Trope of the Month March: The Prophecy

[Beth Pavell]

Following on from our discussion in February, this month we're looking at prophecies! Prophecies seem to go hand-in-hand with Chosen Ones, and as a plot device they have an ancient pedigree indeed. In the modern day they can be found in Harry Potter, A Song of Ice and Fire, His Dark Materials, Star Wars, and of course, sporadically in Pokémon - to name just a few. Much of the fun in prophecies comes from the impact they have on the plot. Sometimes prophecies entirely drive the plot, sometimes they linger in the background. Rarely do they seem to come literally true, and the more symbolic the language used, the more likely it is to keep the readers guessing.

One very old and well-known prophecy plot comes from the story of Oedipus. The oracle of Delphi prophesied that Oedipus was destined to kill his father and subsequently marry his mother. In an attempt to avert this fate, he goes into self-imposed exile. What Oedipus doesn't know (But the audience does) is that Oedipus is adopted; parents aren't his biological parents. The long story short is that Oedipus murders his father, an apparent stranger, in a fit of rage, and marries his mother, who believes she's merely marrying the local hero. In this case the prophecy comes literally true because the characters aren't fully aware of all the facts.

In Macbeth, a prophecy comes true in a symbolic way. In this play, Macbeth is told that he shall not be 'vanquished' until:

“Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill / Shall come against him"

Macbeth takes this prophecy very seriously as assumes he's therefore invincible, since a forest moving by itself is impossible. That is, until an army wearing branches and foliage from Birnam forest marches on him to Dunsinane. J.R.R Tolkien famously regarded this particular symbolic fulfilment to be cop-out on Shakespeare's part

It perhaps goes without saying that prophecies are very hard to discuss without spoilers, so this discussion may well be full of them!

 

[Nitro Indigo]

I liked the first arc of Wings of Fire because it was about how prophecies are meaningless and you should save the world because it's the right thing to do... even though it ended with a deus ex machina. Then it turned into an Erin Hunter-esque series where prophecies motivate everything.

 

[LightningTopaz]

Even though prophecies are thrown about right and left in almost every show, what are some ways they have been done well, or subverted, inverted, or even averted?

 

[Greninjaman]

Honestly, I feel like that one can have a save the world story without it. Going back to Frodo in Lord of the Rings, were there any prophecies that said that he would be the one to destroy the ring? I know there was one, but it did not pertain to Frodo and the Ring. Plus, like was said in the first post, the more meat there is to the prophecy, the more likely the reader will continue reading. A poor example of a prophecy would be something like: a farm boy will rise up to kill the Dark Lord. This could be referring to anyone.

 

[Juliko]

I don't really like prophecies. They just seem like a convenient excuse to make people heroes rather than for other, more valid reasons, such as just wanting to do the right thing or stand up for what's right when others are too scared to do so.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Prophecies are one trope Tolkien used very sparingly and usually vaguely. You could argue that it's only the Elves who are truly bound by prophecy anyway - one of the divine gifts given to Men is their freedom from fate, possessing the freedom of action to truly forge their own destiny in the world. I certainly think the reason there are no real prophecies in The Lord of the Rings is because it would defeat the point of the story. The heroes really only have hope to go on, and ultimately it is hope that allows them to defeat Sauron.

In The Silmarillion there's an apparently straight prophecy in the Doom of Mandos. The Doom is the reason why the kingdoms of the Noldorin Elves consistently fall. But given that the Doom is quite literally a judgement, a punishment, handed down by Mandos, you could argue that it's not really a prophecy so much as a curse

 

[Greninjaman]

Some times, prophecies are just thrown in for the heck of it, like the one from the secod Pokemon Movie. Like did they really need a prophecy?

 

[LightningTopaz]

@Greninjaman

How would the movie work without "Disturb not the harmony of fire, ice, and lightning?" Could the movie work without the prophecy?

 

[Juliko]

Yes. Yes it could. The Japanese version had no prophecy, other than an end of the world prediction, and the part about it directly involving Ash was an invention of the English dub. I checked.

 

[Greninjaman]

Here's a question: Why are prophecies always so vague? Why can't they be specific and direct?

 

[LightningTopaz]

Historical prophecies have always been vague, and therefore open to many interpretations. Fictional prophecies are no different.

 

[Greninjaman]

But why is that the case?

 

[canisaries]

If a prophecy is vague, it's much harder to say when or if it's come true, or if it ever will. If you say "Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on 26th of June 2020 at 15:08 Pacific Standard Time" then people will pretty much know you're full of crap when that doesn't happen (not that anyone would believe you anyway because who the hell are you to know about the state of some celebrity's pancreas and so accurately). It's also very easy for Mr Johnson to make this fate impossible by spending the day in isolation or dying far before this date. Specificity makes prophecies fragile, but vague prophecies can be interpreted in different ways. So if you instead say "someone will meet an unfortunate fate this summer, and many will know", there's a lot more mystery and intrigue, and you most certainly will be right in some way. And if you're a fortune teller by profession, your fortunes better come true or no one will pay you just to make wild guesses about their lives.

LightningTopaz is also right. A prophecy, as a concept, is already expected culturally to be vague or multi-interpretational. If you have a "specific prophecy", it's kind of put into question whether "prophecy" is even the right word. "Prediction" would probably be more fitting, as it says nothing about how specific the claim is, or what grounds it's made on.

 

[LightningTopaz]

This vagueness is also a double-edged sword. People can twist a prophecy to suit their own ends, or claim they are so sure it's about something it may not even be about at all.

 

[Greninjaman]

Didn't that happen in the Harry Potter Series? I recall there was a prophecy regarding Harry.

 

[DawningWinds]

Didn't that happen in the Harry Potter Series? I recall there was a prophecy regarding Harry.

That it did. Something about those who've thrice defied Voldemort, a baby born as the seventh month ends, being marked as his equal. Basically, Voldemort thought Harry was the baby in the prophecy (which is stated multiple times to also be able to apply to Neville), so he goes to try and kill Harry before any of that happens, and his parents both sacrifice themselves to save their son and that works, so he ends up with just a lightning scar, which also has part of Voldemort's soul attached.

 

[Greninjaman]

Just like with the Chosen One Trope, this one is one that also has been done to death.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Part of the fun of the prophecy is in the mystery. A prophecy is a puzzle for the audience to figure out based on the evidence given by the author. Vague(r) wording gives more wiggle room for the author to play with and more for the audience to argue over. There's a lot of this in A Song of Ice and Fire, where the prophecies are so symbolic that they could mean almost anything. Whether it's effective or not is a matter of opinion. I tend to lean towards thinking that, while chapters such as the one featuring the House of the Undying are fun to read, they're symbolic to the point that they don't really have any effect on the story

 

[hanecco]

I think a good mysterious prophecy should be like a riddle - it’s hard, or even looks impossible to figure out the answer, but once you do it seems like the most obvious thing in the world. Otherwise the prophecy is so vague that it could apply to literally anything.

As for prediction-like prophecies, I think they work best when some sort of twist is put on them. For example, the prophecy could say that the third-eldest child of the king will inherit the throne... but what if the king secretly has an illegitimate child, who is the true third-eldest?

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

I'm usually not any more a fan of prophecies than I am of chosen ones. I prefer stories that move because of actual character choices and motivations than "because prophecy" and it's usually unnecessary anyway.

One take I quite like is one from, again, The Witcher. Spoilers: Geralt is bound to princess Ciri because he essentially baits fate magic. It feels like a non-parody version of the narrative magic in the Discworld series, in which story matters as much as choice.

Speaking of Discworld, no prophecies come to mind, but a quick search found a scene in which a character questions why a child was named 'Gawain,' and another suggests that it is a good name for a fighter. The first character suggests this is a self fulfilling prophecy, in that the unusual name will invite playground tauntingand lead to scuffles as a child.

Self-fulfilling prophecies and "trick" prophecies are more interesting to me, as are outright fake ones. For example, the notorious Delphic prophecy that King Croesus would destroy a great empire if he made war on the Persians. The destroyed empire was his own.

My favourite take by far on "real" prophecies is that in Good Omens, in which a genuine witch published a book of precise and accurate prophecies, which never sold well because the prophecies weren't exciting or relevant to most readers, as they mostly concerned the future events surrounding the author's descendants, and were written about the modern world by a medieval woman who didn't know what an iPad was.

I once wrote a trashy fanfic in which prophecy was a major driver, and I frankly think the impulse to wedge that kind of thing in ruined what might otherwise have been a moderately interesting story about mistreated trauma victims by removing their agency.