"There is food for thought in Merlin's end. There are worse fates for the body and for the soul. To be driven a everlastingly around the world on adventures that never end, no matter how varied they may be, is finally a monotony as narrow and confining as the magic circle under the flowering thorn. Ulysses wearies at last of all the monsters he has conquered, the difficulties mastered, the Circes and Calypsos at whose sides he has slept his soul away; wearies of the islands iwth their cliffs and harbors that have arisen, hostile or friendly, before him, fading into twilight behind; wearies of the wine-dark sea and the starry silence; and he longs for the less eventful repetition of the well-known things of everyday, longs for his little island, his house, and his aging wife. For the Heart of man is committed to two worlds. On the one hand, there is the wild forest of experience which is without as well as within, pathless, full of monsters and adventures, fairies adn enchantresses, adn of spellbound lovely being who require to be rescued and who then bewitch their rescurers. And on the other hand, there is the dense sweet-smelling whitethorn hedge; and all longing for far spaces comes home to rest under its cloud of flowers, painfully yet blissfully stilled" (Zimmer 200-201).
As much as I hate for a great story to end, at some point the voyage must circle back home, the characters must come to rest. In the television series "Star Trek Voyager", the ship was flung so far out in space there was little hope for those on board to ever get back home. Of course they had grand adventures, met new types of people, overcame impossible odd and solved difficult situations. Each week a new installment was ready to entertain us and allow us the escape and adventure we craved. It was great for a while, but then I began to feel bad for the characters who missed their homes and families. Just then the writers would allow them some sort of hope that they may one day reach their destination. Did they ever make it home? I am not sure; I stopped watching. The voyage was too long for me. I hope the characters found their way home, but I stopped to rest along the way and never caught back up. No matter how grand the adventure, we want our heroes to find peace even if it means we must part with them and end our adventures together.
The beginning of the story is the time to decide whether to pack up and adventure with our hero. The middle is our escape from our lives into excitement in new lands where we can expand our views of the world. At the end of the story our hero comes home, and so do we as readers. We stop and come home to our lives; better off for having adventured. Although the thought of a story that never ends is interesting, it would be too much, we would tire from the endlessness of it all. Feeling bad for our weary hero, we would no longer look at him the same way. Eventually we would turn our eyes away when we felt it was time for him to rest. It is then that we too need to rest and ready ourselves for the next adventure. Of course we do not want the grand adventures of romance to end, but each hero must rise then rest like the cycle of the sun. Frye tells us that romance draws from the natural world. To never end would go against the rhythms of nature. As much as we would like at times to continue on with our hero, it is best when we are left wanting more; just as each night we look forward to the dawn.
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