highlands, like the peak of Mt Horn, for human beings;
lowlands and sea surfaces for Tigeries;
undersea, in the Seas of Yang and Yin, for vaz-Siravo.
An orphaned child without adult control finds freedom in an alien culture and an exotic environment:
"Diana...had passed her life among Tigeries and Seafolk."
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 214.
(The title is ironic because Diana Crowfeather is Dominic Flandry's illegitimate daughter.)
When Diana's mother died in an accident and the man who had been living with her wanted to put Diana in the Navy school on the neighboring planet, the girl ran away because:
"...Tigeries were hunting through hills where wind soughed in waves across forests, and surf burst under three moons upon virgin islands." (ibid.)
The authorities could not find her, then forgot. Thus, her freedom was complete. Comparable characters are:
Tabitha Falkayn brought up by Ythrians on Avalon;
Rudyard Kipling's white orphan, Kim, evading missionaries and charitable societies in order to live as he wants in "'This great and beautiful land...'" (Kim, London, 1944, p. 193) of India;
Modesty Blaise struggling for survival in post-World War II environments.
Modesty's freedom was not chosen and her surroundings were threatening, not exotic, but, like the others on this list, she had what it took to survive and succeed.
Another list of similar characters is those brought up, in legend or in fiction, by animals:
Romulus;
Mowgli;
Tarzan;
Zantar (a comic strip parody of Tarzan, brought up by lions).
I do not think that Poul Anderson has any character on this second list?
3 comments:
Hi, Paul!
You asked which of the stories of Poul Anderson comes closest to showing a character being raised by animals. After some thought I decided that "Earthman, Beware!" came closest to that (first pub. by SUPER SCIENCE STORIES in 1951; then repub. in STRANGERS FROM EARTH, Ballantine Books, 1961). The protagonist, Joel Weatherfield, is actually a child stranded on Earth as an infant belonging to another humanoid race so far advanced from mankind that we would seem animals to Joel's people.
Joel managed, by his genius, to build a device that would make clumsy contact with his own race, and succeeded. But the adults who came to investigate told him it was too late, that his mind and body had set and "hardened" in ways which made it impossible for Joel to rejoin his own race. The analogy of feral humans raised by animals on our Earth was used. Unless rescued in time, it was almost impossible for such humans to truly rejoin mankind.
I also thought of Skafloc, kidnaped by the elves as an infant from his family and raised in Faerie, as we see in THE BROKEN SWORD. But the elves were neither animals nor impossibly remote and advanced from mankind to be beyond all understanding or contact by humans.
Sean
Sean,
Joel Weatherfield was not quite what I was thinking of but interesting and relevant, nevertheless.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
And "Earthman, Beware!" was the closest I could find in the works of Poul Anderson with the theme of the human child raised by aninals. But nothing truly like Kipling's Mowgli or Burroughs Tarzan can be found in Anderson's works.
Another story by Anderson, "Ther Martyr," also touches on the idea of mankind making contact with a vastly more advanced race. To say nothing of the shocker ending!
Sean
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