[HPforGrownups] Re: I have a question...

[Melete]

No: HPFGUIDX 132209





> > vmonte responding to Saraquel :
> > Isn't there a legend or fable that talks about a
> man that becomes 
> > immortal because he keeps his soul hidden in a
> box? (Did I make this 
> > up?) 
> 
> Meri here. That's probably a common theme in lots of
> old stories. In 
> the Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander for
> instance, Taran 
> encounters an evil wizard who magicked his life
> force into his pinky 
> finger, then cut off the apendage and hid it in a
> tree. He could only 
> be killed when the finger was destroyed. But where
> would LV keep his 
> soul? Who would he trust enough to carry such a
> desperately important 
> item for him? 
> Meri 
> 

Yes this is definately an old common theme in
marchen/fairy tales.  It makes the person that much
more impervious to hide their heart/soul/spirit
somewhere else.  Neil Gaiman uses it in his Death the
High of Living when Mad Hettie lives hundreds of years
after she hides away her heart.  In Neverwhere also by
the esteemed Mr. Gaiman, the Marquis de Carabas is
revived after his heart is brought back to him.  *It
was being kept in a box.*  And in Jim Henson's
fabulous series, The Storyteller, the episode about
the giant again deals with how he cannot be killed
because his heart has been hidden away.  

While, Gaiman certainly didn't make Hettie and the
Marquis de Carabas into cruel characters. In fairy
tales the idea of hiding away your heart somewhere
certainly makes an already dangerous character even
more cruel, cunning and emotionally detached.

Ellyddan 



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