(urth) Short Story 99: The Boy Who Hooked the Sun

[Marc Aramini]

The Boy Who Hooked the Sun

“The Boy Who Hooked the Sun” appeared as a chapbook in 1985 and is
reprinted in *Starwater Stains.*

SUMMARY: On the eighth day, a boy from Atlantis casts his fishing line into
the ocean and catches the long line of the sun as it rises. As the sun
moves to escape, it plunges the earth into night, throws up sprays of
stars, and even hides behind the moon.

The richest man of the village tells the boy to cut the line, for winter is
wintering the blossoms in his orchard, and summer drying out the canals
that water his fields. The boy pelts him with the stones of Atlantis. The
strongest man in the village comes because the rich man hired him, and the
boy, infused with the power of the sun, tosses him into the sea after also
pelting him with the stones of Atlantis. Then the cleverest man in the
village offers him a kingship in the empire they will form, but he receives
the same response. The boy asks, “Oh really? A king. Who is to be emperor?”

A magic woman comes, and mentions all manner of supernatural and mythic
beings threateningly, and the boy tosses a variety of precious stones at
her until she, too, leaves. A fool “who sang songs without words to all the
brooks and boasted of bedding the white birch on the hill” comes expressing
his fears. Instead of pelting him with stones, the boy lets him touch the
fishing pole until he leaves.

His mother comes, and claims that she has not yet told him the finest story
of all, the tale of “The Boy Who Hooked the Sun”:

“Come now to the hose the richest man in the village has given back to us.
Put on your crown and tell your general to stand guard; take up the magic
feather of the bird Tchataka, who opens its mouth to the sky and drinks
wisdom with the dew. Then we shall dip the feather in the blood of a wild
ox and write that story on white birch bark, you and I.”

He promises to do as she wants and release the sun for as long as they are
both alive, but his thoughts run contrary to his vow: “I love my mother,
who is more beautiful than the white birch tree and always kind. But do not
all the souls wear away at last as they circle on the Wheel? Then the time
must come when I live and she does not, and when that time comes, surely I
will bait my hook again with the shining stones of Uranus and we shall rule
the stars. Or not.”

Thus, the seasons result – when the sun remembers its sore mouth it seeks
to get away from the earth, and then when it sees the boy's line stretched
across the sky and powdered with hoarfrost, it returns. “Or perhaps it is
only – as some say – that it remembers the taste of the bait.”

COMMENTARY: We have already looked at Wolfe’s take on allegory with “Love,
Among the Corridors” (which he insisted was the opposite of allegory – a
literary myth). In that story, it is easy to see that love is a woman.
Here, we have a fable. The distinction between a fable, a literary myth,
and a parable is perhaps of little use to a fabulist such as Wolfe –
however, the personification of the natural world, with the sun as a kind
of giant fish, tends to place this clearly in the camp of fables – which
are nearly ubiquitous across all cultures on earth.

Here, the boy casts his line into the sea at the long reflection of the
sun. It starts on the eighth day, the day after the creation story is
concluded, even though years seem to have passed in the lives of the
characters. We are in the province of man’s dominion over the world exiled
from Eden, and the description of the boy make him both fey and ordinary:
“He was not such a boy as you or I have ever seen, for there was a touch of
emerald in his hair and there were flakes of sun-gold in his eyes. His skin
was sun-browned, and his fingernails were small and short and a little
dirty, so he was just such a boy as lives down the street from us both.” He
is completely ordinary, but still magical.

The description of the father, who years ago had traded the stones of
Atlantis for wine and ram skins of the Greeks, shows a turn away from
untested value, wonder, and myth to pragmatic and ordinary concerns – the
world of logic and bartered goods. Notice that the boy, even though he is
poor because his father traded away those stones, still seems to have
unlimited stones of Atlantis to repel the rich man, the strong man, the
clever man, and the magic woman. The stones of Atlantis represent something
like youthful idealism or a belief in something besides riches and trickery
and mysticism. Perhaps the stones are the power of the fable itself to
explain the universe in terms children can understand. At first glance this
seems to be a belief in magic, that a fishing rod can capture the sun
itself, but the magic woman who comes by and tempts him undermines that
reading. At the end, when he considers the stones of Uranus, the stones
seem to represent the dream of conquering the stars and mastering the
natural world completely.

At the start, the fable attempts to describe why there are stars in the
night sky, why sometimes the sun hides behind the moon, and why it grows
hot and cold as the seasons pass. It shows the coercive power of riches,
strength, cleverness, mysticism, and even parental expectations, all things
which can sway children from following their dreams. It shows forbearance
and patience for foolishness. Much like “At the Point of Capricorn”, the
movements of the sun through the heavens is given a kind of human back
story, showing why the sun always chooses to return closer to earth and
allow the cycle of life to continue.

Ironically, since the fable attempts to describe poorly understood
phenomenon in terms that human beings can easily understand, a meaningful
analysis is difficult – the story is simply the story, and when the mother
finally gets the boy to cut his line, she does so by promising that they
will write a wonderful story down – that of “The Boy Who Hooked the Sun”.
She calls upon material possessions, worldly might, magic, and the power of
story to finally get the boy to release the sun, but one gets the sense
that it is only because he loves her that he puts down that youthful dream
and embraces the values of the world around him (even, ironically,
spiritual and magical values). However, he vows, when she is dead, to defer
his dream no longer and conquer the stars, in the vain hope that there is
always a tomorrow. The dreams of progress and mastery over nature – are
these the stones of Atlantis?

THE MAGICAL WOMAN AND HER DEITIES

The most difficult distinction to make involves the temptation of the
magical woman – why are her pleas so ineffective in swaying the boy, who
seems to hold the stones of Atlantis dear? Let's examine the manner of her
invocations.

She says, “Sabaoth sweats and trembles in his shrine and will no longer
accept my offerings” - Sabaoth is the Greek form of a word which implies
the Lord God of Hosts or armies – Jehovah as a God of battle who will crush
Moloch, Baal, and other deities. This is a surprising reference to the
Jewish God.

She then mentions that the feet of Sith, “called by the ignorant Kronos son
of Uranus”, are broken. Kronos ruled during the golden age of the titans
before he was overthrown by Zeus, and Sith is another name for the Sidhe,
fairies or elf-like beings who dwell in barrows or in an invisible world
beside our own. The conflation of Greek myth with fairy stories or even
talk of angels is fairly common in Wolfe by this point.

She also mentions a bird: “The magic bird Tchataka has flown. The stars
riot in the heavens, so that at one moment humankind is to rule them all,
and at the next is to perish.” Tchataka appears in Flaubert's *Temptation
of St. Anthony*, in which the gymnosophist says :

“I dreamed of the essence of the great Soul whence continually escapes the
principles of life, even as sparks escape from fire. Thus at last I found
the supreme Soul in all beings, and all beings in the supreme Soul; and I
have been able to make mine own soul all my senses. I receive knowledge
directly from heaven, like the bird Tchataka, who quenches his thirst from
falling rain only.” (Flaubert 54-5)

These magical and mythic references do not sway the boy. It seems that he
accepts “traditional” magic in due course because of his mother's stories
and expectations, but in and of themselves they do not serve his youthful
dream.

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS:

What is the hoarfrost covered fishing line which we can see in the sky when
the days are shortest?

Is the bait the sun wants to taste the dreams and hopes of youth unfettered
by reality?

At first, it seems that the power of Atlantis is in fantasy and even magic,
but the mystical woman who comes to try and dissuade the boy makes it clear
that it is not magic and spiritualism that the boy holds on to, but perhaps
something else. Why, when he relinquishes the rod, do the stones become the
stones of Uranus? He is the deity of the sky. Have they ascended beyond his
reach or have they become the dreams of mastering the universe itself as
humanity matures?

CONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS:


The fables and literary myths of Wolfe have a more nebulous and
hallucinatory feel than his more concrete fiction, and “At the Point of
Capricorn”, “A Solar Labyrinth”, “The God and His Man”, “The Old Woman
Whose Rolling Pin is the Sun”, “Empires of Foliage and Flower”, and the
stories from “Mathoms from the Time Closet” and “Redwood Coast Roamer” as
well as “The Arismaspian Legacy” and its follow up, “Slow Children at
Play”, all share a kind of impossible symbolist logic that verges on the
dreamlike but is no doubt inspired by the earliest traditions in
story-telling.


 Flaubert, Gustav. *The Temptation of St. Anthony*. Google ebook.
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