Again, with Purpose

By K. Steitz

When I was an awkward, bookish teenager, my favorite novels were The Blue Sword and The Hero and the  Crown by Robin McKinley. Those books are still in my collection; their pages are dog-eared, yellowed, the spines are broken. I loved them deeply and visited them regularly. The main characters in both books were these incredible young women who never quite fit in, but cared desperately for their chosen family and fought tooth-and-nail to protect them. At the time, I didn’t think very hard about why I loved them, or how I had found some of the few books in the genre that had female protagonists- I just loved them.

As I grew, as we all must, I learned that fantasy is a genre for boys. It is about strapping young men who come from modest backgrounds and save their homes/countries/etc, or save their lovers whose names never quite matter. I learned that these are stories of wish fulfillment. These stories, and women, and the world, were almost always told through the eyes of men. I heard the phrase “wish fulfillment” and I thought, “Yeah, okay, that sounds right.”

But what if this genre isn’t just wish fulfillment? Now that we have stories told by and for men and women, perhaps we’re looking at something different? What still draws us to Joseph Campbell’s hero cycle? Now, so far from my teens, I wonder if it’s something different. Perhaps these resonate with us because it is not just merely fantasy or wish fulfillment, but because these plots, these heroes and heroines represent purpose fulfillment.

We struggle day in and day out to justify our 8 to 5 office jobs that are at their core, just busy work. We spend the majority of our lives navigating daily life for systems of government and capitalism that will never benefit most of us. We have no grand destiny, and many of us have lost our purpose, but we can read novels of fantastic people and places, making a difference, finding the courage to follow their dreams, to fight the good fight. Wouldn’t it be brave if we followed our own dreams? During these times, wouldn’t it be brave to make a difference?

Steve's note

K. Steitz is a kickass poet, roller derby... player (is that the right word) and feminist. In 2013 she released her first poetry collection A Record of Night and she blogs at But ah, my foes and oh, my friends.