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Tolkien’s works on the other hand, are uplifting and serves to give us a model of nobility of spirit to strive for whether it is Sam or Theoden or Aragorn, which other books do not. It is a more hopeful and inspirational work, though admittedly less realistic.
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It's only less realistic when one lives in a society where striving for nobility is not valued. We seem to think nowadays that striving for nobility is hypocritical or a waste of time. Aragorn, Frodo, Sam, Theoden would have disagreed-- and so would Tolkien. (And so do I.)
Nowadays many of us view character development as, "from slime pit to acceptability". Tolkien, I think, views character development more from Acceptability to Nobility. As was mentioned in the Great War thread, we don't value character nearly as much as we value happiness; we strive for what we value. So heroic striving for nobility looks unrealistic to us, which is too bad. I think we'd be happier anyway if we were striving for genuine nobility. But we often dodge this struggle because we might fail and be called a hypocrite. Yes, everybody has a weakness or thirty. Many of Tolkien's characters, however, have already fought off twenty-five of their weaknesses.
Any software engineer knows that 80% of the development takes 20% of the time, and 20% of the development takes 80% of the time. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth spending all that time striving to get the last 20% of the development right. In our modern age, character development has come to mean moving up in the first 80% of improving our character. We don't understand the struggle to finish the final twenty percent. As long as we'renot in trouble, we figure we're doing okay; and that's our current societal value. We don't value sainthood any more. Too bad.
LOTR seems unrealistic to us because the characters are further along the road to nobility than we are; does that surprise us? We don't journey towards what we don't value, so why should we be surprised that we haven't arrived? I love LOTR precisely because it calls us higher, and shows us what (as a society) we have forgotten and abandoned. In his letters, Tolkien referred to unprincipled men as orcs. I wonder how he'd feel about modern society. I shudder to think.
Aragorn is 87 years old. We're not privy to his early development-- sixty-some-odd years of sleeping in ditches and swamps and strolling through Mordor. We get to watch his final struggles; we see him finally accomplishishing in two years what he prepared sixty-seven years for. He's already developed courage, perseverance, determination, purity, etc etc. His final polishing-- perhaps it's more like the final 5% of his preparation-- is in Leadership. In Bree, he's a loner. Down the Anduin, we watch him struggle to lead the company, and his development, one decision at a time.
Well, that was a wild ramble, and just in case my point was lost in the confusion, let me restate it: I think TOlkien does a superb job of developing characters who struggle through that final 20% of development of nobility and virtue.
[ November 14, 2003: Message edited by: mark12_30 ]