Lud in the Mist

Hope Mirrlees 

In the novel Lud in the Mist, by Hope Mirrlees, the hero is not what one may consider a hero at all. Nathanial Chanticleer is a man in his fifties who has thrived off of stability and lack of change. While outwardly happy, Nathanial is anything but; as a youth, he plucks a wrong note from his Lute, and this note has haunted him for the duration of his uneventful life. The unharmonious Note seems to menace the predictable nature of his life. Yet another unharmonious note is struck when Nathanials’s 12 year-old son eats a drug-like fruit. 

At this point, one may notice this book begins to follow the classic journey of a hero. Nathanial has lived much of his life in a very safe, secure town up until he is called to an adventure. That adventure is when Nathanial is forced to rescue his son from the duplicitous actions of Gibberty and Leer. In this book, the supernatural element are the Fairies and the fairy fruit, which provides the supernatural element in this heroic journey. What makes Nathanial a hero is his “insane” devotion to his family and his willingness to make a hopeless journey to Fairyland to save his children that essentially provides the survival of Lud-in-the-Mist. After this journey, Nathanial does return to Lud in the Mist, however he returns changed, which is expected, and commonplace within a typical hero’s story. No one will experience such an adventure and return entirely unchanged. One of those changes is reflowing fairy fruit back into Lud, this signifies the necessary balance that must exist between fairy and fact, as well as poetry, prose, stability and change.