Understanding Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Hog-Who? Understanding Terry Pratchett’s Discworld

In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part Great A’Tuin the turtle comes, swimming slowly through the interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs, his huge and ancient shell pocked with meteor craters, through a sea-sized eyes that are crusted with rheum and asteroid dust He stares fixedly at the Destination, thinking of little more than the weight. Most of the weight is of course accounted for by Berilia, Tubul, Great T’Phon and Jerakeen, the four giant elephants upon whose broad and star tanned shoulders the disc of the World rests, garlanded by the long waterfall of its vast circumference and domed by the baby-blue vault of Heaven. (The Colour of Magic)

In short, we not only are no longer in Kansas—we’re not even on a planet! Pratchett’s Discworld rides on the back of a great galactic turtle named A'tuin on whose shell four great elephants stand upon which spins, like a great pizza, the Discworld.

“But that’s impossible!” Of course it is: there is no way such a world could exist within our physics. In one of his novels Pratchett's narrative says that the great Creator (or creators), having dutifully followed all the rules of mathematical probability, said: “Whew! Now that that is all done; let’s have some fun!” Discworld can only exist with magic. Thus, this is a fantasy novel and it knows it.

The Whole Thing Began as a Complaint Back in the 1980s when thanks to Tolkien and Lewis the sub-genre of “Fantasy.” had been firmly established, Terry Pratchett sat down and wrote an anti-fantasy in which in pure British style he upturned everything. Rincewind (on the right) is a very bad (as in “lousy at”) wizard who has this constant feeling that things could be run better if human ability would stop relying on magic all the time.

This Skepticism Runs Straight into the “Impossible to Deny” Fantastic For example when Rincewind runs into the first Discworld tourist who carries a box that makes pictures, he hopes it is actually done with light sensitive paper. In fact there is a small demon inside the box who will give you color prints as long as he has the paints but will resort to black and white if he has nothing else.

This collision of belief and doubt is central to the Discworld books and Hogfather in particular.

Ankh-Morpork

Most of the action of Hogfather takes place in the Discworld’s largest city: Ankh-Morpork The Unseen University Mustrum Ridcully Bloody Stupid Johnson Hex The Watch Corporal “Nobby” Nobbs Constable (Washpot) “Visit”-the-Infidel-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets The Guild of the Assassins Lord Downy Mr. TeAhTiMe

The Unseen University Based very loosely on Oxford Home to the Wizards Major activities are sleeping and eating.

Mustrum Ridcully Mustrum Ridcully is Archchancellor of Unseen University. He is also known as Ridcully the Brown, possibly as a parody of J. R. R. Tolkien's Radagast the Brown.

Bloody Stupid Johnson Bergholt Stuttley Johnson, better known as Bloody Stupid Johnson, was a landscape gardener and inventor on the and is mentioned in a number of books. Though he has died before the timeline in which most of the books are set, his legacy lives on. Organs, bathrooms, monument design, landscape gardening and cooking; there is apparently no start to his talents. To date only one Johnson bathroom has been discovered (the Patent 'Typhoon' Superior Indoor Ablutorium with Automatic Soap Dish). It was found behind a boarded-up door hidden behind a bookcase in the Archchancellor's rooms at UU, and was promptly opened up by order of Mustrum Ridcully. The bathroom features a number of unusual water spouts and fountains, such as the 'Old Faithful' facility and the 'Musical Pipes' enhancement, interlocked with the university's organ. (No Picture Available!)

Hex Hex is an elaborate, Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg-esque, magic-powered computer housed at Unseen University (UU) in the city of Ankh-Morpork, Hex is a computer unlike any other the Disc has ever seen (which is not particularly hard since all other 'computers' on the Disc consist of druidic stone circles). Hex runs and evolves under the watchful eyes of wizard Ponder Stibbons, who becomes the de-facto IT manager at UU because he's the only one who understands what he's talking about. Housed within The Unseen University. Think Magical IBM Machine

The Watch: Basically the Police of Ankh-Morpork. Corporal “Nobby” Nobbs Despite his kleptomania, he is honest about the big things (at least, the ones too big or heavy to lift) and is described as someone that you can trust with your life, although you'd be daft to trust him with half a dollar. Constable (Washpot) “Visit”-the-Infidel-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets

The Guilds of Ankh Morpork

The Fools Guild—Nothing to Laugh About Here

The Beggars Guild

The Assassins Guild - Head Assasin Lord Downy Mr. TeAhTiMe—and you better get it right

The Realm of Death Death in the Discworld although he looks as awful as all the traditional art portrays him as, is not an evil force. He is in fact an "anthropomorphic personification," a concept that he sometimes has a hard time getting his considerable intellect around.  It means that he was in fact created by those whom he collects.. Note: Death does NOT kill; he harvests. He rides a horse named “Binky.”

He is also completely a being of Discworld and has no certainty where souls go after he releases them. Gathering those who die is just his job, and over time he has developed a curiosity and attachment for humans (in fact he adopts one whose daughter, Susan, plays a major role in Hogfather). 

He does not feel fondness for as his daughter, Ysabell, points out, he has nothing to feel with. When he found her as a baby whose parents had just died in the dessert she notes that "He didn't feel sorry for me, he never feels anything... He probably thought sorry for me." (Mort).

His Family during Hogfather Albert Susan

Auditors of Reality These are sort of the bureaucrats of the cosmos:  "They make sure that gravity works, file the appropriate paperwork for each chemical reaction, and so forth. The Auditors hate life, because it's messy and unpredictable, which makes them fall behind on their paperwork; they much prefer barren balls of rock orbiting stars in neat, easily predictable elliptical paths. They really hate humans and other sentient beings, who are much more messy and unpredictable than other living things, and they have attempted more than once to deal with this 'problem'"