Transcript
Speaker: Hello listeners. Spoiler warning. We will be spoiling the book Hogfather by Terry Pratchett. And we additionally recommend that this podcast not be listened to by children. Death found to his amazement that dealing with the cue was very enjoyable. Hardly anyone had ever been pleased to see him before. Next. And what's your name, little? He hesitated, but rallied and continued. Person?
Speaker: Navi knobs, hog father? Said Navi. Was it him or was this me he was sitting on a lot bonier than it should be? His buttocks argued with his brain and were sat on.
Speaker: And suddenly Navi found he had no control at all of his tongue, of its own accord gripped by a terrible compulsion, it said. Yes. He struggled for self -possession as the great voice went on. So I expect to want a present for a good one, a good few, a good male.
Speaker: Aha, I got you banged her rights. You'll be coming along with me, my old chummy. I bet you don't remember the cellar at the back of the shoelace makers and old cobblers, eh? All those hog watch mornings with a little hole in my world, eh? The words rose in Navi's throat, but were overridden by something ancient before they reached his voice box, and to his amazement were translated into... yes? Something nice.
Speaker: Yes. There was hardly anything left of Nabi's conscious will now. The world consisted of nothing but his naked soul and the Hogfather, who filled the universe.
Speaker: And you will, of course, be good for another year. The tiny remnant of basic knobbiness wanted to say, er, how exactly do you define good, mister? Like, suppose there was just some stuff that no one would miss, say. Or, for instance, say, a friend of mine was on patrol sort of thing and found a shopkeeper had left his door unlocked at night. I mean, anyone could walk in, right? But suppose this friend took one or two things.
Speaker: Sort of like, you know, a gratuity, and then called the shopkeeper out and got him to lock up. That counts as good, does it? Good and bad were, Tanabi's way of thinking, entirely relative terms. Most of his relatives, for example, were criminals. But again, this invitation to philosophical debate was ambushed somewhere in his head by sheer dread of the big beard in the sky. Yes, he squeaked.
Speaker: Oh, yes. The hogfather reached into his sack and pulled out an awkwardly shaped present wrapped in festive hogwash paper, which, owing to some slight confusion on the current hogfather's part, had merry ravens on it. Corporal Knobs took it in nervous hands. Thank you.
Speaker: Now I wonder what you would like.
Speaker: Corporal Knobbs slid down gratefully and barged his way through the crowds, stopping only when he was fielded by constable visit. What happened? What happened? I couldn't see. I don't know, mumbled Knobby. He gave me this. What is it? I don't know. He clawed at the raven bedecked paper. This is disgusting, this whole business, said constable visit. It's the worship of idols.
Speaker: It's a genuine burly and strong -in -the -arm double -action triple cantilever crossbow with a polished walnut stuck in engraved silver facings! A crass commercialization of a date which is purely of astronomical significance, said Visit, who seldom paid attention when he was in mid -denounce. If it is to be celebrated at all, then...
Speaker: I saw this in Bose and Ammo. It got editors' choice in the What to Buy When Rich Uncle Sidney Dies category. They had to break both the reviewer's arms to get him to let go of it. Ought to be commemorated in a small service of, it must cost more than a year's salary. They only make him to order. You have to wait ages. Religious significance. Dodd unconscionable visit. That's something behind him was amiss.
Speaker: Are we going to arrest this impostor, Corporal? He said. Corporal Knobs looked blearily at him through the mists of possessive pride. You're foreign, Washpot, he said. I can't expect you to know the real meaning of Hogs Watch.
Speaker: Welcome to the Book Club Podcast. Today we are discussing Hogfather by Terry Pratchett. I'm Caroline and I absolutely love this book and how it talks about wonder, beliefs, and storytelling. It is truly the perfect Christmas story and I say that as someone who does not normally like Christmas stories.
Speaker: And I'm Carly, and I've been reading Discworld novels since I was a child. GNU, Sir Terry Pratchett. I have read Hogfather a few times over the years, but it's not one of those that I have memorized, so it was fun to go back and do a deep dive. And Hogfather was the first Discworld book I read with Susan and with Death, so it was my introduction to both. What does GNU mean? If you know, you know. If you don't, you need to read more Discworld.
Speaker: Wow. Well then, moving on. If I explain it, I will start crying, and I don't want to start crying, so. OK. We will leave that mystery both for me and for the listeners to look up on our own time. Hogfather, as Carly mentioned, is a Discworld novel. Discworld is a sprawling fantasy series by Terry Pratchett that parodies pretty much everything, including fantasy novels themselves.
Speaker: This particular book centers around the hog father, a Santa Claus -like character who gives presents to nice boys and girls all over the world on hog watches night, the night before the new year. Instead of reindeer, he has four hogs to pull his sled. The children leave out brandy and pork pies for the hog father and turnips for his hogs. The story begins in the city of Ankh -Morpork, which resembles Victorian London.
Speaker: mysterious beings called the auditors visit the Assassin's Guild to have the Hogfather assassinated. The auditors are sort of like celestial bureaucrats who like the universe to be orderly and predictable. Because of this, they hate life and anything illogical. The auditors want the Hogfather killed because he exists due to belief and imagination, which are inherently messy, unpredictable, and illogical.
Speaker: like most things human. And the auditors hate those things. The assassin chosen for this strange job is Mr. T -Time. T -Time hires a band of criminals to help him kill the Hogfather, including medium Dave, Lily White, and his brother Banjo. Banjo is a huge muscular man with the mind of a child. Death figures out that the Hogfather is in trouble, so he takes the Hogfather's place, delivering presents with his butler Albert, who dresses like an elf.
Speaker: One house he visits is where his granddaughter Susan works as a governess. Backstory on Susan, death adopted a girl after her family died. Many years later, he took an apprentice. The apprentice fell in love with death's daughter and they married and had a daughter Susan.
Speaker: Susan looks human, but she inherited some occult abilities, including the abilities to stop time and see what is really there, like monsters and anthropomorphic personifications, like death. Her goal is to be a normal human. Susan is absolutely horrified when she finds death acting like the Hogfather, or acting as the Hogfather, I should say. Death forbids her from getting involved, so of course she decides that she has to figure everything out.
Speaker: First, Susan visits death's home, a world created by human belief where everything is black. The house is black, the grass is black, the fish in the black pond are also black. She finds the hourglasses that measure people's lives and then a back room of hourglasses that measure the lives of mythical creatures like the Tooth Fairy and the Hogfather. The lives of mythical creatures and of gods run out when no one believes in them.
Speaker: The Hogfather's Hourglass is almost entirely gone, signifying that belief in the Hogfather is dangerously low. Susan also learns that the Hogfather was once a god that made the sun come up with a blood sacrifice because old gods take new jobs, as she says. Susan then travels to the Hogfather's home, the Castle of Bones, just in time to see it collapse into snow as if it never existed, meaning that belief in Hogfather has finally disappeared.
Speaker: She also finds the newly incorporealized god of hangovers named Bilius.
Speaker: Meanwhile, the wizards at Unseen University in Akmorepork start to investigate why new creatures are being formed as they think them up, such as the eater of socks or the god of indigestion. Susan shows up at Unseen University to ask the wizards for help with Bilius. They make him a hangover cure so that he can answer her questions. Bilius says that before he was incorporealized, he remembers lots and lots of teeth.
Speaker: They ask Hex, a thinking machine, to explain what's happening. Hex explains that there is a surplus of belief because that belief is no longer being directed to the Hogfather. The surplus of belief is creating random new mythical creatures like the Verruca gnome. A Verruca is a wart.
Speaker: and the God of Hangovers. Based on Bilius's memory of lots and lots of teeth, Susan decides to head to the Tooth Fairy's realm. Death, meanwhile, continues pretending to be the Hogfather. He loves it. People are, for once, happy to see him, but he starts breaking the rules by giving children exactly what they ask for instead of what their socioeconomic status would allow. We'll explain that later. And refusing to accept the death of a little match girl. Meanwhile, in the Tooth Fairy's realm,
Speaker: which death cannot enter because the Tooth Fairy's realm is created by children and children don't believe in death, Susan and Bilius discover a pile of teeth made by Mr. T -Time and his associates. Susan explains that this is old magic.
Speaker: Controlling someone's body part controls them. By controlling all the teeth, Mr. Tea Time, who was hired by the auditors, can control the children and make them disbelieve in the Hogfather, therefore killing him. As Susan and Billious explore the castle, looking for the imprisoned Tooth Fairy, the criminals' childhood fears appear and kill them one by one.
Speaker: Susan confronts Tea Time, Banjo, and Medium Dave as they're trying to get into a locked room. During the struggle, Banjo switches sides and saves Susan. She asks them to sweep the teeth out of the magic circle while she visits the real Tooth Fairy. The Tooth Fairy tells its story. It was the first boogeyman. It started as the thing men fear in the dark in ancient times, but then it had an existential crisis and instead became the Tooth Fairy.
Speaker: It started collecting children's teeth to protect them. The Tooth Fairy reveals this before it dies. Susan asks Banjo to take over its job. When she leaves the Tooth Fairy's home, death appears and tells her, the fight is not over. She must save the Hogfather from the auditors or the sun won't rise. Death takes her to the snowy mountains where the Hogfather's castle of bones once stood. A boar is being chased by dogs. Death tells Susan that the boar is the Hogfather and the dogs are auditors.
Speaker: Susan rides the boar, urging it to jump an icy chasm. An auditor dog tries to jump across and she hits it with a branch. Death rages at them for breaking the rules. He explains that because the auditors have taken the form of living things, they can die, and they do. Death takes their souls. The boar dies, but reincarnates as an earlier version of the hog father. Susan watches his transformation through all the historical stages
Speaker: from Borgod to Hogfather, and then the sun rises. So for our opening question, I want to quote from that section that we talked about of Susan and death saving the Hogfather. Susan asks, what would have happened in death says, what would have happened if you hadn't saved him? And Susan says, yes, the sun would have risen just the same. No, says death. Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact.
Speaker: Death says, the sun would not have risen. Susan asks, really, then what would have happened? And Death says, a mere ball of flaming gas would have illuminated the world. So this question, which I think it's at the main theme of this book, is what's the difference between the sun rising and a mere ball of flaming gas that illuminates the world? And I'm going to go first and say, I think it has something to do with storytelling. OK. I think probably.
Speaker: I think one of those is meaningful, poetic, hopeful. That's the sun rising. A mere ball of flaming gas that happens to shed some light is none of those, right? Right. And so it has to do with humans needing these stories.
Speaker: a story about a boar being sacrificed. And that's what makes the sun rise in order to be human. And that's mentioned several times throughout the book. And I think it's really interesting that it comes from Susan too, like in that first encounter when she sees death dressed as the hog father, she's appalled. And she's like, this is the time when humans are the most human, but she's also extremely cynical. There's a lot of cynicism that she confronts with the children that she takes care of.
Speaker: You know, they ask her if the hog father is real. And she says, does it matter if you still get the presence? Pretty cynical. Yeah. And they're like, yes. And I think that's the lesson she's learning is like, it does matter whether or not you get the presence. And it does matter that the sun rises, even though if the sun doesn't rise, a ball of flaming gas will still illuminate the world. So I'm just thinking about a day in my life
Speaker: where the sun rises versus a mere ball of flaming gas eliminates the world and i'm not gonna claim that you know everyday i rise with great optimism when i see the sunrise or anything like that right but,
Speaker: I am generally a morning person, and I do find that if there is a period of optimism in my day, it is then when the sun comes up. Or even if I'm not always awake, then just the idea of it means more than just, okay, now I don't need to use lights as much.
Speaker: Sure. What were you saying about the connection between that and storytelling? That we need to tell the story of the boar that that to make the sunrise and that even when we don't. Well, I think there's two things happening here that the phrase old gods take new jobs like the way that human belief shifts and changes over time so that the hog father is like a god. I'm not
Speaker: Gods have very specific roles on Discworld, so I'm a little bit confused if he is a god or not. But Hogfather takes on the new role to stay alive. And another quote that I love from this book, death says that all things strive. And so even gods strive in the Discworld. And so the Hogfather, in order to, you know, be alive in a way that he is alive, switches jobs so that he can still have human belief to keep him alive.
Speaker: So it's kind of interesting that there's like this effort to have myths comes from humans. It's a human need to create myth, but then their creations take on lives of their own and then become forces to perpetuate their own existence as well. Yes, that's that's something I really love about Discworld is that humans
Speaker: are presented as contagious almost, or humanity is contagious, right? Both death, it mentioned a little bit in this book and certainly in other books, and the Tooth Fairy begin to take on human -like qualities from being around humans. The Tooth Fairy, who was originally this bogeyman, develops the ability to have an existential crisis and also the ability to want to help humans.
Speaker: Death starts to feel sympathy and want to have a personality, right? It's interesting. Humans bend the world to them, but then there's the second part. Like you said, the gods also want to become human, are also infected by it. Do you think there's any equivalent to that in our world?
Speaker: Yeah, I think we're going to get into the Cogfather quote, that to a certain extent, we shape our reality. And how can I know what we're shaping, what we're not shaping? I'm not sure because I am a human within my own created reality. So I think we will get to talking about humans shaping the world through their stories.
Speaker: But I guess I kind of wanted to take the backdoor approach first, which is talk about the things that humans create then go back and not only have lives of their own, but maybe have additional secondary effects on humans. And in the Discworld series, that's things like death and the Tooth Fairy. But I'm just wondering if there's an equivalent in our world, something like
Speaker: institutions or religions or something that humans create, but it takes on a life of its own and comes back and has almost agency and power because it's been given so much by humans.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's human society. So I like I think of fandom. I mean, it makes like, of course, this is a book written by an author who created a world with his books and created a fandom with his books. And I think that's true. I've heard that said by many authors that they create once they start writing, if they have good characters, it's like they're not even writing a story. It's like the characters take a life of their own.
Speaker: It makes sense that this would come from an author, because I've heard that as an experience to the authors. But money is another thing. Like, I've learned a little bit of economics, but I do think most of us, you know, the way we act in the world, we're not thinking about money the way economists do. We're thinking about it as this made up thing. But it works, right? That's a very discworld concept of like, who cares why or what, like, if it works, it works and let's just go with it, you know? I mean, I think political institutions, large and small,
Speaker: would be like this with all the symbolism and ritual. The Supreme Court is an example. We're kind of at a pivotal moment where public perception seems to be changing and that is very real and yet at the same time not real at all because the Supreme Court has never had any real power. It's never
Speaker: It's not the executive branch. It's never had guns or money or anything like that. It's only been its perceived legitimacy. I think that's just a similar thing, something that exists because people put belief into it.
Speaker: Yeah. And the people in those positions get caught up in it. They get infected with that as well. Well, yeah. And I think ordinary citizens too. I mean, another example, there's a really good charming post -apocalyptic novel by David Brand called The Postman. And it's about someone who some 20 years after the collapse of American society puts on a postman's uniform.
Speaker: And he does it just because it's the only clothing available, but then everyone starts treating him as proof of civilization coming back. And this is all in the first couple chapters of the book. I'm not spoiling anything. But it's a similar idea that that image, that institution has so much power that people are willing to rally around it and it takes on a life of its own.
Speaker: Yeah, I think this is making me wonder like why does Susan say that this is the time hog watch time is when humans are the most human. And I think that's really interesting, especially coming from Susan, right? Like she her her goal is to be normal. Like one of the
Speaker: One of the funniest bits I thought of a little throwaway line is when she finds Billious in the snow and she's like, I can't leave him here because he'll freeze. And in the back of her mind, she's like, no, he's a God. He won't freeze. But a human would think that he would freeze. And she was proud of herself for thinking like a real human. You know, she sees through all of the fakeness of it, but she still thinks it's important.
Speaker: I mean, I think one of the things we have to talk about that is what Terry Pratchett thinks of humans because, well, yeah, big question, right? But what you and I have said so far implies a sort of idealistic view of humans, but that's not what he's about, right? I mean, he presents plenty of characters who are villains or dumb or
Speaker: small minded or petty or all sorts of things. Yeah and hogs watch and the real world equivalent of hogs watch is the time when we're supposed to be thinking about the best qualities of humanity the charitable qualities and the forgiving qualities of humanity.
Speaker: So it's like, I mean, just like the postman's uniform reminds people of civilization. It's like this annual holiday, like we need it to remind us to step out of the day to day minutia and think about a greater purpose in life. Well, I want to push back a little bit because I'm not sure there's all that much in here about charity.
Speaker: uh, and that definition of being good, right? I mean, where do you see that here? Well, it's, it's what Susan kind of talks about and it's in all, like all the references of, you know, in the spots in where death kind of gets it wrong about being hog father. Like he, he seems to interpret the story. So like there's a really
Speaker: deep conversation between death and Albert. So death doesn't understand certain unwritten rules about being human. This is when, you know, they end up in a very poor house and death wants to give the child exactly what he asked for. And Albert's like, no, you can't, you can't do that. You have to give him
Speaker: something that suits their socioeconomic status. And Death says, it is unfair. Albert says, that's life, master. Death says, but I'm not. And Albert says, I meant that is how it's supposed to go, master, said Albert. No, you mean this is how it goes. I am even handed to rich and poor a like snap death. But this should not be a sad time. This is supposed to be the season to be jolly. He wrapped his red robe around him and other things ending in ollie, he added.
Speaker: And that line, other things ending in Ollie, is something that Susan said to him earlier. Death doesn't have to think about socionomic status. And he doesn't have to think about who is naughty and nice. Death performs the same service for everyone in the same way. And he doesn't like unfairness.
Speaker: But the stories like that he knows about the hog father, because earlier there was the little match girl, which is a very famous story. I remember reading it when I was in maybe elementary school. I remember being pretty young reading it and it's this beautiful little story about a girl selling matches on Christmas Eve and she was looking in windows. It's been a long time, so I may not remember this exactly, but she's looking into windows of people feasting on Christmas Eve and she dies in the snow.
Speaker: and angels come down from heaven and take her to heaven. And in Discworld, Des sees this and he turns the life timer around. He's like, I'm not taking this child's soul. He saves the child's life. And he gives a child who ends up knobby knobs and is like, make sure this child has something to eat and is warm.
Speaker: He so he breaks the narrative. He's like, no, no, we're not going to feel warm and happy about a child dying in the snow. And Albert tries to explain it to him like, no, no, you feel grateful for your food when you know that other people are dying. Like, I don't really resonate with that. But it's it's kind of funny how like death is trying to keep the story of the hog father alive. But he keeps finding himself in these stories. He also does King Wenceslas. He messes that up as well. And it's like,
Speaker: he doesn't understand how these stories work. Honestly, I'm very confused about how to interpret that too. I think there's a lot there. I think we should explain the gifts appropriate to socioeconomic status thing a little bit more. So the child has wished for some very expensive gift and death is going to provide it for him via magic. And Albert says, you can't do that.
Speaker: But then doesn't Albert also go on to explain why you can't do that? Yes, I don't know if I quite understood that his explanations are really bought into them. But yes, I thought he said something like, you know, if you give this kid this incredibly expensive gift, his parents will just sell it because they need the money. Or, you know, it'll be stolen from him by someone around him, who also just really needs the money.
Speaker: And he'll be left without it the day after Christmas. Right. And death is like, so you're saying rich people get nice gifts and poor people don't get nice gifts. And he's like, oh, so rich people are nicer and poor people are naughtier. And Albert's like, no, that's not right either.
Speaker: I mean, Albert is sort of, he's saying that it will get stolen or his parents will sell it. We don't know if that's true from Albert's own upbringing that that would have happened. He knows his father was a drunk and would have done that. I don't feel satisfied with that explanation, do you? No, I don't. And it's like a lot of the explanations with death, the things that are human are not good sometimes, right? Yeah. I mean, and that's one of the central ironies of the Christmas season as well, right?
Speaker: like Santa Claus rewards the naughty and the nice and yet some are equally nice but different rewarded to differing degrees right in terms of presence.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, would a poor child getting gifts that are not what he asked for from the hog father, does that still sustain belief in the hog father? Well, I mean, there's still there's still gifts, right? Yeah. But if they're gifts that your parents can afford and never a gift that your parents can't afford. But that in and of itself is a more adult thought, isn't it?
Speaker: Yeah. Doesn't Albert also say something about the gifts need to give people hope. They don't necessarily need to provide everything they need at this moment. They need to meet enough of their needs so they're not dying or sick. And then more importantly, provide hope for the next day, right?
Speaker: Yes, it's so succinct. I cannot get this out of my head. He promises jam tomorrow. If you give someone jam today, then they'll eat the jam and whatever thing has changed. But if you promise them jam tomorrow, they'll hold on to that hope. And again, extremely cynical.
Speaker: Not a happy thought. But yes, but needing to give people hope. I can't agree with death here. Death says, no, you need something now to be grateful for. You can't be grateful for something you haven't received yet. Or maybe you can't sustain that gratitude for long. You actually have to have something to be grateful for. Well, my father does give presents. It's just not always the most expensive present to everyone.
Speaker: Right. So I wonder if talking about the scene from our opening quote where death as hogfather is in the mall spelled M -A -U -L. That's great. Yeah. And he's giving away presents and the store owner calls their watch and that was our opening quote, the watch attempting to arrest the hogfather and that whole the watch here are
Speaker: the police, essentially. And death is dressed up as the Hogfather, and he is essentially being a mall Santa Claus, except one who is actually death and actually has tremendous magical powers. Right. Yeah, I mean, that's, I always assumed the Hogfather would have the same magical powers as death displays
Speaker: in there. Like he has a sack, right? And the, the presence from the hog father sack. Like, I feel like it might've been an Abbott and Costello routine. It's written in that way with the store owner and Nabi and the store owner is like, he's giving away presents and Nabi's like, isn't that what the hog father is supposed to do? And he's like, no, but how can people buy power? How can our customers buy presents if the hog father is giving things away? And Nabi's like, is he taking your things and giving them away? Cause that's something we can maybe arrest him for.
Speaker: Like this very... And the answer is no, right? He's producing the presents out of the sack. Right. And it's like, it's pointing out the commercialism, but it's also pointing out like the story of the Hogfather cannot possibly make sense and is not acceptable. Like we can't possibly have a magical being who gives gifts because it would just destroy the way the world works in some way.
Speaker: Well, it would destroy that shop owner, right? Yeah, I feel like paradox. A lot of this book, I feel like there's this paradox because Discworld is a magical world. And so if this is a story taking place in what's supposed to be our world, I'd be like, oh, of course, there's no magical. And that is a dissatisfaction I have with a lot of Christmas movies, especially especially Santa Claus movies, because sorry, if any kids are listening, it can't possibly work. Right. Like, like, how does he get around the world in one night? Right.
Speaker: Right. And like all of the Santa Claus, any movie with Santa Claus in it, he's confronting people with disbelief because I don't know, that's where the tension in the story comes from. And it's very paradoxical and it's very frustrating. Like we want the story to be real. Like we want some magical being to be able to just give a poor person food when they're hungry. But Terry Pratchett doesn't let us have that. It's always disruptive in some way.
Speaker: But there is still a real magical being here who is handing out gifts, right? Yeah. So it's not that you can never have that. You just can't have as much of it as you want or can't imagine. Right. But we need that. We need that story. We need the annual reminder of those kinds of stories of magical gifts for some reason. Well, I mean, I think for the usual reasons, hope and wonder
Speaker: Susan talks about death, taking things too literally. And so death starts believing in the big hot watch story about it being a jolly season. And humans are the most human when they can lie to themselves about what jolly time of year it is. I mean, lie to themselves sounds harsh, because there's a couple things going on here, right? Humans, maybe adult humans can hold two stories as being true at the same time. There's one where
Speaker: the sort of crass commercial version of gift giving and there's one where the hogfather is real and providing gifts. Children mostly seem to full heartedly believe. So the children aren't being duplicitous and the adults aren't lying either. They're enjoying a story that has virtues other than mathematical truth, let us say.
Speaker: So yeah, let's talk about children because it's very important in the story. So children can see things that are really there. So and Susan as a sort of special type of person doesn't outgrow that. And the things that are really there are, for example, the monster under the bed that children can see because it is really there.
Speaker: you know, tooth fairy, things like that, right? So the tooth fairy has an interesting quote and says, there didn't really used to be children back in the ice times, just big humans, little humans, not children. And there was a different world in their heads. That's where the old days were now.
Speaker: So adults in the modern times are different. Children aren't different. Children sort of held on to this old world where the boogeyman was the thing that humans feared in the dark. And that horrible, irrational fear of things sort of died off in adults, but it stayed with children.
Speaker: and it has something to do with belief as well. Because if you tell a child that if they suck their thumb, there's going to be a scissor monster that comes and cuts off the thumb, they're going to believe it and they're going to be terrified of it. If you tell an adult, and this is a very common Discworld notion, adults will know that things are impossible and therefore not believe in them and therefore are not affected by them. Right. So that ability to believe it somehow relates to the ability to be really scared?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, there's another quote that's like, Susan is thinking she's like, adults are afraid of things like mortgages, you know, and disease. But kids, kids can have that really irrational fear. Yeah, I remember that I've, I've never been afraid as an adult as I was as a child, right?
Speaker: Yeah. I had never thought that maybe that feeling is also connected to the ability to believe. That's interesting. Well, it must be related to, to the idea that you have to sacrifice the board and make the sun come back in the darkest days of winter. You have to make a blood sacrifice or you will be stuck in icy dark times forever. But I can sort of see a thread connecting fear.
Speaker: and the creation of beliefs to deal with that fear. You're afraid the sun won't rise again. And the reaction to that, however intentionally, is to create a belief system where it's both explanatory and participatory, right? And that removes a lot of the fear.
Speaker: Right. And so, you know, as a whole humankind developed this belief system and it always worked to bring the sun back. So then it's like we were talking about earlier, their belief became independent. And they felt like there's more control over the world, right? Like, oh, humans believe this thing that the sun would always come back and then it did. So there's like a power there.
Speaker: And that's why the gods have to evolve because adult humans feel empowered. And so they need, they need those myths to be different. They need the myths to be different because they have different concerns over time. Is that it? Yes. That makes sense in general. I will say, you know, even though this is just the explanation I used, I'm not convinced that
Speaker: religion or beliefs generally are just a tool that people use to make themselves feel better in a very direct way. So we have a spectrum between the sun rises and a mere ball of flaming gas. And somewhere in there fits the fact that people started at one point believing that if they killed this boar, the sun would rise the next day.
Speaker: And on the one hand, that can seem very instrumental. Like, oh, they just made an error in reasoning and they thought that would work. I don't think that's true. I don't think people in the past were that stupid. I think they made metaphorical connections that they knew were metaphorical, but it still had power. And that's maybe partly related to why storytelling is so important. It's not just a mistake about, for lack of a better word, science, right? And we got better science and so we don't need
Speaker: We don't need to sacrifice a boar. Those aren't fitting the same niches, I don't think.
Speaker: No, I agree with you for sure. No. And it reminds me of the concept of unwritten rules, which we start out in the very first scene, Lord Downey, the head assassin, when he talks with T time. I don't know if it's explicitly, but something along the lines of T time doesn't follow those unspoken rules. And I noticed a lot of unspoken rules in this book. So Downey is described as having no morals, but having standards.
Speaker: Yes. And then later in the book, Medium Dave, who is an honest criminal, has a very strong moral sense. And I think those are all related to the unwritten rules. And the unwritten rules are all related to the stories we tell about ourselves. They can remain unwritten because humans have a narrative sense.
Speaker: And so we don't have to be explicit about the rules because they're too complex. Right. It's a sense you have. And so when you understand the shape of a narrative, you know, being a criminal and knowing the boundaries of what it means to be an honest criminal versus an evil person like T time, like it's a very delicate distinction. But the narrative tells you how to walk the line there. Fascinating to call it a narrative sense, sort of like a sixth sense.
Speaker: I love that because it captures so much about how hard it is to make rules and how many rules are situation specific. So if you're an assassin, maybe one of the quote unquote rules is that you wouldn't kill a starving orphan on Christmas Eve. But if the same girl is a princess in line for the throne and you've been paid enough, OK, you'll do that. But one of those is just too pathetic or something.
Speaker: Would that fit with the narrative sense of why you can't be a moral criminal and take one job versus another? Yeah, exactly. And I mean, the assassins are highly educated and they're highly educated, I think, to be taught those narratives and those standards, right?
Speaker: I mean, and so tea time is terrifying because he knows the rules are made up and he knows they don't apply to him. And that's why he unsettles people. And that's why he's able to figure out how to kill the hog father. And and that's why he's evil, right? Like medium Dave is a scary guy. It's clear that he's a murderer. And I think this is true for most of the criminals. So I want one thing I wanted to ask you about that is when all of those criminals
Speaker: are being killed, did you feel justified? Early in the book, Pratchett says that kids like stories about blood as long as justice is served, right? I feel like that's true. And I was like, is justice served when those criminals die? And like, do we feel vindicated or safe when those characters are killed? When they're killed in the Tooth Fairy's house as their childhood fears come to life, I did not feel that way. I did not feel like it was
Speaker: vindication or justice it felt sad i wouldn't have minded if they had been killed in a fight or even you know arrested and then executed or something like that but to be killed by your childhood fears is just the worst death imaginable right because you're
Speaker: You're going back to a place of incredible fear right before you die. No, I think I feel the same is super sad and tragic. One of the guys is I think it's Kat's eye. He's afraid of the dark. And you don't get a lot from Kat's eye. But there's one line where they're kind of teasing him like, Oh, you're afraid of the dark. And I think medium Dave says something like,
Speaker: Oh, Ma Lily White would have never let us go into the cellar. She would have walloped us if we went into her cellar, because that's where she made hooch, basically. And Cat's Eye says, oh, yeah, well, my dad would wallop us if we got out of the cellar. And like, just that one line. So dark, right?
Speaker: so much about that person and why he's a criminal and what a horrible childhood he must have had. And so when he is killed by the dark, it is it is sad. And then medium Dave is also extremely heartbreaking. The image of his mom appears and lectures him for not taking care of his brother Banjo. Banjo has the mind of a child and he's crying and like almost I don't even know. It seems like he was like peeing his pants in fear of his mother and like
Speaker: again extremely dark and tragic and it's sad it's really sad in a humorous novel and then but tea time is different he is really evil because he doesn't have this complexity right and he doesn't have he doesn't have any rules that he thinks are special
Speaker: I think that's one of the defining characteristics of the rest of these characters. I mean, obviously the assassins think murder on some level is okay when they do it, but they have a standard, a code, right? It's not the same for everyone, but everyone who is treated sympathetically by the author, and I think who deserves it, they have some sort of code or standard.
Speaker: Even if it is not entirely verbalized, like you said, it's more like an innate narrative sense that makes them different from tea time, who is just what we would call like a sociopath. Right. Right. And so the interesting thing about Susan, and I think this is true for most of the Discworld's strong protagonists, Susan recognizes that the rules don't apply to her, but she also knows that it's important for her to try to follow them. Interesting. You're talking about her desire to try to be normal.
Speaker: Yeah, like there are moments where she she's like has to remind herself to use the doorknob to open a door instead of just walking through it. Right? Yeah. And that's important to her for some reason because because why I'm not sure. Well, you said earlier that tea time
Speaker: knows that all the rules are made up. But I feel like Terry Pratchett would say, yeah, of course they're made up. That's why they're important and why we have to all agree with them and act like they're real, right? Yes, yes, very true.
Speaker: The rules are both made up and not really articulated in one place ever, and yet no less important for all of that. Yeah. Um, so while we're talking about tea time, I don't, do you think it's just a funny thing or is there significance to the Te Atime? Yeah. So at one point tea time, his name is spelled like tea time says that his name is actually pronounced Te Atime.
Speaker: And it's only said once. It's kind of this toss -off. No, it's multiple times. It is multiple times? Okay. I did not know what to make of it. And then I think it's important that when death takes his soul, death says, okay, Mr. Te Atima, and T -Time's like, oh, you said it right. No one ever says it right. I think that says something important about death. Yes. That death says it the right way. Right. Quote, right way. Well, death has different sources of knowledge, right? Than the ordinary person.
Speaker: Yeah, what do I think I'm looking at? Is it time for the quote? Yes. All right. So we've sort of talked around this quote. We've talked about storytelling, the need for belief, the nature of the unwritten rules.
Speaker: And there is a central quote here that really distills some of this. Do you want to read it, Carly? Sure. So death tells Susan, humans need fantasy to be human, to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape. Whoa. It's a powerful quote.
Speaker: Maybe you should read it. OK. Humans need fantasy to be human, to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape. You have to start out learning to believe the little lies so we can believe the big ones. Yes, justice, mercy, duty, that sort of thing. It's a pretty good quote, to be fair.
Speaker: No, I get emotional because I know how many people love that quote and love this book and love Terry Pratchett. So it's very important to me to be part of that. So like Susan is immediately appalled that death says that justice, mercy, duty are lies. But they're big lies. They're big lies. Yeah. Do you think that's true?
Speaker: Or let me take a step back, a slightly smaller question. Does believing in the big lies require the little lies? Does believing in the big beliefs, the capital letter beliefs, does that require some smaller beliefs for practice?
Speaker: You know, I, it's just in my personal experience, um, I think I've changed the way I think about morality a lot. Like I used to be a devoted Christian and I'm not anymore, but that doesn't mean my strong moral sense has changed. I think my moral sense is what made me a Christian in the first place. And it's what made me leave the Christian church, like my particular Christian church.
Speaker: So it's like their core justice, mercy and duty are core beliefs for me or like core values. I don't believe in throwing salt over my shoulder and I don't believe in saying a little prayer. I still do some little rituals like that, though, but not because not just in case, you know what I mean? Like, I think some people are like, oh, just in case I'll throw salt over my shoulder. You know, I don't do that. I do the ritual for the sake of the ritual.
Speaker: Like, because I want to be human, like Susan, I guess. Do you think your personal journey, not saying anyone else needs this path, but do you think you had to go through those earlier beliefs to get to these? That's hard for me to identify. I think my strong core of beliefs actually comes from Terry Pratchett, like in this world.
Speaker: Yeah, like this concept of humans and narrative sense. And even when you know the rules don't apply to you, it's important. There's something important about following the rules as a respect and a love for other people, even when those people are stupid and annoying.
Speaker: like that's what I learned from reading Discworld. And that remained unchanged from me first joining the very particular Christian church and giving everything I could to that church and believing with everything I could and it didn't feel true anymore. And it also like was my moral sense through throwing myself into political activism because I think that was a similar like
Speaker: you know, I want to see this reality reflected based on certain principles. Well, in that experience of being a political activist, I felt like that lost its strength or lost its effectiveness.
Speaker: Yeah, but still that core belief from Terry Pratchett is still there. So it feels like I had like, and I don't know if it's just a question of timing because I read Discworld first before I started to really study the Bible and before I started to learn about political philosophy. I don't know if it's a question of just like, that's just how my brain was formed because I read Discworld when I was very young, you know? Maybe another way to ask the question is I had a similar feeling as a child thinking about Santa Claus.
Speaker: as you do about some of your beliefs and I'm not trying to minimize them. I think, I mean, I think there's a core similarity there.
Speaker: Okay. I don't remember believing in Santa Claus. Okay. Do you remember believing in Santa Claus? You know, it's funny. I don't actually. I remember when I stopped, which we won't go into on this podcast. Um, when we have another appropriate conversation to talk about when you stop believing in Santa Claus. Uh, I remember the moment when, you know, an older kid told me Santa Claus wasn't real.
Speaker: And he actually, it was a classmate of mine, I guess he was an older, just older in years or in his soul or something. And he actually said it to make fun of another classmate of ours and sort of looped me into it like I already knew this truth. And I was so offended and I tried to defend the guy who was being bullied, I guess, while also trying to suppress my own tears, really, that I had just been told that Santa Claus wasn't real.
Speaker: So I think there's a moment of betrayal there, right, that can be very harmful. But to me, the myth itself with its idea that you could just receive gifts. And my family was never particularly big on the naughty or nice aspect of it. So it didn't seem transactional. I was like, wow, there's just this magic in the world, like someone who wants to give gifts to children. And there's other associated myths about
Speaker: good things happening around the Christmas spirit, around the Christmas time and the Christmas spirit and all that. And so it does seem to me like an early example of excess goodness in the world. Okay, that's really interesting. I think this is the same question as our opening question, you know, the difference between the sun rising and a ball of gas.
Speaker: Mike this question is what is added believing in the hog father versus what the way Susan grew up where her parents told her very clearly like this present is for me. I thought about it. And I saved for it. And this is the person who's giving you a gift. Like, yeah, what's the difference in believing that there's there's this magical source of gifts versus knowing that your your loved ones love you and were thoughtful and got you a gift.
Speaker: Yeah but children don't think that way about their parents like children parents are like furniture maybe always there you know if you're lucky and.
Speaker: you know, they have to take care of you, right? You're not, you're not appreciative at all, right? Yes. But what about grandparents? Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I felt the same way. So think whatever you will with me. No, that's that makes sense. So if you're you teach children that these gifts come from a magical place, and then when they're older, does that magic get transferred to the gifts they receive?
Speaker: from their parents like does it change the way you appreciate your parents oh that's interesting i think it might i mean i i certainly think that parents are the ultimate example hopefully of selfless giving an unconditional love right
Speaker: which is really magical. I think to me it's magical whenever someone receives something far better than they could have deserved. Ideally that's true with love of all kinds. But it's interesting we kind of have to bribe children into having that complicated thought by starting with presence, right? Yeah.
Speaker: I guess you can tell from the way I'm talking about it, that I have never really liked the naughty or nice, he's making a list, he's checking it twice aspect of Christmas. I think that really undermines the whole thing. Yeah, I'm wondering if that was for parents to just get through. If you had a kid who needed to be reminded to be nice and needed to be bribed, I don't blame any parents for that, just to get their kid to behave if they need to.
Speaker: So you've talked about how your beliefs have changed over your lifetime, which I think we can all sympathize with, I hope. But do you think there's been basically the same amount of belief? It's just the object has shifted over time?
Speaker: Oh man, I hope not because I claim to trust science now. I want science and having a scientific approach to the world to be different from having a belief approach to the world. Couldn't you just shift that same belief to your values or your principles, which are not scientific, right?
Speaker: Yeah, I think in what's happening here with Hogfather and like the idea in this book that there's a certain amount of belief and excess belief causes the corporealization of new anthropomorphic personifications. How many multisyllabic words can I use? But the things that are created have to explain some common phenomena, right? Like the dean immediately jumps in and is like, oh, there's a gnome who gives me lots of money.
Speaker: It doesn't work. It has to be common phenomena, like socks disappearing. Right. I mean, they give a little definition of what it has to be to be personified as a god or semi -god. It has to be perceived as random by the person who's experiencing it. It's random how my socks disappear. It has to be pretty universal. Lots of people have experienced this.
Speaker: and there has to be a lack of explanation, right? Right. And I think that speaks to the quality of humans to need to find explanations for things, to find cause and effect. And yet that's somehow also related to believing in things like justice and mercy and duty, right?
Speaker: Yeah. Just, oh my gosh. Okay. So that's, it's justice. Is it somehow justice that poor kids get gifts that are poor for poor kids and rich kids get gifts that are for rich kids? Like it doesn't seem like it. You don't think that's justice. I mean, death, I think it's very clear, like death says this is unfair, but death is just, death is not, I think fairness and justice are different. Okay. So I'm still confused about how
Speaker: you know, creating this the sock God is a similar process to believe in justice or mercy. Yeah, I think it's stability, which is a very conservative point of view. And I don't necessarily like it. But I think it speaks to stability, right? Like what death does is the hog father breaking these rules causes instability. And so not doing that is good. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: I think you could see it being all related to questioning. Not the same questions, but questioning. Your sock disappears. Where did my sock go? Why did it go? Who took it? There's some questions you ask that kind of talk you into creating a little sock gnome who came and took your sock. But there are bigger questions, like how do we relate to each other?
Speaker: How do we treat each other? What do I owe each other? Why? How does the society hang together? That sort of thing that don't have definite answers or they don't have answers that can be
Speaker: quantified at least, but it's a similar process of questioning and maybe it's the questioning that's the uniting thread. Maybe there's a similarity between saying there must be a reason for this random phenomena of me losing my sock and there must be a greater reason for our lives and society. I don't know.
Speaker: Yes, I think that is true, that part of our storytelling and myth -making instinct is about that concept. To some extent, because we think there must be a reason, we choose for there to be a reason and then there is a reason, right?
Speaker: Yes. Yeah, no, it's something along the lines of like, we need there to be a reason. And so we agree there is a reason and that makes it so that there is a reason. And we continue doing the things we do because now there's a reason to do that. And we all agree there's something like justice and mercy and duty, although we will not agree exactly on what those are and how they apply in every situation. But we will agree generally that
Speaker: they exist, right? So Caroline, do you want to share your final thoughts about the Hogfather? Yes, there's so much in this book and I love it so much. I think one idea that I really liked that I don't have much more to say about, but this idea that there's sort of loose belief sloshing around in a society and it needs a focus.
Speaker: And to me, that reminds me of how when you read about, you know, a civilization or a society declining, there's, you know, at the end, it's populated by a whole bunch of new religions and new beliefs. And that seems to me to be similar, like, you know, the people in that society had a shared belief in this
Speaker: These institutions are the civilization that has faded. And so now there's this belief just looking for outlets. And so you get all sorts of cults and sex and new religion. So I thought unexpectedly.
Speaker: There was a great explanation of that in this book about Christmas. Yeah. Yeah. Um, a really, that's a really cool observation. And, um, I mean, my final thoughts are, you know, we, we dug into like the serious themes of this book, but I don't want listeners who haven't read it to have the wrong impression, right? Like this book is delightful and funny. Yes.
Speaker: Yeah. And there's a lot that we didn't talk about because I think they just add a richness and a texture and layers of fineness over the story. And it's just, I mean, we didn't, we didn't even scratch the surface of, of everything that we, there were whole characters we never even mentioned.
Speaker: integral to the story. So I mean, definitely an enjoyable story, but of course has this deep meaning through it as well. So listeners, what did you think of Hogfather? Have you read other books by Terry Pratchett? What do you think about Discworld? Let us know by recording a voice memo and emailing openingquestionatgmail .com. You can also complete the feedback form on our website at bookclubpod .com. We're going to take a break for a little while.
Speaker: Subscribe to our podcast and your podcast player apps that you don't miss season two. And please complete our feedback form so that you can help us finalize our next reading list. The Book Club podcast is produced by Carly Jackson and Caroline Borman. Music and audio editing by Alex Marcus. Thanks for listening.
