![]() ![]() In his fascinating monograph-cum-memoir on horror, Danse Macabre, Stephen King identifies three archetypes which he believes dominate the heady brew of American pop culture. It's an attempt, using psychology and conjecture, to identify one of the archetypes of horror, the ur-forms of the ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties that are following our species down the corridor. The story of the dragon is one path toward constructing an answer to this question. The question is what our fears tell us about ourselves. The question is not what we fear, or even why-never mind why some of us like to be scared so much that we try to artificially induce terror by reading and writing horror fiction. So when those humans turned their minds to constructing a symbol of great and deadly power-well, what would you expect it to look like? The lions and tigers, the birds of prey, and the invisible serpents were the dangers that generations of humans learned to avoid. And in this definition an answer became apparent: here were the three great predators with which early man shared the world. ![]() The definition that fit the greatest number of stories, as well as our own understanding, was that a dragon was a giant creature whose form included some elements reminiscent of a serpent, some of a great cat, and some of a raptor. The reason, the article proposed, became clear when one tried to define what was a "dragon," exactly. Perhaps a decade ago I read a newspaper article-now long lost-in which a scientist of some stripe was speculating upon the subject of why, in almost every culture around the world, it seemed there existed a myth concerning a creature that we would call a dragon. No other surviving version of the myth involves disgorgement. Jason, in quest of the Golden Fleece (draped from a tree, upper left), is disgorged alive from a dragon's mouth while Athena looks on. ![]()
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