Paul Bunyan: Difference between revisions
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A [[Public Domain Character|figure]] of [[Eagle Land|American]] [[Oral Tradition|folklore]]. Depending on who you ask, he might be seven feet tall with a stride of seven feet, or he might be so gigantic his beard has its own ecosystem.
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And get up into Alaska, and folks will tell you he's still there now, living out his retirement in the last wilderness America's got left.
His name's '''Paul Bunyan''', and stories about him have gotten a little [[Tall Tale|exaggerated]].
He got his start as stories told among lumberjacks to amuse themselves in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Whether there was ever an ''actual'' Paul Bunyan the stories are based on, and what similarity, if any, the surviving stories of him bear to the original logging camp yarns is a subject of much debate among folklorists. Folklorists from Quebec will tell you he's based on stories about lumberjacks Paul Bonjean (who might or might not have existed) and Big Joe Mufferaw (whose stories were [[Based on a True Story|Based on a Real Person]], [[wikipedia:Joseph Montferrand|Joseph Montferrand]]).
The oldest surviving mention of him in print is a an article James MacGillivray wrote for the ''Detroit News'' in 1910 called "[
Starting in 1916, ad man W.B. Laughead wrote some pamphlets for the Red River Lumber Company that used stories of Paul Bunyan to try and sell their product; these pamphlets are collectively known as ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20191017224842/http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=9182 The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan]''. Laughead is credited with creating most of the commonly known Bunyan lore, [[Newer Than They Think|including Babe the Blue Ox and the idea that Paul Bunyan was a giant]].
As it so happened, while they weren't much good at improving lumber sales, these pamphlets proved immensely popular for their entertainment value. And, since advertisements are meant to be distributed as widely as possible, free of charge, the Red River Lumber Company had never bothered to copyright Laughead's stories. This combination led to everyone and their grandmother putting out new Paul Bunyan stories, cribbing plenty of concepts and characters from Laughead's pamphlets. New logging camp characters were added, the site of Paul's operations moved from state to state, his size ranged from titanic to merely brobdinagian, and other professions requiring an equal mix of brute force and quickwitted ingenuity were attributed to him.
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But, no matter who he's got working for him, or where they go, [[Everything Trying to Kill You|mother nature's always looking to screw them over]]. The weather's never anything but blistering heat or sub-absolute zero cold, with occasional flood or fog to liven things up. Trees can be so large men can spend most of their lives chopping at one before seeing it fall. Wildlife ranges from [[Fearsome Critters of American Folklore|the obnoxious splinter cats and gumberoos to the deadly agropelters and snow wassets]]. And you never know when something utterly bizarre like a Winter of Blue Snow or a cornstalk the size of Jupiter is going to pop up.
Paul and his lumberjacks always tackle these problems with varying measures of brute force (when he wants to get back some logs he sent down the Mississippi, he just has Babe drink from the river until it starts flowing backwards), genuine cleverness (greasing a giant griddle by tying hams to people's feet and having them skate on it), to the [[Crazy Awesome|just plain ridiculous]] (when they're plagued by torrential rain, Paul finds where a solid pillar of water is coming down and swims up it; the rain stops, and he comes back down proclaiming, "[[It Runs
The important part is that the characters, the problems they face, and the solutions they come up with must all be exaggerated to the point where [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]] doesn't simply break, it shatters so hard you can't help but [[Rule of Funny|laugh]].
{{tropelist}}
* [[Big Eater]]: All of his loggers, but especially Paul himself, and ''especially'' Babe.
* [[Camp Cook]]: Goes by a number of different names, but Paul's always got one or two of these hanging around.
* [[Cassandra Did It]]: One tall tale has Paul running into a pair of boots that elicits this reaction from the other lumberjacks, though Paul realizes their true nature.
* [[Fearsome Critters of American Folklore]]: Paul and his camp often run across these, and Babe might ''be'' one.
* [[Just
* [[Mighty Lumberjack]]: The [[Trope Codifier]]<ref> Not the [[Ur Example]] - Big Joe Mufferaw came before him.</ref>, having originated in Canada in the early 19th century. There are many myths surrounding him, the most famous of which is that the 10,000 Lakes of Minnesota were formed by him and his sidekick, [[Species Surname|Babe the Blue Ox]], as they walked around in a blizzard. It's worth noting that most of the Paul Bunyan myth, including everything about Paul being a giant with a giant pet ox, was actually the invention of a 20th century copywriter who spun Paul Bunyan into a mascot for a logging company.
* [[Serial Escalation]]: Pretty much a requisite for any tall tale character, where the goal is usually to top whatever outrageous claims the last person to tell the story made.
* [[Tall Tale]]: In the most literal sense of the word.
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[[Category:Paul Bunyan]]
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