The Rain Kings Mythical design
In the modern world of today people go through their daily lives never noticing what is around them, but we have to remember that many cultures were once primitive. Different tribes once believed that they had to have ritual sacrifices to have good crops, others had to have old stories told while reenacting them so as to recreate the histories of their past and to teach human behavior and within that fact “bring value to life” (2, Elliad). What people don’t know is that the stories and once primitive life style is still among us till this day. Through animals, nature, other places across the globe, poetry, and books, mythological and primitive life is shown throughout the ages, but what about today’s world? This is where the small details come into play. One example is the book Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow. Through the journey of Mr. Henderson mythological structure, mythical representation in the main character and the primitive mythological life style of two cultures will show that even in modern society there still lives mythology.
Mythological structure is split into three different parts: Beginning, middle, and end. To be more in depth beginning is of a creation or harmony; middle is war fare and pain; and the end is either a revelation or an apocalypse. In this case the book begins with him talking of how he decided to go to Africa in the first place. He then goes back to the beginning, even though it’s brief he still addresses the time when he was born “At birth I weighed fourteen pounds and it was a tough delivery. Then I grew up.”(Henderson, 4). He then goes on, telling of his quick history of what he did when growing up. The middle of the mythology structure is basically suffering, his wife Lily one day addresses him about it “Gene when you suffer you suffer harder than any person I ever saw.” She had to smile, and not about my suffering, of course, but the way I went about suffering” (Henderson, 33). In this paragraph he even thinks to himself about his own suffering. When he finally goes to Africa and meets a primitive tribe he also mentions his suffering “It’s too bad, but suffering is about the only reliable burster of the spirit’s sleep” (Henderson, 78). The end is of a revelation or an apocalypse and always in a story like this it’s about a revelation. In the end of the book he finally realizes that he loves Lily and his children “One thing however I kept saying to myself and telling Romilayu, and this was that I had to get back to Lily and the children” (Henderson, 328). He then has a revelation about his connection with an old bear named Smolak “But most of the time I lived not with horses but with Smolak, and this poor creature and I were very close. So before pigs ever came on my horizon, I received a deep impression from a bear” (Henderson, 338). He was talking of how you connect with an animal like how Dahfu connected with his lion Atti. In short, he experienced a remarkable transformation simply explained by T.S Eliot “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know it for the first time” (Little Gidding). When looking at the book it’s simple to see that it has mythical structure within its pages you just have to know the basics of mythology beginning, middle, and end.
The representation of Henderson in a mythological form can mostly be explained by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. He explains that a hero’s journey goes through a sequence: adventure, the mentor, and the threshold. In Henderson’s case even though he is a jerk in the beginning he shows the three stages: going to Africa to solve the “I want” (adventure), meeting Dahfu (mentor), and finally revelation about his life (threshold). In the book these stages are clearly stated if looking closely at the words written. As a hero he is mostly similar to Hercules, in mythology Hercules is known for his rash ways of making decisions, his short temper, the journey of sacrifices and suffering, but also his strength and courage. Henderson is also rash when making decisions, one example is when he decided to blow up the frogs in the Arnewi tribe. In the end even though warned by his trusty companion Romilayu, he ended up destroying their water supply and had to leave the tribe. This adds on to Henderson’s suffering. Since the beginning of his life he has always struggled and suffered because of his family issues, his relationship with his wife and children, and with his “I want”. He then has a short fuse when it comes to dark situations like entering the new tribe Wariri when he was sleeping with a dead corpse “I tried to consult with myself as to what I should do, but I could not make sense, the reason being that I was becoming offended and angry”(Henderson, 136). Becoming rash again he takes the corpse and dumps it to show them that they couldn’t do this to him. Last was his strength, many times he has shown his strength and dedication when out in Africa, an example is when he had to wrestle with Prince Itelo, even though younger and more athletic Henderson rose to the challenge and defeated the prince. Another time was when he wanted to move the goddess statue Mummah, a heavy statue that would bring rain if it was moved. Once king Dahfu accepted Henderson’s offer of moving Mummah he was able to lift Mummah and move her with the other gods. In the end he made it out of the savage tribe and out of Africa because of his courage taking along with him the lion Dahfu. Henderson relates to a hero’s tale but also similar to a famous hero Hercules, showing that the main character is in a mythical representation of a hero adventure.
In the book it shows the most primitive mythological life styles of two cultures. Through Henderson’s quest of curing his “I want, I want, I want” he comes in contact with the two most exclusive non-inhabited of modern society tribes: the Arnewi and the Wariri. In these two tribes it shows rituals and traditions among the people that Henderson has come to admire. The first tribe that he came in contact with was the Arnewi, when he enters he sees everyone crying with their cows soon finding out by the prince and the queen that all of them are vegetarians and the cow is their sacred animal. When they meet death the owners have to eat the cow which brings them sadness, but although this is happening he finds out that everyone is peaceful and they all live in a sort of paradise. He then meets the queen showing their traditions with their hospitality “In short, this was a special mark of the old lady’s favor. Itelo protruded his lips to show that I was expected to kiss her belly” (Henderson, 74). But once he destroyed their water he made his way to the Wariri. Which became the exact opposite of the Arnewi tribe, instead of seeing green they we’re in this desert, instead of having hospitality they slept in a hut with a dead corpse. But soon after meeting the king he came to form a friendship and sense of hesitance about their traditions. The reason why was because of the death of the king, Dahfu then explains his fate
These same ladies, so inordinate of attention, will report me and then the Bunam who is chief priest here, with other priests of the association, will convey me out into the bush and there I will be strangled… The priest will attend until a maggot is seen upon my dead person and he will wrap it in silk… declaring it to be the king’s soul, my soul… he will carry to town a lion’s cub, explaining that the maggot has now experienced a conversion into a lion (Henderson, 157).
This is metempsychosis of a king and is also said in James G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough “The man-god must be killed as soon as he shows symptoms that his powers are beginning to fail, and his soul must be transferred to a vigorous successor before it has been seriously impaired by the threatened decay”(Golden Bough 309). But what wasn’t told was that of the duty of the rain king. If king dahfu should die the rain king would become king. If he knew of that small detail he would have never lifted the statue of Mummah another tradition among the Wariri. In Henderson’s modern day that he lived in, he still was able to find primitive tribes that showed mythology at its finest; showing traditions and rituals that bring back a mythical sense of life.
Henderson’s journey brought a lot of the mythical elements into play to make an interesting outcome of his revelation. Through his path the mythological structure, representation of mythology in the character, and the primitive mythological life style of two cultures showed that even in modern society there is still a living and breathing mythical world out there. So in the end if people would look at the world in its truest form they would see the stories of how things came to be and the traditions that were never lost but just forgotten. The world might think that myth is not a part of reality but in the words of Elliad “Myths not an escape from reality but a safe passage to reality.”
