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FarFromHome
Valinor
Mar 1 2009, 7:05pm
Post #101 of 161
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Therefore I would like to test your theory through debate, and see whether it might stand up to criticism, without, I hope, offending you or anyone else who shares your views.
As I said, I'm not sure my idea does hold water. I may be barking up the wrong tree. Perhaps the thing I've noticed - which is that so much of the story comes from so few, mostly hobbit, points of view - is a technique Tolkien is using for some other reason, rather than to try to make his story reflect the development of a legendary or mythic tale.
As it happens, I heard an interesting discussion on the radio the other day about modernism's attitude to mythology (in the context of both Joyce's Ulysses and T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land). One of the speakers said something about myths being "translations without originals", and that immediately reminded me of the Sil. Here's what the speaker said (I transcribed it from the podcast):
Modernist writers all became obsessed with myth. It was an obsession they inherited from the Victorians. I think what they were obsessed by, fundamentally, is not so much the content of myths, but that myths were translations without originals. If you think of any myth, there are lots of different versions of it, and you never know which the version is.
That's made me wonder if Tolkien was perhaps deliberately rejecting this modernist approach of seeing myths as fragmented and essentially unknowable, by creating a story in the mythic form that, to the extent he could manage it, isn't self-contradictory and fragmented. He didn't like the fractured quality of the Celtic myths, and I think he said he regretted that Beowulf mixed the pagan and Christian viewpoints. So maybe he was just trying to create the kind of ideal myth that didn't have this frustratingly muddled quality. In which case, the ambiguity in the story-telling technique may not be to make his readers wonder what lies behind it, but quite the opposite - to let them have, despite the potential ambiguity of the viewpoint, a single, unified story.
But the ambiguity of so many of the scenes is certainly something that interests me, especially the ambiguity that comes from the fact that in some scenes we are only told how something "seemed" to Frodo or Sam (especially them, but occasionally to the other hobbits). Very rarely do we hear that something "seemed" a certain way to any other character. One clear exception is Aragorn on the Seat of Seeing. I'd be interested to know how many other exceptions there might be - maybe my memory of the story is shaky at this point. To what extent is our viewpoint constrained to that of the hobbits? As I mentioned in my earlier post, there's a clear difference between Peter Jackson's fully "omniscient" narrative technique, in which we have scenes between characters like Elrond, Gandalf and Aragorn that allow us access to their thought processes, and Tolkien's narration from relatively limited viewpoints, so that we see these "great" characters mostly from the outside, the way the hobbits might see them.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship’s beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Bilbo's Last Song
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Mar 1 2009, 7:31pm
Post #102 of 161
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Gandalf, Gimli and Legolas, the hosts of Mordor.
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Very rarely do we hear that something "seemed" a certain way to any other character. One clear exception is Aragorn on the Seat of Seeing. I'd be interested to know how many other exceptions there might be - maybe my memory of the story is shaky at this point.
When Tolkien clearly identifies a point of view --something he certainly does not do consistently-- it is usually that of a hobbit. Because there are fewer occasions when we see from others' viewpoints, there are naturally fewer instances of "seeming" moments that aren't hobbits. But three examples jump to mind; there are probably a few dozen more, particularly for Gimli.
--"But to the wizard's eye there was a faint change, just a hint as it were of transparency, about him, and especially about the left hand that lay outside upon the coverlet."
--"Then it seemed to Gimli and Legolas who were nearby that she wept, and in one so stern and proud that seemed the more grievous."
--"But the hosts of Mordor were seized with bewilderment, and a great wizardry it seemed to them that their own ships should be filled with their foes; and a black dread fell on them, knowing that the tides of fate had turned against them and their doom was at hand."
As I mentioned in my earlier post, there's a clear difference between Peter Jackson's fully "omniscient" narrative technique, in which we have scenes between characters like Elrond, Gandalf and Aragorn that allow us access to their thought processes, and Tolkien's narration from relatively limited viewpoints, so that we see these "great" characters mostly from the outside, the way the hobbits might see them.
I think Tolkien wanted us to believe in, and that he thought he was creating, Elrond, Gandalf and Aragorn as unambiguously good and noble characters. However, several discussants over the past sixteen months, squire and sador especially, have reminded us that Tolkien shows how even these characters make mistakes.
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squire
Half-elven
Mar 1 2009, 7:40pm
Post #103 of 161
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Think of hobbits as a lens, not as authors
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I think Tolkien, starting out to write a sequel to The Hobbit, naturally wrote from the hobbits' point of view as Fellowship began. I also think, as he looked back at The Hobbit, that he saw ever more clearly the value of the tension between the "bourgeois" or "modern" hobbits and the grand epic fairyland of dwarves, dragons, and gold, when trying to write such a fairytale or romance for modern audiences. He may even have still been stinging from the criticism his Silmarillion tales had been given by his publisher's readers: that they were too elevated in tone to be really entertaining.
Starting from this vantage point, he saw his way through to the end of a far larger, and far more elevated, story than he had ever meant to write when he began. The scale and elevation are thrilling, yet all agree the story benefits from not being too serious, or too antiquarian, at all times. The hobbits' perceptions, language, and focus on earthy comforts all contrast with the "knights of olde" deeds and sayings of the heroic characters. I think this keeps the reader engaged in a way that (for instance) the Silmarillion has a very hard time doing. And Tolkien - no fool about such matters - knew it.
I would even say he made sticking to the hobbit point of view a writer's rule for himself that was almost hard and fast - not to be broken, except when absolutely necessary, because it is such a darned good concept. But he was never enslaved to it, either. After all, next to the criticism of the Silmarillion's style, he also held in his mind his publisher's early criticism of the LotR drafts: that there was "too much hobbit talk". He confessed that he had a weakness for such drivel (read it in HoME VI if you can), and we might say that the success of LotR comes from Tolkien's successful effort to balance his wide-ranging tastes in adventure literature.
Finally, I guess that this highly effective and literary lens approach later tempted Tolkien to continue the gag from The Hobbit, which only occurs at the end of that book, that LotR is a "translated" manuscript from ancient Middle-earth, actually written by the hobbits themselves. It's clever, and it adds another layer of interest to the book, but it was not applied to the actual writing so much as layered on for fun at the end. He spends more time on the "Red Book" effort in the last few chapters, and in the post-writing segments (Foreword, Prologue, Appendices), than he ever does in the main body of the story. It's because of those vast stretches of story that are pure Tolkien that I don't think it's very convincing to say that he wrote LotR intentionally as if it was somehow "discovered", "translated", etc. etc.
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Footeramas: The 3rd TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion; and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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Curious
Half-elven
Mar 2 2009, 12:16am
Post #104 of 161
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I discussed most of these points
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earlier in this same thread.
That's made me wonder if Tolkien was perhaps deliberately rejecting this modernist approach of seeing myths as fragmented and essentially unknowable, by creating a story in the mythic form that, to the extent he could manage it, isn't self-contradictory and fragmented. He didn't like the fractured quality of the Celtic myths, and I think he said he regretted that Beowulf mixed the pagan and Christian viewpoints. So maybe he was just trying to create the kind of ideal myth that didn't have this frustratingly muddled quality. In which case, the ambiguity in the story-telling technique may not be to make his readers wonder what lies behind it, but quite the opposite - to let them have, despite the potential ambiguity of the viewpoint, a single, unified story.
That's an interesting thought. Tolkien seemed frustrated, in particular, that so little Anglo-Saxon mythology survived. I'm not sure he was frustrated that Beowulf mixed the pagan and Christian viewpoints, though. I think he criticized the tales of Arthur for being too Christian, but in Beowulf I think he saw it as a feature, not a flaw -- an essentially pagan tale seen through a Christian lens. One could almost say the same of LotR!
And although LotR is more orderly than many myths, it does draw on many myths and fairy-tales. It pretends to be the source of such myths, but in fact is the product of them, reimagined by Tolkien, of course.
Very rarely do we hear that something "seemed" a certain way to any other character. One clear exception is Aragorn on the Seat of Seeing. I'd be interested to know how many other exceptions there might be - maybe my memory of the story is shaky at this point. To what extent is our viewpoint constrained to that of the hobbits?
Most of the adventures of the Three Hunters in Rohan and at Helm's Deep and in the Paths of the Dead are not told from the viewpoint of the hobbits. Faramir's romance with Eowyn is not told from the viewpoint of a hobbit, even though Merry was nearby. But as I noted in my previous post, even where the hobbits are the protagonists, as in the adventures of Frodo and Sam, the story is not told in their voice, and for me it requires a good deal of effort to reimagine it as a tale told by a series of biased, untrustworthy narrators pretending to be one objective, omniscient narrator.
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Dreamdeer
Valinor
Mar 2 2009, 12:30am
Post #105 of 161
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I have never seen Tolkien's characters as idealized in the actual writing. I have seen plenty of fans, however, who had a need to perceive the characters as idealized, and who'd get downright angry at anyone else seeing them any other way. Then this becomes so enshrined that people next discuss the "flaw" of Tolkien writing unrealistically idealized characters, or else Peter Jackson's "fault" in not writing unrealistically idealized characters. But in the actual text, they're all quite approachable folks, with plenty of imperfections that they manage to overcome to get the job done anyway.
I prefer to think of their better qualities, even as I prefer to think of those in my friends, but if you must have an itemized list: - Aragorn. He made numerous mistakes, and sometimes would admit so quite frankly, as at the Breaking of the Fellowship. He could not quite keep his boast that "My cuts, short or long, don't go wrong" (Although they eventually came out alive, getting lost to the point of skirting the fringes of troll country--which took Aragorn sufficiently by surprise that it would qualify as "lost", at least until he suddenly realized that he'd gone too far north--and worst of all suffering the Ring-bearer to sustain an incurable morgul-wound, qualifies as having gone wrong, even though Glorfindel rescued them.) His attempts at lightening the mood with humor at the Prancing Pony failed embarrassingly (which immediately endeared him to me, having launched many a failed joke in my day, myself) He fumbles and second-guesses himself and suffers occasional failures of confidence. I find that actually rather charming, and find myself rooting for him to pull together and eventually become the King that he must be.
- Gandalf. Short-tempered nicotine freak whose lack of organization often leaves him chaotically bouncing around and never finishing anything. Sometimes rude and testy, but like some of my best irascible friends, has a heart of gold well worth exploring beyond the crusty surface.
- Hobbits. All of them, can sometimes be shallow, unobservant, frivolous at inappropriate moments, impudent, and ignorant, though granted Frodo somewhat less than the others. They have no inhibitions about drunkenness or gluttony--Frodo definitely included. Sometimes they need keepers more than bodyguards. But that's all just part of their charm.
- Theoden. Starts out as a mean-spirited hypochondriac with a disastrous foreign and domestic policy, trusting to bad advisors and waxing dangerously petulant even with his own kin. He became heroic with effort and better counselors, but he had to work at it. So here's another example of someone who repents.
- Eomer. Trusts to superstitious rumors and leaps to unflattering conclusions before being taught better. Obviously ignorant and rough around the edges. Played right into Grima's hands by responding with brute force to more sophisticated verbal barbs. But hey, everybody needs at least one good-natured barbarian for a friend.
- Faramir. Probably the best of the lot, but fully capable of being tempted by evil, even if he didn't give in to it. Also crippled by a daddy complex to the point of riding nearly to his death. Although a nearly-perfect gentleman in most regards, he apparently lets out his aggressions and his less-sophisticated Shadow-side by indulging in rough humor and practical jokes, because how else can you explain that his men shrugged it off as one of the Captain's little jests, when their guests suddenly leaped to their feet and grabbed at their swords? Does that often happen at your parties?
- Eowyn. I love her dearly, and admire her wholeheartedly, but for her PMS stands for "Pass My Sword!"
- Galadriel. Rebel. Sorceress. Not immediately included in the general amnesty afforded most of the other Noldor. Had to pass a test that she came within a hair's breadth of failing. Yet the ideal woman, so I've been told, is an angel with just enough of a touch of devil in her for spice.
- Legolas. Loveable goofball. Tolkien called him the least effectual of the Fellowship.
- Gimli. Even more of a loveable goofball, though I find him the more eloquent of the two--take that, elves!
- Elrond. Admirable on many levels, yet also complex and conflicted. We really don't know that much about his individual quirks, but he must have a vulnerable side if he winds up bonding with his kidnapper as a little elfling, when his father didn't even try to rescue him before sailing off on what everybody called an impossible quest.
- Bilbo. Curmudgeon. A gallant one, but a curmudgeon all the same.
Oh, and I forgot to mention in an earlier thread: Lobelia repented, too.
Am I missing anybody?
Life is beautiful and dangerous! Beware! Enjoy!
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Curious
Half-elven
Mar 2 2009, 3:29pm
Post #106 of 161
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They may have foibles, but have any of them
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sinned? Maybe Galadriel did, but Galadriel in The Silmarillion and Galadriel in LotR are two different ladies, as evidenced by Tolkien's attempts to rewrite Galadriel's history in Unfinished Tales. LotR is a world of absolutes, with a bright line between Good and Evil, Saints and Sinners, Heroes and Enemies. That doesn't mean that Saints and Heroes are perfect, by any means, but they Do Not Sin. Tolkien excused even Frodo, who claimed the Ring, saying he fell under an unbearable burden, rather than succumbing to sin.
Of course, if you ask the Saints and Heroes what they think of themselves, they will tell you all of their flaws, because they are, of course, as Humble as they are Brave and Wise. But the Great and the Wise honor them.
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Dreamdeer
Valinor
Mar 2 2009, 3:52pm
Post #107 of 161
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Stories never tell us all the details. We don't know whether Aragorn has cheated at cards, or whether Eomer has entertained a lady or two after hours, or whether Elrond cusses in private. These things have nothing to do with the story.
But yes, some of these characters have sinned in the story. Tolkien did not say that Frodo did not sin--he said that his fall was understandable and inevitable. Not inevitable in the sense of having no free will, but inevitable in the sense that Frodo was a mortal who cannot possibly be perfect. In one of his letters I'm fairly certain that I read Tolkien saying that Frodo's fault was in not asking for enough help, trying to bear the temptations all alone. Frodo is forgivable, not perfect.
Pippin stole the palantir. Sure, he was tempted, but as Gandalf said, he should have asked for help with his itchy fingers.
Theoden sinned in listening to Grima's seductive counsel, that absolved him of responsibility by pandering to his hypochondria.
Oh, and by the way, saints do sin. They're human beings. They overcome sin, but they all have their pasts. St. Augustine's illegitimate child, St. Paul's past of persecuting Christians, St. Matthew's past as a graft-taking Roman collaborator tax-collector...I could go on.
Sam sinned against Gollum in his judgmentalness, and paid a terrible price for it.
Eowyn sinned by disobedience, though it all worked out in the end.
Bilbo stole the Arkenstone, saying, "Now I am a burglar indeed", although he later put it to good use.
Not all literature has to be Xena Warrior Princess turning from villain to hero. Heroes are often like us (in fact the more like us, the better.) We don't necessarily manifest our imperfections on a spectacular scale.
Life is beautiful and dangerous! Beware! Enjoy!
(This post was edited by Dreamdeer on Mar 2 2009, 3:55pm)
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Dreamdeer
Valinor
Mar 2 2009, 4:02pm
Post #108 of 161
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Saints do sin. They're human beings who overcome sin, but they all have pasts. Some of the more obvious examples include how St. Augustine begat a child out of wedlock, St. Paul used to rally people to stone Christians to death, St. Brigid and St. Francis both began by giving to the poor what wasn't actually theirs to give, St. Matthew began as a tax-collector, which in his day meant a Roman collaborator getting rich on graft (prostitutes and tax collectors were often spoken of in the same breath, as people who got their money in a bad way) etc. I could go on. But again, these are the more spectacular sorts. Most of the saints had the usual run of sins, like the rest of us. Same as the heroes in LotR.
What sort of sinning would it take to make these characters believable to you?
Life is beautiful and dangerous! Beware! Enjoy!
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Dreamdeer
Valinor
Mar 2 2009, 4:04pm
Post #109 of 161
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I just accidentally put them in the middle of the post!
Life is beautiful and dangerous! Beware! Enjoy!
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Curious
Half-elven
Mar 2 2009, 4:54pm
Post #110 of 161
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Stories never tell us all the details. We don't know whether Aragorn has cheated at cards, or whether Eomer has entertained a lady or two after hours, or whether Elrond cusses in private. These things have nothing to do with the story.
There's your unreliable narrator again. I have no way to refute such arguments, I suppose. You can imagine them all as secret sinners if you like.
Tolkien did not say that Frodo did not sin--he said that his fall was understandable and inevitable.
In Letter 246, Tolkien said that Frodo was not guilty of "moral failure." To me that sounds like he did not sin.
Pippin stole the palantir. Sure, he was tempted, but as Gandalf said, he should have asked for help with his itchy fingers.
Yes, well, Gandalf examined Pippin carefully to make sure no permanent damage had been done -- and by that I take it he judged that Pippin had not fallen into evil. But yes, it was close. I think the explanation is that Pippin was allowed to succumb to curiousity to fulfill a Higher Plan.
Theoden sinned in listening to Grima's seductive counsel, that absolved him of responsibility by pandering to his hypochondria.
Theoden was the victim of Saruman's spells.
Sam sinned against Gollum in his judgmentalness, and paid a terrible price for it.
Sam judged Gollum correctly. That wasn't sin, it just wasn't a match for Frodo's superhuman mercy and trust in Providence.
Eowyn sinned by disobedience, though it all worked out in the end.
Tolkien makes the point several times -- think of Hama or Beregond, as well as Eowyn and Merry -- that disobedience is not a sin when done for a moral purpose.
Bilbo stole the Arkenstone, saying, "Now I am a burglar indeed", although he later put it to good use.
Again, disobedience -- in this case, disobeying Thorin -- is not a sin when done for a moral purpose.
Oh, and by the way, saints do sin. They're human beings. They overcome sin, but they all have their pasts. St. Augustine's illegitimate child, St. Paul's past of persecuting Christians, St. Matthew's past as a graft-taking Roman collaborator tax-collector...I could go on.
LotR is much more strict than the New Testament or the tales of the saints, where the whole point is that Christ dies for our sins, and gives every sinner the opportunity to repent.
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Curious
Half-elven
Mar 2 2009, 5:16pm
Post #111 of 161
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Tolkien's characters *are* believable within
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the confines of Tolkien's fantasy world, which is different from the Primary World. No one was more aware of those differences than Tolkien. But they also raise the bar for us in the Primary World, and make us wonder whether we could turn those ideals into reality, and whether the fantasy could be true not just because it is internally consistent, but because it gives us a glimpse of what Tolkien called "evangelium," i.e. "good news," i.e. the promise of the Christian Gospels. I don't think you have to be a Christian to be seduced by this vision, though -- it's just that Tolkien was a Christian, so that is the language he used for his own idealized vision.
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FarFromHome
Valinor
Mar 2 2009, 5:28pm
Post #112 of 161
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I'm more interested in the implications of LotR being the hobbits' story, not in the mechanics of how they managed to actually write it (although I do like the idea of the palimpsest - the multiple-layered effect of legends retold, recopied, added to and edited - which Tolkien must have been very familiar with in his day job).
I think Tolkien, starting out to write a sequel to The Hobbit, naturally wrote from the hobbits' point of view...
I'm not sure it's really relevant to try to explain what Tolkien's motivations might have been when he started out. I'd rather look at the completed work and see what it gives us. Just saying that Tolkien did this or that for mundane reasons that he hadn't thought through doesn't really do justice to his work, I don't think. We have to assume that he wrote what he meant to write, and that he meant what he wrote. Otherwise what's the point of studying his work at all?
I would even say he made sticking to the hobbit point of view a writer's rule for himself that was almost hard and fast - not to be broken, except when absolutely necessary...
Yes, I'd agree with this. When moments came along that just wouldn't fit into the hobbit-centric approach, Tolkien allowed himself the freedom to step outside the hobbits' viewpoint.
...the gag from The Hobbit, which only occurs at the end of that book, that LotR is a "translated" manuscript from ancient Middle-earth...
So you're pretty sure that Tolkien was just making a laboured academic joke here, are you? You don't think that all the many mentions of the Red Book and the writing of it are more than a childish gag, inherited from The Hobbit? I have to part company with you there. Tolkien's entire creative life was taken up with the development of a "legendarium", a "mythology for England". He would hardly stoop to making it no more than a pointless gag in his most serious work.
He spends more time on the "Red Book" effort in the last few chapters, and in the post-writing segments (Foreword, Prologue, Appendices), than he ever does in the main body of the story.
True, although a) that's to be expected, because that's when the story might actually be written; b) there are small mentions here and there throughout; and c) there's a very long and developed discussion about stories, in which Frodo and Sam talk about the theory of story-writing (the need for a little laughter - "why didn't they put in more of [Sam's] talk, Dad? He makes me laugh!", the need for suspense, and even the fundamental insight that a story told from a different point of view can be a very different story indeed: "I wonder if he thinks he's the hero or the villain?")
That all seems a bit much for a simple gag.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship’s beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Bilbo's Last Song
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Dreamdeer
Valinor
Mar 2 2009, 5:33pm
Post #113 of 161
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"There's your unreliable narrator again. I have no way to refute such arguments, I suppose. You can imagine them all as secret sinners if you like."
I didn't mean to offer such silly examples as things that I actually imagined. I am trying to say something about literature in general. Literature, mind you, not court transcripts. All stories, not just Tolkien's stories, leave stuff out for pacing purposes, and not only allow but intend for us to fill in the blanks. We not only don't know about the character's sins, we don't know what Elrond likes for breakfast, whether or not Galadriel wears underwear, what's Strider's bar-tab at the Prancing Pony, or who tutored Faramir in mathematics.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that every single thing left out of a story must be presumed to not exist. That doesn't work with art. Art works by implication. Right now I'm looking at a print beside the computer, of a Botticelli painting of the Annunciation. The background shows a window, through which one can see a castle on the hill. If you insist, I cannot prove, from the blurry glimpse provided, that the castle has any furnishings whatsoever inside. You might fault me for assuming that it does, on the basis that it is normal for dwellings, especially of those who can afford to build castles, to contain furnishings, but it would really be off base to claim that Botticelli painted an unrealistic picture just because he provided no visual evidence that the castle in the distance was furnished.
To answer your contentions:
Frodo was not guilty of moral failure because he tried his best. His best was not perfect, but he deserved forgiveness for trying. Moral failure would mean damnable. Frodo is not damnable.
Pippin had not fallen into evil in the sense of becoming a tool of Sauron's. He was guilty of a petty sin, not of going over to the enemy.
Movie-Theoden was a victim of Saruman's spells, not book-Theoden. Although Saruman could enhance his persuasiveness magically, strong wills could resist him, as we later see in Isengard. Theoden was guilty of not exerting his will. Gandalf came to heal him, but sin is a disorder of a soul out of balance. Notice how Gandalf heals him. None of that "Saruman be exorcised!" theatrics, although Gandalf did engage in some special effects to underline his points. No, he persuades the King to realize that he's sounder than he wants to admit--and his health demands responsibility. In other words, Gandalf persuades Theoden to repent letting himself get seduced into hiding behind his age.
Sam did not judge Gollum correctly, in the moment of Gollum's repentence--thereby undermining the repentence while it was still weak and immature.
I'll give you the ones about Tolkien allowing disobedience for a worthy cause--in general, at least. The question is, just how worthy was Eowyn's cause? Good came of her resolve, but her motive was suicide. And Bilbo's motive was not originally to provide Thranduil with a bargaining-chip--at first he just plain wanted the Arkenstone out of greed, and his statement about being a burglar indeed reflects his awareness of his own guilt in the matter. He had finally reached a point where he could no longer rationalize his behavior--he had become exactly what everybody called him.
I will repeat my question: What sort of sin would make these books seem realistic to you?
Life is beautiful and dangerous! Beware! Enjoy!
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Mar 2 2009, 5:42pm
Post #114 of 161
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...that what Tolkien "omitted" about Aragorn wouldn't actually make him look better, not worse, than he does in the story as presented? Maybe Tolkien really did want to create characters who were good beyond our experience.
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Mar 2 2009, 5:46pm
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FYI: "mythology for England" isn't Tolkien's phrase.
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It's a minor point and doesn't undercut your argument, but: while Tolkien certainly once intended something like a "mythology for England" --though when he comes closest to saying so, he's describing a project long abandoned-- that phrase was actually coined by Humphrey Carpenter in his biography of Tolkien.
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Curious
Half-elven
Mar 2 2009, 6:04pm
Post #116 of 161
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my answer.
The book also implies that Theoden was a victim of Saruman's spells, although the spells are much more subtle.
Okay, can we agree that none of Tolkien's heroes are guilty of damnable sins, as opposed to petty sins?
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Dreamdeer
Valinor
Mar 2 2009, 6:18pm
Post #117 of 161
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Forgive my lack of clarity. I did not intend that material omitted would have made Aragorn appear better or worse per se. If anything, it would probably make him appear both better and worse. Richer, more detailed. I'm saying that he comes across as normal, so why can't we assume that he has a normal complement of strengths and weaknesses? Good normal, granted. Better than average--much like the sort of people that we seek out to befriend. Brave, well-meaning, self-sacrificing--who doesn't have friends like that? Middle-Earth history put him in a position to let his inner hero step forward, but we all know people who would be heroes if called upon. Some are quiet heroes at home, making incredible sacrifices that don't get into history books.
Tolkien stated that his goal was to portray the ennoblement of the humble, and it's there in his writing for anyone who wants to see it. Because Strider has endearing little fallible moments now and then, we identify with him, we know that he is capable of sins even if we don't see them up front, and that it doesn't matter, because his overall orientation is good. People with an overall orientation towards good stand a much better chance of becoming heroes in a pinch than people whose overall orientation is spiteful or selfish, because of the habits that they create.
How do people become heroes? By making a habit of choosing integrity (commitment to one's values whether or not they're convenient) through a series of increasingly difficult tests, until that integrity becomes steel-hard and unbreakable. Aragorn is someone like us, who made a habit of integrity his entire life, which eventually paid off in making him strong in the face of near-despairing odds. That's a hero: somebody whose integrity has become, through practice, strong enough to make them do heroic things.
Tolkien has alway written on the same theme in Middle Earth, starting with Bilbo Baggins in "The Hobbit". Bilbo starts out as a pompous, self-centered, petty little bore. Step by step he transforms into a truly admirable hero, by a series of decisions to maintain his integrity (except in the matter of thievery--psychologically, he had to let go of his artificial construct of "respectability" in order to achieve a more real kind of virtue--that whole salvation by way of Shadow journey.)
Having integrity is not the same as sinlessness. The more I think about Tolkien's trauma regarding his mother's death, the more I see how it shaped everything he wrote. He watched her die a horrible death, when denying her beliefs would have gotten her the special foods that could have bought her up to three more years of life and a relatively healthier, more comfortable existence. She was not some extraordinary being, not some idealized literary fabrication, but a real-life woman with flaws like everybody else--but she had integrity, and it made her become a hero in her son's eyes. Tolkien believed in this trait, which he witnessed firsthand, enough to bestow it on all his favorite characters.
Think of what he might have written, had she chosen to give up her faith in order to survive a few more years, and not suffer so much. He would have written of tragic compromises, intrigues, people doing "what they had to do" without moral compass, prolonging their lives a little longer "because they had no choice", no doubt all written very sympathetically. His stories, would, in short, have become much like many other stories that get published, read for awhile, and then forgotten. He would have no less talent; I daresay his writings would have become required reading in the better colleges. But they would not have inspired in the same fashion; they would not have gripped the imagination of the world the way that his writings have in this real world of ours. Their appeal would not span cultures, races, classes, religions, and generations. After awhile, only academics would care.
Life is beautiful and dangerous! Beware! Enjoy!
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Dreamdeer
Valinor
Mar 2 2009, 6:21pm
Post #118 of 161
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In other words, none of the heroes are villains.
Life is beautiful and dangerous! Beware! Enjoy!
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Curious
Half-elven
Mar 2 2009, 6:32pm
Post #119 of 161
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Yep, there's a bright line between them.//
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Curious
Half-elven
Mar 2 2009, 6:39pm
Post #120 of 161
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Who wants "better than average"?
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You have lots of friends like Aragorn? Worthy of absolute power over a universal empire? Worthy of marrying the semi-angelic Arwen? Sorry, me and my friends are at best more like Fatty Bolger -- brave to a certain extent, better than the average hobbit, perhaps, but hardly capable of freeing the Shire, let alone the world.
(This post was edited by Curious on Mar 2 2009, 6:40pm)
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squire
Half-elven
Mar 2 2009, 6:54pm
Post #121 of 161
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I wasn't writing or thinking clearly, I see. I meant that in The Hobbit, the "memoirs" conceit is a gag, added at the very end as a kind of literary in-joke. I agree that it's more than a simple gag in the later book; as I said, it's cleverly done and it adds a layer of interest. I think the connection I resist is not that Frodo and Bilbo write a book, the "Red Book", within the story, that tell the stories of The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. That follows Tolkien's lifelong interest in the origins and meaning of stories, and reflects also his earlier attempts to give the Silmarillion a fictional provenance as "discovered" legends.
I do resist the idea that because we read about the story-element of the Red Book, therefore The Lord of the Rings, as written and published by Tolkien, is meant to be read and understood as that book in translation, etc. throughout the story. Thus the narrative voice is understood to be Frodo, and any inconveniently inconsistent elements were added relatively seamlessly by later scribes and editors, such as the omniscient scholars of Gondor. If this does not convince, we are asked to believe that Tolkien "rewrote it" as the narrator, but only as a translator updating the discovered "manuscript" to the readability standards of the 20th century. I find the entire premise too flimsy to support such a great book, especially compared to Tolkien's own self-described dream of writing "a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them."
To a couple of your other points, let me say that I analyze Tolkien's process not because I don't think he meant what he wrote, especially after he re-wrote it, several times. It's because he seems often to have discovered what he meant, after he wrote it. His process of writing by discovery means that he often took early ideas and repurposed them in retrospect. For instance, once the idea of Trotter the hobbit-guide proved unsupportable, Tolkien didn't just eliminate the character and rewrite the necessary chapters. Rather, he transformed Trotter into Strider the man, and eventually Aragorn - leading to a phenomenally massive evolution in the entire tale's meaning. Yet much of Strider's early dialogue and action is almost unchanged from Trotter's, leading me (for instance) to question who Trotter the Hobbit was thinking of so intently as he chanted the tale of Luthien to the other hobbits on Weathertop. It sure wasn't Arwen, yet the transition to it being Arwen works perfectly once the song was taken over (so to speak) by Strider. Tolkien thus kept that moment in, whereas he eliminated the wooden feet completely.
Similarly, when we study his process in writing The Lord of the Rings, we see that the idea of telling a fairy-tale romance from the bourgeois hobbits' point of view had already proven successful and so he started from that immediately, long before he realized the epic scope of his project - so that I conclude that the hobbits-as-lens is a more reliable and interesting way to explain the distinct hobbit-centric narration than the conceit of hobbits-as-authors. Then in the course of further writing, as the story took on aspects of an actual history, but especially during the preparation for publication, I imagine that he re-purposed the hobbit-centric point of view to support a "translation from the Red Book" idea. But he never did it consistently or thoroughly, since that would have required essentially a complete rewrite that would probably have destroyed the book as a work of art. Put another way, discovering a mundane beginning doesn't mean I judge the final product mundane at all; it makes it all the more amazing, to me.
Finally, I think the discussion between Frodo and Sam on the edge of Mordor, about the nature of the story they find themselves in (and also other such remarks by Merry and Pippin, etc.) is way too self-conscious to be considered support for the Red Book idea. Rather, it shows Tolkien having a go at the self-referentiality of his modern-day fairy-tale, for his reader's benefit. It's an extremely modern sequence that has drawn critical praise for its deftness in acknowledging and justifying its own artificiality. If anything, it is a passage that all by itself makes fun of the idea of the Red Book, while ostensibly promoting it - because it asks us to believe that 1) the hobbits had such a conversation and 2) they then included it in their own book about themselves which 3) asserts that their entire adventure is both "fiction" and "true". We can assert that Frodo is capable of such literary introspection, but such an assertion elevates him right out of the book and into Tolkien's seat. Once Frodo becomes Tolkien, we're back in Oxford with a don who deeply cares about story and its paradoxes, not with a Westron-writing hobbit from some primeval European culture of seven thousand years earlier.
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Footeramas: The 3rd TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion; and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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FarFromHome
Valinor
Mar 2 2009, 7:13pm
Post #122 of 161
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I do resist the idea that because we read about the story-element of the Red Book, therefore The Lord of the Rings, as written and published by Tolkien, is meant to be read and understood as that book in translation, etc. throughout the story.
Agreed, that would be much too simplistic an interpretation of what Tolkien tells us. In fact, almost nothing of my argument would make sense if we took that approach - it depends very much on the idea that many voices contributed to the story, and that the story may have (must have) evolved after it left the hands of its primary sources.
...let me say that I analyze Tolkien's process not because I don't think he meant what he wrote, especially after he re-wrote it, several times. It's because he seems often to have discovered what he meant, after he wrote it. His process of writing by discovery means that he often took early ideas and repurposed them in retrospect.
A nice point, and it certainly does validate the approach of looking at Tolkien's creative processes. I have sometimes thought how very much his method of taking a scene or a character and "repurposing" them is almost exactly what happens in the evolution of true legends. A striking image from the tale of Tristan and Isolde, for example (the sleeping lovers discovered with a sword placed between them), also turns up with a different meaning in the story of Lancelot and Guinevere.
Finally, I think the discussion between Frodo and Sam on the edge of Mordor, about the nature of the story they find themselves in (and also other such remarks by Merry and Pippin, etc.) is way too self-conscious to be considered support for the Red Book idea.
I agree that it's too self-conscious to fit with the idea that LotR is the Red Book, the simplistic approach that, as I mentioned above, is not my approach. However, the way it almost breaks the fourth wall as the hobbits discuss being in their own story certainly draws attention to the possibility of thinking of this as more than just a straightforward, omniscient-narrator tale. This is where Tolkien seems to be most clearly hinting that there's more to this tale than meets the eye - narrative points of view really matter, and there's a fundamental unreliability in any single account.
Once Frodo becomes Tolkien, we're back in Oxford with a don who deeply cares about story and its paradoxes, not with a Westron-writing hobbit from some primeval European culture of seven thousand years earlier.
Indeed, the story has now turned completely into the layered tale with its multiple meanings and points of view that I'm arguing for!
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship’s beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Bilbo's Last Song
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squire
Half-elven
Mar 2 2009, 7:26pm
Post #123 of 161
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Faith in Christ, and the ennoblement of the noble
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I think Tolkien would have written the kind of books he wrote, whether or not his mother had died the way she did. He projected onto her the qualities of Christ, whom he adored. His worldview was defiantly Catholic and medievalist, before she died, which already marked him as different from most Englishmen. Add to her death his being fostered by a Catholic priest, and his ability to idealize the humble and realize the integrity of faith becomes too deeply rooted to ascribe to a single tragedy. What is remarkable is rather that he was able to rise above his Catholicism, and express these concepts literarily in the populist way that you observe, without writing mere tracts.
I disgree that Aragorn "comes across as normal". Rather, he comes across as human, which some readers do seem to miss. But he is way, way above average. He is both a leader and a hero, and we believe in him not because he's normal like us, but because we know that if we met him, we'd honor him as a hero and follow him as a leader. The ennoblement of the humble was Tolkien's theme expressed through the adventures of Frodo and the other hobbits. His other theme, less publicized because less politically correct (I dare say) is the ennoblement of the noble, like Aragorn, in the best old-Tory tradition. Merry and Pippin express this theme in this memorable but underemphasized passage:
Pippin remained behind. 'Was there ever any one like him?' he said. 'Except Gandalf, of course. I think they must be related. ... let's be easy for a bit. Dear me! We Tooks and Brandybucks, we can't live long on the heights.' 'No,' said Merry. 'I can't. Not yet, at any rate. But at least, Pippin, we can now see them, and honour them. It is best to love first what you are fitted to love, I suppose: you must start somewhere and have some roots, and the soil of the Shire is deep. Still there are things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in what he calls peace but for them, whether he knows about them or not. I am glad that I know about them, a little.
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Footeramas: The 3rd TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion; and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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sador
Half-elven
Mar 2 2009, 7:28pm
Post #124 of 161
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I tend to agree with the 'hobbit-lens' rather than 'hobbit-author' distinction you make
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But this really must be done thoroughly. I think both FarFromHome and you are generalising on your impressions, rather than analysing and judging whether the passages a hobbit couldn't write are local exceptions, or prove that there is no rule.
As I said earlier in this thread, this requires a lot of work. I still toy with the hope to find the time to do it properly - but where and when?
On another note - I do not think the hobbits' remarks about how their images in future books was so modern. Roman history seems to be full of people who were concerned with their future images - and the way they reflect on their progeny. Even Greeks were, if we can trust Homer - see for instance Hector's challange to the Greek commanders in chapter 7 of the Iliad, which managed to gain him the duel with Aias.
"So Mr Frodo is his first and second cousin, once removed either way, as the saying is...
...Mr Bilbo has learned him his letters - meaning no harm, mark you...
...there's going to be presents, mark you, presents for all - this very month as is."
Mark the Gaffer's words!
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Curious
Half-elven
Mar 2 2009, 11:03pm
Post #125 of 161
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I'll have to mull this over, but I agree that Aragorn's story makes me feel more uncomfortable than Frodo's. I just wish Aragorn were noble purely on merit, and not because of his bloodlines. But that would undercut the whole idea that some men are noble born. In which case, what right would Aragorn have to be king? It works within the rules of Tolkien's fantasy, but it touches a sore spot of mine in the real world.
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