The Innocent

by Candice Raquel Lee

  Discussing The Innocent

  So, why does Alexa die? Why does Cristien become a monster? To entertain the reader? Yes, but also because The Innocent follows the hero’s journey for both characters. The hero’s journey, according to Joseph Campbell, is a set of milestones a “hero” must reach on his successful quest.

  This is my interpretation of it:

  Now the hero can quest for anything from a mundane object like a sword to sacred knowledge. As you saw, I do not call my chart a hero’s cycle, because I believe that we all go through these stages in life when something out of the ordinary happens to us, like puberty, a death in the family, a new job, moving, suffering of any kind, or a change.

  We are all, when we come out the other side, heroes of our own lives, but we, unlike literary heroes, don’t stop. We keep going through the cycle every time we meet a challenge or change in Life.

  The ultimate goal of this cycle, according to some, is to be liberated from it. How that is done, how we are freed or enlightened is by not being affected by the ups and downs of life.

  But what if we can’t ignore them? What if we get stuck in the bottom? Then Alexa stays dead and Cristien remains a monster. But eventually they must change; something will change them. We have to climb out of the belly of the beast eventually, which if we think about it, is a second womb where we are being reborn.

  Anytime something bad happens, we have an opportunity to become the heroes of our own lives. That does not mean we turn into super people overnight and bad things run off our backs like water off a duck. No, as you can see from the chart, we go down, sometimes to a dark place. It is called the belly of the whale because that is where Jonah found himself when he denied God, or denied his own vision of the divine.

  It is the farthest point from the light. It is suffering, it is anger, it is sometimes failure, but we can also rise from this place like Alexa and Cristien. We just have to remember the light.

  So, when you are angry or hurt or sad, or something bad has happened, call on the light. It will be a hard climb up, but you are not alone. Many have made that slog before you, and many of us will make it after you. You are not alone, as Alexa found out. The whole of humanity is rooting for you.

  Remember that females are heroes too. The first person to be called “Hero” in a story was a woman not a man. I have read recently that some women want their own heroine’s cycle which excludes men as teachers and helpers because Campbell set down the Hero’s journey in a very androcentric way.

  All the helpers for the male hero are women and goddesses. Odysseus had his Athena, the hero atones with his mother, and finds a female lover. In these stories, women are the helpers, the goddesses. In this ideology, woman is superior, stretching down to give a guy a hand up. She is put on a pedestal too good to have her own adventures, too saintly or too powerful to get dirty with the boys. She is stuck, passive and unmoving.

  Yet there are other stories about goddesses going down to death and being resurrected like Inanna or about women becoming goddesses like Psyche. For the woman, men were the helpers, giving a girl a needed hand. Cupid starts Psyche on her adventure and brings her back from death with a kiss. Inanna prays for help to her father and her husband takes her place in the land of death.

  I don’t think that it is bad that men play a role in a heroine’s adventure because then men must take a secondary role, learn to help out like Cristien does with the growth of Alexa. Men would then have to take the back stage. Cristien is the helper in Alexa’s adventure and she is the helper in his. In that way, things are even: everyone gets to play hero and goddess. It becomes a give and take, men and women are partners and equals like Chandraswami and Yueliang. I hope you enjoyed this vision of the heroine’s journey and the sacred ancient messages of everlasting cycles that it imparts.

  QuestioningThe Innocent

  According to Joseph Campbell there is a charted path to every hero’s journey called the monomyth. It states that every hero takes certain steps including the call to adventure, refusing the call, crossing the threshold, receiving supernatural help, facing a road of trials and becoming master of two worlds. After researching the monomyth further, do these mythical stages occur in Alexa’s development? In Cristien’s?

  2. How do the myths or stories in the novel (for example, the tale of Cupid and Psyche) reflect Alexa’s and Cristien’s lives? What purpose is there in making these parallels?

  3. How does the poetry in the novel help propel the plot? How are poems used as the “wise help” in the hero cycle?

  4. Who is the Innocent in the novel? How is innocence seen by the main characters including Lily?

  5. Chandraswami says, “The Truth is all.” What would have happened if Cristien had told Alexa the truth earlier? Was he correct in withholding information from her for so long?

  6. Appearances are deceiving, and eyes cannot always see the truth. How is this portrayed in the book? How is deception a theme in the story? Why does Alexa turn off the lights in the last scene? What is she trying to make Cristien see? How does Tagore’s poem strengthen the theme of seeing beyond the physical, and how does this pertain to Alexa and Cristien?

  7. Characters in the novel switch roles, at one time Cristien is the knight with Lily, but Alexa becomes the knight with him. What does this say the one’s identity and the nature of life?

  8. How many past lives does the text suggest Alexa has had? Why is this important? What was her relationship to Cristien, and how had her deaths in the past affected him and helped make him the man she loved in the present?

  9. Is Lily at all sympathetic? Does she love Cristien? Is she capable or it? What is their relationship based on?

  10. How are Lily and Alexa similar? How do these similarities affect Cristien?

  11. What status did Cristien have as boy since his mother was an anchoress during the Middle Ages? How does his desire to prove himself and become a knight forge his personality?

  12. How is Cristien’s view of Christianity shaped by his time and upbringing? How does it affect his reactions to certain tragic events in the book? He says, “You would play the devil too if that was the only way to get to heaven.” How is this indicative of his view of himself?

  13. Who is Alexa? A girl, a creature, an illegitimate child, a color, a demi-goddess? How would she see herself? What parts really matter in who she is as a person and how she interacts with the world?

  14. How is the idea of race or difference handled in the novel? When Cristien tells Alexa that we are all feel different is he just talking about being supernatural? How does his view of their difference make them even more human?

  15. What is the meaning of family in the book? How do Alexa and Cristien make up for their lack of it?

  16. Is Alexa’s mother wrong about wanting her to finish college? How does her approach affect the message? How is her Alexa’s value as a person affected by it?

  17. How are secrets or past traumas handled in the novel? Why does Cristien not know about Lance’s sister’s death? How do these men not share their deepest secrets and yet remain the best of friends? Is it their traumas that bring them together or push them apart? How does the idea of shame factor into the actions of the characters? How does it impair their ability to heal?

  18. Alexa says in Chapter 20, “When you see angels you should know the devil is not far behind.” What does this mean? How does it pertain to the scene? How does it relate to the idea that the line between good and evil is quite easy to traverse? How does suffering create negative action?

  19. How is fate seen in the book? Do “all roads lead to Rome?”

  20. Why does Cristien change into a monster? Yueliang says that every evil is unique. How is Cristien’s self-image expressed in his shape?

  21. What is Yueliang’s interpretation o suffering? Is misfortune seen as entirely negative? Is Cristien’s anger at his situation warranted?

  22. Why do you think the author chose to make her characters an incubus and succu
bus, two very sexual creatures, in order to discuss spiritual love? How do these conditions mirror the struggle to find fulfilment in the modern world?

  23. Why don’t Cristien and Alexa get to live happily ever after?

  25. Is love stronger than death in this book or not? What does that mean?

  26. Have questions of your own about myth or the book? Email me @theinnocentbycrl@gmail.com

  Dear Reader,

  I hope you learned something from reading The Innocent, be it about myths, the eternal journey of the soul, love or another’s perspective. I hope you took away something positive, that it made you curious, that you will not stop here but go further. If so, please share this book with others, and, if you have a moment, rate or review it on Amazon and/or Goodreads.

  Wishing you all good things,

  Literature of Love Reading List

  Ancient Love

  “Cupid and Psyche” from Apuleius’ The Golden Ass

  Love and Poetry

  “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes “How do I love thee” by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning “I seem to have loved you” by Rabindranath Tagore Sonnet XXX, “My love is like to ice” by Edmund Spenser

  The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope “She Walks in Beauty” by Lord Byron “Song to Celia” by Ben Jonson Sonnet 116, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds” by William Shakespeare

  Love Gone Wrong

  Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

  Mystical Love

  “Quia Amore Langueo” by Anonymous Song of Songs by Solomon

  Trials of Love

  Layla and Majnun by Nizami Tristan and Iseult, edited/translated by Joseph Bedier

  Supernatural Love

  The Innocent by Candice Raquel Lee (Alexa missed this one)

  About the Author

  Candice Lee holds a BFA in Creative Writing. As a long time New Yorker who has studied myth, religion, poetry and philosophy from the Mahabharata to the Mabinogion, she has developed a healthy sense of the sublime and the ridiculous. She enjoys travelling with her husband through Europe where every street is an artifact and every sunrise a poem. She is also a sculptor of mythic subjects.

  Lilith's Flight

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