[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

I find your choice of words here objectionable: needlessly inflammatory.

Well, I could say the same about yours. So what do you do about that?

"We", as in the readers. That's all.

But do you mean all the readers? That is simply not true for all readers.

Use of we in an article meant to persuade often does just the opposite to a critical reader. Use of we is often a trick by the writer to create a connection to the reader of the article. See how often it is used by Edmund Wilson in his notorious review of Tolkien at http://www.jrrvf.com/sda/critiques/The_Nation.html , when Wilson is not instead using the word one. Don’t use either word to persuade people.

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

Part of a poem I wrote back in 2002 seems an apt answer:

my hope
that you see
the world in color

That, too, is metaphorical.

So you use a metaphor for anyone who sees the world differently than you do. What does that prove? Not a thing. I am in reality not colour-blind and someone who is might otherwise see the world as you do.

I reject your metaphor as not applicable and inappropriate and insulting.

I would find such comments objectionable if they weren't so sad. I'm left wondering what someone, who has such little use for metaphor and depth of reality, finds so compelling in LotR that one would spend so much time on a site like this discussing it?

You are left wondering about something which you should be able to easily figure out, or perhaps you can’t understand anyone who feels differently than you do about anything.

In his prologue to the second edition, Tolkien writes, “As for an inner meaning or ‘message’, it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical or topical.”

I am quite aware that Tolkien wrote in letter 142:

I think I know exactly what you mean by the order of Grace; and of course by your references to Our Lady, upon which all my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded. The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.

But to take this fully one must be a Roman Catholic and believe in the Virgin Mary as a being of unusual power in the world. Are you?

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

I know that Tolkien's work is fiction but I love the level of detail that makes Middle Earth so vivid, that as you read LOTR you glimpse the Silmarillion. It isn't real but it has a plausibility about it, a degree of coherence and scope it does seem different from the likes of Alice, which i loved but which doesnt have the same hold on me and which is clearly made up with its dream conceit...oh I am finding this idea hard to express.

I suppose what it boils down to is that Tolkien may be no more real than other fantasy novels but I find it hard really to find it less real than other mythologies which I know aren't real either. They may have elements from genuine events but are they not just as made up albeit by more people over a longer time. Does that process make them more real than the synthetic mythology produced from the learning and imagination of one man?

I agree almost entirely with this. I can think of fantasy novels that seem as real as Tolkien when I read them, and also some fantasy works that others like more. Others become a chore to read. But there is no fantasy novel or mythological text which seems as real as the real world.