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Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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We recently got around to a similar discussion on another board, & I wanted to maybe take up the ideas here, This is part of a post I made there, regarding Tolkien's depiction of the suffering & death of the Land, as opposed to people..
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An avenue of trees had stood there. They were all gone. And looking with dismay up the road towards Bag End they saw a tall chimney of brick in the distance. It was pouring out black smoke into the evening air.
...there was no more for the new mill to do than for the old. But since Sharkey came They're always a-hammering and a-letting out a smoke and a stench, and there isn't no peace even at night in Hobbiton. And they pour out filth a purpose; they've fouled all the lower Water, and it's getting down into Brandywine. If they want to make the Shire into a desert, they're going the right way about it
The great chimney rose up before them; and as they drew near the old village across the Water, through rows of new mean houses along each side of the road, they saw the new mill in all its frowning and dirty ugliness: a great brick building straddling the stream, which it fouled with a steaming and stinking outflow. All along the Bywater Road every tree had been felled.
The Old Grange on the west side had been knocked down, and its place taken by rows of tarred sheds. All the chestnuts were gone. The banks and hedgerows were broken. Great waggons were standing in disorder in a field beaten bare of grass. Bagshot Row was a yawning sand and gravel quarry. Bag End up beyond could not be seen for a clutter of large huts. 'They've cut it down!' cried Sam. 'They've cut down the Party Tree!'..... It was lying lopped and dead in the field. As if this was the last straw Sam burst into tears. 'The Scouring of theShire'
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Those are just examples - we all know the chapter, & the repeated emphasis on the damage done by Sharkey's ruffians. We also know what happens when the four companions return:
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Nearly seventy of the ruffians lay dead on the field, and a dozen were prisoners. Nineteen hobbits were killed, and some thirty were wounded. The dead ruffians were laden on waggons and hauled off to an old sand-pit nearby and there buried: in the Battle Pit, as it was afterwards called. The fallen hobbits were laid together in a grave on the hill-side, where later a great stone was set up with a garden about it. So ended the Battle of Bywater, 1419, the last battle fought in the Shire......, though it happily cost very few lives, it has a chapter to itself in the Red book, and the names of all those who took part were made into a Roll, and learned by heart by Shire-historians. The very considerable rise in the fame and fortune of the Cottons dates from this time; but at the top of the Roll in all accounts stand the names of Captains Meriadoc and Peregrin.
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What's interesting is Sam's response:
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The trees were the worst loss and damage, for at Sharkey's bidding they had been cut down recklessly far and wide over the Shire; and Sam grieved over this more than anything else. For one thing, this hurt would take long to heal, and only his great-grandchildren, he thought, would see the Shire as it ought to be.
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The damage done to the Shire gets paragraph after paragraph. The destruction is described in graphic detail. The death of the 19 Hobbits gets a sentence & no account of how they died, whether quickly or slowly, in pain or not. Their burial gets another sentence. Then there's no further mention of them. The 'important' thing is the healing of the Shire, replacing the trees & putting right the damage to the land.
The 'culmination' of the chapter could have been the burial & the ceremony, & it would have been both beautiful & moving & brought home the central theme of the book - loss, & the inevitability of death. Instead what we get is a chapter that deals with the destruction & healing of the natural world .....,( oh, & by the way a few Hobbits got killed in the process, but let's not get sidetracked by trivialities....). Even our beloved Sam grieves over the loss of the trees more than anything else.....er..more than anything else - more than the fact that 19 innocent Hobbits gave their lives to save the Shire??
Again, the emphasis is on the destruction of the natural world, the pain & necessity of healing, Arda.
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I've focussed there on the descriptions of the suffering of the Shire, but the depictions of the suffering & death of the land of Mordor is even more graphic & sickening. Why is Tolkien's hand freer when he is depicting the pain & death of the land than when he is depicting the pain & death of people?
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Another aspect of the reality of war that is worth considering is the suffering of non-combatants during wartime. The women & children have been evacuated from Minas Tirith, which again means that we are spared some of the real horror of war. This from Randle Holme III (1627-99), describing the (English - yes, we also had one.....) Civil War siege of Chester in December 1645
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Eleven huge granadoes like so many tumbling demi-phaetons threaten to set the city, if not the world, on fire. This was a terrible night indeed, our houses like so many split vessels crash their supporters and burst themselves in sunder through the very violence of these descending firebrands ... Another Thunder-crack invites our eyes to the most miserable spectacle that spite could possibly present us with – two houses in the Watergate skippes joint from joint and creates an earthquake ... The grandmother, mother and three children are struck stark dead and buried in the ruins of this humble edifice, a sepulchre well worth the enemy's remembrance. But for all this they are not satisfied, women and children have not blood enough to quench their fury, and therefore about midnight they shoot seven more in hope of greater execution, one of these last lights in an old man's bedchamber, almost dead with age, and sends him some few days sooner to his grave then perhaps was given him. The next day six more break in amongst us one of which persuade an old woman to beare the old man company to heaven, because the times were evill. Our ladyes all this while, likewise merchants, keepe their sellers (ie cellars) & will not venture forth in these tymes of danger
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Last edited by davem; 01-25-2009 at 09:01 AM.
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