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Stereotypes of a Fantasy Novel Protagonist

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Submitted By adeniztan
Words 2081
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Ada Deniz Tan
Dr. Aslı Değirmenci
IED 134
20 May 2015
Stereotypes of a Fantasy Novel Protagonist Fantasy novels are very popular between not only children and teenagers, but also people of all ages. There are so many fan of the fantasy novels, films and television series of them are produced and almost each other was in vogue usually at young population when they are released. As fantasy novels have gained a great population and so many example of them released in time, they have become obviously an extended part of world literature. Moreover, they have so many genres, subgenres, rules, aims and stereotypes like other types of literary works. In fantasy novels, it can be said that elements and genres are usually similar, however, characteristics of protagonists, which means main character, and other characters are sometime strictly differs between themselves. I read the book The Magicians by Lev Grossman, the first book of Magicians trilogy, one of New York Times Bestseller books, which is published in 2009. In this research paper, my aim is to analyze stereotypes of a fantasy novel protagonist with analyzing the characteristics of Quentin Coldwater from the novel The Magicians.

Lev Grossman was born in 26 July 1969, in America. He graduated from Literature
Department of Harvard University in 1991 and has worked as a journalist and a cult critic for
Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly and so many other newspapers, magazines and even websites. It can be said that he is a versatile journalist, he has not only written articles about literature, but he has also written about viral games, consumer technology and web comics. Besides he is a well-regarded journalist, he is also a popular fantasy fiction novelist. He is the author of books Warp, which was published in 1997,
Warex , which was published in 2004, and The Magicians, The Magician King and The
Magician’s Land, which were chronologically published in 2009, 2011 and 2014, they have become a trilogy. Style of Lev Grossman can be distinguished from other fantasy fiction novels.
The most remarkable point in Lev Grossman’s phraseology is his fidelity to real life in his novels.
In his book The Magicians, he tells the adventures of Quentin Coldwater and his friends with concentrating on their emotions, complex feelings, changeable thoughts and relationships between each other with looking from perspective of a third person instead of bringing supernatural phenomena, incredible stories of humanized animals, plants and imaginary absurd monsters into the forefront. Furthermore, he stick to the geography of the world when he gives the locations of imaginary places in the book. His serious and realistic style can be clearly understood from his article ‘‘Finding My Voice in Fantasy’’ :
‘‘I wrote fiction for 17 years before I found out I was a fantasy novelist. Up till then I always thought I was going to write literary fiction, like Jonathan Franzen or Zadie Smith or Jhumpa Lahiri. But I thought wrong. . . .
Fantasy is sometimes dismissed as childish, or escapist, but I take what I am doing very, very seriously.’’ (2014)
Fantasy novels depend on fantasy fiction. Fantasy fiction is a narrative which is based on imagination. At first appearance, supernatural phenomena, magic, imaginary places and even worlds, fantastic creatures and monsters seem as the most essential elements in fantasy fiction like other popular genres of fiction. But the essential components that makes a fiction novel a complicated fantasy fiction are a bit different. The major elements of a fantasy fiction are ancient history and language. Like the others genres of fiction, fantasy fiction takes its characteristics from ancient history. If you are a strict follower of fantasy novels, you can clearly see that the lifestyles of society in imaginary worlds, countries, or cities, architecture of the places which is defined on novel and almost backgrounds of every supernatural phenomena are based on historical events, even most of the imaginary creatures and symbolic things are based on mythological history of different ancient societies, ethnic groups and religions. In the novel
The Magicians, the main character Quentin Coldwater goes to Brakebills University which depends on education of magic. When Quentin Coldwater and the other attendants of Brakebills
University learn magic, they first start to learn the medieval history of magic from ancient literary works before they become a real magic student. In addition to that, in The Magicians, magic tricks can be made with saying some words in a rhythmical order from so many languages from old and modern ages. Quentin Coldwater and the other attendants of Brakebills University also learn medieval English, Latin language, old Dutch and Estonian language.
On the contrary to general view, fantasy fiction is not an imitated genre of popular culture fiction, it has a background of history, culture, literature, linguistics and elements like stereotype and protagonist. Two essential parts of literary works ‘stereotype’ and ‘protagonist’ are actually very close to each other and they are both essential components for themselves. Stereotype means a character or a characteristic which is symbolized by a character that represents a society, a belief or a gender. In old types of literary works, every literary work has an aim to give a direct message or symbolize a thought and notion which is believed to be truth or wrong.
In progress of giving the message, two or more opposite groups are used in the literary work.
At this time, stereotypes become a part of the action. They start a conflict between each other and they can never find a middle way because each character has a strict loyalty to their unchangeable characteristics. Protagonist is also one of the sides in conflict. Protagonist means the main character in a narrative and the message is given by way of protagonist.
In today’s literature, characteristics and messages has been started to be given more in detail. Every character including protagonist can carry more than one message or symbolize more than one notion. Moreover, raising a conflict with making characters the symbols of different views has been no longer a rule. However, it does not refer to that there is not a need for stereotypes in literature anymore. Stereotypes has started to be used for explaining the characteristics and the characteristics are usually similar according to genres.
For example, when we look at the protagonists of modern fantasy fiction novels, we see that most of them have some problems with the order of life. Quentin Coldwater have many problems too. However, his life story is not as tragic as story of Harry Potter. He only lacks of self-reliance a little bit, have a careless family and he is upset for being rejected by Julia, who has been his love since he was in primary school. These are ordinary problems that can be happened to every teenager. He is a very intelligent young man, he is very successful as academic and he has developed himself as intellectualness. On the other hand, to get to the main point, his fancifulness is the actual reason for having a problem with the order of life. He is impressed a lot from the fantasy fiction novel, which is real only in the novel
The Magicians, Fillory and Further by Christopher Plover. This is a series including 5 books which tells the adventures of kids of Chawtin family in the imaginary Fillory country.
He often thinks that his life is monotonous and aimless, so he want to live in a place like Fillory. He is also interested in magic and he is successful at doing some basic tricks with coins. However, living a type of life he imagines is not so possible while he prepares for university exam and lives in Brooklyn. Then he goes to Brakebills University and his life is completely changed. He starts to live away from his family, his best friend James and his love Julia and he starts a new life which is very different from his monotonous and ordinary life. He is going to be a real magician like in his dreams, moreover, it is a door which opens to his dream world. In his new life in Brakebills, he becomes a definitely different Quentin Coldwater. He becomes a social, brave, emotional and more and more day dreamer person unlike the old Quentin who lacks of self-confidence, behaves strictly reasonable in an irritating way and feel as separated from the other people. After he graduate, he goes to the Manhattan to live with Janet, Eliot, Josh and his girlfriend Alice, who are his friends from Brakebills University. In Brakebills, they were grouped whose name is
Physical Children (97). They were attendants of Department of Physical Magic, which is defined as the hardest magic department in Brakebills University. On the contrary to that fact, after they graduated and started to live in Manhattan, they become stolid and sybarite people as most of other ordinary teenagers in our day that they totally hate at first. Apart from Alice,
Quentin, Janet, Eliot and Josh almost give up their interest in magic and they started to a life that in which there is nothing except for drinking alcohol, using drugs and going to parties. It seems that that they have lost their intellectual personalities. When they continue their rounder life, Penny abruptly come up a morning and say the others that they can go to
Fillory with help of a magical button. (254). Idea of going to the Fillory is a great idea for Quentin, because it is the biggest dream of him in whole of his life and he thinks that he can regain the joy of his life which he lost. He could not find the life which he wants neither in the Brakebills University nor in Manhattan. After they go to Fillory, they have so exciting adventures. When the book is about to finish, Quentin solves the disputes of Fillory that the story of Fillory and Further is actually a true story and totally real from characters to plots. Mystery of Fillory was the biggest wondering in life of Quentin, however, nevertheless, he is not satisfied. Then he comes back from Fillory and starts to work in a company as an accountant. Although Quentin decides to keep himself away from magic after the unbelievable adventures and death of his love Alice in Fillory, at the final of the book, Eliot, Janet and Julia come to Quentin and when they offer him to return to Fillory, Quentin accepts. To sum up, when we analyze the story of Quentin Coldwater, we can clearly see the three outstanding characteristics of stereotypes of a fantasy novel protagonist. First, they have problems with anything which is ordinary. In my opinion, because they are large-minded and they make looking from different perspectives a habit , they treat in this way. On the other hand, although they seem as fearful and unconfident, they are actually brave as they are always capable of making radical decisions without fear. Finally, it must be the major point and might be the worst, they are never satisfied.
The anthem of The Magicians is based on the dissatisfaction of Quentin Coldwater.
I aimed to give information about stereotypes of a fantasy novel protagonist with analyzing The Magicians by Lev Grossman. I aimed to impose the anthem of my research paper in every part of it and I strived for keeping the fidelity to the structure of my paper.
I started to tell from the basic components of my topic, I gave detailed information about fantasy fiction, stereotype, protagonist and author Lev Grossman with receiving helps from variety sources. With gathering the information and analyzes from The Magicians together,
I aimed to convey my research which includes known and unknown information about stereotypes of a fantasy novel protagonist in detail.

Works Cited
Attebery, Brian. The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin.
Bloomington: Indiana UP, (1980): 14. Web. 20 May 2015.
Donohue, Keith. "Post-Harry Potter, The Spell Is Cast." The Washington Post, 1 Aug. 2009.
Web. 23 May. 2015
Grossman, Lev. ‘‘Finding My Voice in Fantasy’’ The New York Times, 17 Aug. 2014.
Web. 23 May 2015
Grossman, Lev. The Magicians. New York: Viking/Penguin, 2009.
Kois, Dan. ‘‘Further Adventures of a Magician from Brooklyn’’ The New York Times,
26 Aug. 2011. Web. 19 May 2015.
Tolmie, Jane. ‘‘Medievalism and the Fantasy Heroine’’ Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 15.
Routledge, (July 2006): 145-158. Web. 24 May 2015.

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