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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Jan 8 2015, 2:01pm
Post #2 of 7
(474 views)
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I'm not sure that the article reveals any new insights into Tolkien's thoughts, but it might represent a nice summary of them.
'There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.' - Gandalf the Grey, The Fellowship of the Ring
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geordie
Tol Eressea
Jan 8 2015, 10:29pm
Post #3 of 7
(458 views)
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quote -
"His orcs -- deformed and ugly creatures, whose hands are sometimes replaced with weapons -- embody this lust for power."
Tolkien never wrote about orcs having hands replaced with weapons - did he?
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Eruonen
Half-elven
Jan 9 2015, 5:18am
Post #4 of 7
(442 views)
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Not that I recall but refer to the movie Azog.
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geordie
Tol Eressea
Jan 9 2015, 8:42pm
Post #5 of 7
(431 views)
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- this is the reading room, though, innit? :-)
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squire
Half-elven
Jan 9 2015, 9:19pm
Post #6 of 7
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The article referred to in the initial post clearly states that the author's examples regarding Orcs will be taken from the Jackson movies. Thus (I suppose) the reference about hands becoming machines/tools/weapons, and also about how they're born or bred in slime. Neither idea about goblins is Tolkien's. The author is picking and choosing, and Jackson gives him more of what he wants than he would be able to find in Tolkien's books. It's true Tolkien used the orcs and their magical masters, Sauron and Saruman, to satirize images of modern industrialism, as this author suggests. But Tolkien added to the Orcs' horrific existence earlier elements of western mythology such as the cruel and bloodthirsty barbarians from the East (Huns and Mongols) that ravaged early Europe, and even the devils of the medieval religious imagination. The orcs' work is always said to be crude, poorly made, and brutalistic - which is not really an accurate caricature of the products of the assembly line.
As far as the image of the Machine itself, Tolkien was not particularly original in his use of the term as a metaphor for hyper-industrialized modern society. His comment in Letter 96:
Well the first War of the Machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter – leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant: the Machines. As the servants of the Machines are becoming a privileged class, the Machines are going to be enormously more powerful. What's their next move? - JRRT, 1/30/45
is forgivably glib, occurring as it does in a family letter, and it draws on the work of many earlier and more perceptive authors and critics.
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 & 4th TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion and NOW the 1st BotR Discussion too! and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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swordwhale
Tol Eressea
Jan 13 2015, 7:54pm
Post #7 of 7
(440 views)
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that Tolkien is in the same generation as my grandfather, who saw the world shapeshift from horses and buggies and mule drawn plows (my father's family worked their "truckpatch" that way) to men on the moon.
This part of his work, and his apparent nature, was something that resonated with me; that he had a distaste for what he saw the world becoming.
This line from Legolas sums it up for me: "There is too little that grows here and is glad..."
"Judge me by my size, would you?" Max the Hobbit Husky.
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