“Each generation thinks it invented sex; each generation is totally mistaken”, as Robert Heinlein once said. Likewise, each generation thinks it invented cynicism, that they are the first ones mature enough to not believe in fairy-tales and face the cruel reality of the world without comforting lies. And no lie is more outrageous to a certain kind of cynic than this absurd activity called fantasy.
The meeting of harsh reality and comforting fantasy is the backbone of Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia. The book tells the story of Jess Aarons, a ten year-old boy from the Virginia countryside. Jess is the only boy among four sisters in a family struggling financially. He has a secret passion for drawing, which his distant father strongly disapproves of (“What are they teaching in that damn school?” he had asked. “Bunch of old ladies trying to turn my son into some kind of a—”), and does not seem to have any friends besides his six year-old sister May Belle.
As the book opens, Jess has a very practical, very worldly goal: to become the fastest runner in Fifth Grade. This, however, quickly crumbles when he is beaten in a race by the new girl in town, Leslie Burks.
Josh Hutcherson and AnnaSophia Robb in the 2007 movie adaptation
Leslie is everything Jess is not. Her parents are rich writers, she reads books on animal preservation, she likes The Chronicles of Narnia. She doesn’t even have a TV!
But more importantly, Leslie can create fantasy. Despite a shaky beginning, Jess soon become friends with her. One afternoon, they swing across the local creek on an old rope to explore the woods behind the farmlands. Leslie says that the woods are a magical kingdom, and that she and Jess are queen and king of it. She calls it Terabithia.
Terabithia is a “fantasy land”. But it is time for us to define precisely what we mean by this word.
Literary vs Psychological
C. S. Lewis’s An Experiment in Criticism dedicates an entire chapter to this. Lewis remarks that fantasy has both a literary and a psychological meaning. Literary fantasy is any narrative that deals with the impossible and the supernatural, like Gulliver’s Travels or The Wind in the Willows. Psychological fantasy, meanwhile, can have three meanings:
An imaginative construction which in some way or other pleases the patient and is mistaken by him for reality. […] To this kind of fantasy I need give no name because we need not mention it again. Delusion, except by some accident, is of no literary interest.
A pleasing imaginative construction entertained incessantly, and to his injury, by the patient, but without the delusion that it is a reality. A waking dream —known to be such by the dreamer — of military or erotic triumphs, of power or grandeur, even of mere popularity, is either monotonously reiterated or elaborated year by year. It becomes the prime consolation, and almost the only pleasure, of the dreamer’s life. […] I call this activity Morbid Castle-building.
The same activity indulged in moderately and briefly as a temporary holiday or recreation, duly subordinated to more effective and outgoing activities. Whether a man would be wiser to live with none of this at all in his life, we need not perhaps discuss, for no one does. Nor does such reverie always end in itself. What we actually do is often what we dreamed of doing. The books we write were once books which, in a day-dream, we pictured ourselves writing —though of course never quite so perfect. I call this Normal Castle-building.
But normal castle-building itself can be of two kinds and the difference between them is all-important. They may be called the Egoistic and the Disinterested. In the first kind the day-dreamer himself is always the hero and everything is seen through his eyes. It is he who makes the witty retorts, captivates the beautiful women, owns the ocean-going yacht, or is acclaimed as the greatest living poet. In the other kind, the day-dreamer is not the hero of the day-dream or perhaps not present in it at all. Thus a man who has no chance of going to Switzerland in reality may entertain himself with reveries about an Alpine holiday. He will be present in the fiction, but not as hero; rather as spectator. As his attention would be fixed not on himself but on the mountains if he were really in Switzerland, so in the castle-building his attention is fixed on the imagined mountains.
An Experiment in Criticism, Chapter Six
What kind of fantasy are Jess and Leslie exercising when they turn the woods into Terabithia?
Not literary fantasy. They are children playing make-believe, and this “game”, while it is played, can be as much an end-in-itself (and often involve as many talent) as proper Art. However, for Jess and Leslie Terabithia is — if I can state a paradox — only an end in itself as long as it is an end to something else; namely, being their secret place. It is a magic kingdom, but it is their magic kingdom. Bringing other people into Terabithia would ruin it as much as proclaiming out loud they are very regular, non-magic woods.
Terabithia, therefore, is a work of psychological fantasy. Not the first, delusional sense, nor the second, morbid one (not at first, anyway). It is normal castle-building, oscillating at times between the Egoistic and Disinterested subvarieties.
Jess and Leslie find themselves going more and more to Terabithia, as a way to escape their day-to-day problems. They do not know they are doing it, of course. If they did, if they tried to “fake the magic”, it would soon become a morbid castle-building. They would try to create a perfect world, and thus lose any world at all.
Once again a paradox: they can only escape to Terabithia because Terabithia is a place of danger. In their make-believe, Jess and Leslie fight giants, invaders, and terrible curses placed over them. The dangers of the imaginary world and of the real one are different, of course. For a start, obviously, the terrors of Terabithia can be forgotten as soon as the afternoon gets late and they tire of playing.
But there is another, deeper difference: the dangers of Terabithia can be fought with hope. It is easier to fight a giant than to fight a bully; which is why giant-slaying is conductive to bully-slaying. It is hard to undo the magic curse over Terabithia, but impossible to undo the meteorological curse of pouring rain; which is why enduring a curse helps enduring rain.
Terabithia is not there to teach Jess and Leslie that dragons exist. It is there to teach them that dragons can be beaten1.
Perspectives and Distortions
Terabithia is still, however, created by them, and thus bound by their limitations. And we soon see the hard boundaries castle-building, even of the normal variety, must be confined by.
Take for example Janice Avery. Janice is a very age-specific character, a physically intimidating female bully who “among all seventh graders was the one person who devoted her entire life to scaring the wits out of anyone smaller than she”.
After she makes Jess’s sister May Belle pay a fee to use the bathroom, he and Leslie decide to get back at her — a movement the book directly parallels with their giant killing. Following Leslie’s idea, they write a fake love letter from Janice’s crush, telling her to wait for him after school and tell no one. Meaning, of course, that Janice tells everyone, and is thoroughly humiliated when the boy doesn’t show up.
Victory for the giant-slayers! At least… it should be. But Jess cannot help but feel guilty:
“Poor old Janice Avery”, Jess said as they sat in the castle latter.
“Poor old Janice? She deserves everything she gets and then some!”
“I reckon.” He sighed. “But, still —”
Leslie looked stricken. “You’re not sorry we did it, are you?”
“No. I reckon we had to do it, but still—”
“Still what?”
He grinned. “Maybe I got this thing for Janice like you got this thing for killer whales.”
The “thing for killer whales” refers to a dialog previously in the book, when Leslie first says Janice Avery must be stopped; all while reading a book about killer whales, which, being an endangered species, Leslie thinks must be protected. Jess calls her out on the double standard (“You save the whales and shoot the people, huh?”).
The remark barely rises to the level of banter, but it is enough to show that (despite what TV Tropes Manic Pixie Dream Girl page might have you believe), Leslie is not an all-perfect, wise creature. She could learn a thing or two from boring, provincial Jess Aarons.
Because Janice Avery is not a giant. From her first appearance in the bus, we can see that she is somewhat of a social outcast, when a boy shouts to her “Weight Watchers is waiting for you, Janice!”. That is nothing, however, compared with what we learn later: Janice’s father physically abuses her. When Janice confides this to her supposed friends, they spread the story to the entire school, further alienating and humiliating her.
Leslie ends up going into the girl’s bathroom to comfort a crying Janice Avery, and the two become, if not friends, something close. Afterwards, Jess and Leslie keep going to Terabithia — but I doubt the giants look like Janice anymore.
“Your girl friend’s dead, and Momma though you was dead, too”
The books (in)famous ending puts the fantasy of Terabithia to a final test. How do you escape from the inescapable?
It has been raining for days, turning the creek that borders Terabithia into a fast-running river, when Jess’s teacher (and his secret crush), Miss Edmunds, invites him to an art exhibition in Washington. Jess considers inviting Leslie to come along, but chooses not to, both because he does not want to admit he was afraid of crossing the creek that day, and because he does not want to share Miss Edmunds’s attention.
He has, as the chapter name puts it, a perfect day at Washington. Even the Sun comes out as they leave the Museum. And then Jess returns home.
His family is in the living room. Quiet. His mother breaks down in tears when she sees him. Finally, they tell what happened.
Leslie, they say, tried to swing across the creek alone2. The rope broke, she hit her head, and drowned. The rest of the book will deal with coming with terms with this simple but terrible fact: Leslie Burke is dead.
Leslie’s death is the most famous part of the book, and a lot could be said about it. What interests us now, however, is how it affects the role of Terabithia as fantasy. The queen is gone, and with her the enchantment over the woods across the creek. If Terabithia will continue to be a fantasy land for Jess, it will have to be under new terms.
The first glimpse we get of the new state of fantasy in Jess’s mind is worrying: in his internal monologue, he acts as if Leslie is still alive, and at any moment she will come back and he will tell her everything about his day at Washington. Jess seems to have regressed into Delusion. Even during Leslie’s service — when the reality of her death is screamed at him — he still talks as if she is alive.
You think it’s so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well, it ain’t.
It is only when Leslie’s father tells they had her cremated that Jess breaks. Leslie is dead, and he will never see her again, not even in her coffin.
So he runs away, to the only place he knows.
Psychological fantasy has failed him. Jess cannot go back. The only path is backwards, into the numbing darkness of Delusion, or forwards — towards the last step of fantasy, Art.
Escape, at Last
His father finds him, and the two discuss whether Leslie will go to hell, since she did not believe in God.
His father pulled Jess over on his lap as though he were Joyce Ann. “There. There,” he said, patting his head. “Shhh. Shhh.”
“I hate her,” Jess said through his sobs. “I hate her. I wish I’d never seen her in my whole life.”
His father stroked his hair without speaking. Jess grew quiet. They both watched the water.
Finally his father said, “Hell, ain’t it?” It was the kind of thing Jess could hear his father saying to another man. He found it strangely comforting, and it made him bold.
“Do you believe people go to hell, really go to hell, I mean?”
“You ain’t worrying about Leslie Burke?”
It did seem peculiar, but still — “Well, May Belle said…”
“May Belle? May Belle ain’t God.”
“Yeah, but how do you know what God does?”
“Lord, boy, don’t be a fool. God ain’t gonna send any little girls to hell.”
He had never in his life thought of Leslie Burke as a little girl, but still God was sure to. She wouldn’t have been eleven until November.
It is a heartfelt moment, in which Jess is not only make peace with Leslie’s death, but with his father. Mr. Aarons was the first of Jess’s many problems, the angular stone of his previous dull life3. Their reconciliation comes in two contrasting beats, which paradoxically blends into one.
First, Mr. Aarons finally reaches out to Jess on an emotional level, pulling him over on his lap and stroking his hair, something he had not done in years. Secondly, he talks to Jess like he would talk to another man. The same movement of regression to early childhood is also the movement of growing up to manhood; the reconciliation between father and son comes with Mr. Aaron both supporting Jess and trusting he will be able to handle it on his own. Ten-year old Jess is of course not literally an adult going forwards, but he is certainly more mature than the boy we saw in the opening pages, running across the field.
Now that Jess accepted Leslie’s death, what is to be done of Terabithia? The relationship between him and his fantasy kingdom cannot go back to what was before. Terabithia — at least this iteration of it — has served its purpose.
Terabithia taught Jess that things are more than themselves. The woods can be an enchanted kingdom; just like a distant father can be a loving one. Terabithia, if you enter it from the right paths, receives from the world some of its reality, and gives back to the world some of its own magic. That’s what Leslie helped Jess learn.
Now it occurred to him that perhaps Terabithia was like a castle where you came to be knighted. After you stayed for a while and grew strong you had to move on.
With the lesson learned, the book could end with Jess leaving Terabithia behind, thankful but ready to move on. Instead, however, Jess builds a bridge across the creek and finally invites his sister May Belle to Terabithia, where he will be king and she, the new queen.
Jess has taken the private, sometimes egotistical, castle-building he and Leslie started, and turned it into something that can be shared and enjoyed by others. He has transcended psychological fantasy, and reached artistic fantasy. He has created Art, which is bigger because others can enter it.
Jess Aarons, who has been running since the first chapter, has finally escaped.
The quote “Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” is from my brother in weird initials, G. K. Chesterton… except not really. The quote was misattributed to Chesterton in the epigraph to Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. Gainman later said: "It’s my fault. When I started writing Coraline, I wrote my version of the quote in Tremendous Trifles, meaning to go back later and find the actual quote, as I didn’t own the book, and this was before the Internet. And then ten years went by before I finished the book, and in the meantime I had completely forgotten that the Chesterton quote was mine and not his. I’m perfectly happy for anyone to attribute it to either of us. The sentiment is his, the phrasing is mine.”
The actual, more wordy Chesterton quote is:
Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
Tremendous Trifles, Chapter XVII
One of the many stings of pain in a very painful scene: Terabithia was never really a secret. Their parents knew all along where they had been going. Though small amidst the utter tragedy, it is nevertheless a loss of the previous magic of the book.
The movie adaptation makes this explicit by adding the character of the Dark Master, the main foe of Terabithia, who directly parallels Mr. Aarons in the same way the giants parallel Janice Avery.