Hoid’s Stories’ Real-Life Equivalents

[Lunamor she/her]

Two of the stories Hoid tells in Stormlight seem to match up well to a real-life myth or folklore. I am convinced that the others must have some sort of equivalent as well. (Spoilers for all of his stories)

1. The Girl Who Looked Up = Prometheus

A person steals a light source for humanity who is stuck in the dark, resulting in severe punishment.

2. Fleet = John Henry

A human challenges a non-human force to a contest and wins, but at the cost of death.

3. The Wandersail = ? 

I feel like the general story should be a pretty common idea. Episode 8 of Season 1 of Star Trek TNG is a bit similar. (Episode Spoilers)

Spoiler

It features an idyllic society where any minor infraction is punished by death, which the society’s people are ok with. They don’t kill each other and the emperor equivalent is still alive, however.

4. The Cleverest of the Three Moons = ?

This one really feels like there could be a similar ancient myth.

5. The Dog and the Dragon

I’m not 100% sure this one has an equivalent, although this is a guess that is based purely off of vibes.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Duxredux he/him]

Someone more versed than me should be able to find fables that fit the structure of Hoid's stories, I'm sure, but I have a different concept to share. Are you familiar with The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell? I haven't read it personally, but the core idea is that there are reoccurring stories that are echoed across civilizations, through history, and deep into mythologies that Campbell refers to as the "monomyth". The monomyth, known as the hero's journey is found in plenty of highly memorable stories and has been deliberately followed in modern stories, like Star Wars (Brandon criticizes George Lucas for following the hero's journey too closely by including the virgin birth in Episode 1). Story archetypes have been studied, discussed, and analyzed for decades if not centuries. It wouldn't surprise me at all if nearly every story structure within the Cosmere hasn't been told at some point. For example, Brandon has noted that Bridge Four in WoK is basically the underdog sports team story archetype. The archetypal story is alluded to within the Cosmere in SotD where Vathi notes how so many stories are similar to Yaalani the Brave, the woman breaking gender roles, and that she sees them as methods to reinforce gender roles by parents telling daughters, "You are not Yaalani".

So... you're right, but it both is and isn't as significant as you might expect. Hoid's stories are likely echoes of IRL stories, in the same way that modern media can find roots in a dozen mythologies. This isn't to minimize Brandon and Hoid's abilities as a storytellers, instead Hoid may actively be choosing archetypal stories because they will likely resonate with the members of every planet he visits and echo their own stories. If Hoid has noticed the linguistic evolutionary convergence of the name "Doug" then he has almost certainly recognized story archetypes.

[Lunamor she/her]

2 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

Someone more versed than me should be able to find fables that fit the structure of Hoid's stories, I'm sure, but I have a different concept to share. Are you familiar with The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell? I haven't read it personally, but the core idea is that there are reoccurring stories that are echoed across civilizations, through history, and deep into mythologies that Campbell refers to as the "monomyth". The monomyth, known as the hero's journey is found in plenty of highly memorable stories and has been deliberately followed in modern stories, like Star Wars (Brandon criticizes George Lucas for following the hero's journey too closely by including the virgin birth in Episode 1). Story archetypes have been studied, discussed, and analyzed for decades if not centuries. It wouldn't surprise me at all if nearly every story structure within the Cosmere hasn't been told at some point. For example, Brandon has noted that Bridge Four in WoK is basically the underdog sports team story archetype. The archetypal story is alluded to within the Cosmere in SotD where Vathi notes how so many stories are similar to Yaalani the Brave, the woman breaking gender roles, and that she sees them as methods to reinforce gender roles by parents telling daughters, "You are not Yaalani".

So... you're right, but it both is and isn't as significant as you might expect. Hoid's stories are likely echoes of IRL stories, in the same way that modern media can find roots in a dozen mythologies. This isn't to minimize Brandon and Hoid's abilities as a storytellers, instead Hoid may actively be choosing archetypal stories because they will likely resonate with the members of every planet he visits and echo their own stories. If Hoid has noticed the linguistic evolutionary convergence of the name "Doug" then he has almost certainly recognized story archetypes.

That’s super interesting, I haven’t read that book before, but it makes a ton of sense! I feel like Lucas can be particularly on the nose with this stuff, the plot of Willow is basically just Moses in the beginning 

[Duxredux he/him]

14 hours ago, Lunamor said:

That’s super interesting, I haven’t read that book before, but it makes a ton of sense! I feel like Lucas can be particularly on the nose with this stuff, the plot of Willow is basically just Moses in the beginning 

It's super fascinating and the first time my wife told me about the monomyth kind of blew my mind. How was it that the stories of so many disconnected cultures could have the same themes? Was it some core aspect of human belief, some innate part of the human experience that made these stories get passed down for generations? After thinking about it overnight, there's some pretty cool inworld decisions to model the hero's journey and I'll try to describe them.

There's different models of the hero's journey now, some with 8 steps some with 17 or more. Here's one I pulled off the internet (and it even has its own attribution, how convenient).

I'll give a few examples, first the Dog and the Dragon, Kelsier, and Kaladin.

To a certain extent, I might argue that the Dog and the Dragon is a slight subversion of the hero's journey. You have the Dog seeing the dragon, (skip refusal of the call) chooses it as his mentor and begins his process of changing into a dragon. The dog is tested, not many allies, a few enemies as he tries and fails. Then the child falls into the well and the Dog approaches the inmost cave of the well, flying into the darkness and brings the child back from the pit. He is rewarded and then refuses to believe that he has changed and rejects the resurrection and elixir of growth as he thinks that he has failed to become a dragon. This of course is where Kaladin calls out Hoid and says that the dog is a hero and simply failed to recognize it. I hadn't tried mapping the hero's journey to the Dog and the Dragon before this, but it seems to fit pretty well.

Now Kelsier I think was deliberately trying to recreate the hero's journey. He needed a story to inspire the skaa to rebellion, a religion to supplant the Steel Ministry and he synthesized his own from Sazed's compiled religions and his own rising title as The Survivor of Hathsin. It doesn't stop there though, by inviting their recruited armies into a literal pit similar to Hathsin, he tries to recreate the hero's journey for their army, inviting them into his fable, staging the fight between Bilg and Demoux. It works too well, Yeden believes too much and gets their army slaughtered. At the end, he takes down an Inquisitor as the Skaa celebrate, is it enough? Is the journey as the Survivor of Hathsin enough to inspire the skaa? Not quite and he resorts to OreSeur faking a deeper cycle, his story becoming the Survivor of Death. One he ironically fakes but later because of a few cons and borrowed power he Ascends to become a weakened Preservation, a counterfeit god.

Contrast this with Kaladin and Bridge Four trying to recruit new Windrunners and eventually deciding to model their training after their own and bringing their squads into the chasms complete with stew as a sort of induction process. Much less engineered, actual bestowal of power granted to the new Windrunners, an mostly unintentional symbolic induction into the Bridge Four and Kaladin's hero's journey. Was Kaladin turning from the Honor Chasm his resurrection? Their descent into the Chasms? Surviving the Highstorm's "judgment"? All of the above? Protecting Elhokar? His depression in the context of the other depressed? Diving off Urithiru? I can't tell if the hero's journey is too simple and just part of the human experience or if it captures something fundamentally important about change and growth.

As a side note, if Kelsier's world had belief system powers instead of genetics, it might have gone very differently for his rebellion. That said, there is a contrast between Kelsier needing a revolution and Kaladin simply wanting to keep his friends safe.

It's fascinating stuff. I'm not a literary buff, I just listen to writing podcasts because my wife likes writing and this is a way I can engage with one of her interests. If anyone has formally studied literature and has anything to add or correct, I'd be interested.

Edited January 27, 2024 by Duxredux
Added dog and dragon