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Originally Posted by Firefoot
If it is a flaw, it must not be too terribly great a one because my first reading I fell for it just about every single time - the big ones, anyway. Gandalf, Frodo at Shelob's lair for sure; I'm not sure about the others, but by the time it happened to Pippin I had pretty much picked up on the fact that he probably wasn't dead.
As for being afraid to kill off main characters... maybe. But not nearly so much as many other authors I have seen. Boromir, Theoden, and Denethor are the big ones, but personally I was extremely sad when Halbarad died.
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I fell for the first several, too. I wasn't sure about Pippin. Didn't have too long to reflect on it, you know? It kind of ended. And I, too, was very, veyr sorry to see Halbarad die. I really liked him, if only because Aragorn loved him so.
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Originally Posted by Firefoot
I think the thing about making the reader believe that the character is dead is that it takes the reader through emotional ups and downs (No! he can't be dead! He's alive?? Yay!) and makes the book more effective. Whether or not he had something more symbolic in mind, as you suggested, Mith, I don't know but even if it was subconscious it does make a lot of sense.
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It does add to the story, that is true. I think that is one great reason that he did it. (Everyone wants a great story, right?) But there may have been another underlying reason for him doing it so many times. You did mention it, Mith. . .being part of his religion. The dying and rebirth, and even the dying and coming back to life altogether, as in Gandalf's case. (He did die, didn't he?) I know, I know - Tolkien didn't write allegory. I've heard it a hundred times if I've heard it once. But I don't believe a chap can really write something quite as potent as the LotR without putting some of his truth and belief into it. It's not so much the length of the book - there are several books that are long, boring, and hardly have any hidden truth in them at all, but those are hardly the sort of books that catch and hold millions of people's imagination for longer than the reading of them. It's not the length, it's the content and what the content is built upon.
Hm. Having sufficiently strayed from my point, I'll return. I don't think it's such an outrageous thing to suppose that Tolkien did have more than one reason and more than one conscious idea when he put so many 'deaths' and renewals of life, and one of those reasons and ideas may have been in direct relationship with his religious beliefs.
If they weren't, then I still think he drew some awfully lovely pictures of that belief in his writings.
-- Folwren