Quote:
Originally Posted by Nerwen
Why, are the Babylonians and Sumerians filing copyright claims?  |
Or who is filing
them, anyway... But to use this to move back on topic: there is one point related to the question of looking for parallels in Tolkien's writings, and that is that I would say it is the interpretation the author gives to the myth which is relevant. You cannot say that Little Red Riding Hood is the same as WWXVI. just because it both has evil Wolves and women being eaten in it. Tolkien uses, say, the myth of Atlantis for Númenor, but gives it partially a new meaning in the
context of the whole story he unfolds in front of us. You can keep the "visual" parts of the story, or how to call it, the "sceneries", but the point is completely different. I really dislike is when people say "this is the same as...", which is what people do even with Tolkien: somebody unfamiliar with him reads a random bad paperback fantasy and says "yeah, this is something like that Tolkien, it has dragons and stuff".
As for your relation to the possible parallels,
narfforc, I believe that if you don't want to look for them, nobody forces you to, right? Tolkien in any case didn't want to (see my post above), and as it has been pointed out before, there are thousands of articles out there on the internet which would want me to read 1984 as anti-communist and others as anti-capitalist and others that want me to read it as a warning against the current political situation in Southern Shcmurtiania, yet I don't have to read them... or, if I want to use my critical thinking and possibly widen my horizons, I will read a couple of them (and if possible, some which I can trust to be a bit more than random rant of an angsty blogger), and then I can judge how much of them is in fact relevant and how much of them is not.
Anyway - to return again to what I have started with - if there are Christian parallels to be found in the story, then I would think they are in on the level of "inner meaning" rather than just on the "outer-visualisation" level. I mean, yes, they are there on both, but if I speak of "Christian parallels", I would be looking first and foremost for the meanings: if I take the already mentioned Frodo's journey, it is a story of selflessness, the willingness to go for the sake of others up to the point of where one's own life may become part of the necessary sacrifice - forfeiting my own gain, the possibility to rest happily in Rivendell, but going on with the motivation of love for those I am leaving behind (in Frodo's case the Shire, and later the rest of Middle-Earth and all the folks he met on the way, from the merry Elves to Faramir). That is the Christian part I would find there - and not the fact that, say, it takes three days for Frodo to reach Mount Doom, which corresponds with the three days since Christ's death to his resurrection or the three days Abraham took to reach the mountain of Moria (or not even the fact that a certain place is called "Moria", while we are at it! Also because Tolkien himself said that it was a coincidence, and I don't see very many parallels between these two Morias in general). These I do not find relevant (although once again, I do not deny some of those might have been inspired here and there), mostly also because of that, as
narfforc has pointed out, things like three days are a common mythological operator not limited to Christianity (or Judaism, for that matter) alone.