The Warrior Spirit: Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian

Above: Some of the Conan the Barbarian artwork by Frank Frezetta, whose images immortalized the character

I can still remember the first time I watched "Conan the Barbarian" with my father as a young boy. The brutality and violence stayed with me long after the initial viewing, but more than anything else it was the story, the characters, and the powerful narrative which burrowed its way into my fuzzy memories. I've since gone on to read many of the comics, and even sought out the original works by Robert E. Howard trying to trace things back to their origins, wondering what it is about the character exactly which inspires me so much.

There's something about the whole tale that just feels very ancient and sweeping. Howard's incredible prose has much to do with this, but there are certain thematic elements at work as well which I've noticed more recently. The idea of a person of humble birth rising to the level of general and then king is indeed an inspirational one. Much of what gives the Conan stories their appeal is their mythological feel, and while this concept has been done many times before in countless fairytales with commoners becoming princes (or princesses) and living happily ever after, the story of Conan was one of strength, power, brutality, savagery. All of this came to lend the tale a quality of the oldest stories, a realistic hardness, and a world without rules. When Howard created Conan, the U.S. was in its Depression Era and a sort of bitter harshness reflecting that period pervades many of his other stories as well.

Those stories were originally published in the monthly pulp-magazines of the era with little bits and pieces of each published a few pages at a time in an issue. Every now and then, works that were written as pulp -mere, consumable entertainment for the masses- manage to acheive something higher: a sort of literary and artistic greatness that reaches the attention, appreciation, and analyzation of scholars as well as the common man. Sherlock Holmes provides a good example of another early, cheap magazine to do so; in more recent times, films like Star Wars; and manga like Naussicaa have done so as well. It's strange in a way to think that Conan's fate in the stories (man of lowborn birth becomes a king), mirrors that of the character's success and popularity in the mainstream, literally a common man's form entertainment that has risen to a higher level.

Above: Copy of the original, unabridged Robert E. Howard stories edited into a single book.

Howard was a proliflic writer and he did manage to turn out quite a bit of material on Conan, though this has now been absolutely dwarfed by the combined amount that has now been produced by other writers continuing to give his creation's life. Howard's life itself is another very interesting story as well, but as far as the character's history is concerned, the fact that its phenomenal success occurred after Howard's untimely death is what left publishers in a bind to release more Conan material. Thus free reign was given to others to create more stories and sate the appetites of fans. While there are certainly a lot of purists out there whose loyalty is to Howard, a person could also very well argue that one of the best things about Conan is all the additional work which has been produced over the years since his death that is much in keeping with the spirit of the original.

Yet another unusual parrellel the Conan character shares with many mythological stories throughout history, is that his saga has been passed on from one story teller to another. This is much the same as many trully ancient legends whose origins predate writing, which were passed on orally, and often embellished and added upon with each new storyteller. I remember (reading, ironically enough) a criticism by an oral storyteller on the written word and its effects on relating these stories. They seemed to feel that the written word was lifeless, like it was dead even though it was certainly more accurate than recounting things orally. While not an oral tale, Conan, like many other stories is still an ongoing one; it is continuously being retold differently and being added to as well by new writers and artists and even actors.

Getting back to the character and the story itself though, I once more find myself asking what it is about them I like. Perhaps more than anything else, it's the idea of the path he took in life: the road of the wanderer, the road of the warrior. There are certainly truths of a special sort to be discovered in such a way of life which one might not otherwise know: To learn about life by taking it from others, to find meaning in the struggles and conflicts even as they escalate in to the extremes of violence, to know many friends and lovers and watch them come and go in the thoroughfare of an eventful life, to celebrate in excessiveness and try to find the limits of joy and pleasure in such revelry, to live each day like it might be the last. There's something absolutely primal about the character and the stories that penetrates the soul of the reader and never relinquishes its grip.

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A quick excerpt from the story "The Queen of the Black Coast", my favorite of all of Conan's lines and an excellent example of Howard's poetic, mythical sounding prose:

"I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death... I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and the stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exutation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion, I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.

-Conan the Barbarian
from, The Queen of the Black Coast
by Robert E. Howard-