li1298

Hero

The hero is Darren Shan (which is a pseudonym, not the author’s actual name), whose life as a schoolboy changes drastically after going to a freak show and becoming a vampire’s assistant.

Plot Summary

The main character is a boy called Darren Shan, who goes to see a freak show with his friend Steve. One of the acts has a poisonous spider – Darren is obsessed with spiders, and steals it, and it bites his friend. Darren is forced to bargain with the owner of the spider – who is a vampire called Mr. Crepsley - for an antidote, and the price he has to pay is to become the vampire’s assistant. This enrages his friend, who asked to be a vampire’s assistant earlier, but was refused and told his blood was evil, so Steve swears revenge on Darren for taking his destiny.

The series then follows Darren’s life as a vampire’s assistant, introduces him to the vampire clan and their enemies the vampaneze. A war erupts with the vampaneze, a very powerful man called Mr. Tiny makes a prophecy about the war – there’s a Vampaneze Lord (who later turns out to be Steve), and three vampires will have a chance to fight him and save their clan (those being Darren, Mr. Crepsley and a prince called Vancha March) but they must take their opportunities. Darren later discovers that either he or Steve will become a figure called the Lord of the Shadows depending on who wins the war, and the world will be a barren wasteland. He decides to fight his destiny and ensure that it can’t happen by ensuring that both himself and Steve die.

Departure

Call to Adventure

There are two interpretations for this one, I think. The call to adventure in the series may be from the flyer for the Cirque du Freak that the characters find at the beginning of the show, as ultimately it is that flyer that starts the whole thing off and leads to the chain of events that occurs. This is most likely and what I’d go for, really. It could also be a bit later on when Mr. Crepsley basically demands that Darren leave his life behind to become his assistant, which is a bit more direct.

Refusal of the Call

Darren takes the deal to save Steve, but he initially refuses to go along with Mr. Crepsley as his assistant. Unlike Steve, it’s not something that Darren ever wanted. He just wants to live his normal life, but he realises that he can’t control himself and his bloodlust and may just end up hurting people he cares about so agrees to go with Mr. Crepsley in the end.

Supernatural Aid

The only thing I can really think of for this one is Mr. Crepsley as the magical helper, who essentially gives Madam Octa (the poisonous spider) to Darren to look after (he despises her for getting him into this situation, so he isn’t exactly thrilled). She does become useful later on, so I’ll say that covers this step.

Crossing of the First Threshold

I’d say this is Mr. Crepsley and Darren going back to join the Cirque du Freak. Darren had been there once as an audience member, but it’s a completely different life being there as part of the Cirque and into a world which knows of vampires, knows what he is, and where unusual people are par for the course.

Belly of the Whale

We’re actually skipping forward a few books here, but I’d say the true Belly of the Whale of this series is when Darren first steps into Vampire Mountain. It’s the first time he really steps right into the world of vampires, whom Mr. Crepsley hadn’t told him much about, and everything there, from the people, the customs etc. is completely unfamiliar to him. At this stage he has totally left behind all familiarity.

Initiation

I’m going to reorder these a little bit, as they don’t all happen in the order listed.

Road of Trials

This one’s easy – there’s a whole book devoted to it! (As you might have guessed from the titles, that would be Trials of Death. This is also why I’m writing about the series as a whole rather than an individual book – because the books are short and really the whole story goes over the course of the books.) Because Mr. Crepsley blooded Darren (who is only a child), he could get into a lot of trouble. The Princes get persuaded not to punish Mr. Crepsley, but to allow Darren to prove his worth, so they declare he must pass the Trials of Initiation – normally used for people becoming Generals. People either get through them, or they die in the process. There are five trials that he must pass. He passes several, and then against the blooded boars it looks certain that he’s going to die, so Harkat steps in and rescues him. This is a huge violation of the rules and could lead to Darren being executed for enticing people to help him (although it was Harkat’s own decision).

Atonement With the Father

This could be just about any scene featuring Mr. Tiny! Most likely, I’d say Mr. Tiny’s visit to Vampire Mountain when he explains that the night of the Vampaneze Lord is at hand and that three hunters have a chance of stopping him – Darren, Mr. Crepsley, and he refuses to name the other since they aren’t present. (It later turns out to be Vancha.)

Meeting With the Goddess

I suppose you could argue for Darren meeting Debbie for this one? He first meets Debbie as a child while travelling with Mr. Crepsley and they have a sort of mutual crush on each other, but it never really develops. They later meet again, when Debbie is an adult, but since at this stage Darren is physically only a teenager (half-vampires aging more slowly than humans) it also doesn’t really go anywhere… but he does care for her a lot.

Woman as Temptress

After Mr. Crepsley dies in the War of the Scars, Darren gets very depressed and mopes around a bit. Around the same time, Harkat is told that if he ever wishes to find out who he was, the opportunity is now – and Darren decides to tag along, because his going would greatly increase the chance of Harkat surviving on his quest. (NB: Harkat is a Little Person, a soul brought back from the dead and put in a stitched together body to perform certain tasks for Mr. Tiny. He has no memory of his previous life, and no idea who he was.) This is The Lake of Souls, and it breaks entirely from the main quest for a little subquest about Harkat’s identity.

Ultimate Boon

This is the one that I am finding very difficult to pick out. The goal of the quest really is to destroy the Vampaneze Lord. I suppose that it’s also to prevent the Lord of the Shadows being created… but it’s not really something physical in this story?

Apotheosis

This one’s very simple – Darren’s decision to let himself die when he kills Steve, so that neither of them can become the Lord of the Shadows and create the hellish future that he witnessed in The Lake of Souls.

Return

Again, I’m shuffling a few of these around.

Master of Two Worlds

Darren has always really become the master of two worlds – as a half-vampire, he is half human, and half a vampire, and the central part of the series is him coming to take part in both worlds, before towards the end of the series where it’s threatening for him to become a full vampire where he would lose the ability to straddle both worlds the way he has enjoyed doing.

Refusal of the Return

There isn’t a refusal of the return after apotheosis, really – since Darren doesn’t have a choice in what happens next. I suppose you could argue that there is one earlier, when Darren is reluctant to return to his home town – since he, and everything there, has changed so much, and ultimately he’s barely aged and might be recognised (and he’s supposed to be dead).

Rescue From Without

After Darren dies, his soul swims around in the lake of souls for hundreds of years in torment, before Evanna fishes him out. Mr. Tiny has agreed to allow it. Darren is to be revived as a Little Person, but because Mr. Tiny is so angry with his getting around his destiny, he does not have the ability to speak and the body is very temporary.

Magic Flight

This could be Evanna secretly handing Darren’s diaries to him, and him smuggling them out. (The series of books are intended to be Darren’s diaries.) Darren has a plan to escape his destiny again.

Crossing of the Return Threshold

As a Little Person, Darren gets transported back in time to the time frame of the first book, when he first went to visit the Cirque du Freak (it’s established that this can happen – Harkat the Little Person also existed in the same time frame as the person he was). Darren is one of the Little People that his younger self saw all that time ago. He interrupts Darren’s eavesdropping on Steve by terrifying him – this will prevent the events of the rest of the series from happening with Darren. The events will still come to pass roughly, but with a different person – he wants to free himself from his destiny. Little Person Darren gives his diaries to Mr. Tall to send along to the adult him in the future, for publishing reasons, with the very end part filled in by Evanna (but in Darren’s voice, since she is very powerful and knew what he thought and experienced). That is what he decided to do with the knowledge of what would come to pass.

Freedom to Live

This is twofold here. In the changed timeline, the child Darren will be free to live an ordinary life, without vampires, wars and death because of the actions of the Little Person Darren. After Little Person Darren had changed the past, his very temporary body started to wear down and fall apart, and then his soul would be free to go to Paradise rather than being endlessly trapped in the Lake of Souls once more. So one has the freedom to live in peace, and the other has the freedom to die in peace.

Final Thoughts

I have had a lot of fun doing this project. I knew going into it that The Saga of Darren Shan would probably follow along with Campbell’s idea quite closely, since it was the first thing that really came to mind when I was reading the first few lessons. Still, I was surprised at how closely it followed it. Every now and then I thought “hmm, don’t think exists in here,” followed minutes later with “oh wait, maybe it’s this.” I found it quite hard at first how, despite the straight forward sounding names of some of the events, they can actually be metaphors and actually come out as something completely different than what it sounds like it should be.

Some of the events had entire books devoted to them, like Trials of Death. Of course, with writing about a 12 book series there’s a lot of events left out here that occurred between each of these points, but I suppose when it comes down to it this is really the main plot points. I was really interested in some of the points such as Apotheosis; I genuinely didn’t think this would be part of Campbell’s theory, but it fitted so well and it explained to me a lot about why that wasn’t the end of the series and events still occurred afterwards. The story wasn’t quite done!

From what I’ve seen, the Monomyth lends itself quite nicely to many fantasy stories. I can certainly see elements in those sort of stories, but I’d be very curious about how well it would apply to other stories, that perhaps aren’t so much the story of heroes. But then, if we consider a protagonist of a story to be a hero… then it would be interesting to see how this applies to other genres of books, or even other cultures (I’m very curious how manga would hold up to this, for instance).