Q2: Shardik the God
Shardik the bear is at times described as a god, and at other times as a manifestation of God, where God is spoken of separately. Shardik himself never resembles much more than a bear distinguished only by his large size and seemingly random actions. His influence and meaning seems to be mostly assigned to him by, well, basically everyone in the setting – even Bel-ka-Trazet, who just thinks he’s a bear, but a significant one. What, if anything, do you think Adams was trying to say about the role of God and his prophets in our world?
Comments
You're right - it's kind of deity by consensus! If enough people in a particular area agree that X is a god or Y is a prophet, then so be it! In passing, the TM folk used to quantify this and reckoned that once you had enough of a fraction of the population of any defined region practicing their stuff, you'd get a snowball effect and it would become self-sustaining.
There is in Shardik, I think, a distinction between authentically spiritually-minded prophets (eg the Tuginda) and folk that are just out of their depth and carried along (eg Kelderek), but there seems little room in the book for the idea of an authentic spiritual dimension to the world - seemingly any non-material dimension is only there because of projection from people, verging on a kind of mass hallucination.
So I guess Adams has a pretty low view of religion and spirituality! Which for me was a definite detraction from the book - I like a book better if it has a more nuanced view of such things rather than the (to me) tired old "they're all either charlatans or deluded" trope.
Richard nails it. Adams' religion is for idiots or con men. It is a bunch of people interpreting the GM's dice rolls.
Yes, Shardik is perhaps better described as an instrument of fate than as a god. There certainly isn't much of a moralistic quality in the book, apart from some comment on slavery as an instrument of religion, and that not very nuanced. My edition of the book did not have an introduction, which Richard's apparently did. There is a brief introductory statement note from Adams: "Lest any should suppose that I set my wits to work to invent the cruelties of Genshed, I say here that all lie within my knowledge and some - would they did not - within my experience." Which I take to mean that Adams had some personal experience of slavery or abuse, either personally or through his work, and that perhaps his main intent was not that religion is senseless, but that abuse in the name of religion is senseless.
The descriptions of Shardik's ravaged and emaciated body, as well as the scene where he is being honoured in death, certainly felt like he was taking a bit of Aslan but rewriting him for his own story where the redemption doesn't come directly from the beast/god but from the humans who respond to Shardik's actions and create a whole new way forward for their society based on that. It took me down a number of roads in my head,
Certainly, as mentioned, it was a bit on the nose with it's views on religion and faith, but I thought Adams did an ok job demonstrating that faith/religion/belief, while being a possible tool for suffering and destruction, can also be used to reform things into something else that is hopeful - even when led by the exact same person in both cases!
Kelderek needing to experience the horrors of slavery first hand to truly be impacted by it (as opposed to the detachment from the act he had as ruler), tracks well with my own time spent engaged in faith communities (for both good and bad!)
> The descriptions of Shardik's ravaged and emaciated body, as well as the scene where he is being honoured in death, certainly felt like he was taking a bit of Aslan but rewriting him for his own story where the redemption doesn't come directly from the beast/god but from the humans who respond to Shardik's actions and create a whole new way forward for their society based on that. It took me down a number of roads in my head,
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That's an interesting analogy with Aslan which hadn't occurred to me
I also hadn't thought of Aslan, but this rings true.