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The One Ring Forums:
Tolkien Topics: Reading Room:
Omissions, ambiguities, inconsistencies--nay, do not start! ...here are the marks of a conspiracy.:
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CuriousG
Gondolin
Aug 7 2020, 3:22pm
Views: 3731
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Omissions, ambiguities, inconsistencies--nay, do not start! ...here are the marks of a conspiracy.
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In ruminating on your musings, my logical mind wrestled with its own logic about the real world, asking questions like, "Why do people start wars, knowing how how many innocent lives will be lost?" "Why can't two people in love overcome their differences and stay married until death do them part?" "Why didn't Japan surrender after the first atomic bomb was dropped on it?" Nay, do not start, for the list is long.
So I wonder why we expect a fantasy world to behave more logically than our own. Maybe it's due to the idea that a fantasy world is created by a human, and that creator has 100% control over it, whereas no human has 100% control over the real world, and we learn to live with illogical things all the time. I don't think the real world's failure to behave logically makes us believe it's not real, but if a created world fails that test, our stricter sense of logic dismisses it as non-credible, and the creator has done their job poorly.
Tolkien made that observation in "On Fairy Stories":
To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode. Then, throwing down the gauntlet at the foot of Logic, Aesthetics boldly struts upon the scene. We're not attracted to Middle-earth because all the parts work like a nicely made appliance, but because we enjoy it and find it beautiful. Therefore we want all the parts to work, I suppose so others find it both beautiful and credible too and we don't feel like we're in a tiny cult of dingbats. And the more Tolkien did make all the parts work, the more we expect everything to work, and all questions to be answered.
He certainly takes us by the hand and answers one question after another. "Is there really a story about the cats of Queen Beruthiel?" "Yes." "Is there a story behind Galadriel's 'ere the fall of Nargothrond or Gondolin...' ?" "Yes." It's like being on a street full of tiles, with each tile bearing some mystery on its surface, and every time you turn over the tile, the mystery is explained. So why not expect ALL of them to work the same way when we've been encouraged to think they will?
I guess we need to reach the conclusion you did, that we grant the same leniency to a fantasy world that we do to the real world to have inconsistencies, exceptions, and illogical contradictions, because that's the logical thing to do.
(This post was edited by CuriousG on Aug 7 2020, 3:24pm)
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Edit Log:
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Post edited by CuriousG
(Gondolin) on Aug 7 2020, 3:23pm
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Post edited by CuriousG
(Gondolin) on Aug 7 2020, 3:23pm
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Post edited by CuriousG
(Gondolin) on Aug 7 2020, 3:24pm
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