How to Work on Subtlety

I have a few works in the process with Biblical allusions. I would love to write something that makes a reader think rather than bashing them on the head with a manuscript crying, "GUESS WHAT? THIS CHARACTER REPRESENTS JESUS!!! DIDJA KNOW THAT??" Which is terribly difficult for me, since I have virtually no sense of subtlety. Does anyone have any tips on how to cultivate a more thoughtful and profound environment in a novel? I could really use some.

Apologies if there's already a forum on this. Thanks in advance.

I suspect that if you start out with the idea that you're going to write a character who represents Jesus, you've already lost the subtlety battle. I'd suggest instead that you write a character with key traits that you think are Jesus-ish, or write a story whose theme is redemption or forgiveness or whatever message you feel is Jesus-ish. Also...by and large, really "perfect" characters are apt to be as boring as snot, so writing someone who's Jesus-in-different-clothing can yield a really flat character.

Personally, if I wanted my readers to think, I'd do something other than a retread of a story/character that's already been done so thoroughly for so many centuries. You might read Tepper's "Gibbon's Decline and Fall" for an example of thought-provoking fiction. Or Shute's "Round the Bend," which actually *does* manage to ask interesting questions about Second Comings and so on.

I've said this on other threads (see fans and critics) and I'll reiterate here: look at the characterization of Joshua (Jesus) in "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal".

Ultra-condensed summary: The book is Jesus' life narrated by his best friend Biff. Jesus is referred to as Joshua throughout the book.

Joshua, in the book, is a technically perfect character, but the author (Moore) has a real genius for characterization, because he was also an interesting and realistic one. The trick of it was to give him actual human character traits: Joshua had pet peeves, lost his temper, played pranks on occasion, and loved silly puns. Did this make him any less perfect? No, because he was master of all of these flaws the entire novel.

This relates to your question, but now I'll get directly on topic: subtlety

Let's look at three different Christian analogy stories here (all fantasy). The three are The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Harry Potter.

Let's start with Chronicles: The Narnia books are children's stories. As such, Aslan is basically Jesus in different clothing, complete with his death and resurrection ending a long winter and ushering in a new age. Very obvious stuff.

But the books still worked because the focus of the books was not on Aslan, per se, but on the other characters and how they reacted to Aslan and the events around them. Aslan could be that very obvious Christ type as long as we don't make him dominate the plot in such a way that he takes important time away from characters with real conflicts and flaws.

So one to do it is to make the Christianity comparisons really obvious but compensate by having the characterization of all of your other characters down pat so that their reactions to the events around them are interesting and believable. We might know that the Christ type will eventually die and be resurrected, but we shouldn't know how everybody else will react to it until it actually happens.

Now let's look at Harry Potter. Harry himself is an obvious Christ type in the last book. He dies to save everybody himself but essentially comes back from the "dead" to ultimately bring down Voldemort.

How did Rowling make this work? Well, for starters, she made Harry a very believable character. He was human with flaws and who made mistakes just like everybody else. But she also made it very clear-even inevitable-that once Harry was confronted with the choice of dying to save others, he'd take it. So even though we saw where this was going, we believed it because we believed in Harry.

It also worked because Rowling didn't just rehash the Bible with her plot. She had a complex, tightly woven plot that focused on lots of things besides parallels to her religion. We weren't reading Harry Potter for a religious message, we were reading it for the great characters and tightly woven plot and moments of brilliant writing that shine through.

Rowling was just smart enough to set her plot up in a way that the subtle references to Christianity (as well as the more overt one at the end) evolved naturally from the rest of the series. So that's another way you could work it.

Finally, there's the most difficult way of doing it: The "Lord of the Rings" (LotR) method.

LotR is, to put it in as clear a way as I can, brilliant. The comparisons in it to Christianity are very subtle yet very profound at the same time. How does Tolkien do it, though?

Well, the immediate and obvious parallel is Gandalf representing Christ (the savior who came back from the dead). And this works on some level, but it's also only one aspect, and a small one at that. In fact, the Christ parallel almost gets lost in the shuffle, especially since Aragorn, the returning King, is also a Christ parallel.

So there's one method-Tolkien "divided up" the comparisons to Christ by creating two individual, distinct characters who each represented different aspects of Jesus.

Then there are Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, and this is where it gets really subtle and brilliant. Tolkien is not actually making a straight out Biblical allusion here. Rather, he is making a point about Christian theology-how forgiveness and salvation are bound up with each other and about how, in the end, if you show others love it will be enough to overcome your failings.

This is all portrayed dramatically when Frodo decides to spare Gollum out of pity. This seems to backfire horribly when Gollum betrays them both to Shelob and Frodo is captured, but of course we know Sam rescues Frodo and escapes.

Meanwhile, the quest is hopeless. Frodo can't win. Even if his strength holds out and they make it to the crack of doom, he does not have the willpower to cast into the fire. He is simply not strong enough, because man has a weakened nature.

And then Gollum shows up, and he bites of Frodo's finger, ring and all, and is cast into the fire. Frodo is saved. Why? Not because of any special power of his own, but because he showed mercy to a pitiable creature. Without having shown love to him, Frodo could never have completed the quest.

To sum up, Tolkien makes his way not only through Biblical allusions but also to Christian philosophy and theology. He presents Christ to the readers, but he presents Christ through the lens of various real characters, not as one single perfect entity. In other words, he subtly points out that the best qualities of every unique character are the things that make Jesus Jesus, and he makes this point by making small references throughout.

He also incorporates some brilliant theology into the story through the characters of Frodo and Sam. So to present Christian morality to the reader it doesn't necessarily need to be connected to an obvious Biblical story (certainly Sam and Frodo's march matches no Biblical tale in any sort of real detail).

Instead, just show your view of the world through your characters. If your characters are heroes who share your philosophy, and if your philosophy is Christian, that should be enough to get your message out to readers.

I hope you found this small essay enjoyable and helpful.

It's possible to read Christianity into--or impose it on--virtually anything, but I wouldn't assume that either Tolkien or Rowling meant for those messages to be implicit in their works. In fact, I think that one might advance the notion that neither LotR nor Harry Potter is particularly Christian, and that some of the "Christ-like" behaviors owe more to the much older Sacred King/given sacrifice motif than to the Joshua-come-lately figure of Christ. Candidly, I think that LotR draws much of its strength from its roots in pre-Christian sagas and mythology.

Sooo...if you're citing those things as successful subtle Christ stories, I'd have to say they missed the mark for me.

(Also, I might be leery of assigning all positive virtues to Christ and then describing any character's good qualities as "Christ-like" so as to designate them Christ figures--that really renders the whole concept of a Christ figure pretty much meaningless.)

I think the point is still arguable. The fact that Tolkien himself calls the religious influences *unconscious* initially says a great deal. Was his world-view informed by his religion? Sure, but that wasn't the only influence. Quite honestly, I have never seen Gandalf as a Christ figure, nor even--JRRT's declaration notwithstanding--an "angel." He's far more Odin than angel. Similarly, JRRT and Christians generally might want to identify some of the elements of his story as "Christian," but the truth is that gods and heroes have been questing, healing, sacrificing, suffering, dying, hanging on trees, and transforming for millennia--and JRRT knew *those* stories too. These are story elements that predate Christianity, and nothing that JRRT does puts a uniquely Christian stamp on them; LotR can be read, understood, and appreciated with no reference to Christ or the Bible.

Here's a re-statement of Tolkien's quote: "I wrote a huge honking epic story, and then I remembered I was a Christian and noticed that parts might be considered Christian in content or inspiration, so I went back and rewrote to make it more like that, only not too obviously."
I'm not at all convinced that this was a man who meant to write a "fundamentally religious" work; I think it's as likely that he leapt to turn it into one. And I think the quote is what he wants to believe about the process; the jury is out on how accurately it reflects what happened.

And honestly, I don't think anything in the text (of LotR) makes it a specifically *Christian* (as opposed to generally "moral" or religious) work. The actions of the characters that you're pointing out as particularly "Christ-like" are simply decent men doing their best in a bad situation, exactly as thousands of young men were doing all around JRRT during The Great War. He didn't need to look to the Bible for that inspiration; he could find it all around him every day.

Similarly, Rowling's statement that there are "religious parallels" (esp. in HP7) fails to convince. There are "religious parallels" everywhere, in everything, if you look through that set of spectacles. (The cynical flip side of that, of course, would be the notion that humans have simply incorporated into their religions all of the Big Stories, the ones that stir them.) In addition, Rowling's works are arguably a *huge* collection of cliches, tropes, and recycled settings, themes and storylines; it would be amazing if some weren't at least vaguely "religious."


I do think there's also an interesting tangential question, though, about the extent to which any novel written in a modern Western nation is going to be influenced by an underlying cultural context which includes Christian material and attitudes. It's very rare indeed to read something that stands entirely apart from the context of (relatively modern) Christianity, and quite a startling experience.

Good discussion. That said, I'm really not into writing another book length response, so I'll make this my closing comment:

I honestly thought the Christian parallels in Harry Potter were pretty overt, especially with the Biblical quotes.

As for LotR, I knew Tolkien was a Catholic and I knew he converted C.S. Lewis so for me it was quite easy for me to see the Christian philosophy underlying Tolkien's tale. It was always hard for me to pin down exactly what they were, but I suppose a large part of Tolkien's genius is that we don't know exactly why it's genius. It just is.

I felt like that's the way it was with Christian theology in his books, so it's not quite as if those essays or quotes convinced me of anything. More like I read them and said "Yes! That's it! It all makes sense now!"

It also helps that I too am Catholic and can spot a lot of Catholicity in Tolkien's writing as well.