Yesterday I wrote an article about setting archetypes in which I posited the idea of a Garden, a place that functions as the ordinary world in the Hero's Journey but can also serve as a safe haven and have other narrative roles, especially in something like a video game or tabletop roleplaying game where characters may not be neatly fitting into archetypal paths like the Hero's Journey.

Upon review, I don't think I really went into great detail into any particular example, and I'm left a little dissatisfied with my handling of the topic, so I'm going to take some time to look at examples and talk about what makes a place a Garden and how it functions.

Because setting archetypes are interesting things, it's worth noting that they are not necessarily directly tied to the actual nature of a place, but rather to the role they play in a story. For instance, in The Expanse, Amos Burton comes from Baltimore, which is a dystopian city following a number of political and ecological upheavals.

For Burton, Baltimore is the Garden, the start of his Hero's Journey, and it reflects a place that shapes and molds him, even though it is also a hated place. While the Garden is based on the image of the Garden of Eden, it does not need to be perfect and flawless to function in a similar manner.

Example 1: The Shire (Tolkien's Works)

The Shire serves as a powerful image across Tolkien's work, going through a variety of permutations as stories change and shift, but always serving as an example of the Garden archetype.

Tolkien, as a student of mythology, was keenly aware of the roles that places played in stories, and many of the locations throughout the Lord of the Rings trilogy and his other works are closely aligned with archetypal roles.

The Shire is really an exceptional example of the Garden for five or six reasons, largely because Tolkien includes a good volume of work based on it as opposed to many of the other places that serve this archetypal role, and because it only rarely shifts away from the Garden role in the stories that Tolkien tells with it, most notably The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

One of the core principles of the Garden is that it is a safe place for growth and development–at least until something happens to change this. This is especially true of the Shire in each of its appearances, which focus on the respective coming-of-age stories of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. While Bilbo doesn't stick around so long that the Shire becomes dangerous in The Hobbit, Frodo's possession of the One Ring requires him to leave the Shire in a scene that foreshadows the Shire's eventual Fall from Eden later in the trilogy.

This serves to highlight another important principle: the fragility of the Garden, or else its inaccessibility. Tolkien opts for the former, with many outside presences representing both the sins of the Shire's inhabitants (few though they may be) and primordial evil lurking outside the domain of innocents that is the Shire. Innocence is purchased with vulnerability, and this is a recurring motif in The Lord of the Rings, and something that allows Gandalf to serve as a sort of messianic figure (user @vaughndemont has written a fantastic overview of this that is worth checking out) who watches over the Garden.

When Gandalf's protection wavers as he is forced to take steps to protect the world from a greater evil elsewhere, the Shire is exposed and suffers its Fall from Eden in the form of an invasion by Saruman's forces, who take advantage of the sheltered hobbits who call the Shire home.

This is not entirely an accident; one of the roles of the Garden is to blind its inhabitants even as it protects them. If the innocents being nurtured in the Garden were to witness the world outside, they would likely be corrupted, or at least tempted to leave, and as a result it also makes it difficult for characters to gain a perspective on reality that reflects universal truth (and, in many cases, pursuing universal truth leads to exile from the Garden, as in Genesis).

The Shire fits this role by serving as a place where the troubles of the world simply cease to exist. In a moment we'll look at some examples of less innocent Gardens and how they are approached, but if you're interested in learning more about the Shire there's an interesting lecture by noted Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey that has a lot of details and interesting notes about what Tolkien was probably envisioning when he wrote about the Shire, but it goes beyond the scope of this examination.

Example 2: Tatooine (Star Wars)

Tatooine in Star Wars is another example of the Garden, though it is far less idyllic than Tolkien's Shire.

We get to see Tatooine serve as the Garden twice over the course of the Star Wars saga, first in the original trilogy, where it serves as Luke's origin, and again in the prequel trilogy, where Anakin calls it home.

One of the things that is important to note is that many of the core values of the Garden are still present–its role as incubator, its fragility, and its distance from the rest of the universe–even though it is approached in a different light during the prequels.

Looking through Luke's eyes, Tatooine is a boring backwater that it may seem to be. Too far from the more dangerous elements (Mos Eisley serves almost as its own separate planet for Luke, representing the Untraveled Path which comes later in the Hero's Journey) of the world, Luke's experiences show it as a place that has little excitement, and we can tell as viewers quite early on that the story is going to follow the Hero's Journey because of the conversations Luke has with his family, in which he speaks of plans to go off-world to join the Imperial Academy.

This is a good clue that Tatooine is the Garden as well, because those kept in a state of innocence often rebel against it: Luke is forced to be on Tatooine while the rest of his family has been scattered across the stars doing dramatic things, and this rubs him the wrong way.

Of course, when R2-D2 and C-3PO show up and Luke follows them to that adventure, there is a Fall from Eden that occurs when his family is killed and their moisture farm is destroyed by Imperial forces. This forces Luke to leave this comfort, which he begins to appreciate once he is faced with the prospect of a dangerous and uncaring universe.

In the prequels, we find Anakin here. One of the best criticisms of the prequels is that they have an interesting approach to dramatic flow, something that could be highlighted by the fact that the first Garden presented actually comes in the second act of the first movie.

Anakin, although enslaved, is relatively safe on Tatooine, until a Jedi approaches him and begins to study him. Talented like no other force sensitive candidate in living memory, Anakin is recruited, despite concerns, into the Jedi Order, forcing him to leave his home.

Later Anakin tries to return to the Garden to free and visit his mother, and finds that she has been killed by Sand People, which serves as both a Fall from Eden moment and an elucidation of another property of the Garden.

Once one leaves the domain of the innocent, it is nearly impossible to return. Only through reaching an apotheosis of character can one ready oneself to return to the Garden.

Example 3: Orokin Empire (Warframe)

My final example that I want to cover is the Orokin Empire, which is revealed in Warframe's storyline. As Warframe is a video-game with a minimalist approach to storytelling, I find it interesting to use as a viewpoint for archetypal storytelling, because it draws so heavily on associations and themes rather than allowing the player to explore many of the parts of its world.

The Orokin Empire is particularly noteworthy because, at the time the player learns about it, it has ceased to exist. The Tenno are an ancient warrior order, of which the protagonist is a member, that was once part of the Orokin Empire before the cataclysmic events that destroyed that civilization and sent most of the Tenno into hibernation.

The Orokins not only created the Tenno, but they also cast them out, echoing the story of Eden in Genesis: although the Tenno are expert warriors with otherworldly powers, they are also limited by their relative impotence and the fact that the universe has changed around them–a product of their innocence–while they have been dormant.

Since the surviving Tenno know nothing of their origin, it is only through returning to the Garden that they can learn more about themselves, something that is both impossible but also highlights the iconic role of the Garden as a symbol of identity. The Tenno are set apart from the inhabitants of their universe, and it is only their role as former footsoldiers of the Orokin Empire that allows them to have their distinctive persona and a role set apart from any others in the universe.