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Felagund
Nargothrond
May 18, 5:51pm
Post #26 of 30
(3371 views)
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Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
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CuriousG
Gondolin
May 18, 6:44pm
Post #27 of 30
(3148 views)
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Riding over the hills, and eating their fill, the warm sun and the scent of turf, lying a little too long, stretching out their legs and looking at the sky above their noses: these things are, perhaps, enough to explain what happened. However that may be: they woke suddenly and uncomfortably from a sleep they had never meant to take. The standing stone was cold, and it cast a long pale shadow that stretched eastward over them. The sun, a pale and watery yellow, was gleaming through the mist just above the west wall of the hollow in which they lay; north, south, and east, beyond the wall the fog was thick, cold and white. The air was silent, heavy and chill. Their ponies were standing crowded together with their heads down.
The hobbits sprang to their feet in alarm, and ran to the western rim. They found that they were upon an island in the fog. Thanks for bringing that up. I don't think of LOTR as being heavy with "unreliable narration," but as you say, it's unmistakable here. It even has a bit of the whimsy found in The Hobbit's narration, or so it seems to me.
What I wonder is: was Tolkien writing in the style the scene called for: mysterious and supernatural? Somehow being slightly dismissive of magic here paradoxically amplifies the supernatural element. There is no doubt in prior chapters, such as Old Man Willow swallowing a couple of hobbits. Look, a tree ate people, there's no: "well, it's possible they fell into a willow crack which somehow closed around them..." But here on the Barrow-downs, the approach is vastly different, and Old Man Willow wasn't that many pages behind this.
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Silvered-glass
Nargothrond
May 18, 8:02pm
Post #28 of 30
(1976 views)
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On the idea that the conflict between the Valar and Melkor achieves somethiing that neither side would on its own, and which neither of them predicted. And that may be how it works:
This raises deep questions about Eru and how much he really planned things. Was Melkor designed from the ground up to fall into evil so that snowflakes could be created? Or was Eru's plan that Melkor and Ulmo collaborate peacefully to create snowflakes but deep down snowflakes would inevitably form from water meeting with cold, no matter the intentions of the wielder of the cold? Or did Melkor create beautiful snowflakes on purpose but the Valar were sure that it could be nothing more than accident because they didn't like Melkor and saw everything he did in the worst possible light?
I get the feeling Eru didn't plan every detail and only set up scenarios that could develop in multiple different ways. Snowflakes were nevertheless probably still something that would always have happened once the correct physical conditions were met.
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Silvered-glass
Nargothrond
May 20, 7:01am
Post #29 of 30
(948 views)
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Sauron in the Real World - The Short Version
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I think I might as well give a short introduction to Sauron's real-world connections. You may want to look up all these strange names and terms on Wikipedia if you are interested.
I think Sauron was known as a solar deity whose Eye watched over the world. He was not considered evil by his followers. Sauron would become known as Ra and Surya, along with many other names.
The One Ring would in later mythologies become, among others, the Eye of Ra and Surya's ring-shaped weapon the Sudarshana Chakra.
The emblem of Mordor's forces is typically conceived by artists as a realistic red eye, but the eye is supposed to be lidless i.e. round and would need to have been stylized to be practical. I think Sauron's symbol most likely was a circle with a dot in it, corresponding to the Egyptian hieroglyph for the Sun (as well as the Western astrological symbol for the Sun and the alchemical symbol for gold).
"The Lord of the Rings" and "Ringlord" are just literal English translations of the Buddhist concept of the chakravartin, the universal ruler.
Tolkien says that the name Sauron does not come from the Greek word for lizard. Rather, I think he derived the name Sauron from the Saura cult of Hinduism that worships Surya.
Hindus, as imagined by Tolkien, still worship Sauron under names such as Vishnu and Surya. Sauron's ascendancy among the Hindus coincides to the decline of Indra (Manwë).
(I think Tolkien's non-European influences haven't gotten the attention they deserve.)
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noWizardme
Gondolin
May 20, 8:03am
Post #30 of 30
(658 views)
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Yes, thought-provoking, isn't it
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For myself, I liked the idea that the creation of Tolkien's mythical world becomes like human creation of things.
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"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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