Eragon pt. four

[kippurbird]

Chapter Awakening
Characters Eragon, baby dragon
Shiny magical objects in Eragon's possession One baby dragon

Summary

Trying this again since LJ ate my first post.

Awakening begins with a description of the baby dragon. While the description is fairly standard there is something anatomically incorrect about the way Paolini describes the dragon's wings. If we keep in mind that a dragon's wing is usually another hand modified for flight. There's the thumb and the hand and it usually looks like this:



However Paolini describes the dragon's wing as such, "... and ribbed with thin fingers of bone that extended from the wing's front edge, forming a line of widely spaced talons." Now, I'm assuming that since he went out of his way to describe the dragon's wing that it's not a normal looking dragon's wing. So, I tried to sketch out what such a wing would look like and came up with this:



The blue lines are the bone and it doesn't really look that feasible of a bone structure. But apparently anatomy isn't for mysterious dragons.

Now that the dragon has hatched, one would assume that it is hungry. After all it has absorbed all the yolk that should have been in the egg (unless, once again, it has teleported into the egg) and it exhorted a lot of energy to get out of that egg. This is how most baby animals react once they are born. They go "Where's the food?" The baby dragon, however, goes about and instead explores the room, curiously. It is only after it bonds itself to Eragon and examines him curiously does he exhibit hunger.

To make a parallel example, look at the dragons from Anne McCaffery's Dragonriders of Pern Series. When these dragons hatch, they impress upon a person immediately and then demand food. They don't explore anything or look around curiously until after they've been fed. They also hatch out much larger, now that I think of it, and they grow to be big enough for riding. I don't want to think of the amount of food and energy needed to grow a baby dragon that starts out a foot long into a dragon capable of carrying a full grown human in five months (as Brom says in a later chapter). Pernese dragons aren't capable of carrying a human until they're nearly a Turn old.

I'm not going to comment on the whole bonding sequence except to say that it really didn't seem to have any emotional stirrings for me. It came off as rather bland instead of this wondrous scary thing. I think it's because of the way he mixed his metaphors and couldn't stick to a single image. He also doesn't put in what Eragon is feeling at the time too which would make the scene more potent.

However, he then goes on to show another bit of Eragon logic. Eragon, we have learned, has been raised with stories about the Dragonriders and how they are good, kind and wonderful and the whoopie keenness of everything Good in this world. He has a dragon on his bed. What does he think? "This was a dangerous animal, of that he was sure". Dragons are good kind and hang around people, yet it's a dangerous animal. That doesn't follow.

Continuing in Eragon's brilliant line of reasoning, he decides not to show the cute harmless dragon to his Uncle but instead wait until it is bigger and therefor they would be unable to get rid of it. I'm not sure what size has to do with a person's ability to get rid of something is. You can kill a cow just as easily as you can kill a mouse. It would make more sense to show them the cute innocent little dragon than the potentially dangerous big dragon and ask if you can keep it.

He then decides that he can't keep the baby dragon in the house. He has no idea if this baby dragon can fend for itself from the cold or predators. He doesn't know how often this dragon needs to be fed. He knows nothing about its habits or anything like that. But what does he do? Leave it in the woods in a hut and hope that it doesn't wander off. It would make more sense to keep it in his room where he could check on it frequently and make sure it's okay. He doesn't do this, of course.

Finally Eragon waits for about a month before he decides to go and see if someone knows how to take care of a dragon. He decides to go see Brom. Apparently he's hoping that Brom will have a story entitled "Care and feeding of Dragons" because how else would Brom be of any help?

My final nitpick with this chapter is when the dragon talks to Eragon. We know that the dragon says his name but we don't learn what the voice sounds like. Is it male, female, high pitched, low pitched? Rumbling? There are no descriptors to this voice. One would think that this is an important thing to describe. His dragon has just spoken to him for the very first time and we get nothing about its voice! This is what he should spend his time describing! And if he did it right he wouldn't of had to wonder if the dragon was male or female. Even if the voice was gender neutral he should have said it, to keep up the idea that he doesn't know what gender it is.

Comments

[ghostgecko.livejournal.com]

His wing description may have been a garbled attempt at something like a gliding lizard's wing: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrates/flight/gliding.html (scroll down for some pics). Interesting, the moviemakers gave it wings with featherlike scales ("sceathers").
Then again, maybe not.

Man, this sotry if ripping off Star Wars and Jane Yolen's Heartsblood series right and left, isn't it?

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Aren't those wings for gliding and not flying though?

[ghostgecko.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'm not defending him by any means. Just wondering if he got the idea from that. Of course, we're talking about a telepathic, fire-breathing hexapod so I guess we can't expect TOO much biological sense.

Excuse the typos, the cat is sleeping draped over my arm and making it hard to type.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't mind people defending him, if I'm wrong about a point and they can point me straight. But it could be. Or he could have just said, "I'm gonna make a new type of wing LOL!11!" A friend thinks that he meant the typical dragon type of wing, but his description is so mangled that he didn't get that idea across.


KITTY!

[madamsnape.livejournal.com]

*Grins* Fab sporking... nothing else really to say for this chapter, but well done!

[thelittlebudgie.livejournal.com]

The baby dragon, however, goes about and instead explores the room, curiously. It is only after it bonds itself to Eragon and examines him curiously does he exhibit hunger.


Perhaps the dragon's thoughts went something like this: Meat! Ugh, Stu-meat! Maybe there's not-Stu meat somewhere else. *searches for not-Stu meat* Godammit. Stu! Get me meat!

Leave it in the woods in a hut and hope that it doesn't wander off.

I am never leaving either Paolini or Eragon alone with something small and defenseless. Something small and hungry, like a pirhanna, on the other hand...

Somehow I forgot about Eragon not knowing the Sapphira's gender. Does he name her then, or does he wait until later? And why is it that he goes to Brom of all the people when he doesn't trust the trader-y type people?

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Brom is apparently the be all know all end all of dragon lore. Therefore Brom must know about dragons and dragon names. Brom is not a tradery type person, he lives in the village.

He waits until after he talks to Brom to name her. Somehow he manages to keep on calling the dragon "it" until then. I would have assigned a gender to it as soon as it hatched... but that's just me.

[dove-cg.livejournal.com]

Discussing the gender, without knowing from the voice, gives me unusual Steve Irwin-related ideas. I suppose it's for the best that he didn't try discovering the creature's gender by looking the way most farmers would (at the groin area.) Sure, it might be awkward to figure out, since it is probably more lizard-like in that area, but that wouldn't stop anyone from just looking and guessing. You know, it's been awhile since I've read any of the Pern stuff. Did they discover the dragon's gender, for the first time, from the voice? :)

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Actually Eragon does try that. The little dragon was not happy with him.

As for the Pernese dragons, it's color coded. All greens and golds are female (though only the golds can lay eggs), the bronze, brown and blues are male. The original settlers discovered this with the fire lizards which were what dragons were made from. /pernese geekiness.

[neshomeh.livejournal.com]

I'd just like to put in a good word for Brom here. My memory is shaky, but I seem to have this notion that he's a decent character who doesn't deserve to be in this story. Eragon just makes him look bad.

Otherwise, spot-on.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Brom, from what I can tell, is the only interesting character in the book and that's because he's the mysterious stranger character and the mentor figure. And you get information from him that sort of explains stuff.

[wyrdmuse.livejournal.com]

Wait, so he can't afford or get meat for three humans, but he's going to take care of a dragon? Did he stumble upon the rare Vegan Dragon?

[ghostgecko.livejournal.com]

Now that I think about it, it must look a bit like a Da Vinci glider: http://www.chicago-splash.com/artman/uploads/davinci_s_real_code_2.jpg

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

No. Somehow their meat concerns have been met and he can afford to feed this fourth individual despite what they would have carefully measured out to last them through the winter.

[gundamkiwi.livejournal.com]

I always thought that the greens can lay eggs, but once they chew firestone they become sterile, which is why gold dragons don't chew it. 'Cos the golds need to make more dragon babies, an' stuff. That, and for some reason green dragons aren't as desirable as bronzes and browns, so no one cares that they become sterile. Or something.

I need to re-read me some McCaffery, I does. ^^;

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Green fire lizards can lay eggs no problem, fire stone or not. Green dragons are born sterile. Queens can't chew firestone, it doesn't make them sterile though, for the first ones did try and chew it and nothing happened.

[gundamkiwi.livejournal.com]

Really? I wonder where I missed that along the way...most interesting. Thanks! ^^

[hiyami.livejournal.com]

I do seem to recall that it's indeed the stone-chewing that makes Green dragons sterile, or at least that's what the Riders thought.
The "Queens can't chew stone" was only revealed in the books about the arrival, though, so maybe Anne McCaffrey retconned that bit.

[hiyami.livejournal.com]

That comment is gold, but the accompanying icon makes it even more tasty.

[hiyami.livejournal.com]

I'd have thought the dragon told him her name?
Or was he afraid that it would be too much like Pern?... (yes, it's sarcasm)

If there is no gender indication before that, I'd assume he gives her a female name because darn it, he intends to ride it some day and he doesn't want to think it could be male!

(no 15-yrs old boy wants to be associated with gay thoughts, unless they are gay and okay with it)

[dracothelizard.livejournal.com]

Someone over on journalfen pointed out your critique of Eragon, and thank you for saving me the effort of reading the book and being annoyed. I've seen the movie, and that was bad enough.

One thing, though:

"And if he did it right he wouldn't of had to wonder if the dragon was male or female."

It's 'wouldn't HAVE had'.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

People are mentioning me on Journelfen? *is impressed!*


Oh and you're probably right. XD I've been known to make some fantastic mistakes.

[dracothelizard.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there was a post on fandom_wank or clairvoyantwank about the anti-Eragon comm, and someone mentioned your sporking of the book at some point, so I thought I'd check it out.

And I'm at part 10 of your sporking so far, and good grief, the book is even worse than the movie, and the movie annoyed me! Dragons never stop growing yet have an amazing growth rate if they mature in six months or so O_o.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Could you link me? Am curious.

Isn't it? The movie was pretty bad, but then again the source material was horrid.

[dracothelizard.livejournal.com]

Well, here's the wank report: http://www.journalfen.net/community/clairvoyantwank/355638.html

and your critique thing is mentioned somewhere in the comments. Hurrah for vagueness ;)