Thompson i
Kate Thompson
Mrs. E. Richardson
University English II
12 November 2010
Reality in the Fantasy of The Color of Magic
Thesis: The fantasy humor in Terry Pratchett’s novel The Color of Magic is rooted in Pratchett’s parodies of real life: the characters, traditional roles in fantasy literature, and the absurd technical intricacies of Discworld.
I. The characters
A. Twoflower as a naïve tourist
B. The Luggage as a guard dog
C. Hrun the Barbarian as Conan the Barbarian
D. Patrician as a corrupt leader
II. Traditional roles in fantasy literature
A. The reluctance of Rincewind to be the story’s hero
B. Unintimidating and annoyed Death
C. Fate and the Lady gambling over Twoflower and Rincewind’s fate
III. Technical intricacies of Discworld
A.
The Luggage
B.
Octarine
C.
Twoflower’s new technology
1.
Camera
2.
Watch
D. The astronomy of Discworld

Thompson 1
Kate Thompson
Mrs. E. Richardson
University English II
12 November 2010
Reality in the Fantasy of The Color of Magic
Terry Pratchett’s novel The Color of Magic is a humor novel set in the fantasy world of
Discworld, a flat world supported by four elephants standing on the back of the giant turtle,
Great A’Tuin, swimming through the cosmos. On this magical world, an outcast wizard,
Rincewind, becomes an impromptu guide for the naïve tourist, Twoflower. As they travel across
Discworld they battle warriors, trolls, and imagination-controlled dragons. Twoflower is excited about adventure, whereas Rincewind simply wants to survive. Pratchett portrays Rincewind as the reluctant protagonist who, unlike Twoflower, has no interest in this adventure and just wants to continue with his life. In this way, Rincewind is the foundation of Pratchett’s parody.
Pratchett infuses the fantasy setting of Discworld with pieces of the non-fantasy world. The fantasy humor in Terry Pratchett’s novel The Color of Magic is rooted in Pratchett’s parodies of real life: the characters, traditional roles in fantasy literature, and the absurd technical intricacies of Discworld.
The characters of Discworld are written to be familiar and relatable to readers. This was a purposeful decision made by Pratchett to add to the humor and parody of the book. Critic Faren
Miller comments, “Stripped of their grandiose theatricality or aura of supernatural mystery,
Discworld's aristocrats, witches, wizards, and multitude of uncanny creatures can become all too human” ( par.11). Pratchett uses the character Twoflower as a parody of a gullible tourist.
Twoflower is a clerk from the Agatean Empire. His life is monotonous and mediocre, which

Thompson 2 breeds a desperation for exploration and adventure. He travels to Ankh-Morpork to sightsee; he wants to meet barbarians, dragons, warriors, and wizards during his visit. He is enthralled by his new surroundings and eager to explore every inch of Discworld. Like any enthusiastic tourist found in the real world, Twoflower carries around the fantastical equivalent of a camera: his picture box. During their travel, Twoflower asks questions that someone might asks while on vacation, such as “‘I wish for an accommodation, a room, a lodgings, the lodging house, full board, are your rooms clean, a room with a view, what is your rate for one night?’” (Color of
Magic 14). Twoflower is naïve to the happenings and dangers of Discworld. His inherent curiosity and unquenchable thirst for adventure put the two directly in the middle of Discworld’s danger. Both Twoflower’s appearance and behavior emulate those of any naïve, excited tourist roaming New York City or Paris.
When Twoflower and Rincewind are accidentally transported to an alternate universe, they are more or less the same character; Rincewind is still the reluctant hero and Twoflower is the naïve tourist. In the alternate universe, Rincewind is now Dr. Rjinswand, “33 [years old], a bachelor, born in Sweden, raised in New Jersey, and a specialist in the breakaway oxidation phenomena of certain nuclear reactors” (Color of Magic 151). While he is in the mindset of
Rincewind but in the universe and clothing of Dr. Rjinswand, Rincewind becomes disoriented.
He assumes the airplane that he is in is the belly of a silver dragon and the gun a hijacker is intimidating the pilot with is an amulet. Mistaking the hijacker’s bomb to be a picture box,
Rincewind takes it and accidentally becomes the plane’s hero. In this universe, Twoflower is
Jack Zweiblumen, a tourist to the United States who asks Dr. Rjinswand to be his guide. The only difference in these characters is their names; Rincewind still becomes a hero by accident

Thompson 3 and Twoflower is still a naïve tourist. The characters Rincewind and Twoflower are people that could be found in the real universe whom Pratchett places in a fantasy setting.
Twoflower’s Luggage is also a familiar character. The Luggage is made out of sapient pearwood, has hundreds of tiny legs, and is impervious to magic. The most defining characteristic of the Luggage is its unwavering loyalty to Twoflower. Whenever separated from his owner, the Luggage becomes aggressive and will stop at nothing to be reunited with him.
The Luggage tears through dimensions, repels every spell cast on him, and fights whatever gets in his way in his missions to protect or retrieve Twoflower. He is the magical equivalent of a guard dog. Pratchett’s description of the Luggage after tearing into the alternate dimension to recover Twoflower resembles a guard dog; Pratchett depicts the Luggage as having “lots of big square teeth, white as sycamore, and a pulsating tongue, red as mahogany” (Color of Magic 151-
152). This description is so identical to that of a dog that the reader has to remind himself that the
Luggage is a protector and not a pet.
The character of Hrun the Barbarian is one of the most obvious parodies. P. Andrew
Miller explains, “Hrun the Barbarian…is a perfect parody of Robert Howard’s Conan” (3). He is a famous Discworld warrior. His appearance resembles that of the iconic Conan the Barbarian; he has a wide chest, tan skin, a head of black hair, and wears a leopard-skin loincloth. Hrun carries his talking sword, Kring, who always wants to fight and save the day, and goes off on boastful tangents about his heroic adventures. He is a noble warrior, as seen when he refuses to kill Liessa’s brothers while they are unconscious, stating that he has a reputation to protect. His only desires are wealth, power, and adventure. His is the magical parallel of Conan the
Barbarian. Hrun, like all of the characters in The Color of Magic, is a real-life person in a fantasy world. Pratchett acknowledges, “[The characters] tend to act from motives we can

Thompson 4 understand; they tend to be people we think we may have met” (“Imaginary Worlds” 160). When
Hrun is first described, the reader immediately recognizes his character as someone the reader has encountered before, in this case Conan the Barbarian.
Pratchett’s description of the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork is one that matches the description of an actual corrupt leader. The Patrician’s physical descriptions are unsettling and intimidating, such as the way he smiles “with his mouth only” (Color of Magic 22). His way of speaking is unsettling and intimidating. When talking to Rincewind about Twoflower’s arrival, he speaks amiably, saying, “‘I want you to listen very carefully to what I am about to say…otherwise you will die. In an interesting fashion. Over a period’” (Color of Magic 24). He evokes fear in the people of Ank-Morpork. He is obsessed with money, as made evident by his fixation on the amount of gold in the Counterfeit Continent, the Agatean Empire’s continent where Twoflower is from. He repeatedly mentions how the continent is made of gold and is
“‘very, very rich’” (Color of Magic 25). When he receives orders from the Counterfeit
Continent to keep Twoflower safe from harm, his immediate thoughts are of the compensation he might receive if he follows the orders.
Pratchett also draws on traditional roles in fantasy literature for parody; his twist on these traditional roles defies and pokes fun at the stereotypes of fantasy writing, which he comments are “mosaics of every fantasy story you've ever read” (Why Gandalf Never Married).
Rincewind’s character in traditional fiction would be the brave hero; contrarily, Pratchett depicts
Rincewind as a reluctant, cowardly, and often accidental hero. For example, in typical fantasy literature Rincewind would have offered to be Twoflower’s tour guide across the Disc.
However, Rincewind is forced by the Patricians to guide Twoflower and keep him safe. A
Patrician explained to Rincewind, “‘[Twoflower] landed this morning. He might have met a

Thompson 5 great hero, or the cunningest of thieves, or some wise and great sage. He met you. He has employed you as a guide. You will be a guide…’” (Color of Magic 25). Rincewind wants nothing to do with Twoflower, but is ordered to take the role as the protector.
Rincewind also ironically becomes the hero through the actions of others. While running from dragons, Rincewind finds Hrun’s sword Kring stuck in a tree branch. Kring convinces
Rincewind to pull him out so they can rescue Twoflower and Hrun. When Rincewind refuses to rescue Twoflower and Hrun, Kring threatens to chop Rincewind’s head off, and “Rincewind saw his own arm snap up until the shimmering blade was humming a mere inch from his throat. He tried to force his fingers to let go. They wouldn’t” (Color of Magic 113). Kring takes control of
Rincewind’s actions as they battle the dragonriders and dragons. K!sdra, a dragonrider, recalled that during the battle which led to his defeat, he saw “the strange way in which [Rincewind] held the sword in front of him at arm’s length, as though embarrassed to be seen in its company” (The
Color of Magic 113) and that “[Rincewind] was covering his eyes with one hand” (The Color of
Magic 114). Thus, Rincewind involuntarily saves the day, thus parodying the cliché role of traditional literature’s heroes.
Additionally, Rincewind is overestimated as a hero. Rincewind confesses “he was, he would be the first to admit, a coward, an incompetent, and not even very good at being a failure…” (Color of Magic 173-174). However, he is assumed to be a noble man who voluntarily watches over and guides Twoflower. When the hydrophobes speak to him, they treat him with the respect of a gallant conqueror. One hydrophobe says, “‘We know all about you,
Rincewind the magician. You are a man of great cunning and artifice. You laugh in the face of
Death. Your affected air of craven cowardice does not fool me’” (Color of Magic 175). The hydrophobes believe that Rincewind’s un-heroic qualities are a façade. Rincewind simply

Thompson 6 accepts that he will not be able to convince the hydrophobes otherwise and allows them to believe that he is a hero. This further emphasizes that Rincewind became did not become a hero voluntarily.
Death is also a character that is unlike any previous characterization of Death in traditional literature. Pratchett’s characterization of Death is unique to the expected, stock character of Death in other fiction. Critic P. Miller explains, “The Discworld’s [Death’s image] follows the typical stereotype, complete with black cowl and scythe” (2). He also speaks in all caps, in an attempt to make himself sound frightening. Death feels “there is something about
[Rincewind] that irked Him beyond measure. He didn’t keep appointments for one thing” (Color of Magic 102). He is frustrated that Rincewind is not where Death had an appointment to kill him. Death tells Rincewind, “‘WHAT’S SO BLOODY VEXING ABOUT THE WHOLE
BUSINESS IS THAT I WAS EXPECTING TO MEET THEE IN PSEPHOPOLIS…THE
WHOLE SYSTEM IS SCREWED UP AGAIN’” (Color of Magic 52-53). Instead of intimidating Rincewind and simply killing him, Death begs him to die, saying, “‘LOOK,
THERE’S NO CHANCE OF YOU [DYING, IS THERE]?’” (Color of Magic 53) and, when
Rincewind is dangling from a tree above a pack of wolves, “‘NOW WOULD YOU BE SO
KIND AS TO LET GO [OF THAT BRANCH]?’” (Color of Magic 72). When Rincewind refuses, Death tries to coax him, promising, “‘IT WON’T HURT A BIT’” (Color of Magic 53).
When Rincewind again refuses, Death pouts and sulks off, exclaiming, “‘SOD YOU, THEN’”
(Color of Magic 53). Despite his attempts, Death is not intimidating. His character, unlike typical, daunting depictions of Death, is that of an ordinary guy trying to do his job. P. Miller states, “Strangely, the most developed character in the [Discworld] series…is Death. Death is more human than many of the other inhabitants of this world” (3).

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Traditional fantasy literature has illustrated the idea of destiny as a great celestial force that affects everyone. Pratchett takes this revered idea of destiny and depicts it as two people,
Fate and the Lady, playing a game. The romantic theme that powers beyond reach control fate is a lot less romantic when Pratchett explains it as two people rolling dice. While they are rolling dice, Pratchett writes, “[The Lady rolled] a six. A three. A five…Something was happening to the five, however. Battered by the chance collision of several billion molecules, the die flipped onto a point, spun gently and came down as a seven” (Color of Magic 66). Fate and the Lady behave more like two cheating children playing a board game than supernatural beings deciding the luck or doom of the world. The two play with Rincewind’s destiny while he is fighting a troll. During the battle, Rincewind failed to hit the troll with his sword. Then, “there was the faintest sounds, like the rattle of old teeth” (Color of Magic 69), and Rincewind’s sword suddenly bounces off of a shrub and lands in the troll’s neck. During his adventures, Rincewind hears sounds of dice rolling and knows that his destiny is about to change. This parodies the gravity of fate in traditional fantasy literature.
Pratchett also incorporates the technical intricacies of Discworld into his parody. The fantasy cosmos in The Color of Magic has very specific astrological and mechanical details; everything is “governed by absurd yet tidy logic” (F. Miller, par. 11). Critic F. Miller explains,
“The book opens with a Prologue that transforms fantasy’s common method of introduction— summarized myth plus an overview of scenery—into a clash between concept and perception.
An ancient explanation of the cosmos totally at odds with modern science appears as an astronaut might see it…” (par. 4). Pratchett parodies the entire real world, from the way it turns to the technology, using Discworld as his stage.

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Pratchett admits that writing The Color of Magic is not “something that's hard or difficult. It's just intricate” (“Books Interview” 2). Pratchett focuses on the history and astrology of Discworld; making the setting of The Color of Magic realistic heightens the parody of the novel, because the readers detect a similarity in the minutiae and science of Discworld and the real world. Everything on Discworld happens for a logical reason, such as “several quintillion atoms [materializing]…in a universe where they should not strictly have been” (Color of Magic
150), a universe “instantaneously unraveling its space-time continuum” (Color of Magic 150), or because of the amount of a certain element it was exposed to. The prologue describes the theory of the size, shape, and space of Discworld. The world is flat and circular, resting atop the backs of four elephants standing on the shell of the giant turtle, the Great A’tuin. The Great A’tuin swims slowly through the universe, with many hypotheses being made about the turtle’s sex and destination. Pratchett mentions “cosmochelonians” (Color of Magic 2) and “astrozoologists”
(Color of Magic 2) who study and theorize about this turtle and the universe it swims through.
Pratchett clarifies every detail of Discworld; in a footnote, he explains that the disc has “two major directions…hubward and rimward…[it] revolves at the rate of once every eight hundred days…[and] the disc year consists of not four but eight seasons… (Color of Magic 5).
Everything in Discworld happens for a “rational” reason. Nothing is left unexplained or un-parodied. Even the character of the Luggage, Twoflower’s mystical baggage, is elucidated.
The Luggage’s magical qualities are all due to the material it is made of: sentient pearwood.
While the readers are confused by this imaginary material, Pratchett explains what the luggage is made of as if it clears up the uncertainty of reason for Luggage’s behavior. F. Miller explains,
“Pratchett provides an elaborate pseudoscientific background for its ‘sentient pearwood’ (sic) material, indicates its social significance as an accessory available only to fabulously wealthy

Thompson 9 foreigners” (par.7). Pratchett’s explanation of the Luggage makes Pratchett sound like he believes his own outlandish logic, adding humor to the novel’s intricacies.
One prominent detail of Discworld is the imaginary color and element octarine.
Octarine, the eighth color in Discworld’s color spectrum, is the color of magic. Only certain people and creatures can see octarine. Pratchett notes, “It had been remarked before that those who are sensitive to radiations in the far octarine…can see things that others cannot” (Color of
Magic 52) and “cats can see into the octarine” (Color of Magic 53). Wizards also can see octarine, which they describe as a “fluorescent greenish-yellow-purple” (Color of Magic 23). In reality, human eyes could not physically see this color. If the colors greenish-yellow and purple were mixed together, human eyes would perceive it as grey or black. This means that the wizards and cats in Discworld have a different visual system than real humans. While real humans see through the use of cones and rods in their eyes, wizards and cats can see the octarine due to the presence of octagon cells (Oddfellow).
Twoflower’s new technology which he brings to Ankh-Morpork also adds detailed humor to the novel. He has many common objects that could be found in real life, but they are all baffling and mysterious to the Ankh-Morpork natives. While the readers understand the purposes of a camera and a watch, the Ankh-Morpork natives are as confused by it as cavemen are to fire. To make this confusion relatable to the readers, Pratchett makes Twoflower’s camera and watch magical and different. For instance, Twoflower’s camera is not an ordinary camera.
At first glance it appears to be a normal camera with “a round glass eye from the center… and a lever at the back” (Color of Magic 32). It is a picture box: a box with a tiny demon inside of it that paints pictures of what Twoflower wants. Instead of running out of film like a normal camera, the demon inside the picture box runs out of paint, and it uses salamanders as flashbulbs.

Thompson 10
Twoflower’s watch produces equally confused reactions from the Ank-Morpork natives.
When a couple of thieves, Weasel and Bravd, pickpocket Twoflower’s watch, they are unsure what the object is, describing it as “a golden disc on a short chain” (Color of Magic 63). Bravd says that he heard it as a disc that told time, and Weasel cautiously opens the watch. Unlike a typical watch found in the non-fantasy universe, this watch has a very small demon inside of it who tell you the time. This startles Weasel, who “hurled the time-teller far out into the heather, where it possibly hit a stone” (Color of Magic 63). When Bravd asks why Weasel destroyed the watch, Weasel becomes jumpy and nervous and responds by saying, “Do what?...I didn’t do anything. Nothing happened at all” (Color of Magic 63). This is the same reaction that would be expected by humans if they were presented with alien technology.
The prologue to The Color of Magic explains the cosmology of Discworld as if the novel were an astrology book. Every aspect of the Discworld’s cosmology is as detailed as that of the real universe. It introduces fictional ideas, such as astropsychology, that sound believable so that the readers buy into the realism of Discworld and, therefore, the parodies are more effective.
The prologue discusses different theories and speculations on “the Destination” (Color of Magic
1) and origin of Great A’Tuin. Pratchett even puns Georges Lemaître’s Big Bang Theory, writing about a theory that Great A’Tuin’s destination is the Time of Mating, where the turtle would meet up with and mate with other turtles and “from that fiery union new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis” (Color of Magic 2).
These intricacies of The Color of Magic are all parallels to parts of our real world. This is shown directly when Twoflower and Rincewind tear into a different universe: the real world.
Rincewind assumes that the plane he is on is a silver dragon; the dragons that people of
Discworld fly are the equivalent to the planes that people in real life fly. Rincewind sees the fear

Thompson 11 in the passengers’ faces when the hijacker exposes his gun; therefore, Rincewind believes that the gun “must be an amulet” (Color of Magic 149), which, in Discworld, would be as dangerous and terrifying as a gun.
Terry Pratchett’s The Color of Magic is a novel that “develops from a spoof of fantasy genre fiction into a wide-ranging, complex satire” (F. Miller, par. 6). Pratchett’s usage of the characters, traditional roles in fantasy literature, and technical intricacies results in an intelligent and complex parody of real life, which is delivered in a low brow, slapstick manner. Pratchett states, “Discworld is, more than anything else…relentlessly, solidly logical…on Discworld, all metaphors are potentially real, all figures of speech have a way of becoming more than words”
(Imaginary Worlds 160). Even though not all of his parodies are immediately noticeable,
Pratchett’s novel gives all readers an opportunity to find humor in the actual world.

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Works Cited
Miller, Faren. "Terry Pratchett: The Soul of Wit." Contemporary Literary Criticism Select .
Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center . Web. 11 Nov. 2010.
Miller, P. Andrew. “The Discworld Series.” Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy
Literature (1996): Literary Reference Center. EBSCO. Web. 23. Sept. 2010.
Oddfellow, Prof. Octarine: The Imaginary Color of Magic.
19 April 2008. Web. 2 Nov. 2010
Pratchett, Terry. "The Books Interview: Terry Pratchett." Observer (24 Oct. 1999): 12. Rpt. in
Contemporary Literary Criticism Select . Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center .
Web. 11 Nov. 2010.
---. The Color of Magic.
New York: HarperCollins, 1983. Print.
---. “Imaginary Worlds, Real Stories.” Folklore 111.2 (2000): 159-168. Academic Search
Complete.
EBSCO. Web. 23 Sept. 2010.
---. Why Gandalf Never Married. 15 Nov. 1985. Web. 2 Nov. 2010.

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