[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by SpM

Bb, my comment on that thread was directed more to my feeling that Tolkien had morally cleansed Faerie - "the high purged of the gross". The principal characters of Tolkien's Faerie are not the mischievous and sometimes amoral characters of traditional Faerie. But the "horrors" of the perilous realm are certainly there, as the collection of quotes that have accumulated on this thread clearly show.

Tolkien does side step the amoral nature of Faerie, but he does not miss out the Monsters or the Wonders. When he says 'purged of the gross' I think he's referring to a certain aspect of Fairy Tale that's fascinated with bodily fluids, sex and even toilet humour. Tolkien doesn't really go in for sly jokes about 'swiving' and belching (though Mr Jackson put that right back ).

But he doesn't flinch from describing a Monster, nor does he flinch from having his Monsters do or suggest unspeakable things. He even gives his Orcs a voice.

I'm sure Tolkien would have been aware of horror at the very least, and I think he may well have read quite a bit too, as he was very fond of contemporary fantasy and sci-fi. Though maybe he veered away from the 'pulp' and went more for the classics of the genres; his descriptions of Thuringwethil suggest he had indeed read Dracula (and having been to Whitby he may have been inspired to pick up the book after his visit, as the story pervades the town and always has since publication). However, how do we know whether or not he had a few pulp fiction works stuffed in his bookshelves?

Originally Posted by Child

Many people complain about the lack of characterization in Tolkien's book, saying that we don't get inside the characters' heads the way a reader would in much modern fiction. This point can be debated endlessly, of course, but too often we fail to see things Tolkien puts inside his characters just because the author uses techniques and images that many other authors would not. I'm speaking particularly of Tolkien's handling of the horrific and how he links horror to what is going on inside the heart of a particular character.

Of course, even though there's a lack of Interior Monologue from Tolkien's characters (that's not a feature of traditional epic anyway) Tolkien makes use of dreams to convey what's disturbing people. That's why I recognise symptoms of PTSD in Frodo - he has the crazy dreams that I have, where you wake up sweating and absolutely terrified. Who else uses this? Doesn't Edgar Allen Poe?

Originally Posted by Boromir88

I'm reminded by the Mel Gibson movie, Signs. Which I thought was very effective and unnerving through most of the movies. You have the build up and the hysteria with crop signs popping up, then the aliens land and you just see their shadows, or hear them running on the roof...etc, and that starts getting you even more terrified.

I'll hold my hand up right now and say I do enjoy M Night Shyamalan films - old fashioned storytelling always works for me. And I've not seen the latest one so please - NO SPOILERS! Anyway, these do merely suggest at things going on, and we see the characters slowly descending into their madness and confusion. Like these subtle horrors, I also loved Blair Witch Project which merely had symbols of evil and the terror of the protagonists to convey horror. However, Tolkien is not quite like that as he does depict the Monsters. He also has a lot of them.

But one thought occurs here. An M Night Shyamalan film is always most enjoyable the very first time you watch it as when the surprise hits, this is the high point of the story, and you can only experience that once. maybe some of you who don' t quite see the horror in Tolkien any more are not getting that kick or shock any longer. You know what's coming. But you can still get the kick of the horror; I still get it just by focussing even more on those images, playing with them, wondering what, exactly this or that Monster looks like, what their nature is, what they might potentially do.

EDIT:

I had some more thoughts on the issue of Tolkien's characterisation and how he does not favour the interior monlogue approach common to modern fiction (and common by the time he wrote, too). Yes, we might not get to see what's going on inside Frodo's head, but we do see the terror he feels when confronted with a Monster, and we do get to see his fears in general by seeing his actions and hearing him speak.

Are we assuming that only the interior monolgue applies to the Gothic form? Because it doesn't! A very obvious example occurred to me - Wuthering Heights! This book is never narrated by either Cathy or Heathcliff, yet throughout we see their state of mind, the terror or joy they feel, simply through being told about what they did or said. The method Emily Bronte used was to narrate via Lockwood and Nelly Dean (an aside - I love Nelly Dean!); Tolkien narrates in the third person, too, and because we are reading an external story told to us, he also has to convey the fear throguh words and actions. Perhaps its also the very heightened extremes that they go through that conveys this kind of Gothic terror?