Aang’s Journey of “Bending” The Four Elements Featured In The Show Of Avatar: The Last Air Bender
The inner fight of the Avatar, Aang, with nature and his nature is evident in his refusal of the immense responsibility and destiny of the Avatar that nature bestowed upon him to live everyday life as a child merely slow down his journey of becoming the world-saving Avatar and realising his ‘ecological ego.’
As a result, more significant harm continues to befall nature due to the abuse of elemental bending skills by other characters featured in the show. Throughout his mission to master the four elements of nature, Aang’s psychology regarding human nature’s conflict with fate and nature is evident.
Theodore Roszak, in 1995 in his chapter Where Psyche Meets Gaia of his book “Ecopsychology,” beautifully clears up the bitter resolve of human nature against nature, merely out of ignorance of the indescribable level of connectedness and shared responsibility:
“The environmental movement holds its place in history as the largest political cause ever undertaken by the human race. It includes everybody because there is nobody the movement can afford not to talk to. Its consistency even reaches beyond our own species to include the flora and fauna, the rivers and mountains. Whenever I turn to an environmental issue, I find myself intensely aware that other, nonhuman eyes are upon me: our companion creatures looking on, hoping that their bewildering human cousins will see the error of their ways. On the other hand, when we think of psychotherapy, we think of human relations on the most minor and most personal scale: one-to-one or intimate groups. Therapy is private and introspective; it deals in the hidden life fears, desires, guilty secrets perhaps too deeply buried to be known even to the individual.”
Aang is not only an ignorant child refusing his responsibility and destiny as an Avatar and bender of all elements, but also his responsibility to protect nature, his friends, and eventually himself.
Upon hearing he is the Avatar bender of all nature-given elements and having to leave his Air bending teacher to venture, Aang does what any scared child would, learning that the world’s fate relies on him. He ran away at night from the temple of Air nomads.
Only to be dragged into a storm which triggers his spiritual Avatar state that causes him to be frozen in an iceberg for a hundred years along with his faithful flying bison, known as Appa, a nonhuman creature that faithfully follows Aang through his quest and is known to partner up with Air nomads. Maybe that was nature’s reaction to his refusal of fate as the Avatar and gifted elements by giving him a century of a timeout.
After a hundred years with no Avatar in sight, people lost hope of resolve, and some were wiped out (air nomads), some were enslaved (water benders), and others refused to yield (earth benders) to the unbearing terrorising and colonising figures (fire nation).
However, some characters in that fantastical parallel universe never gave up:
“Water, Earth, Fire, Air. My grandmother used to tell me stories about the old days. A time of peace, when the Avatar kept a balance between the Water tribes, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation and Air Nomads. But that all changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar mastered all four elements. Only he could stop the ruthless Fire benders. But when the world needed him most, he vanished. A hundred years have passed, and the Fire Nation is nearing victory in the war. Two years ago, my father and the men of my tribe journeyed to the Earth Kingdom to help fight against the Fire Nation, leaving me and my brother to look after our tribe. Some people believe that the Avatar was never reborn into the Air Nomads and that the cycle is broken. But I haven’t lost hope. I still believe that somehow the Avatar will return to save the world. (Avatar: The Last Air Bender)”
Katara, a youthful Water bender and one of the four primary protagonists, narrates this introduction. She and her brother Sokka discover the Avatar, a young Air bender named Aang frozen in the iceberg.
Katara’s grandmother instructs them to find a Water bender instructor for the young Avatar in the Northern Water Tribe. Because he must master Air, Water, Earth, and Fire in the holy Avatar cycle, then he must be the one to fight the Fire Lord and restore the world’s balance.
Despite his bitter psychological resolve as a 100-year-old boy, Aang embarks on his mission to fulfil the expectations of people around him as the Avatar and save the world from the Fire nation’s colonisation. By preventing the Fire Lord from misusing the nature-given, Fire-bending talents any further.
The Fire Lord is utilising his bending abilities to destroy nature, other nations’ cultures, and heritages. Not only did he do all the previous and see it through, he even eradicated the Air nomads. Based on the prophecy of the next Avatar bender being an Air nomad. The major casualty in this conflict is nature itself. Nature is what defines humanity in this world. Therefore, while humanity is at war, nature is also at war and suffers immensely.
Aang’s Struggle Of Bending Each Of Nature’s Elements
Aang’s mission, however, is not all that smooth. He has yet to grow to be able to;
- Handle the guilt of his escape for the past century and face the consequences,
- Cope with the loss of all he had ever known as familiar after the genocide done on his indigenous Air nomads and not seek revenge on the Fire nation but to only right the errors of the Fire Lord,
- Venture into the spirits’ world to resolve misunderstandings between spirits and humans and grow wiser as the Avatar meets his past reincarnations in the repressed collective subconsciousness of the universal existence of balance,
- Sacrifice power and what he holds dear for the sake of the greater good because it is his duty as the Avatar to do so,
- Finding a balance between the overlapping elements is arguably his most challenging duty.
Aang already knew how to Air Bend from a young age. He learned how to Water bend from Katara and then a Water-bending teacher who disregarded Katara for being a mere woman who got lucky in bending Water. Eventually, Katara proved to be the most crucial factor of advice and guidance in Avatar Aang’s life and journey to balance and bring peace to the world.
Aang received a prophecy telling him that his Earth-bending teacher would be like no other, a prodigy in their field and an undeniable presence. Little did Aang know that the prophecy entitled him to a spoiled little princess who was blind, or so he thought. Toph was an unyielding force that not even Aang could withstand.
She was more challenging than a mountain and had her shortcomings with Katara, which showcases a relapse between the Water and Earth elements that reflects Aang’s struggle to balance the two foreign elements with his own, especially when it was highlighted in the show how Earth bending was the exact opposite of Air bending and is not as flexible as Water bending but is rather challenging.
In the end, Aang had to learn how to bend Fire which for him was the most bitter and meet the holy dragons with Zoku, the son of the Fire lord who joins their crew later on. Aang did not have one constant teacher throughout his journey, but he impacted everyone he met. His companions evolved with him alongside his journey, and so did his enemies.
He learned what he could from whoever was willing to share the knowledge. However, he stayed decisively focused on his goal and fate as the Avatar making sure not to stray. His journey was not easy still.
He had what he may call later on “a whole experience” of what it means to grow along with the world. The Avatar started with the wisdom of an Air nomad and the mindset of a child as nature guided him through, showing him his resolve from within.
Aang’s Elemental Resolve
The Avatar came to exist as soon as Aang linked with his past self and balanced the bending of the four elements to face the oppressor of nature. However, Aang’s resolve had to rely solely on directing the errors and ending the terror. Not to revenge his people or avenge nature and the other nations.
Aang stripped away the bending abilities of the great Fire Lord, for the Fire lord did not realise what extraordinary gift nature had bestowed upon him to be able to bend Fire and exploit it against nature, terrorising the world and the other elements by his own egoistic belief of betterment through the act of colonisation and relying on genocides as casualties. So it was only befitting that nature takes back what nature originally owned as the Fire lord did not balance his elemental use.
Simply put, Avatar is about a young boy who is reawakened in a world torn by the elemental magic conflict to go on a mystical adventure to realise his destiny as the Avatar and restore peace to the globe, reaching unification within himself and the four elements of life: Air, Water, Earth, and Fire.
This article explored a few extracts/ scenes and implemented the Ecopsychological approach by describing/transcribing/ quoting from the series, Avatar: The Last Air Bender. Aang, the Avatar in the series, was suffering within himself to accept his identity, parallelly struggling to accept the elements of life and nature.
Realising that no one element can do without the other and that all are in balance for a reason, he becomes the master of the four elements to fulfil his destiny of bringing peace by accepting all nature has offered him. He fully experiences his ‘ecological growth,’ in the words of Roszak, and manages to realize his own elemental resolve.
