Eragon: A Sue to End All Sues

by Derekeen

For those of us who can actually day dream about whatever, I doubt there has never been a time where we dreamed about being something more than what we really are. Some people dream about being knights in shining armor, big time sports legends, movie stars, composers, or even a hero for a fantasy world. There are a lot of young boys out there who wish they could be jedi knights or dream of being a space fairing stud like Han Solo.

Some even go so far as to take the next step in trying to make their dreams come true, and they do that by writing down their daydreams and turning them into actual stories. This is not at all a bad practice, because some of the greater authors go this way. Christopher Paolini did in a sense, because he dreamed about riding dragons, swinging swords, being a hero, and falling in love with elf women.

Those of you who have been following the Christopher Paolini and Inheritance phenomena (if it can be called that) know that Paolini based the idea of the character Eragon on himself. Eragon is the image that Mr. Paolini envisions whenever he sees himself in his own fantasy world. And who is Eragon? He’s a young boy in this fantasy world known as Alagaësia. Just as Luke Skywalker did, Eragon began life as a farmboy in a backwater village living a modest life until tragedy strikes. He is then flung into a world of adventure and eventually becomes a hero…nay, not just a hero, but the savior of everything that is good against the evil empire. Not exactly an original plotline, which is one of Christopher Paolini’s several faults as an author. His originality isn’t what’s being discussed here though. The focus here is that the character of Eragon as being one of the biggest Mary Sue characters in the history of modern literature.

So what is a Mary Sue? You can check out the definition of a Mary Sue here (where you will see that Eragon is listed as one of the examples of male Mary Sue characters). Basically the Mary Sue began as a term for fan fiction describing a character who is a fictional alter ego for the author, one who can interact with the characters in that fandom as the author probably dreamed about doing to inspire her to write such a fiction piece.

In the worst cases the original character in the fan fiction piece can sometimes have a relationship with one of the canon characters (one of the characters from the fandom that the fiction is based off of). It also describes characters who are idealized in some way, such as being powerful or having a tragic past, many things that make her seem overly unique and special.

As an example we will look into a fairly popular target for fan fiction writing, the anime cartoon InuYasha. If someone were to write an InuYasha fan fiction story, create a female character who is modeled after herself, and then have that character compete with Kagome for InuYasha’s heart and end up winning, that would be one of the highest marks of a Mary Sue character. It could be taken further if this character had a special magic ability which would allow her to single handedly destroy the demon Naraku, the main villain of the InuYasha anime.

Mary Sue characters do not have to be fan fiction characters either. A character set in an original setting can be a Mary Sue if he or she is over-idealized, too powerful, or too perfect. This is where Christopher Paolini fits in with Eragon.

Where shall we begin?

First, Paolini openly admits that Eragon is based off of him. That’s one.

The character of Eragon finds an egg while hunting in the forest that eventually hatches into a dragon. We later learn that the blue dragon, Saphira, would not hatch until the egg found its way into the right person’s hands, the person who would become her owner, that being Eragon. There is another point.

How does Saphira react to Eragon after she hatches from her egg? Well, kind of like a puppy, Saphira immediately loves Eragon at first sight and the two are best friends from then on. No efforts to earn a friendship or to gain trust, no showing how much they care to one another, nothing. Best friends to the end from second one, only they are the type of best friends that one would see between a boy and his dog. At times when Saphira and Eragon are at play I was almost expecting Eragon to pick up a stick to start playing fetch. Not only is this a sad way to portray dragons in my opinion, but this “I Choose You” mentality is another old cliché that is often found in many fantasy settings. Anne McCaffrey used it in the Dragonriders of Pern novels and there it was well done. In Eragon I found it to be a bit sappy in its use, more in tune of a mediocre telling for a younger audience. Then again, even Ash Ketchum had to work to gain Pikachu’s trust. Eragon and Saphira just merely connect. Right, not only is it boring, but it’s overpowering for the character, and yet the third strike of a Mary Sue against Eragon. That’s not all either; in fact it barely scratches the tip of the iceberg.

Eragon falls into a tragic set of events, his uncle being killed and him being forced to leave his home. Not to worry though, because not only does he have Saphira with him to keep him company, but he also has Brom. Brom is the cliché old mentor character that is not very unlike Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars. Brom goes on to teach Eragon all the know-how of being a dragon rider, including how to be a great sword fighter, how to read the old tongue, how to ride Saphira, and also how to use magic. Over the short time that they travel together Eragon begins picking up on all of this very quickly. In fact he learns too quickly for it to actually be real. For starters, the magic sword that Brom gives him is six feet long, yet through the process Eragon learns to not only wield it with one hand, but he can wield it with either hand just as fluently. Does this seem to not set with some people or is it just me? Right, thought so. It has been argued that dragonriders do become stronger than normal people though. That’s nice, but it doesn’t save you from gaining more Mary Sue points.

Later on in the story Brom gets killed. From there Eragon goes on his own with Saphira and eventually finds out that an elven princess is being held captive by the enemy. He mounts a daring rescue and saves her, and eventually Eragon falls in love with the elf maiden Arya. Amazing. It seems to me that Mr. Paolini might have fallen in love with the character Arwen from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”, or thought that elf women were exceptionally sexy and hot, and thought it would be cool if he could hint towards a connection between himself and an elf maiden as well. This connects with the idea of the author’s self image main character getting into a romantic involvement with a fandom character and it becomes a pretty big mark for him being a Mary Sue.

Finally, towards the end, Eragon joins the Varden, the Alagaësia equivalent to the Rebellion in Star Wars, and helps fight the Empire. The Empire threatens to destroy the homeland of the dwarves and the Varden do their best to fight them off. All seems lost and the Empire is about to win until Eragon out of the blue begins throwing magic around and kills the leader of the invading Army, not to mention Saphira breaths fire for the first time and saves his tail. Okay then, here are some more Mary Sue points for our friend Eragon. By some mistake of chanting the right magical word which he thought was a swear word, Eragon manages to cast a magic spell to help him thwart his enemy, and from there he goes from first time user to a magic master caster. Ludicrous to say the least.

The list does go on and I’ve only mentioned a few of the points from Eragon. For Mary Sue points in Eldest, I can only give word of mouth points since I never read the second part of the Inheritance trilogy and nor do I intend to (almost all of the word of mouth I’ve been in contact with say Eldest was a lot worse than Eragon). These efforts by Christopher Paolini to try and make Eragon seem as awesome as possible, the greatest hero character of all time, and the most loved for all the readers out there have sort of backfired. Start a poll with some unbiased people who have read Eragon and I’m willing to bet they say that the character they dislike the most would be Eragon.

Readers need to be able to connect with and identify with the character before any sense of liking can take place. Paolini makes the mistake of putting too much power to Eragon. He does have one weakness in that he faints a lot in battle, but since all of the good guys love him he really is never in danger of being beaten by the enemy or that he might die. After that, is there anything left? Not really, just a super awesome dragon-riding, elf loving, magic casting, mega hero in a fantasy setting that readers cannot help but go, “eh, whatever” at.

So, in closing, the Elite Coalition of Grossly Mary Sue Characters would like to accept the character of Eragon into its ranks. He meets with all the criteria in that he is over-idealized and super powerful, he is getting into a relationship with a character that can sort of be called a fandom character, if you realize that Arya is just a combination of Arwen from LOTR and Leia from Star Wars, and everyone loves him. That may seem fun at the start but after a while the reader will get bored and Eragon is going to turn into a character that people dislike. What will Chris Paolini’s legacy be besides just being another rich guy who wrote a book?