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Anyone who has followed my posts at all know that LoP made a profound impression on me. It was a rattling good story at the time and the preface warned me immediately against analogy.
Since then, it was become almost a sort of Bibletext for picking relevant or applicable, rather quotes to underline points I make.
Of course, Tolkien was a British Catholic and saw Mordor as the hosts of cynical materialistic non -belief. It is a source of wry amusement to me especially as the argument he uses apply better to theist apologetics than to atheism.
Along with the assembly of Elgar's 3rd and completion of Bruckner's 9th, the long awaited film version was a great event. And it was done with fidelity and understanding and love for the books. Which was very important. There was a fair amount of change but all for good reason, and even improving the story. Even the sad loss of the scouring of the Shire i had to accept was for good reasons.
So I don't know whether there will be any discussion, but watching the talk here struck me as showing just how relevant and timeless the trilogy is.
I think what makes a great religion-inspired book is...the lack of religion
Tolkien did that wonderfully. There's plenty of religious symbolism, but it's only there if you're looking for it. To everybody else it's just a story about a group of brave heroes in trying times who overcome adversity, or a fantasy version of WW2.
I read "The Silmarillion," which is another of Tolkien's books that shows an overview of the history of Middle Earth in story form. It's basically The Bible without all the murders and horrible things...but even that's not preachy. The dwarves are the Jews. The humans are the atheists. The Elves are the Christians, and Mordor is of course the evil Satanic minions and such. You still have to kind of look for that though. It's very easy to just see it as just a detailed fantasy story in which the dwarves are not Jews, but just dwarves (the mythological version...not the real life short people).
I've read it several times, albeit not for a couple of decades. I spent half of the first film wiping tears because it perfectly depicted the Shire as my minds-eye had - only more beautifully.
Can't beat a well-told epic tale of friendship, love, honour and the forces of good putting the boots to evil.
I've read it several times, albeit not for a couple of decades. I spent half of the first film wiping tears because it perfectly depicted the Shire as my minds-eye had - only more beautifully.
Can't beat a well-told epic tale of friendship, love, honour and the forces of good putting the boots to evil.
Tolkien's great at that.
The movie creators should be proud of themselves too. You can tell both the books and the movie trilogy were things the designers really cared about making superb.
I saw the first movie before starting the book...but I can imagine how neat that would be to see the Shire on the big screen after reading about it and imagining it.
Wasn't Tolkien at least in part trying to come to terms and vent the emotions of his experiences in WW1 when composing the Trilogy?
He was in the trenches at the Battle Of The Somme, I believe, and may not have survived to write the Trilogies had he not come down with trench fever and been sent home. He must have experienced and witnessed unspeakable horrors. The races (Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, etc.) the places (Rivendell, Minas Tirith, etc.) along with the epic battles and good having to face and triumph in seemingly insurmountable odds could have WW1 parallels...
Yes. WW1. Though people tended to associate it with WWII. But - like the vid talk says he wrote the notes of Lost Tales in the trenches, and he did not see the Ring as an analogy of the Bomb.
The talk mentions that he regretted the loss of "English Mythology" through the Norman conquest and that the Arthurian cycle is more French chivalry than British. Though he (and the Talk of the Rings) overlooks that Arthur came from the Britons to begin with. It is more true to say that Robin Hood was adopted from the the folk stories of Robin and Marion in France. Rather like Jesus and the gospels, there is likely some basic fact or at least story at the bottom, but a mass of invention is added to that.
Tolkien of course invented his mythological world with some changes. The Balrog was originally a metal monster that orcs rode around on - I have no doubt with the WWII tank in mind. And originally his earth was flat, later the Flat bit (leading to the West) was Spiritual. In the normal round world you'd just sail to America -you'd need to be on the Spiritual plane (though whether that meant death or not is open to discussion) to get to the Uttermost west.
In fact I'll start here. Elves were immortal and didn't die - ever. Unless by accident, disease (I seem to recall some elves expiring from Malaise at least in the Old tales) starvation or being killed in battle. Which occurred quite a lot.
Now, Jackson cannot help but adapt Tolkien to modern ideas of an afterlife and the final description of Frodo arriving in the Spiritual West while still alive with a beach green meadow and sudden sunrise (the sun zooms about in the West just as it does in the Bible) gets transferred to Gondor when Pippin realizes that they will likely all be killed. Then Gandalf describes the Afterlife. The West or an afterlife place isn't clear and doesn't need to be. But it is where they will go if they are killed. So as Pippin says, "that's not so bad".
But we still see the elves departing sadly (and one would think they'd be looking forward to it!) for the wonderful lands of the West while still alive, though Jackson captures the feeling of them slipping away into the spirit world as they go (1).
In the 3rd film Arwen turns back from this procession to an afterlife as sad and grey as anything in Greek or Babylonian mythology and returns to a real, colourful but in the end finite life.
Tolkien never saw it (Arwen talks of Death as a bitter gift) but giving up immortality is quite a relief. Aragorn in relating the tale of Luthien and Beren says that Luthien gave up immortality to wed the mortal, Beren and she of the elven folk alone has died. He says forgetting all the thousands slain in the Gondolin wars or indeed with the wars in the sainted west where elves battled elves in the kinstrife, with Galadriel in the thick of it.
Oh yes, One reason why LoR never became the Mythology of the UK as he hoped was because of the snobby hypocrisy of the Elves. A bit like the Vulcans, they are written to be everything we aspire to - perfect, in body and mind. But in fact they are only able to beat humans two falls out of three, but otherwise they are no better, and worse, snobby and racist.
I have a bit of a nose for propaganda, and I was willing (as in all story -telling) to take sides, just for the story - which is why the current fad of TV serials where the goodies turn into the baddies at least in a parallel universe or other dimension -earth episode has stopped me ever turning the damn' thing on. But I was uncomfortable with the portraying of Mordor as bad as bad can be. And wry amusement as Gandalf and the elves constantly fret about possible betrayal. As Gandalf says, the untrustworthy are ever distrustful.
I don't doubt Jackson was aware of the Southrons, Haradrim and Rhunnish allies of Mordor as being too Arabic. He tried to make them look a bit Ninja -ish but couldn't disguise it - Tolkien saw Muslims as allied with the bad guys. Muslims worship the same God as Christians, but do it wrong. The creed you belong to, not the god you worship, is what matters.
C.S Lewis was refreshingly unhypocritical about it. The same god idea when Aslan the lion avatar of Jesusgod and Tash the dragon -of the arabic hordes was turned into Tashlan. And he depicts it as a trick to fool true believers, even if the dupes who promote the cult believe It.
No, I adore the books and the film, but I do not approve of the ideas. They draw on Tolkien's views, belief and attitudes, and they seemed to him right and proper and bad and wicked as appropriate. But it ain't as easy as that.
Next topic - Analogy after all - Gondor is Constantinople.
(1) do you know, the term used for the rabbits living in the warren of the shining wires "terribly sad - like trees in November." fits the mood of the elves leaving for this shining lands. How nicely Watership Down and LoR captured this idea of the end of This Life being sad even with the wonderful afterlife promises. One definitely feels that they all Know Something that is depressing them - but nobody will talk about it.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 01-26-2017 at 05:07 AM..
Some don't care for it. It depends what one likes. I remember the Far pavilions was shouted about and I got it from the Library and flung it into a corner after the first half dozen pages (and Dune has its fans, but I found it boring and unpleasant).
I also adore Watership Down (though others have found it silly and pointless) but I read Johnathan Livingstone Seagull once, and once was plenty. Ok for kiddies, I suppose (1).
Oh yes, I was going to mention that Harry Potter has provided the Mythology that Tolkien failed to, though again for me one read was enough, and the films though well done, make me want to cringe -regularly.
As I say, depends. We all like different reading or not reading at all.
(1) I think that's it. That's why I adore Peanuts - because it just contains so much philosophy and neat questions - it is so much more than just a comic strip, even if Schultz never intended it. I got 'The Gospel according to Peanuts" in the days before I knew I was atheist, and it is a typical attempt at Christian propaganda, using Peanuts cartoons to make a point. In fact it appalled me even as a teen, because it wasn't Seeing the point at all. It was doing what I call 'Keyword exegesis' where you grab a word or term and go off on a tangental sermon and avoid the real subject. Looking back that book did more to damage the Christian cause for me than even Cliff Walker's "Positive atheism" site (my correspondence course in atheist thinking).
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 01-26-2017 at 05:19 AM..
If you enjoy the fantasy genre, the genre that includes dragons and magic and tends to have Medieval European themes, Tolkien is probably the best that sort of writing.
If you don't enjoy the fantasy genre, I could imagine you not liking it as much and seeing it as too long.
Can you become emotionally invested in fictional beings in a fictional world to the point where you'd be interested in learning about a made-up language of elves in this fictional world? If yes, then you'll probably like it because there's a lot of that sort of thing. It also contains Hobbit genealogy, if you're interested in that sort of thing.
I sometimes feel like if there is some species of aliens watching us that's less imaginative...they must think we're completely insane due to some of our species' interest in not just learning about beings we know to be imaginary...but judging by how popular Tolkien's works were, their backstories, ancestry, languages, cultures, and national histories.
Some don't care for it. It depends what one likes. I remember the Far pavilions was shouted about and I got it from the Library and flung it into a corner after the first half dozen pages (and Dune has its fans, but I found it boring and unpleasant).
I also adore Watership Down (though others have found it silly and pointless) but I read Johnathan Livingstone Seagull once, and once was plenty. Ok for kiddies, I suppose (1).
Oh yes, I was going to mention that Harry Potter has provided the Mythology that Tolkien failed to, though again for me one read was enough, and the films though well done, make me want to cringe -regularly.
As I say, depends. We all like different reading or not reading at all.
(1) I think that's it. That's why I adore Peanuts - because it just contains so much philosophy and neat questions - it is so much more than just a comic strip, even if Schultz never intended it. I got 'The Gospel according to Peanuts" in the days before I knew I was atheist, and it is a typical attempt at Christian propaganda, using Peanuts cartoons to make a point. In fact it appalled me even as a teen, because it wasn't Seeing the point at all. It was doing what I call 'Keyword exegesis' where you grab a word or term and go off on a tangental sermon and avoid the real subject. Looking back that book did more to damage the Christian cause for me than even Cliff Walker's "Positive atheism" site (my correspondence course in atheist thinking).
Yeah, my sister and I both like Stephen King books, but for opposite reasons and different books. I like his more fantasy and science-fiction oriented stuff like The Green Mile and The Dark Tower series. She likes his horror. I don't understand why people have an interest in being scared. She doesn't understand why people get attracted to weird stuff and learning about that weird stuff.
One of my favorite books is World War Z because that contains a lot of the detailed world-building I like. It's not very character-oriented though. It skips between characters. You see the perspective of one person, for a chapter, and then the book moves on to a new chapter and then you never hear about that person again. The book is about world during the zombie war, not so much individuals, and plenty of people like more character-oriented stories and don't like it at all.
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