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Why Tolkien is not coddling his readers, why Tolkien is awesome


Ser Scot A Ellison

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However, I would like to add something that I think a lot of readers have difficulty with. Specifically, that Tolkien was a champion of "The Comfortable Middle" which is something that gnashes the teeth of those who dream of the future as something greater than the present or are wedded to the past. Tolkien's view on history in the Middle Earth stories is that its people will never achieve the great glories of the elves or Numenor of the past BUT THEY WON'T FALL AS FAR EITHER.

There's a kind of uncomfortable distaste for Hobbits, Hobbitry, and Hobbiton in the minds of fantasy readers since they're very much people who want to leave their comfortable middle class existences to journey to Gondor and Rohan. They identify with Aragorn, not Frodo or Bilbo, as they wish to be among the great heroes of the world.

Tolkien, however, sees the future becoming more Hobbit-like in the future and this as a good thing. Which people who think Tolkien romanticizes the past have difficulty with as it is a critique of the idea of the past being purely bad and the future being more grandiose versus the future becoming, well, comfortable, and safe.

Well, safer.

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14 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

It should be noted that Eru is GoodTM but he's a Higher Good than humans can really operate on due to being omniscient and also he gets the morality-out in that Eru is willing to allow evil to happen for the greater good--which is the controversial defense of evil in real life by those who wish to deal with the Problem of Evil (albeit, in RL, good and evil aren't that easy to fix either -- even with hypothetical omniscience).

The Valar are good in a similarly awesome way but they're flawed in the fact they do not have omniscience or necessarily make good decisions. They can also be corrupted.

And yes, excellent essay.

Eru's plans presumably unfold over the course of tens of thousands of years, so are going to be very difficult for mortals (or even Elves) to fathom.  For all that any of the protagonists of LOTR knew, Eru might have intended Sauron to win this particular conflict.

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I think both the parochiality of the Shire hobbits (except for our heroes) and the scouring of the Shire show that Tolkien was very well aware of the fragility of the comfortable middle. In the future there will not be Glorfindel vs. Balrog or Turin vs. Glaurung fighting for the fate of the world but Wormtongue or petty orcs vs. Merry Brandybuck and Sam Gamgee fighting for some small scall rural idyll might still be a struggle where one should be careful to pick the right side and that might be bad enough for the ones involved.

And while I don't think we should expect a cobbled fake mythology like Tolkien's to solve the Problem of Evil but there is one point in traditional theology that seems also to feature in Tolkien. God delegates some of his powers to his creatures so they might be able to partake in the joys of creation. E.g., He could just make humans pop out of thin air but instead he gives to parents the creative power to create new humans because this gives parents more joy. (And then, with such delegation of power of course comes the freedom to abuse that power.) Similarly, although it might seem somewhat cold-hearted and cynical in a fight against overwhelming odds like in the War of the Ring, Gandalf's powers are severely restricted by divine order because the free people of ME are given the power to fight evil on their own and thus bringing about good.

 

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2 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

I'd certainly like to know more about Middle Earth's government and politics.  Was Gondor an absolute monarchy, or a constitutional one (in all likelihood, the nature of its government would have varied considerably over the course of 3,000 years)?  Did serfdom exist in Gondor or the Shire?  Did Gondor has a standing army, and if so, how big, or did it rely on the retinues of its lords?  What's the status of working class elves (we certainly come across them, but the main focus of the stories is on Royal elves)?  How extensive was trade with the Harad, (referred to by Faramir) when the two countries weren't at war?  Etc. etc.  But, none of these things detract from the story.  They're just fun to speculate about.

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I am repeating myself but apart from the obvious fact that RPG-style worldbuilding would distract from the main story of LotR, Martin really deserves all snide remarks one can muster. He is incredibly cavalier with the very things he complains about! (I have no problem with laziness in practical things in favor of telling a story in principle, but it is really damn cheeky to do this and fault others) The most obvious ones are the unrealistic meteorology that has almost no impact on society (the North, especially the Wildlings should live, if at all, more like Inuit than like Scotsmen with furcoats), the HUGE continent Westeros that is culturally and linguistically far too homogeneous, magic ravens pulled out of thin air because without this quasi-modern communication the whole thing would even be less feasible. Lazily half developed religions that all of a sudden are supposed to become important when the story demands it after they had been mostly lame window dressing for two books. Almost no info on the expert/administrative/legal side of actual governing, except bickering and cabals in the council. And these are books supposedly focussed on politics and governing...

 

 

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9 hours ago, SeanF said:

I'd certainly like to know more about Middle Earth's government and politics.  Was Gondor an absolute monarchy, or a constitutional one (in all likelihood, the nature of its government would have varied considerably over the course of 3,000 years)?  Did serfdom exist in Gondor or the Shire?  Did Gondor has a standing army, and if so, how big, or did it rely on the retinues of its lords?  What's the status of working class elves (we certainly come across them, but the main focus of the stories is on Royal elves)?  How extensive was trade with the Harad, (referred to by Faramir) when the two countries weren't at war?  Etc. etc.  But, none of these things detract from the story.  They're just fun to speculate about.

We've got Letter 244:

A Númenórean King was monarch, with the power of unquestioned decision in debate; but he governed the realm with the frame of ancient law, of which he was administrator (and interpreter) but not the maker. In all debatable matters of importance domestic, or external, however, even Denethor had a Council, and at least listened to what the Lords of the Fiefs and the Captains of the Forces had to say. Aragorn re-established the Great Council of Gondor, and in that Faramir, who remained by inheritance the Steward (or representative of the King during his absence abroad, or sickness, or between his death and the accession of his heir) would [be] the chief counsellor.

But I agree with Jo498 - at some point world-building ends up distracting from the actual story.

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9 hours ago, Jo498 said:

The most obvious ones are the unrealistic meteorology that has almost no impact on society (the North, especially the Wildlings should live, if at all, more like Inuit than like Scotsmen with furcoats),

Agree so much. Tolkien's Forodwaith are a much better depiction of someone living in that sort of climate than Martin's Wildings (or even Northerners in general - frankly, the comparatively warm and coastal White Harbour ought to be the major hub of the North, rather than Winterfell).

One world-bullding criticism that can be made of Tolkien though is the location of Mirkwood. Sticking a giant forest in the rain-shadow of the Misty Mountains is not quite on the level of Martin's oaks north of the Wall (a pet peeve of mine), but it's the same sort of issue. But really we're talking about sad little nitpicking: Martin confuses minor details of setting with a flaw in the story, as if Aragorn's tax policy has any bearing on anything: the story is not about Aragorn's reign, it's about the hobbits. 

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My main problem with Martin is not his cavalier attitude per se. I am fairly ignorant on botany and stuff, so I would not have noticed (although I know that there should be only pine, if any forest so far north/cold). It is 1) that he has made the long winters a main feature of his narrative (or so it seems in the first book) and then almost completely ignores the impact this would have on society, on botany, economy, trade etc. And 2) that he is frequently cavalier about the very stuff he complains about in Tolkien. Despite some flaws like Mirkwood (and also some other overall geography/geology) Tolkien took pains with the stuff he cared about, e.g. not only the languages but lots of botany, geography, climate etc. as well. Martin claims to care about the stuff he is lazy with.

As for your list of problems and plotholes. While it did not bother me when I first read it, I have to agree with Weathertop. Even if we swallow that the Nazgul are comparably weak so far away from Mordor they have too clear an advantage not to press it. Gildor's nonchalance does not make sense either. He should have been cut from the story or been replaced with a minor character who could not give much help, would not know who the black riders were and/or would have been on a really pressing errand so he could only give warnings/messages. The orc massacre is slightly overdone but I am not so much bothered by it. And forget about Arwen; I think her main raison d'être is the placement of LotR in the large scale of history. But I am not at all bothered by her irrelvance to this story.

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The Eagles and Tom Bombadil don’t bother me, really. The Eagles are a touch overused, I think, but their appearances are usually pretty fun. Tom, well, I don’t mind the singing. He halts the narrative too much, but at the same time I think the adventure in the Barrow Downs is really great (Cold be hand and heart and bone…). Gildor I agree with. Weathertop I see the hole, although I admit I'd never really considered it that way. I've always been to worried about Frodo at that part. Arwen is rightfully in first place. Arwen’s character is so lacking in agency and anything interesting that I honestly think Tolkien had no real idea what to do with her or how to involve her in the plot.

On Martin: the thing that's always bugged me about ASOIAF is the absurd timelines. It feels like a very limp attempt to add that sense of ancientness that comes with say Tolkien's world. Except, poorly done: Westeros houses existing for thousands of years? 8000 years since the Others last appeared? I mean, come on, that just sounds silly. The other thing is that there's nothing about his world that strikes me as particularly memorable, aside from maybe the Wall. With Tolkien you have these wonderful, unique, distinct locations be it the Shire or Rohan or Isengard. In Westeros, nothing, aesthetically, really stands out. It's all just designed as your typical medieval world with some fantasy elements thrown in. 

 

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But Arwen is not part of the plot in a meaningful way. I completely understand all the other points (although the ones I did not mentioned above bother me even less) because they can be seen as plotholes, overuse and inconsistencies. But in the case of Arwen it seems to me both obvious that Tolkien didn't really know what to do with her and that this is quite irrelevant for the narrative. She is simply a very minor character but the narrative does not demand otherwise; her underdevelopment only hurts if one demands that the Aragorn-Arwen story be a major part of the plot. But it simply isn't.

Whereas Gildor's behavior seems very strange and Weathertop is implausible within important plot lines.

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As I tried to point out my main problem with Martin is not suspension of disbelief. But generally I think it is only fair to call out blatantly unrealistic things in supposedly "gritty, realist Fantasy" in a way that I would consider pedantry in a high magic or fairy tale style setting. And specifically, it is that he had a good, possibly brilliant idea (the special seasons) and could not be bothered to work out SOME consequences for the shape of the world and their societies. In real medieval times the actual central/northern European winters of a few months were a survival challenge (as is well documented, among other things by the fragility and eventual failure of the Viking colony in Greenland as soon as the climate became just a little worse). Years of winter would completely re-shape a medieval-style society and would lead to Wildling and Northern Culture to be far more different from King's Landing or Dorne than it actually is.

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I think even Tolkien realised (in one of his letters) that the behaviour of the Nazgul at Weathertop was implausible.  But, I can forgive this, as the chapters from Bree to Rivendell are so good to read.

I agree entirely about Tom Bombadil, although there are people who love him.

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It does not amount to a hypothesis or a theory but I find that the first part (Shire to Rivendell) works well as the beginning of the quest, showing at a rather slow pace that it is getting ever more dangerous and that the hobbits are out of their depth. So as episodes on a quest, Old man willow, Bombadil, the Barrow wight, Bree, Weathertop as well as the encounter with Gildor work very well for me.

But within the larger narrative one demands more plausibility than from quest episodes in a medieval type romance (or say the magic forest of Tantrevalles in Lyonesse) where another, completely unexpected challenge unrelated to the one before, be it highwayman, giant, witch or unicorn can step up behind every bush or street corner.

I always accounted for that somewhat loose beginning by thinking of the "hobbit heritage" of LotR: little men on a quest with episodes that oscillate between somewhat silly and genuinely heroic.

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7 hours ago, Jo498 said:

Gildor's nonchalance does not make sense either. He should have been cut from the story or been replaced with a minor character who could not give much help, would not know who the black riders were and/or would have been on a really pressing errand so he could only give warnings/messages.

This drives me up the wall. Gildor knows what the Nazgul are, and he has guessed (rightly) that they are after Frodo. I wouldn't expect him to start in on Ecology of the Ringwraith, but, for crying out loud, a little help for the hobbit might be nice. Frodo has to drag reluctant advice out of Gildor, and that's all he gets from the elves. Pointy-eared bastards.

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First of all, great essay @Roose Boltons Pet Leech. It was a joy to read and honestly, you should expand further on it and maybe publish it! The academic quality is tremendous. 

Second, one of the best threads in the literature forum I have read in years! A big thank you to all of you, to those I agree with and to those with whom I disagree. @Jo498 @TrackerNeil @C.T. Phipps @SeanF @Lord Varys

You guys are the reason why it is still worthwhile to have a look into the Westeros forums! 

Now coming to the topic. It is safe to say that Tolkien is one of the most misunderstood authors of the 20th Century and certainly within the fantasy genre. Add to this my feeling that since the PJ movies have been released, they have become the primary gateway for Tolkien and his works for many people, on
a conscious or subconscious level. Which is a shame because notwithstanding the cinematographic beauty of the movies and  the many things PJ got right, ultimately the movies utterly misrepresents many of Tolkien's core themes. 

And of those core themes is CHANGE. I remember till today how I felt when I finished reading LOTR for the first time as a 12 year old. It was a feeling of happiness but also of sadness and melancholy. If there ever was a bittersweet ending then it was the ending of LOTR! 

And why was that so? Because even though our heroes won, the world would never be the same again. And while the final defeat of the mythological evil in the material world once and for all is a good thing, it comes with losses. As a 12 year old boy, I was sad to know that the elves will fade away and with them all the magic in the world. And without them and the dwarves and the Ents and the Istari and the ethereal beauty of places like Lothlorien or Rivendell, the world would become a duller place. The grandeur is gone, both evil and beautiful, and what's left is a mundane world where sooner or later banality will prevail. 
And Tolkien doesn't sugarcoat it. Fundamental change is not only inevitable but also necessary. The magic goes and with it a lot of beautiful things. But they have to go for the sake of humankind. As sad as it is but with the rise of men Middle-Earth is not a place for immortal elves and Istari. Mundane humanity and magic cannot co-exist in the long run. Tolkien was no psychologist but he understood the human nature in a way that almost no one in the sci-fi/fantasy genre comes close. Just imagine for a second a world, our world, where mortal humans live "side-by-side" with beings, who we experience as superior in every way possible and who as icing on the cake are also immortal. Unfair! Inferiority complex! War and genocide! Men cannot suffer such beings (RSB got that one spot on). 

This is the end of LOTR. 

And this is the part why Tolkien will still be remembered as THE grandmaster of fantasy when my grandchildren will read the books for the first time. Others come and go, and for a while they outshine Tolkien but ultimately all of them become footnotes and Tolkien still prevails. GRRM and ASOIAF is a good example IMO but this is for another post. 

 

EDIT

what PJ's movie utterly got wrong: Sauron and Saruman are not genocidal maniacs. They want to establish their own order, their own system. This means war and subjugation but not Holocaust of the human race. The movies get this utterly wrong, I guess PJ thought he had to dumb Tolkien down and to turn the ring war and its goals up to eleven. Because stupid cinema goers don't understand nothing between black and white. The movie theme of genocide is not badly executed but THIS IS NOT TOLKIEN!

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