it and only in High Concept stories and I think ULG tries to say that in a less technical way.
You know what the worst part is? According to ULG, the *Carrier Bag Theory* essay was not written from a place of, "This is the way fictional worlds should turn" as Campbell did. It was just her written thoughts as she tried to process why heroic storytelling made no sense for the stories she wanted to tell. If *my* stream of consciousness thoughts on the world of fiction were as sharp as hers, I would cut up!
The dichotomy of Hero OR Husband/Hutbuilder is a false one and I reject your premise entirely.
I agree. The standard for Hero is much too low.
Aww, too complicated for you? 😅
I agree about it Being a false dichotomy but I think the point of the video and essay was that it’s one that characters (men) often find themselves straining to sort out for themselves. They invent a problem by desiring to only live in the hero role forever, that was their expectation, but it’s ultimately unrealistic. There are seasons in life for heroic individualism and seasons of happy humble collective service and I think LeGuin‘s point is that the transition from one to another often trips heroes up due to their latent ego and familiarity with only having one of these seasons modeled as respectable by their society at large. It’s a dichotomy that exists only in the mind of those who haven’t figured out how to move between them but it’s definitely real to them, I think
In reality, yes of course there is no reason why a husband or hutbuilder cannot be heroic. But that's the point. That the narrative model of the hero's journey fundamentally constrains how we think about the world in a way that skews our ability to recognize that truth.
Think about all of the stories left untold because they begin where the hero's journey says stories should end. Think about all the young soldiers who leave believing they are heroes and come back broken to a home that has no capacity to receive their trauma. Think about all of the untold history that is neglected and missed because we see through the lens of Great Man Theory. Think about all the mental health problems caused by young men who cannot find fulfilment unless they are worshiped as heroes.
We have so much more capacity to understand life as a conquering of obstacles, and so much less in understanding it as an acceptance of experiences and circumstances. The hero's journey tells us that growth and fulfilment comes from metamorphosis caused by struggle that continually makes us better. But I think it is just as accurate and perhaps even more useful to say that all experiences morph us for better or worse, and the beauty of humanity is in being able to find and extrapolate our own definitions of heroism from that. And I think that's what Le Guin is getting at in her essay.
Your literacy here is the failing, not the dichotomy being discussed.
Great video (as usual)! I constantly come back to the Carrier Bag Theory and Kishōtenketsu Plotting when I work on stories. The world has plenty of Hero's Journeys. We need wider perspectives and more complex understandings ... of everything.
Thank you kindly. And I agree. Literature can be complex. Readers are certainly complex and perhaps game for scaling other peaks in the range once they've crested Story Mountain a few times :)
Looking at it makes me think of Tolkein, like how after the Scouring of the Shire Sam lead the rebuilding with the help of Galadriel's box of earth, or even better how the Hobit ended with Gandalf talking to Bilbo about how it turned out prophesied events came true due to his actions, but he was still just a little figure in the scope of the world and Bilbo responded, "Well thank goodness for that!"
Right? Rings means a lot to me for reasons that would take time to explain. But while the dashing heroes are doing their best to keep Middle Earth from utter desolation, the Hobbits are are putting one foot in front of the other, and the one does not matter without the other. It's simultaneously awing and humbling (if you happen to be a compulsive metaphor projector who can't help but see fiction as a mirror for life, not that *I* would know ;) ).
On the other hand, as i recall, kicking out Sharkey happens onscreen. Rebuilding the Shire happens offscreen.
Being quite old, and watching a lot of youtube, it is rare that I find something that is completely new to me. This is. I am fascinated and have immediately added the essay and Oedipus at Colonnus at the top of my To Read list. I especially resonated with Much Ado, one of my absolute favourite Shakespeare plays. Subscribed. Thank you.
Good deal - Thank you.
I'm pretty sure Much Ado About Nothing was my first love in Shakespeare. Heavens above, there was a time I didn't know who Denzel Washington or Emma Thompson *was,* wasn't there?
When you get to Oedipus at Colonus, remind me we had this conversation, please, I'll be curious if it made you happy or if I exaggerated its awesomeness :)
I'm so very happy that the algorithm brought me to this channel. I'm an admirer of Le Guin and believe she offers a much-needed counterbalance to our cultural fixation on the hero's tale. I am looking forward to viewing more of your videos. Like, right this minute!
*waves vigorously*
Lovely to see you - Glad you spoke up :)
If you seek antidotes to the hero's tale, The Heroine's Journey has legit saved my life before. Whether you learn more about it through my stuff or elsewhere, I think The Heroine's Journey might be worth your while in that it picks up in a seriously useful way where the Hero's Journey ends.
@@SelfWriteousness I'm adding the book to my To Be Purchased list immediately. I'm glad to know it exists, and I look forward to reading it.
@@RigelDeneb172 The Virgin's Promise is one book on the Heroine's Journey and I really appreciated the way it put things into words and helped me understand various stages in life.
Damn, guess I've got an essay to read.
Good idea. Of course, anything I say about it is pretty lame compared to the essay itself, so I'm selfishly glad you saw this video first :)
Yup. Got some reading to do now.
Me too!
The carrier bag theory seems to fit very well with a lot of eastern novels I've read, especially ones in regards to slice of life and post-war stories
I'll buy that. I've become a sucker for slice-of-life stories, m'self. And while I can't presume to know why the post-war crowd resonates with slice-of-life stuff, I started grooving on gentler stories with personal stakes once I started recovering from my first jail job. After, seeing / going through some drastic stuff, my appetite for gritty realism never really came back, but reassurance (albeit in fiction) that little things still matter was amazing.
That makes sense, she was a taoist.
Slice of life! I remember when I first found that genre of online comics, it was so comforting
I would say that conventional heroic fiction tends to feature a world that is separate from the hero and must be shaped by him, like a great sculptor and his marble. His virtue comes from his natural strength and skill.
The inverse of this is a story in which the hero is shaped BY the world. They must react and change. Their virtue, by contrast to the conventional hero, comes in the choices they make in response to the circumstances they encounter, how they choose to live and who they choose to be. Instead of carving out the world according to their will, they are weaving the self out of innumerable threads.
The image of the sculptor is an evocative one :)
I got a buddy who is an artist, a dad, and a farmer who speaks of growing up in fear of strength. When he was a boy, he went out of his way not to become physically stronger because he didn't want to accidentally hurt someone. It wasn't until much later that he understood restraint is *also* a strength, and as a farmer, he had to both be able to strongarm Billy goats and gingerly safeguard eggs. The strength to hold Baby as long as it takes for comfort to set in and the gentleness to cradle Baby needs to abide in the same dude, or neither works.
Thank you for introducing me to yet another wonderful artifact from the magical Ursula K. Le Guin
This was excellent. I've never seen a deep dive into the Carrier Bag Theory before, and this answered so many questions I have about my own writing. Immediate follow; I'm keen to watch more of your videos!
Thank you kindly :) What do you write?
@@SelfWriteousness I hope it's "replies to YT comments" 😣🙏
Your intro immediately made me think, hilariously, of the plot of The Incredibles. Anyway great food for
thought. Thank you for the recommendation to listen to some talks by Le Guin!
Good deal :)
Also, Sneaky Video Editor Me Just realized I haven't nipped any clips from Incredibles for my Hero / Heroine chats. Ah well. Maybe I'm showing my age some.
I think this is why I loved Wheel of Time so much. The world wanted/needed Rand to be a Hero, but all he ever wanted to be was a husband and hutbuilder.
Is that why the series ends with him faking his own death and abandoning his pregnant girlfriends to go explore the world?
@chaircheck2424 he comes back after being gone for a year. They reference it in the flashforwards Aviendha experiences in Gathering Storm.
@chaircheck2424 also, they have the bond. They know he's safe and where he is and can travel tk him at any moment. The point is They're all powerful people with important roles in the rebuilding world (queen of two nations, wise woman and leader for the Aiel, and soothsayer (?) of the Empress of the Seanchan.
Rand is just a guy at that point who may or may not have the true power at that point who gave up 2 years of his life and sanity to save the world. He's allowed to have a vacation.
@ Have you...read the books?
@ No, I just love collecting endings to series I haven't read.
I found an audio of the The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by The Anarchist Audio Library here on YT. Hearing it in full, with the opening bits reminded me that Le Guin grew up with anthropologists and her point about how hero stories might have started, with hunters making their stories more exciting than their actual experiences, really resonate. It was the gatherers who saw the plants and sewed the seeds for the next year's crop who planted the first beginnings of farming after all.
Books that might fit the theory: The Harper Hall trilogy by Anne McCaffrey? Maybe. There is conflict, but it's at ground level, where you and I could conceivably be in the thick of things - people treating others poorly, abuse - physical and verbal (unfortunately), bullying, etc. as well as the big stuff happening out in the wider world.
Yes! Maybe this is why we love series? There's time for everyone, across several books
I don't think conflict would keep The Harper Hall books from being Carrier Bag :)
I get the impression Le Guin was grumpy about the notion that the conflict *is* the story. Therein lies the tunnel vision for plot which can lead to some *good* plots, but lean too far in that direction, and the characters become interchangeable.
*metaphorical light comes on, albeit a small one*
Kinda like putting one's script in the faces of appropriately cool-looking action figures, really. Maybe that's why juvenile readers (often male ones but not exclusively) enjoy plot-heavy stuff / think character-focused stuff is silly? The action is certainly a lot more fun than the action figure alone to someone with a background of playing GI Joe or Ninja Turtles.
Could be.
Um, if I made the argument that is part of the magic of The Babysitter's Club, would we still be friends?
@@SelfWriteousness And the growing popularity of cozy fantasy stories like Legends and Lattes and Howl's Moving Castle, etc. I think we, as a collective, just need the quieter plot or fantasy that isn't so driven by the big dramas. Sometimes it's nice to tuck in and read about everyday dramas. I've never read any of the Babysitter's Club books, but I can relate with Trixie Belden. 🙃🙂
If you read Megan Bisele's Women Like Meat, you will find that in the stories she collected among the oldest continually existing people in the world, it is women who idealize the male hunter in the tales women tell women.
I feel like often it is this desire to answer the question "What happens after the hero returns?" or to see the story as a container of rearrange-able elements that people write fanfiction.
I once had this idea of writing a series of fanfictions about what happen after the horror movie ends. Like, does anyone actually believe the characters? how do their lives progress, etc... Unfortunately i have a lot of idea to write and very little actual writing done.
So glad that this popped up on my TH-cam feed, and you have a ton of videos for me to dive into!
Good deal. I appreciate any time you spend on this channel, and I welcome overwhelming praise or creative insults :)
Adventure Time pretty much follows this mode of storytelling. I appreciate seeing it in a children’s cartoons.
This was lovely, subscribed!
I’ve read several Le Guin novels but very few essays… I will be checking this out and letting it simmer.
Thank you for such a thought provoking video.
Very good - I think you'll like it.
If you understand the whole thing on the first try, please don't tell me, 'cause I did *not*, and I need all the vanity I can get for future projects ;)
So many of her essays are powerful and worth reading and rereading. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas and Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons spring to mind.
If you haven’t read Becky Chambers, I think you’ll find her work fits in well with Carrier Bag Theory. Her Monk and Robot series fits quite well into that quote about the purpose being neither resolution or stasis, but continuing process.
I'll have to keep my eye out for Becky Chambers. Robots and monks are two of my favorite fictional things :)
Process is a happy place. Process offers hope that we can change a little at a time, not just *be* the hero, villain, mentor, or sidekick innately and forever.
@@SelfWriteousness The two (three?) books in that universe are some of the most moving stories I've experienced, co-signing that rec
@@SelfWriteousnessIn that case I think you’ll like them a lot!
Her Wayfarer sci-fi series is great too, she has joked that they are sci-fi where nothing happens because of the lack of battles in her stories, and has also called them Working Class Star Trek.
I've only read her first wayfarer book, and although I did not found it to be "great", I do think it is good, and more: it has all the potential and authenticity most current sci fi simply lacks.
Came her to say this! Some of the gentlest, most beautiful books I have read.
I read that treatise decades ago in college and had forgotten about it. Thanks for helping me remember an old tool box. Hopefully this can assist in bringing the spark back to my writing.
Pleasure, Friend. Good energies on your writing and assorted creative sparks. If I had a tinder box, I'd give it to you :)
I think the image that captured me about the Carrier Bag Theory is the idea of a story as a container of life.
Like, you have this bag. You put in a bunch of oats. They rattle around in there as you do, but then they settle. Eventually you give it a bit of a shake, and things shift. Then they settle. There's another shake, things shift. Then they settle again.
Sometimes, you write Totoro and the shakes are gentle. Sometimes, you write Game of Thrones, and you set the bag on fire, throw it from a cliff, and laugh with the hubris of a false god as the horses of war trample across it and crushes the content, the grains chafing against one another as some fall on the bottom and some are on the top. Sometimes it's not rattled as hard, and the content begins to settle. Then it gets another kick.
That's life.
*nods*
No shortage of life happenings to test the tensile strength of our bag.
And I expect the contents flux is part of what makes it all go, right? Can't move as fast or well with a bag filled to bursting. Sometimes, divesting is good and necessary :)
This made me think a lot. My favorite story, Watership Down, definitely resembles a Hero's Journey, but a lot of the focus is on how the rabbits help each other and form a community, using knowledge from their adventures to change how they live. It's notable that the main character, Hazel, pretty much never accomplishes anything on his own. The little-known sequel, Tales from Watership Down, while inconsistent in quality, does seem to fit the carrier bag idea, and I always appreciated that it's about small conflicts that the rabbits face rather than trying to be a bigger, grander journey.
Also, it is weird how much society focuses on trying to make everyone the main character. I remember leadership was always a huge emphasis in school, and I thought it was odd that they seemed to want as many people as possible to be leaders. In terms of Watership Down, I could never be like Hazel, but I feel like I could become more like Pipkin.
Neat! I am sorry to report I have not yet read Watership Down, but it is one of the publisher's favorites, so you're in great company :)
There's a long-standing believe in writing circles that every character believes he / she / they are the main character of the story, but I'm not sure how true that is among IRL people. Like, we can't really get out our own heads, sure. But do most of people see themselves as the MC?
I feel like reporters (and maybe writers in general) see themselves as Moby Dick's Ismael, recording the exploits of the fabulous characters they've met with little regard for personal recognition. I think comedians see themselves as the loveable sidekick, making someone else's story better one self-depreciating witticism at a time...
These are not the thoughts that keep me up nights, but they are riddles I occasionally think slightly too hard about.
Oh my god I’ve been craving a story structure like this for ages! The closet I could find was kishokentetsu, but that never felt like an adequate answer. Thank you for sharing!
Me too! Lovely to be able to share it :)
Wow, I’d never heard of this theory before, and Ms. Le Guin articulates it so evocatively! Thank you for introducing us to this. As further possible examples of this in action for ehat it’s worth, I feel like I’ve noticed some of this, and in the process remedied some of that ‘vitamin deficiency’ in types of narratives for myself accidentally, by reading fanfiction: canon itself may be expressly built around The Hero to whatever extent, but in fic, people often write about their favorite side characters, about offscreen more ordinary moments, envision what happens next after ‘the end’, and so on. Even where the narrative imposes unquestioned artificial linearity, people’s imaginations seem to include the impulse to make up that difference and draw in the margins.
Pleasure.
*tips hat*
I feel like fan fiction must have come a long way since I took my crack at writing it in the 90s. Gad, those memories are old enough to vote, drink, negotiate a lower insurance premium on their family sedan, aren't they? Yikes!
Really nice video! You did a great job unpacking this!
Thank you kindly. I had my worries, to tell the truth :)
I really appreciate this perspective I haven't heard before. Glad I stumbled on this!
1:02 the slight hitch in your excellent androgynous voice on Le Giun's name matched so perfectly with the image of the tree falling, i thought it was a sound effect!
Right? That got me a couple of times while I was editing. I thought I was imagining things.
I think there are a lot of slice of life anime that would fit this model. I suspect this might be broadly more common in East Asian literature, but I’m not versed enough to do much more than speculate about this.
Kishotenketsu. Eastern story structure (as opposed to western story structure) doesn’t necessarily require conflict; it is introduction, development, twist, and conclusion.
*ponders*
Neat! I'll bet a lot of good stories would fit that pattern nicely, but the two items that immediately spring to mind are Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and just about all my favorite westerns which would have absolutely copied their homework from Akira Kurosawa (The Magnificent Seven is a big one, certainly. But also pretty much every episode of Have Gun, Will Travel).
Frieren can't be a more explicit example of this concept. The story follows the mage that defeated the demon king, years after. And the whole point of the story is learning to choose what to value and treasure in your life (its people, btw).
@@ardidsonriente2223 Yeah, Frieren: Beyond the Journey's End is the one that really popped into my mind. There are episodic conflicts, but the purpose of the story is for Frieren to explore her own feelings, and learn from the people around her.
I just finished reading 'The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction'. It's a place I think I find myself in more and more. Thanks for this video, that led me there.
Me too - Good deal :)
Carrier Bag Theory and Heroine's Journey seem to have found *me* at just the right time in my writerly and personal life to make it meaningfully better. If they do the same for others, better still
This is a great video!! Thank you for making it and introducing me to Carrier Bag Theory
Wow! I'm so happy that I tripped upon your channel. I'm a writer and a philosopher, and this whole video touches on some deep points for both. I feel that so much philosophy in the western tradition is built upon "main character syndrome", which is very much the hero's journey IRL. It assumes the importance of the individual perspective and life over that of the community. While there is a sense that we can only control ourselves, and we must focus on that which we can control, there is an extreme pursuit of it to the point it often becomes myopic.
I suppose we could use a carrier bag theory of philosophy.
Thanks for sharing your lovely thoughts. I'll be rewatching this a few times, as well as reading Ursula K. Leguin's essay.
I'd argue the problem lies less in focusing on the individual perspective and more in a limited focus while doing it. Empathy, feelings of belonging and community are (for most humans) fundamental needs. You cannot comprehensively discuss self-interest without discussing group-interest because there is so much overlap between them.
*ponders*
For reasons that would take time to explain, I've had an awful lot of self-destructive people tear through my life like a whirlwind, and almost to a human, they are self-isolating do-it-yourself types who were raised to whole-heartedly believe in hero myths and tell themselves the unhelpful lie that they should be able to do it alone, then implode when they can't. I wonder if a more community-focused mythos would have helped them: brought them up to believe, "No, of course I can't do it myself. I'm a social creature who needs to help and be helped by *other* social creatures."
Hi there! I'm happy you tripped into my channel as well.
*waves vigorously*
"Main Character Syndrome" is right. I have absolutely fallen into the isolationism trap before and thought, "I should be able to handle this. Why is life kicking my butt this bad?"
I think at the time, I had framed it to myself as accountability, but in many cases, I didn't cause the problem single-handedly, so thinking I could *fix* them singlehandedly was pretty dumb.
Weirdly, thinking one can do it one's self is a dumb thing smart people think all the time. I think the AA crowd might have pinned this phenomenon down pretty good as a fight for control:
"If I caused this, I can fix it. If I didn't cause it, I need help, and I don't want to need help. So I drink."
Accountability to / help from other humans is good. I feel like embracing that more often in fiction might let us do that more often in life.
Your analysis is absolutely FANTASTIC ❤👍
Thank you most kindly :)
This is why there are a million DragonLance novels. Every character got their own series or mini series. We knew every character and their journeys. And their stories all are intertwined up close and far away. Even underground. 😊
Need to watch this video again and pay more attention to it!
Thank you. I had no idea. The growth of character, the growth of power and the loss of it.
I feel like it's harder to find mentions of because it is less well known and fewer people set out to write or do critical analysis with this in mind, but i think the idea fits really well with the recent trend of "cozy fantasy" as a genre.
Right? I'm not the most avid reader of epic fantasy, but I've attempted to write using the archetypes, and the gravitas / limitless stakes are rough when trying to shrink the focus down to a couple characters with relatable joys and sorrows. I absolutely see the appeal of reading where the Gondor street cleaners go after work for cheap breakfast and friendly waitstaff :)
This tingles a lot of my creative drives. Thank you for making this ^_^
Pleasure.
*tips hat*
What do like to create the best these days?
@@SelfWriteousness just doing some writing and venting for my sanity at this point. But I might get into making something for the internet again eventually.
A lot of fanfiction seems like attempts to bring carrier bag theory into the hero’s journey.
yes, great little comment!
I had never heard of this theory thank you for the introduction! I think a good western example of ‘ carrier bag theory’ would be ‘Little house on the Prairie’ by LauraIngalls Wilder. I agree with some of the other commenters that I would characterize. This as slice of life and really almost every sitcom fits into this theory as well. They almost never do anything super extraordinary, but we are very invested in them as characters and what they’re doing in their every day lives.
*ponders own ancient memories of Little House on the Prairie*
Wandering tribe, multiple protagonists, shaped collectively by things, happenings and incremental progress both separately and as a team...
Yep. That is a solid example in western literature I wouldn't have considered if you'd not have mentioned it :)
(Extra shame on me, come to think of it, 'cause the show is quite old. I could've totally nipped footage without holding my breath on what the copyright bots thought of the Disney clips. Ah well. Maybe next time)
This was really cool, Im gonna go and read that essay now. Cheers!
Cheers back - Happy reading :)
This essay is fascinating. Thank you for bringing attention to it. I feel like (because I’m a nerd) that this theory applies well to video game storytelling where linear “hero does plot points” stories feel too rigid.
Valid. I hadn't considered it for video games, but now that you mention it, I reckon Carrier Bag would work nicely for video games, RPGs, or anything with a keen focus on worldbuilding and backstory :)
This is so wonderful. Thanks. Why is it wrong to ask "what happens next?"? I'm less ashamed of my hunger for it.
Thanks for making this, gave me something to think about.
I always learn so much from your videos!!
Thanks v much, a wonderfully thought provoking video essay. One thing I would say is to refrain from constraining it to a homecoming/return sequel and could also be applied to plots where any new 'home/tribe/temporary stoppage' may also lead to recognizing that the world shapes the characters as they interact, cooperate, play their part and let others have their fair share of the capital H pedestal. Much like the earthsea cycle, reconciliation may be with home/tribe but sometimes if that's the not the case it may just be a reconciliation with one's own nature.
And that's fair. My godmum occasionally points out that if we make peace with ourselves completely enough, we stop craving a homecoming because "home" becomes where ever *we* are, even among less-than-fantastic people and places. I reckon if it can apply to her lived experience, it can apply to fictional mentors / future mentors :)
I've never heard of this before, and I appreciate it being brought to my attention. You laid it out well for my novice eyes and ears.
Thank you - I hope so.
I've been second guessing my take on Carrier Bag Theory a *lot* to tell the truth, so if you end up reading it on some slow day for literary stimulation, it wouldn't hurt my feelings :)
This is lovely. I hadn't heard of this before, despite liking Le Guin's works.
I have a question: You mentioned Kiki and Totoro but not Kishōtenketsu, the commonly used 4 act structure which does not require conflict. Did you plan to go into it later?
(It's a great story structure, as it thrives on a new understanding in act 3. I often see it called a twist but I think this gives the wrong idea in English as that word implies a thriller-type reveal, where as this "twist" might just mean gaining understanding. Like learning something new, or an emotional epiphany which allows a character to either move on, change, or recontextualize things they have experienced. Which I frankly think is a much more excellently broad concept for a story to hinge and shine from than either plain violent conflict OR shock based thriller-twists.)
Very truly, I had not heard of Kishōtenketsu before using Kiki and Totoro, but I'm glad it exists and look forward to learning more. Many thanks for making me smarter / perhaps pointing me in a direction for future videos :)
I think this sheds light on a part of a lot of stories that is usually packaged in with most narratives, but even in the most foundational ones, is often forgotten. Life isn't just about constant adventure---even if you think about the natural flow of going from a youth, to an adolescent, a young adult, then a parent, there is an inborn arc of adventurer to teacher/husband/wife/hutbuilder/homemaker. The Hero's Journey addresses this, but it makes it the tail-end of the Journey, rather than a concurrent adventure which the hero/heroine goes through. To be fair, many narratives make a point to demonstrate how the Hero/Heroine must realize the value of home, and give back to the place they came from while reclaiming the spot they once left, but again, this is more of a final reward or step rather than something that usually feels built-towards and integrated into most narratives.
I welcome the emphasis of this oft-forgotten second part! The quieter, simpler parts of adventures may seem so on the outside, but are often just as vital, significant, and harrowing as the external trials and tribulations. If we began to teach people to go on exciting adventures while also tending to their carrier bags, it may promote a healthier frame of mind and state of being for many people, and remind us that there is more to life than coming home after a long journey, dropping off what you've found, and then anxiously searching for the next adventure. Really great video, and I can't wait to read the essay! Thank you so much for sharing! Job well done!!
Thank you kindly.
I agree. I myself have fallen prey to the idea that if I haven't made it even so far as the "Transformation" part of the Campbell model, I'm a failure and taken that quite personally. The Last Unicorn mentions rather flippantly that it will *not* have a happy ending "...because nothing ends," but that's the gospel truth. The notion of "continuing process" as a challenge to the mandatory perfection of the Hero and the "happily ever after" can be one of the most freeing things on earth.
We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Great Gatsby come to mind as possible examples. Thanks for the introduction to this essay, I’ll give it a read!
Wonderful video! I love LeGuin! How have I missed that essay?! I need to read it immediately. Another Miyazaki film that fits the carrier bag theory is "Whisper of the Heart." It's people doing people things, and finding joy in it and each other.
Indeed! I grieve slightly that I once had it on my external hard drive and must have deleted it to make room, because I specifically wanted to nip footage of the library scene for this video and couldn't.
Good job, Past Tense Me -_-
Oh it's been a minute since I've been so thoroughly charmed by a video! Though this is by LeGuin herself, I think that Tehanu is perhaps the best example of Carrier Bag Theory I've ever read, particularly in the context of following The Farthest Shore. Tenar and Ged's journeys are to become less rather than more, but no less powerful, no less worthy of attention, just less active. And they handle this in remarkably different, believable ways, with Ged having a lot more hold-ups after his time as archmage, as a 'doer.'
If pressed, I think I might draw a distinction between novels that fall into strong carrier bag theory and weak carrier bag theory. Weak carrier bag theory is signified by the non-linearity of personal development and a focus on the nuances of individual emotion/experience. These can still be highly dramatic stories; internal conflict is no laughing matter, as I'm sure we all know. There are many more pieces of media that fall into this category, including all the ones mentioned in this video. Some other examples I might argue for would be Jane Eyre, The Giver, and, oddly enough, I think Candide also ends up here.
Strong carrier bag theory has all the elements of the weak version, and goes a step further. It disavows the assumption that a story needs high emotions or intensity to fuel the attention of its readers. These stories are compelling simply because they feel so true to our own everyday life. They run on the beauty of the mundane and the special wisdom that only comes from long hours focused on the smallest tasks. I scoured my reading list and the only book I could find, not written by LeGuin herself, that I feel I can defend as truly belonging here is The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I'm sure there are others, but they are few and far between.
*ponders*
You know, The Secret Garden and Our Town might be 2 stories that go the extra mile in the celebration of simplicity and intimacy from reader to characters (?)
Like, The Secret Garden lets Mary discover contentment / how to *not* be mad at the world through the explorations she makes while bored and confined. And Our Town has a lot of mundane in it to be paid off in Act iii when the MC learns just through hindsight how miraculous even the ordinary steps of her journey really were.
*smirks*
Candide is my champ for "Man vs. Narrator" and in fact "Man vs. Everything" narratives. I reckon it counts as Carrier Bag Theory even when the Carrier is kind of oblivious :)
Hi, loved the video and I will definitely be checking out your channel! Just a word of advice, you might want to rethink your microphone setup. I'm far from an expert but I'm hearing a lot of sibilance that you could probably clear up without changing any hardware, I bet just messing with the mic positioning and maybe a little more sound dampening right around your mic.
Thank you kindly - I appreciate the constructive advice, and a keener focus on technique from my end certainly wouldn't hurt :)
Very interesting video. As I was listening, it occurred to me that Le Guin's novel Always Coming Home could be her own best example of a carrier bag style plot.
I'll buy that. Always Coming Home is still on the ol' TBR somewhere, but it came up by name in my research for this video, and she spoke of it specifically as representing consistencies that were important to her in *all* her writing up to that point :)
Thank you for bringing this delicious and explosive concept to my attention. This is a huge conceptual sandwhich and has so so so very many important ramifications imo. May I recommend to you The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama? Or more recently The Space Person by Catherine Kuo?
Absolutely.
*jots them in phone-bound reading list*
It is lovely to find book recommendations from the folks who visit the comments section. Confidentially, I don't think the folks who get shouty with me about the hornier videos are quite so literate as the ones who have struck up conversations about *this* one.
My biggest take away is some of my favourite movies over the years are featured as examples in this. Makes me look at my media tastes a little differently and helps me to understand that preference a bit more. Time to read Le Guin's writing on this.
This is how I'm writing one of my current novels. I fell into a trap with the Hero's Journey in that the supplemental characters were flat but once I saw them each as the hero of their own story that by chance or design wove into that of the main protagonist, the story blossomed. And I'm always asking myself what's next with each of them, using their connections to develop their character.
That's enough about me. I'll shut up, now.
Nah, nah, nah, don't be modest. Suppress that instinct as often as possible, please. If you think your characters are awesome and get comfortable telling other people *why* they're awesome, the odds of becoming a successful matchmaker between readers and your books goes up a bunch. I want you to become a successful matchmaker, fellow author
Hey, so glad the algorithm brought me here! I love Le Guin's work, and this gave me yet another fantastic way to analyze it. Also, I had a thought while listening. Le Guin famously took a lot of inspiration from Daoist philosophy, which places a great deal of importance on "soft power". To my understanding, the Daoist believes that the result of shaping the world to your will with your strength is always less permanent than the effect of a flexible, mindful approach. To this end, the Daodejing offers:
"Clay is kneaded to form a pot.
But it is the emptiness inside it
That makes the pot useful."
I find this to be a complement to Le-Guin's metaphor of the bottle or the carrier bag, and might be a direct inspiration for it. The "emptiness" inside a story's protagonist, their ability to shift and change their opinions and reevaluate themselves, that makes them a character worth following.
I will continue watching other videos from this channel, thank you for the great work!
All hail the algorithm!
*waves vigorously*
Excellent point. My knowledge of Daoism is pretty scant, so I appreciate your making me smarter / being patient while I (maybe) catch up :)
The idea of a vessels being important comes up a lot in storytelling, it seems. The first I encountered was actually in *The Heroine's Journey* early last year (an idea Maureen Murdock might have realistically gleaned from eastern sources, come to think of it. She quoted a lot of smart people from various cultures). And when she wrote of it, it was in contrast to people inclined to disparage "the vessel" and woman along with it:
The vessel," think some unenlightened people, "is disposable. It might be capable of *holding* something worth while (i.e. babies), but it otherwise has no inherent worth." And for some reason, Ms. Murdock - Author, Philosopher, Force of Nature, and Mother - seemed weirdly invested in assuring the misinformed that vessels are amazing, beautiful, and worthwhile regardless of what they do or do not hold.
@@SelfWriteousness That's super interesting! I remember that I read something Le Guin wrote somewhere, where she stated she had issues writing female heroes (sorry that I can't point it out; it must have been an introduction to one of her sci-fi novels). She stated that she feels that her female heroines always feel to her like male heroes, borrowing their thinking patterns and process. If the character that carries the bag is a female archetype, it makes the choice to apply it to men a lot more interesting. I think Le Guin invites us to read her work through the lens of gender binary and non-binary, so I'd love to reread her work with that in mind ☺
I noticed a video about the The Heroine's Journey on your channel, I'll check it out to get a primer!
Good deal. I'll be genuinely curious what you think :D
@SelfWriteousness I'll comment my thoughts on the offchance I experiance any!
@SelfWriteousness I had some thoughts but my insight was a lot more limited. Still it's a fascinating video! Kudos ☺
Say what you will about the algorithm, I’m glad it brought me to your channel! ❤
I had to rewatch the quotes from LeGuin several times before I understood them even on the surface level but I just love this concept! I want different story structures in my life; I am a little suspicious of elevating one above others - if stories are how we make meaning of our worlds, it seems to me too proscriptive to allow only one type of story as the “best”.
Also appreciated how mild you are. We live in a bit of a shouty world and this is an elixir. :). I’ll be checking out your other videos for sure.
Right?! The whole essay is like that: nutritionally dense but slightly harder than average to chew.
I'm delighted the algorithm brought you here as well.
*waves a friendly hello*
lol the kale of essays.
Love LeGuin and I clearly have another essay to check out! I liked your analysis and thoughts here. One thing that crossed my mind is that this idea of the return is something Joseph Campbell considered (assuming I've remembered correctly). I believe that Campbell thought that in these traditional narratives, the hero was unable to return to normal life, and that was an important part of the story. The hero remains forever changed after exiting into the unknown and being transformed in the "belly of the whale." For example, the Lord of the Rings shows that Frodo, changed by the journey, is sadly not able to readjust to life in the Shire. So I think there might be an interesting exploration of what other aspects of these various stories align with a successful or unsuccessful return and assimilation back into a "hut builder" role.
And that's a fair point. Journeys absolutely change the journeyer and sometimes make it tough to go home.
*warning: incoming backstory*
As a grizzled old jail nurse, I've run into a larger concentration of veterans / former military lads than some folks. And if they were seeing *me,* they probably weren't assimilating well, regardless of which side of the bars they were on. However, I have also met veterans in the wild who are well adjusted, good to women, jolly when drunk (as opposed to the sullen, rage-filled time bombs I'd generally encounter at work), and all around thriving on the home front. As an outsider, I can't presume to know the difference between them and their less resilient brothers-in-arms, but the ones who do okay-est seem to be the ones who did not let that season they spent as warriors define the rest of their lives. We generally hope war is temporary, right? But if one's identity becomes "warrior" and then he suddenly has to make other plans, I guess I'd be surprised if that didn't precipitate some uncomfortable identity questions.
In an article from 2008 entitled "Why the Hero's Journey Sucks," a writer called CharlieJane criticized Campbell's model, asserting it is "...unrealistic and spreads the idea that war is therapy," a reasonable conclusion to draw after hearing the downright loving way Campbell talks about war in The Power of Myth, a talk over which Bill Moyer's people play clips of such warriors in the hero's "Call to Action" on trucks and helicopters bound for Saigon.
*ponders*
I guess if Campbell was looking a the Hero's Journey as whatever part of a young man's life is (subjectively) the most heroic and reckoned that is the making of a man, his storytelling model is perfectly nice.
To someone looking at the young man's entire life as the Journey, Campbell's model will likely feel short-sighted and incomplete.
@@SelfWriteousness Yeah that summation makes sense to me. Thanks for sharing all that--I'll check out that CharlieJane article as well.
Would "Little Women" be a good example of a mega-popular novel that fits the carrier-bag model better than the hero's journey? Or am I misunderstanding the point of the essay?
I think a solid case could be made for Little Woman as Carrier Bag Theory with its multiple multiple protagonists and focus on community and what-not.
Very truly *I* might have misunderstood the point of the essay, so please - oh please - trust your judgement. I wouldn't trust a person like me if I were you :)
Very cool! I heard about this essay a while ago but have yet to read. So happy you made an explanation video.
Thank you kindly. I hope I got within spitting distance of what the author *actually* meant. My reading comprehension sometimes feels like it peaked with 5th Grade Me blowing off Little House on the Prairie assignments.
I think Moby Dick is a heroes journey, perhaps antiheroe's, as told by a carrier bag, uh carrier. We don't learn a lot about Ishmael but we learn a lot about the things in his bag: ideas, feelings, science and sailing trivia, theology, and also the larger than life characters he met.
It also sheds an interesting light on why the themes are so ambiguous. Imagine, this guy comes back to the village and hes had this absolutely harrowing experience, but not one where he came out the hero, or where there was a hero at all really. So both teller and audience wonder what it all means. All he can do is pull various things out of his bag, to make little anecdotes, comparisons and metaphors to help begin to speculate on the meaning of his time at sea and his near death experience with a giant whale and a mad captain.
Apt analogy. I cannot disagree :)
I sometimes think Ishmael missed his calling as a journalist or a comedy writer in that he sees himself as - more or less - a straight man among fabulous characters, and he doesn't feel the need to embellish his role because he doesn't want to distract from this massive thing that happened around him.
@@SelfWriteousness I like this notion of Ishmael as a journalist, like his motivation for telling the story is the story itself, and the events being both understood and known.
I've more often tended to look at his lack of a strong identity in his own story as a conspicuous lack. As though he doesn't really know how to make sense of what happened and therefore he also doesn't know who he is in relation to what happened, just like it's basically impossible for any individual to make sense of their place in the universe.
Either way, journalist or existential crisis haver, Ishmael is a story teller and not a hero. A heros story is one person imposing meaning on a universe forced to submit. But a story tell picks up random stuff from all around, dumps it out on their coffee table and tries, and very possibly fails to trace any coherent meaning between the pieces of junk. I read Leguins essay a while back, but I hadnt considered before now that journalism is a culturally mainstream form of narrative making that is essentially carrier bag-y. Find, gather, compile, collect, put together, are all reporter verbs.
Thank you for making this, I'll be back < 3
Thanks for *watching* this. I'll be here :)
Crawling out of my cave to say, I had no idea this existed and thank you for bringing it to my attention! I definitely fall into the camp of enjoying character-driven narratives and often feel that a book can be perfectly enjoyable even if little to nothing happens...a prime example being a little diddy called "The Metamorphosis" by Kafka. Recently, I've had a hankering to write characters that fit this model and feel more authentic so it's good to know that Le Guin wrote a handy guidebook for just such a need! Hope you're well ~Laura
Hey, I know that avatar!
*waves vigorously*
Also, same. Character-driven narratives are lovely. I reliably think of my youngest godson when the topic comes up because of his sublime lack of forgiveness toward Animal Farm. At all of 11 years old, he was grumpy at Orwell, wanting him very much to know in the Great Beyond that economy of words / story isn't everything and ya gotta give me enough to *care* about your characters. I am giddy and slightly ego-stricken when smart kids say smarter things better than I could.
Also, hugs if you need them. I got excited about literary chatter and didn't think 'til after I hit *reply* that caves can be nice, depending on the reasons we retreat to them. I hope yours are pleasant. If they are not, extra hugs
If you want character, you should definitely read Huysman's Against the Grain. Top shelf stuff from the late 19th C. It broke the Naturalist's mold in the best way ever, using their attention to minute detail (think Emile Zola or Kate Chopin), but turned it on its head by applying to such an outlandish character. It's a fairly short read. Enjoy
Nice vessay. I'd hesitate to call these templates "theories". (Is the theory about "what structure makes a novel readable?") I'd say templates are templates, and Campbell's one is great for certain moods (especially a movie), while LeGuin's is proper better for more diverse moods because it is more generic and can "fit" far more intricate stories. There was also Kurt Vonegut's version of story "rise and fall or flat" structures which seems overly geeky topological, but hard to deny is generic enough to fit most singular volumes in any particular novel series. Paired with LeGuins template type a novice author can have a vision to guide their writing. But there could be the odd rare literary works and films that just go a bit "ape mental" so-to-speak - like beyond Ulysses, or Infinite Jest, and so on - and are anarchic sorts of products of _seemingly_ no artistic vision at all, most of which are flops, but then on occasion there is maybe an untemplated gem. No hero, no container bag. Can't say I know of one from memory though personally, since I'd probably never get past the first pages/minutes.
Wow, funny, thought-provoking, and educational. Subscribed!
This is the kind of storytelling used in table-top role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. Because many people are telling the story together, there is no central Hero, distinct and separate from the group and, in a very real way, the bigger world. You're all here, you're all important, you all have a part to play in the big adventure, but you also have smaller goals, every day challenges... You have things you're not good at, and the group steps up to fill those gaps for each other. I think this is one of the reasons people love not only playing DnD, but watching others play it. It's why Critical Role, Dimension 20, NADDPOD and many, many other actual plays are so popular and have such invested audiences. There's room for everyone to be heroic without everyone else being relegated to a background character or having to bear the burden of success or defeat all alone. It acknowledges sonder, the recognition that everyone around you has a deep, complex experience of their own that you may never get to know, but realize is just as important as yours. Anywho, I enjoyed the video and it really got me thinking. Thank you!
Good deal - Thank you for bringing up some similarities thoughts on the RPG experience in relation to Carrier Bag.
I am not the most intuitive gamer, but I try for my godkids when they invite me, and I actually had the way *they* construct characters in mind while typing portions of my script. I chickened out about including it though, because I reckoned I wasn't well-versed enough on the subject to speak with authority.
I am genuinely glad you spoke up. I feel a wee bit less like I was imagining things :)
Damn, this means "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End" HAS a story model behind!
Go watch Frieren, it is the perfect example for this.
*looks up Frieren*
Neat! This is the first time I've heard of Frieren (as I am an old person and if it is hip I don't usually know about it first). My godkids love these kinds of narratives. I bet they'd chat with me about it and make me smarter if I talk to them sweetly :)
"From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler", by E. L. Konigsburg.
If I’d never read any of UKLeG’s works, I would have definitely felt offended by her Carrier Bag Theory, at least as I understood it upon first listen to this video.
I’m not an overly masculine man, yet my whole life I’ve felt, internally, the draw to adventure and heroism, the desire to live and die in a meaningful and memorable way. The Hero’s Journey is something which I would argue lives naturally in the hearts of most boys and men. But maturity and experience has taught me that that heroic impulse is one which is not one which actually creates a meaningful and memorable life. It is the accumulation of small moments and personal relationships, of learning and mentorship, of long-suffering and thankless service, which truly build the character of a Man. Such a Man is respected greatly in life and missed terribly in death.
Yet, the Boy’s desire for heroics is not an unnecessary part of their process. And it is absolutely not a regrettable or toxic desire. It is natural. It is the fundamental of our play, and the foundation of our motivation. We do need the Hero’s Journey. We cannot fully understand the importance of all these smaller and seemingly less significant things in our lives unless we have the perspective of larger things we once believed to be so poignant. We need the Hero’s Journey, but we also need the “Princess” and “Old Man” afterwards so we learn humility and how to become teachable.
All in all, I think Le Guin is right, but I hope not too many people decide that the validity of the Carrier Bag Theory somehow discredits the Hero’s Journey.
Cool. Carrier Bad Theory doesn't discredit Hero's Journey in the slightest.
Alternatives are good and necessary, and if the Hero feels threatened when he's not the only game in town, he is unworthy of the name.
Yay Reading List!! This came just in time to be what I am looking for. I have been struggling to build this kind narrative for half a year and finding out that it has a name, And Literature! Wonderful?
Good deal - Good energy on your head and your project(s). My current narratives are currently on ice, so I wave my pompons in your direction.
*encourage, encourage*
I think there are some good examples within TV and other more serialized forms. For example Bojack Horseman seems to have themes directly confronting our urge/need to narrativize our lives and how damaging the expectations that sets can be for growth if you aren't careful.
I'll buy that. The wee bit I've seen of Bojack Horseman strikes me as an MC who would absolutely struggle with people and situations that go off-script / need to work through what real life looks like.
*Boy* can I relate to that these days.
When I was a kid, there was a live action fairytale retelling show whose name I have long forgotten that did a Carier bag story. The protagonsist must rescue a prince from a magician's tower and is given a nightly task of horribleness that she needs to complete. There were three but I only remember two- tame the wild dog and next the wild horse. Turns out both beast just need some food, grooming and compassion. She recieves gifts for each task- a comb, a mirror and a ring. after she tames the horse, she and thr prine ride off with teh magician in pursuit. First she throws the mirror behind her and it becomes a alake. The magician turns into a fish and swims it, so she throws the comb behind her to become an impassable forest that the magiican becomes an axe to chop down. The last gift is a ring that becomes wrapped around her pusruer. In the show, he's only chasing her to thank her for taking the assinaine prince away and looking after his pets. I only JUST lerned of the carrier bag theory and this little 80s rendition of a story I cant't remember the title of seems perfect- experince gives the herorine her tools to take with her and instead of a big Final Boss Fight, we get evasion/entrapment. as a kid, it was so different than the other stories. I hope somone can help me name this little show and its very big story.
That's wild.
It's not live action, but it reminds me a wee bit of a Hungarian story called Janko Raven with the helpful co-op of critters and magic objects.
Janko Raven was awesome in that he chose not to marry the princess in the end but go home and take care of his parents.
Wow! Thanks!!! Suddenly some things make more sense…
Awesome! Me too.
Still working on the "continuing process" part, which is appropriate thematically, come to think of it :)
Two comments Id like to make. One: I would expand your rorschach analogy and say that life itself is subjective, but fiction can provide more focus to define that subjectivity.
Two: There's a massive difference between traditional western and eastern storytelling. The 'heros journey' is very comman in western literature throughout antiquity, but eastern fiction often focuses on a situation or event rather than an individual person. And its this eastern style of storytelling that I think the Carrier Bag method is closer to in theory. You see it all the time in anime, especially the older classics like Death Note. The draw of Death Note wasnt about the conflict between Kira and L, not at first anyway. At first it simply proposed a scenario and demonstrated how one character would react to it. And even if you remove the conflict with L, the story still reverts to the Death Note and its impact on mortal life.
I imagine one could say life is a Rorschach without much exaggeration. The best I've ever heard it put was by Paul Simon who once observed "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."
Confidentially, I might not be the best at separating fiction from real life (a personal failing about which my therapist will no doubt sigh mightily and redirect me toward attachment styles).
Wow, VERY glad I came across your video...I have several thoughts I'd like to share. First, Ursula LeGuin's essay, The Language of the Night, if you haven't already read it, draws excellent distinctions between real and muggle fantasy writing. Second, the distinction you/LeGuin make between the gender-biased hero's journey and everyone else, just helped me put my finger on a struggle I've been having with choosing between a career that is about personal enjoyment, not giving a F#!k about public opinion (but sacrificing things Society values as meaningful and more important), versus going for the harder thing, that I don't enjoy as much, but is more valued by history. And I am realizing the gender bias embedded in that, of not valuing the little, the immediate, the personal things.
The third thing I wanted to share is an epiphany I had while listening to Joseph Campell's "The Hero With A Thousand Faces", which (for those who haven't read it) is all about the hero's-journey thing, mapping the stages as: getting the Call to Action, but refusing it; getting it again, this time not being able to refuse it, and it usually involves leaving the safety of one's home; meeting a power ally on the journey who accompanies one; going into the darkest moment to wrestle with the greatest fear; coming out of that victorious, exalted; having a benefit from the struggle to bring back to one's tribe, along with the risk of losing it on the way back; and finally, the tribe may or may not be receptive to the gift brought back.
My realization was, it describes the dream arc! Sleep is resisted at first, then yielded to; there are spirit guides in dreams, with help and information to share; the fears embedded in nightmares are dealt with, yielding wisdom to be brought back to waking consciousness, but is in danger of being lost to not remembering the dream; and finally, the world may or may not listen to what one has realized.
What this means is, EVERYONE is on the Hero's-journey arc (exactly what you've said); but the feminine arc indeed hasn't been heard from enough, and is still being filtered through a masculine lens. When I look at the Tarot, the Crone isn't even in the deck, except by scattered implication.
Anyway, sorry this was so long-winded, but thanks again for provoking new trains of thought.❤
That is a most thoughtful take on The Hero's Journey, and I'm glad you are finding something that works for you by and by :)
I won't presume to tell you about what path you should or shouldn't take, but I would like to point out that if whatever you choose turns out to be a poor fit, you can choose something else, and you won't have failed in your quest. That is why I groove on The Heroine's Journey quite a bit more than The Hero's Journey. The pressure of thinking we only have one shot to get this right is far less a thing because it's *expected* that we head down more than one in our lifetime and that we learn to be kinder to ourselves / others through our various steps and missteps.
Hooked me with the Kiki thumbnail. Kept me with the amazing analysis and wit. I need to go read that essay, then come back and watch this again.
Sweet! I'm glad you made it here - I hope the essay makes you happy as well :)
inspiring video for me. i‘m writing a slice of life historical fiction story and this may also fall into the carrier bag theory.
i’m glad that you show footages from Tales from Earthsea as it is overly hated film. i believe it is a decent film with stands on its own compared to the source materials
Thank you kindly. Yeah, Tales from Earthsea was a bit of a letdown, but *man* are the visuals pretty. Also, it doesn't get a pass for having Timothy Dalton in it, but it does get points.
i wonder what stories we can come up with that follow other types of trajectories. Partly out of academic interest, but also out of a desire to read. some i have in mind are those by Kazuo Ishiguro (especially Pale View of Hills and Remains of the Day), Steinbeck's The Pearl and Grapes of Wrath, Yasunari Kawabata's Sound of the Mountain, and Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness (though there is 'poking and prodding of sticks, but not centrally in that one) as one's i've read and can think of quickly. I wonder how much of Le Guin's Tales of Earthsea are this (I think Tombs of Atuan for certain). Really interested in what other novels/stories people have in mind that might fit the model to offer some out-of-the-box examples to grow storytelling into.
Those sound like plausible leads.
In the spirit of potentially offering you more, I just took a cursory glance at TH-cam to see if I could find one of the interviews to which I listened while preparing for this video or if I'd have to dig for it. I turns out I'd have to dig for it, but the robot governors of the ol' search engine *did* let me know that Le Guin's *The Lathe of Heaven* is available as a free audio book, if you seek free material for furthering your literary quest :)
OMG this is perfect for the play I'm writing now, and the play I plan to write soon.
Neat! Playwrighting was my first love in storytelling 'til I learned I was rubbish and had no knack for corralling actors, so I envy you in the nicest possible way :)
I've not heard of the Carrier Bag Theory before, but then I've not been interested in writing until comparitively recently. I was looking for an ttrpg to run that didn't seem mostly killing and looting. Running one more like Carrier Bag Theory sounds much more interesting to me than The Hero's Journey.
Very truly, I think you'll have a more enjoyable time with Carrier Bag Theory at the heart of your ttrpg than Hero's Journey.
Facts be known, longtime gamers seem to intuitively understand the concept of items and experiences informing a character's actions, then build on those :)
Great video, thanks.
I wonder if Diana Wynn-Jones' "Howl's Moving Castle" series would fit this. Sophie wants to have the hero's journey, but while she leaves home and has adventures, most of the story and conflict focuses on Sophie's inner world; her self-confidence, her feeling surrounding the curse she's under, and learning to move beyond story-book stereotypes in her perceptions of herself and others. It really is a book about learning to see others for who they truly are.
Could be. Very truly, I hadn't thought of Sophie's journey in those terms before you mentioned it, but she does make some choices that allow her to bloom where she is planted. And I'm certain it was more fun to spend one or several book's worth of discovery in *her* head than it would be in Howl's.
I'm not sure if I completely grasp it, but the first novel I thought if was John Steinbeck's East of Eden.
There is very much a central character, Adam, who's life we follow from beginning to end, but the book is- if not actually than by feeling- mostly concerned with the goings on of friends, family, things only peripherally related to Adam, that he's not even privy to. Even the narrator's memories and expierances make their way into the story. Countless stories are introduced in the novel, we meet characters who have overcome more, suffered more, learned more than him. The 'hero' goes from son, to adult, to father, to ailing old man, but the story is the essence of everything human about the American experience.
I can think of a few other stories that make their emphasis the stories surrounding/other than the hero, but East of Eden's the first one I remember overwhelming (and delighting) me to such an extent.
I might be off though, so I'm gonna go read the essay.
Good thinking. I might be off as well, so checking my figures wouldn't hurt :)
I would say Octavia Butler definitely used this method often versus hero's journey
As much as I admire Akira Kurosawa, he had a contemporary whose movies were often shown as double features with Kurosawa's. These films were by Mikio Naruse. They are almost entirely "women's films" but that category doesn't do them justice. Kurosawa is a story-teller, but Naruse chooses his situations, lets them evolve naturally, and shows you where the buck stops!
1964 film _Yearning_ is one of Naruse's last films.
Interesting. I had not heard of Mikio Naruse, and will have to keep my eye out for his work.
Gosh, "Woman's Films" cover a lot of ground. Like, Thelma and Louise, 27 Dresses, Wonder Woman, and *technically* Triumph of the Will are in that category somewhere. It makes me slightly sad that thoughtful, historically significant works can be so easily dismissed with such a label as "woman's films." Maybe patriarchy really *does* hurt everybody (?)
@@SelfWriteousness That's an old-fashioned term, of course, referring to films that addressed issues specific to women, and then in postwar Japan, the struggle for equality, freedom, and acceptance in general.
Naruse chose women's struggles as his subject for good reasons, as it seems to me, and his best screenplays were based the novels of a woman (Fumio Hayashi).
Yes, _Triumph_ is a woman's film (Leni!), but most definitely not a women's film!
Yes, patriarchy does hurt everyone, I always refer to Engels' _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_ about that. Patriarchy regulates everyone in every aspect of their life, from birth to death. The strictest conformity is required to maintain the sort of monolithic individual identity that forms the basis of a dynasty. It's the very antithesis of freedom!
I hadn't come across the notion of "carrier bag theory" before, but it's an interesting question to ask for sure, and one that I've never really sat and thought through. I'm not sure if I 100% grasp the concept, but I feel like one series that might fit this model would be Kino's Journeys (Kino no Tabi), which features a main character, but one that is primarily the vehicle for the viewer to glimpse a variety of different societies and situations. It's definitely one of my favorites, and one I'd gladly recommend, but I'm otherwise unsure if I've really come across any other series that fit the model. I'll have to think on this one, thanks!
Thank you kindly. Also, fear not. I'm not 100% sure I grasp the concept myself. I'm actually super curious if the folks who go and read Carrier Bag Theory will come bag here and let me know how silly my interpretation is. Which will be an ego blow, but it'll make me smarter :)
This is making me think about my favorite genre, horror, and how it both does and doesn't fit the two storytelling models. You can roughly divide most horror stories into either heroic fiction--this being the classic type people think of, where someone's trying to stop the monster(s), and regardless of whether they succeed, the story is generally about that hero-focused man versus evil--or, the general model I prefer, a story that focuses on a distinctly non-heroic protagonist or group of protagonists. The latter is much less an us-versus-them story: the violence is destructive and nonheroic, and the main characters almost always experience loss even if they prevail. The horror in the latter model is often much more internal, as well; even if the threat comes from outside, it's what's already in us that lets it in, as it were.
Thinking about the latter model in terms of bag theory, it's interesting to think of non-heroic horror as a moment in an unseen bag story where the lives of the affected reach a crisis point. It becomes a sort of "anti-bag" story, where the horror is so destructive and disruptive that is essentially tearing the bag open, as it were. Even if the source of the horror is external, it brings out something internal--something in the bag--that can no longer be comfortably internalized. It reveals something to the protagonist(s) that they can't turn away from. Their bag is torn open; and even if they manage to fix themselves, they will never be the same. That scar will always be there.
That's not to say that all horror stories divide neatly along those lines; most of them have elements of both models. John Langan's The Fisherman is a great example of this: both the frame story, and the extended tale that forms the bulk of the novel, have both elements of bag stories, where there is no one clear hero, and the main characters in both stories are distinctly unheroic husbands and homemakers first and foremost; and yet, the course of the story forces them both into a heroic, battle against evil storyline. But because they are decidedly not heroes, they completely fail to be the victorious conqueror that the story imposed on them is demanding them to be. There's violence aplenty, but it is disruptive and destructive; even when the "heroes" try to commit heroic violence, the results are awkward and messy at best, and at worst get their friends hurt and killed.
That, incidentally, is the kind of violence I find myself increasingly drawn to in fiction as I get older. I'm a dude, I like violence. But I find it harder and harder to just relax and go along with heroic violence; more and more, I find myself lumping violence in with the same fascination I have for the grotesque and horrifying. (Not that I don't still enjoy fascist violence sometimes. Nobody's perfect, and I love trash.) That's probably why I have found myself increasingly drawn to horror, both as a reader and a writer, as time goes on.
I dunno, maybe this was all a bit much, but Le Guin does get me thinking, even when she pisses me off ("From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" is elitist trash, and I'm kinda shocked that not only did Le Guin write it, but that it's probably her best known essay.)
Bags getting torn, mended, and carried with greater caution is a nicely poignant metaphor :) And I agree. A lot of horror isn't terribly impactful for the sake of the monster but how the characters react: if they fight, if they don't, how they carry on despite gruesome and often absurdly unfair happenings.
Open-mindedness to learning from stuff that pisses us off is healthy. Aaron Sorkin once recommended, "If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people, and if you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you." I like that - I respect that :D
This reminds me of what used to be my favorite novel as a kid, which nearly everyone seemed to hate. The first book of The Last Dragon, it was called The Fire Within. Technically fantasy, but the fantasy amounted to the faint possibility that the clay dragons this guy's landlady makes _might_ be sentient and keep the house tidy. He never even sees them move. Really, it's mostly about him being something of an older brother to the landlord's daughter and... taking care of a squirrel? By our usual metrics it's a nothingburger of a plot but that's why I enjoyed it.
Interesting. I tried to help a squirrel who was caught in fine netting this last year. He was most irate and unhelpful. If protagonist of The Last Dragon is signing up to help take care of a squirrel, he is nothing short of hero material :)
Delightful.
I have always thought it strange that we should find our characters and give them an inciting incident to get them going.
But we are going, every day, at all times, incidents present or not: there is no need of exigence in existence.
Many of my greatest joys in life came not from circumstance, but from self: wrought not by effort, but by chance of thought. Many of my highest terrors in life came not from a grand quest, with its most dreadful stakes… but from the demands of living in a day packed full of capacity to surprise.
For every deathbed confession, there are ten thousand deaths that go unseen, unheard, and unfelt.
For every newborn person’s worldly introduction replete with trumpets and steadfastery come ten million with screaming in two part harmony as their only music, or silence… on the part of one or the other participant.
There is too much of this world that heroism does not touch, nor villainy reach. This world does not come with answers easy and understanding simple.
This is a world where my choice to butter my bread brings me immense joy, and where to chart my hieroglyphic representation of a word in all languages is an exercise in immense frustration…
And I would not trade either for the simplicity and ease of heroism.
Writing about heroes isn’t fun to me; there is nothing about combat which is fun. It has a tempo, yes, a fast and blurrier pace, and violence is easy to hold our interest - being plenty inherent to humankind and our second language after smiles - but it is vapid to write; absolutely worthless.
What changes about a person amidst a fight, a battle, a war? Much of fiction tells me that the characterisation exists somewhat outside this place, that there are rules to which violence between any two persons or ten persons or twenty thousand must follow if it is to be interesting to an audience on a narrative level.
I, vehemently: disagree.
I think there is no interesting fight that does not resolve based on character evolution. Introduce a character to a fight which makes them change inside of it… or you have created a splendid and sophisticated dance, and left it meaningless.
But it goes beyond this; the journey, bah! The journey? I change ten times a day, yet I go no further with my bones than a half mile to work and back in that time! A work which will be there tomorrow, like as not the next day, until my fragile weekend where I shall
again likely not travel far or learn much, and will still
change considerably.
What is so uninteresting about mundanity? The presentation, only.
Thank you for the video essay, it was interesting to hear of this different way of looking at narratives, and thank you again for the opportunity to better understand what it is that I desire to tell in a story. I shall have much to think of in tangential lanes.
Thank you boosting the property values of my comments section with your thoughts on life and writing. It's nice when change can find us, if not slowly, perhaps in a somewhat less intense way than that experienced at either end of a flashing sword :)
@ It was fun; to watch, and to get my head screwed on.
Had I a lightsaber, my biggest question becomes: what would I even do with it? Frying my eggs with a lightsaber is top banter and all, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
Based on the nearness to my watching this video, and putting out a chapter yesterday after a long month of not writing at all: I can say doubly that I am grateful to have seen this video when I did.
I NEED to read this essay. You know, listening to this, as a fanfiction appreciator, it occurs to me that a lot of what fanfiction does often is turn a hero’s journey (canon source material) into a carrier bag story: what happens when they got home, who took care of the injuries and how did they address their trauma? How do the travel companions bide their time in times of stagnation and waiting? How do they handle the crushing mundanity and absurdity of being a parent? Can they cook? Are they likely to live an alternate life as a barista or a barber or a banker? I think the carrier bag stories exist in tons over in the hero’s shadow, along the margins, taken as unseriously as their material assumes itself to be; but they really are often some of the best stories.
That being said, do stories like “The babysitters Club” count? I guess that’s still a children’s story though. Is there a written form of soapies?? 😂
The Babysitter's Club counts. Relatable stakes, continuing process / character development, *not* all about one protagonist around which all the other characters are in orbit--
Children's stories totally count. We're all somebody's kids :)
Feedback on the amazing video: the audio volume is way too low and hard to hear; a bit of compression would go a long way. Cheers!
Cheers back - Thanks for the tip.
I've been fighting for some time to get the gain as beefy as possible without overblowing the whole thing. I'll certainly snoop and see if I can't better acquaint myself with the compression tools at hand :)
This makes me think of movies where the focus is on war veterans dealing with home life.
Right?
's not quite the same, but one of the realest, distressingly apt adaptation choices *ever* was in Prince Caspian, seeing the guy who once was Peter the high king of Narnia unable to keep from coming to bloody noses on the schoolyard. Like, "You didn't *used* to be somebody, Buddy. You *are* somebody. But it sure doesn't feel like it right now, does it?"
I've seldom wanted to hug a fictional character more.
I’m finding this audio incredibly difficult to hear. Like the voice is all consonants. It’s not just volume level; I don’t know how to describe it.
Same like its too crisp and close even though I have the volume all the way down
This is an honest question with no pressure or irony: Might you know any tricks to improve it? I am open to suggestions on technique.
honestly I wish I knew but Ive never made videos. The essay and presentation youve done here is wonderful it was just really hard to hear! @SelfWriteousness
Got it. No worries - Thank you
I don't onow if you've ever listened to UK Leguin but your voice and cadence is actually really similar
Gosh, I hope that's good. This is the second video I've made recording in a suitcase in Brazil to try to dampen the sound, so if the voiceover is acceptable, that is information that genuinely makes me happy :)
The way you describe the theory, it reminds me of fanfiction in a way? I might be misinterpreting this, but many fics tend to occur outside of their "hero's journey", either between it or after it or outside it entirely. There is still conflict, but it tends to not be shaped by plot, but more on a focus on character interaction, if that makes sense?
Like, for example, I just finished a fic where the two main characters reunite after the ending of the plot. There was a lot of discussions and reconciliation about how the plot shaped them, and what that means for their relationship. They aren't trying to reshape the world, their "world" is each other!
Thank you so much for this. I think this is why when I write, I think less about the hero's journey and think more about the basic structure put forth in Aristotle's Poetics. The Hero's Journey doesn't really fit what I want to say unless I abstract every step to the point of meaninglessness. Well, honestly, I don't really think about any of it until I'm editing. I don't think any of these things were meant to be prescriptive. They were just observations, and they give us a vocabulary to help us make sense of the stories we read and write. Well, I'm off to read The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, now.
Happy reading :) What do you write?
I think that's what a lot of fanfiction does.
The ok now what? The what happens after this? How does the happy ending look like in the long term? Or what happened before this? What is in all those beloved characters carrier bags? What do they share? With wich community? With what intent? And what of love? What is it in absence of the pointy things? What is it when they are abound? How do they reconcile both with each other?
Fanfiction might not be published to sell work, but it is still profound storytelling. (And often exactly because there is not monetary risk or gain it is without this certain bias if the easy and fast to produce heros story narrative)
Something to consider...
Indeed it is. I hadn't heard it mentioned up to now, but fan fiction would definitely be a genre for hitherto unexplored details and story potential :)
I just finished watching The White Lotus, and I think it might fit right into this theory 🙂 It’s definitely not about heroes lol but very much about people and the baggage they come to the resort with (pun intended) and what they take back home with them, for better or worse…If they get to go home, that is.
I'll buy that. The notion of *un*packing is one I'm slowly learning m'self. And some folks never acknowledge the weight of what they are carrying, so they cannot get better. I wouldn't mind if that trend changed in my lifetime.
I am surprised you didn't mention the Odyssey. It's the story of an already-actualized Hero who must return to home, hearth, and husbandry. It's the "but what happens after" for a story that the author doesn't bother to tell.
Very truly, I thought about the Odyssey while drafting my script. But it's been a long time since I spent any quality time with it, and I reckoned I might get something wrong. Glad to know the instinct was sound, if not my follow-through :)
Never heard of the Carrier Bag Theory before and I can see why it spawns so many arguements. You have to heavily abstract Hero's Journey to get most type of stories out of it and only in High Concept stories and I think ULG tries to say that in a less technical way.
You know what the worst part is? According to ULG, the *Carrier Bag Theory* essay was not written from a place of, "This is the way fictional worlds should turn" as Campbell did. It was just her written thoughts as she tried to process why heroic storytelling made no sense for the stories she wanted to tell. If *my* stream of consciousness thoughts on the world of fiction were as sharp as hers, I would cut up!
@SelfWriteousness men will write an essay like it is the word of god, women will write an essay like it is a diary entry. Truth is in the middle