Twoflower: the Character

Twoflower is the comically and near-unbelievably naive tourist from The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett, which I read recently. He began life as a clerk in an insurance company, then decided he wanted to see the world. And he really did see it, we’ll equipped, of course, with his Luggage, with its hundreds of tiny little legs.
Twoflower isn’t scared or panicked at any time throughout the book, which makes him sound fearless, but the reality is that he’s simply too naive for the idea of fear to enter his mind. Fascination takes over instead, for example when he’s being chased by dragons, and he says, “All my life I’ve wanted to see dragons!” To be honest, I do understand his point of view, to a certain extent. I wouldn’t exactly hang around at the sight of a charging dragon, but I would be fascinated in its presence, if I ever somehow found myself on the Discworld, which is of course unlikely.
To be fair to him, Twoflower is actually rather brave, especially when it comes to rescuing his friends. His bravery is quite similar, in fact, to his fearlessness – it just doesn’t ever occur to him to let other people suffer while he gets away. He even at one point rescues someone who was happier before they were rescued, and actually having a rather nice time. To me, that is Twoflower all over.
At the beginning of the book, Rincewind says that Twoflower is entirely chaos-prone, attracting trouble like someone standing on a hilltop in a thunderstorm shouting abuse at the gods attracts lightning. This is, based on the rest of the book, arguably true. True, because he gets into trouble at every turn possible, and arguably, because he always manages to get out of it.
If I was ever in a spot of trouble or a dangerous position, I think I’d either be glad of the panic-free nature of Twoflower, or I’d end up slapping him for his incredle naivety and perpetual calmness. That can be very frustrating, you know.

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