The Fantastic World of Professor Tolkien (1956)
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> “Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of Justice ... even the wise cannot see all ends.”
Remains a very good, concise argument against capital punishment.
Fence off a large part of the American southwest. Surround it with guard towers and automatic motion-activated machine guns to destroy anything that comes within 100 ft of the fence. Then drop the exiles off with a backpack of basic equipment and wish them well.
Remember Florence ADX.
We should keep in mind that Gollum is for a short time reformed before he tries to lure Frodo and Sam to their deaths so that he can have a golden ring...
Not the poster child for capital punishment reform. Turning off snark, that quote sounds very informed by Tolkien's Catholicism.
Which by the way I prefer. The cliche of the powerless humble guy who in the end saves the world has become boring and predictable.
I accept the premise that the gambit was won not through great warriors, but by folk of spirit, loyalty and fortitude disproportionate to their stature.
One thing that really struck home as a youngster reading was of course Eowyn and the witch king.
The only thing which actually saves them and destroys the ring is blind chance. Or, maybe, providence? "Bilbo was meant to find the ring, and not by its maker," says Gandalf. Once you start looking, that theme permeates the entire book.
But then, so does free will: providence, if it exists in Tolkien's universe, cannot act except through people. Frodo's choice to let Gollum live allows Gollum to unwittingly destroy the ring later. And that theme permeates the book too.
It's painfully dated in a lot of ways, but still fascinating, and a lot more complex than the simple adventure story it first appears to be.
From the writing style point of view:
- we wouldn't pace it like that these days. When the story splits, Tolkien tells an entire story from the point of view of some of the characters, and then rewinds time by quite a long way to tell an entire story from some of the other characters. We'd tend to use more changes of PoV, so that all the events progress at the same time. This has the advantages that the climaxes all happen simultaneously, and also allows compare-and-contrast between different plot threads.
- the writing style itself is pretty uneven; there are sections at the beginning which have the same forced-joviality-talking-down-to-children feel that the Hobbit had, but which is quite out of place in the much darker book. It gets better later on, though. (IIRC he only redrafted it once, due to not having a word processor.)
From the worldbuilding point of view:
- despite all the care behind Gollum's characterisation, the bulk of the antagonists get no characterisation whatsoever. Orcs are simple ciphers, portrayed as irredeemably evil; which doesn't fit in Tolkien's cosmology (only Illúvatar, God, can give or take free will). Tolkien was aware this was a problem later on and tried to address it in the Silmarillion, but apparently he was never happy with the solution there. Sauron, of course, famously never appears on stage at all.
- there's a lot of 1950s attitudes, both subtle racism --- he's got a regrettable tendency to use dark skin or deformity as a marker of being evil --- and subtle classism --- and I'm not talking about Sam vs. Frodo here; what I mean is that outside the Shire, the only people we ever meet who matter are aristocracy. Ordinary people exist, because at one point our characters stand on Edoras and look out at the burning farmsteads, but only as comic relief or bit parts. And, of course, there's the famous lack of female characters.
- Sam and Frodo's relationship is very alien to modern eyes: we just don't seem to do that master/servant relationship any more, or if we do, we interpret it as a sexual relationship (hence all the 'Sam will kill him if he tries anything' jokes). Tolkien uses this elsewhere; Saruman/Wormtongue is a perverted example. (There is, BTW, another excellent example of this done right in Kipling's Kim, which you should totally read.)
None of this, BTW, is any reason why it's bad, because not, it's a great book; and the fact that a 60-year old book holds up so well today is a tribute to just how good it is; but it is still very much an artifact of its time, and needs to be remembered as such.
I absolutely agree that no one can write sincerely in the style of a bygone age. But having been written in the past doesn't in itself make, say, Anthony Powell's books (to pick someone writing in a different style at a similar time) dated. It's not like we learned more about how to write novels since then, or novelists of today would be easily able to do better than Powell, which I don't think they are.
Your points about racism etc do make sense though, things like that can be jarring, and it's always a bit disappointing to me to remember that our favourite writers were subject to the reality tunnels of their time.
As are we. Don't forget that.
I think that is a good attitude.
Although I do want to add about the aristocracy/common people issue: the fact that we almost only meet nobles outside of the Shire is consistent with his medieval-style world. At the level of planning and command that the Fellowship moves in, only kings and the like would have any say. (Imagine the battle of Minas Tirith and the march on Mordor being written from the POV of a normal soldier - almost nothing of what's going on would make sense.) Also, one of the big themes of the book is how the Hobbits themselves change from being young, simple, rural people to being warriors and true leaders. This change is made possible in large parts by their dealings with the nobility of other countries.
If not him it would have been whoever else was at the peak of the sisterhood's breeding plan.
Paul was supposed to be Paulina and marry Feyd-Rautha, rather than gut him in front of the Emperor.
"“My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself.” "
http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2014/02/26/87195-sam-gamgee-...
>J. R. R. Tolkien hiked from Interlaken to the Lauterbrunnen Valley while on a trip to the Continent in 1911. The landscape of the valley later provided the concept and pictorial model for his sketches and watercolours of the fictitious valley of Rivendell, the dwelling place of Elrond Half-elven and his people.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauterbrunnen
Having accidentally recreated this trek, I can attest to its natural beauty, and I can see how it inspired his imagination. I highly recommend doing the same if you're lucky enough to be able to.
A photo of Lauterbrunnen: http://gotravelaz.com/wp-content/uploads/images/Lauterbrunne...
Thank you, it looks wonderful.
I want to see mountains again.
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/03/tolkien-artist-illu...
Lovely bit of prose for a book review.
https://www.amazon.com/J-R-R-Tolkien-Century-Tom-Shippey/dp/...
I read it recently, I knew it first time because the movie. I read it in English, and it improved my language skills a lot (even the listening, to my surprise).
"We don't want to go to war today, but the Dark Lord says, nay nay nay".
Was a bit off ("lord of the lash", not "Dark Lord"), but not bad for something I haven't heard for ~35 years.
If you're going to review something, at least get the facts right.
maiar is the plural of maia (in Quenya, anyway, but conventionally in English, too). At least get the facts right.
Perhaps before critiquing someone else's understanding you should make sure yours stacks up. Aragorn is careful to avoid being proclaimed king because he wishes to demonstrate he is worthy of the title. Breaking the siege of Gondor and demonstrating that "the hands of a king are the hands of a healer" is how he does that.
I get where you're coming from, but this kind of pedantic hair-splitting with a condescending tone doesn't advance the conversation. There's nothing "scarily wrong" about a reviewer from 1956 not being intimately familiar with the breadth and depth of Tolkien's canon.
So, like Morgoth (aka Melkor of the Ainur) then.
[There's a lot more wonderful Tolkien knowledge waiting for you out there, too, if and when you want to delve into it. It starts to lean inevitably toward textual history as you delve deeper, but some of that is inevitable with a work of this scope whose author was so far from completing it when he died.]
Being the descendant of Isildur does not, by birth right, make Aragorn king. When the two kingdoms of the Dunedin were formed in Middle Earth after the fall of Numenor, the North Kingdom of Arnor was ruled by the High King Elendil, and the South Kingdom of Gondor was ruled by his sons, Isildur and Anarion. [1][2]
During the first war of the ring against Sauron, Elendil and Anarion were both slain. After the war, Isildur, as the oldest surviving member of his line, became high king of the two kingdoms. However, when he left Gondor the year after the war and travelled north to Arnor, he installed his brother's son Meneldil as King of Gondor. On his journey north, Isildur was killed by a band of Orcs. The crown of Arnor was then passed to Isildur's only surviving son, Valandil. [3]
Valandil never made a claim to the thrown of Gondor. As a result the two kingdoms were separated. It was accepted in both kingdoms that Isildur, by installing Meneldil to the throne of Gondor, had forsaken his claim. From that point forward, Arnor was ruled by the line of Isildur and Gondor was ruled by the line of his brother Anarion. [1][2]
At one point in Gondor's history, the current king died without any obvious heir. At that time, Arvedui, king of Arnor, claimed the kingship of Gondor as the descendent of Isildur. Gondor refused the claim, saying that Isildur had granted the kingdom to his brother's line and only direct descendants of Anarion could be king. [4] Another later attempt at reunification was also rebuffed.
After the Second War of the Ring, where Sauron was finally destroyed, Aragorn again claimed lordship of both Arnor (which was destroyed but he hoped to rebuild) and Gondor. He was a direct descendant of Arvedui, who was rebuffed thousands of years before when he tried to reunite the kingdoms. [5] Throughout the Lord of the Rings, Aragorn is nervous about returning to Gondor because his claim is not assured.
The people of Gondor accept Aragorn's claim to the throne and he becomes the first High King of the Reunited Kingdom. [5] His lineage does play a part in their acceptance. However, the same lineage had been rebuffed several times in Gondor's past and was not seen as a mandate to rule.
Aragorn's actions during the war played a much larger role in the people accepting him as king. Much of this was due to an old prophecy, saying that "the hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known." When Aragorn healed the people wounded by the Black Breath of the Nazgul during the Battle of Pellenor Fields, the rumor went around the city that the king had returned. When he defeated Sauron, the people accepted him. [6]
So there you have it. Aragorn was considered a possible match for the Kingship due to being a descendant of Isildur. However, his lineage did not give him the right to claim the role on its own. The people of Gondor chose to disregard their ancient rules about the rights of succession in order to appoint him king. They did so because of his actions during the war and the prophecies he fulfilled. The main prophecy that planted the seed of him returning as king was his healing of the wounded in Minas Tirith. The article is more correct than you.
You know... if you want to be pedantic about it.
Sources:
1. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Gondor
2. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Arnor
3. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Isildur
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Kings_of_Arnor_and_Gondor
5. http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/King_of_the_Reunited_Kingdom
6. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Aragorn#Reign_as_Elessar
Edit: Fixed typo.
> He was a direct descendant of Anarion, who was rebuffed thousands of years before when he tried to reunite the kingdoms.
You mean Arvedui. Makes the explanation much easier to process!
(And thanks, I had no idea about any of the above.)
The female characters also tend to be quite weak and uninteresting.
Still the vision and the universe was inspiring. I still prefer it to most other fantasy.
1. Plenty of heroic art has ambiguous villains, but this is certainly a modern preference. I'm sure our view of Hector in the Iliad being sympathetic is quite different than the ancient Greek's take on him.
2. The racism issue is quite real, in my opinion. This problem is somewhat exacerbated by the movies, where all the orcs have dreadlocks. But to say the dark races are "mislead" just substitutes stupidity for malice. All the heroes, without fail, are white. The elves, clearly the highest race in Tolkien's world, are white, blonde, tall and beautiful.
3. 3 women, all of whom have bit parts, at best, isn't really that great. Though they are all shown to have great redeeming qualities, two of their characters mostly revolve around their relationships with men (both of whom are in love with Aragorn, a great virtue, it seems). Galadriel is the only one who seems to have an identity and power that does not rely on her relationship to a man. Though even she appears to be secondary to Celeborn when she again appears.
This is not to dismiss LotR as not good or important literature. All these criticisms could be made of the vast majority of western literature up to the late 20th Century. The Iliad has no female or low class characters at all (the Odyssey's introduction of Penelope, Eumaeus and Dido is really a watershed in western literature, and their characters are far weaker than anything in LotR), but is still studied. Because of this, I don't understand Tolkien apologism.
http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/47419/is-lord-of-th...
> The novels are described as “a trilogy in five parts” […] The US edition of the fifth book was originally released with the legend “The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker’s Trilogy” on the cover. […] the blurb on the fifth book describes it as “the book that gives a whole new meaning to the word ‘trilogy’”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_th...
Funnily enough, before the Da Vinci code, the last book I read that I couldn't put down was The Hobbit.
Don't sweat it, when you write your world changing, genre defining masterwork, you can make it as deep and morally ambiguous as you please.
Here are some pre-Tolkien authors people may be interested in: * Dunsany * Mirrlees * Hodgson * Eddison * Howard * Lovecraft * and there are more, just google them, these are just the ones that come to mind
I hate this criticism. The idea that unless you are an author of similar calibre, you are not fit to critique is a dangerous one.
I haven't written an operating system, but I can still tell you that Windows 10 has numerous flaws. Should I STFU until I write my own?
If you started your critique of Windows 10 by calling Microsoft "Most overrated software shop of all time" and then proceeded with a few subjective, shallow criticisms with no detail, you might indeed be told that.
And I'd wager Microsoft has nowhere near the adoration that Tolkien has among HN readers.
What criticism isn't subjective?
I'd vouch that Tolkien is massively overrated as a writer. Perhaps not of all time, but up there along with Stephen King. I like Lord of the Rings just fine but it's not even close to my favorite work of written fantasy. His worlds are huge and beautiful, yes, especially his invented languages. But as works of readable fiction, they just fall so flat. My favorite part of the books are the indices because that's Tolkien's wheelhouse.
How about saying "those are subjective, shallow criticisms with no detail" instead of "STFU and write your own operating system"?
One of these criticisms actually has some bearing on the criticism it's criticizing. One does not.
No, he really didn't. Clark Ashton Smith, Lord Dunsany, Jack Vance, there plenty of writers and entire magazines devoted to fantasy.
>Don't sweat it, when you write your world changing, genre defining masterwork, you can make it as deep and morally ambiguous as you please.
Projecting much?
"plenty" perhaps oversells the genre pre-Tolkien, and also afaik Jack Vance didn't start writing until well after The Hobbit was published, so I'm not sure he belongs on your list - William Morris would have been a much better example as a direct precursor to both Tolkien and Lewis.
You probably haven't read a line from him if you say this. Do not mistake the author for the movies from Hollywood.
This is different to the original complaint about a dichotomy - belief that some things are ultimately good and some other things are ultimately evil is not the same as dividing everything into rigid categories of only good or only evil.
Calling it a pilgrim's progress tale is a bit unwarranted, or at least overly reductionist - it's not that simplistic and that's only one aspect of LotR anyway.
A few grey areas off the top of my head: various elven decisions, Denethor, Frodo, Smeagol/Gollum, Saruman's initial study of ringlore. In Tolkien's writing, individuals do clearly good things, clearly bad things, difficult to judge things, and and things that are some combination of the previous three. All this happens within the framework of the very traditional overarching light v. dark theme (which is also the source of the association between evil and 'dark' and 'twisted' characterisations that some like to complain about).
A lot of it boils down to taste.
It's much more subtle than that. LOTR has characters who are deeply ambiguous, and do not fall clearly into Evil or Good in a traditional sense. Folks like Denethor, Gollum, and even Boromir have multiple facets. Even Frodo is tempted to use the Ring multiple times even though he is aware of the implications.
And let's not forget that, in the book (not the movies, which missed the point of that part completely), the Shire is ultimately destroyed even though Frodo was successful in destroying the Ring. That is clearly not your typical, regular fairy tale ending.
Saruman, Denethor, Boromir, Theoden, the elves choosing to largely stay out of the war...these are people facing hard decisions with limited information and no expectation that victory is possible.
How many of us would make choices in the face of the end of the world that an outside observer would call unambiguously good and wise?
In the books, Denethor is a rational character who is recognized for his wisdom and insight. Gandalf has immense respect for him (though they are not friendly) and at some level they are peers - not at a fundamental level, obviously, Gandalf being Maia.
Denethor is the character who is using reason to get through the day. He isn't operating on faith like Gandalf. He's used the palantir, out of necessity, so he understands the situation better than anyone else. He's stood up to Sauron himself in one-on-one mental battle time and again. He thinks, quite rightly, that Gandalf's plan to send the Ring into Mordor is insane: if the Enemy gets the Ring, everything is over. The most rational thing to do is to hide the Ring away in the most secure place possible (Minas Tirith), and, in the event that they have no other choice, to use the Ring to defeat Sauron. Of course, he accepts that that choice is already out of their hands. Frodo is already gone.
But Denethor has known, all this time, that Gondor (and therefore the West) cannot hope to defeat Sauron. They are ultimately doomed. Gandalf affirms this even after Denethor dies, when he proposes the march to Mordor. Even after their victory at Pelennor, they are doomed. They have defeated only a tiny fraction of Sauron's forces. The last straw for Denethor, of course, is losing both his sons on top of knowing they are all doomed (after a last consultation with Sauron.) But when you look at Denethor through this lens, he looks a lot different than his portrayal as a crazy madman. What distinguishes him and Gandalf is Gandalf's faith that everything will work out.
"In Yeskov’s retelling, the wizard Gandalf is a war-monger intent on crushing the scientific and technological initiative of Mordor ... He’s in cahoots with the elves, who aim to become “masters of the world,” and turn Middle-earth into a “bad copy” of their magical homeland across the sea. ...the remnants of Mordor’s civilization fight a rear-guard guerrilla campaign to sustain the “green shoots of reason and progress,” in opposition to the “static” and “tidy” pseudo-paradise of Middle-earth under the elven regime."
This is part of the seductive power theme in LotR, which in general I consider something of a counterpoint to GGP's complaints about "simplistic morals" and "obvious dichotomy".
As it was with Boromir (who wanted it for good) or Gandalf when he denies taking the ring. They could've ended doing evil with initial noble intentions, that's how the ring would've exploited them.
People seem to miss that Tolkien's rejection of moral ambiguity was not just some lacuna. It was the point. In his world it is usually not hard to know what it is the right thing to do, bit it can be very hard to do it.
Tolkien, the Catholic, wants us to forgive others (e.g. Gollum) when they fail this difficult moral test, but still resolve to pass it ourselves rather than evade it by making excuses about complexity and ambiguity.
You might not agree with that philosophy, but it is still a serious message that pervades the story, and lends it much of its beauty.
Yes, that is indeed one of the major themes of the book. Related to that, I love how Gandalf says (quoting from memory here, might not be word-perfect): "We cannot choose which times we live in, but we can choose what do with the times that are given us."
In this scheme, we mortals are not able to save ourselves, only God can do that. In Frodo's case, Gollum turned out to be Gods instrument. But first Frodo had climb the mountain before that could happen.
I think its an example of how the focal characters are imperfect, but I don't think it shows that there isn't a simple good v. evil dichotomy in the books; I mean, there's no ambiguity that destroying the ring was the one correct course of action and that Frodo was falling short of it.
I recently re-read Tolkien's material and have to admit that whilst it is indeed genre-defining and carefully planned on the conceptual level LotR is indeed a heavily flawed book. I do not understand the reviewer's POV as we had excellent "high" literature all through the 20th century.
I totally accept that the more nerdy HN community mostly see literature as having three genres (Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror) but there is a weird egghead world of people reading "art" books. Those who attended school might had the questionable experience of studying Hemingway or Joyce or Fitzgerald. These authors are different to Tolkien.
You can indeed compare Beethoven to Elvis. Or Michelin gourmet places to street food. I am just not sure it makes sense.
And no, one is not "better" than the other. Outside of the minds of console warmongers and GOP nominees there are more shades of grey than any shady SM e-book fanboi would ever fathom.