[Ealasaide]

When in doubt, leave it as vague as possible.

Ah, Imladris, you are obviously not the glutton for detail that I am! If I am talking about a ship, I want to make the reader see the ship with as much detail as possible. I want to come as close to putting my reader on the ship beside my character as I possibly can. If my character is a sailor, for example, I would like for him to be able to talk about his vessel with at least the appearance of being knowledgeable about his vessel. I would like for him to be able to talk about the decks and the sails and usage of the sails, not be stuck saying merely, "hmmm, the wind is up. Let's sail!" No insult intended, but isn't ignoring specifics of detail the lazy way out?

As for Tolkein's not concentrating on details like this, I do believe he had other things on his mind, seeing as he was creating a new mythology... but we have the mythology in place already, many thanks to him, and can afford to place a little more emphasis on detail. So far, I have just been winging along based on whatever seemed appropriate in a given storyline, which has worked pretty well as far as it goes. I am not looking for a definitive listing of what is and is not available to the folks in Middle Earth, but rather a general consensus of what people's impressions are based on their own reading and interpretation of Tolkein's work. Tolkein could be quite descriptive, though, where such description was approriate. To say that he ignored specifics in "true mythic style" is to sell both Prof. Tolkein and "mythic style" a short bill of goods. Go back to the source material of, say, the Iliad or the Odyssey. Homer could go on forever with rather mind-numbing detail at times.

tar-anclime - good point regarding point of view! I had not considered the source there, myself, but you are right as to what you said in your edit. I think a hobbit such as Merry would be first to note anything that made him think of home, the most ordinary things being the most notable because they would bring with them a sense of normality and comfort to stressful situation. So, are there really umbrellas in Edoras? I tend to think not for precisely the reason that Merry neglected to mention them.

Imladris - could the fact that hobbits tend to hide from big folks really be interpretted as an advance in technology? It seems to me - and it's just my off-the-cuff opinion - that that would indicate a change in social interaction, rather than any technological change. Why do the hobbits make themselves scarce? I believe Tolkein said it was because they were shy by nature and that big people were noisy and blundered about with very little care for their surroundings. This does bring to mind a less pastoral mind-set on the part of the big people, but I fail to see the connection between this and technology. I'd be very interested in seeing how you arrived at this conclusion!


tar-ancalime - you also made a good point about the decline of technology in that no more Silmarils or Palantiri were made, no ships so strong as those made by the Numenoreans, etc, etc, but doesn't that also coincide with a decline in magic? It seems to me that LotR takes place at a time when magic is slowly giving way to the ordinary, the mundane, the world of men, as opposed to the world of elves and elven magic.

(I know the term "magic" is problematic in speaking of Middle Earth, but I use it loosely here for lack of a better term.)