[Kalessin]

Interesting subject - I will (very slightly) assume the role of devil's advocate here ...

I would say that the aspect of the 'machine', perhaps most vividly reflected in The Scouring of the Shire, and commented upon in Tolkien's letters, also includes an element of revisionist or nostalgic idealisation. He himself acknowledged what was for him an idyll of rural (or pre-industrial) England, of a resilient, cheery and honest folk with roots in the land (perhaps today we would talk about a sustainable eco-system) and gentle, charming idiosyncracies.

That this conception of Tolkien's was always a myth, or at best perhaps an occasional village pocket (particularly in England) is only part of the story. It is impossible to accept the notion today without also considering the way in which class, such a crucial factor throughout English history, is at the root of these romantic idealisations.

That simple, quaint parochial folk were happy to go about their minor business, with a mixture of disinterest and awe for the big wide world 'out there', is typically symptomatic of a paternal philanthropy that absolutely characterised the Victorian era from which Tolkien emerged into adulthood. Its unreality is especially framed by the fact that Tolkien's early life in South Africa, and subsequent comfort in the dreaming spires of Oxford, both represented environments in which rigid social divisions persisted, and the idea that 'everyone has their rightful place' would have been predominant.

Only through some level of rose-tinted illusion could the affectionate distortion of rural life, and thus it's unfortunate corruption by the 'machine' of industrialisation, urbanisation, secularisation and the breaking of the socio-cultural mould, be conceived. That Tolkien's narrative succeeds dramatically, and that the characters themselves are rounded and sympathetic, does not compromise the fact that 'Merrie England' is an aristocratic edifice.

Compare the references in Tolkien to the writings of near contemporary DH Lawrence, raised in the mining counties of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Both rail against the harsh anonymity of technology and the loss of individual spirit (and life) brought by world wars and manufacturing industries. Yet Lawrence is in so many ways far less sociologically romantic than Tolkien ... his working classes are resentful, philistine and violent, his aristocracy decadent and self-obsessed. No Elven elite of the wise, cultured and beatiful here [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img].

It must be said that the sense in which the Shire and the nature of hobbits is an idealisation is entirely appropriate for epic myth, and finds its parallel in many tales from across the world, where a nostalgic harmony is evoked as a backdrop to change, destruction, and heroic redemption. Many myths indirectly and directly deal with the rescue of nationhood, the defeat of invaders, outsiders, or more subtly the resolution of conflict brought about by meddling Gods and other mystical beings. Whatever eternal or spiritual truths are present in any of these sagas, there is also a strong case for seeing the evolution of such cultural artefacts as a reflection of historical and social change, a means of rationalising and perhaps exorcising the collective experience of war and/or other societal disruption in an uncertain world.

In this sense, and in this tradition, the nostalgia in LotR is neither flawed nor inappropriate. Yet Tolkien reflected with some subtelty on the fatal nostalgia of the Elves, their cultural stasis and their 'falling'. This is an element of profound insight on his part, and gives modernity and a psychological reality to these mythic archetypes. Likewise, despite wishing to, Frodo can never truly return to the Shire, or to being the Frodo that he was, and again this emotive characterisation is both convincing and thought-provoking. Change IS permanent, it is the half-remembered that seems eternal, like those never-ending always-blue summer-skies that seemed to fill our childhood ... to be cherished with sadness, sought-for in vain - nostalgia indeed.

With that in mind, the politically dubious notion of simple rural folk in opposition to the dark machine can be accepted not solely as a stereotype born of privelige, but also, importantly, an acknowledgment of change and flux, and of the forces that buffet our illusions of permanence, of the humility that such awareness should bring, and the poetic beauty that myth confers on history.

Not solely ... but partly, at least. After all, we're all agreed that the art reflects the artist, right? (Sorry, just being mischevious [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img])

Peace.

Kalessin