How Would it Be?

[Bêthberry]

An a splendid return! Welcome back, wandering hobbit of the 7th Age.

Originally Posted by Child of the 7th Age

Good thread, drigel ! I think I will be the historical curmudgeon here and argue that Bb's maxim doesn't always hold. The reigning interpretation of an historical event or epoch is generally written by the "winners". But that isn't the case with the historical record as a whole. You frequently get chronicles, narratives, and interpretive studies that reflect the opinions of those whose cause (or interpretation) didn't win out. One splendid example of this is U.S. civil war history. The South has a tradition of producing wonderful historians, but their interpretation frequently differs from that of their northern counterparts, even today.

In the real world, the only time you totally lose the voice of the "losers" is when they are wholly illiterate, and simply can't produce a written document. Then we are reduced to studying physical data and "official" records that might shed some light on their condition and opinions.

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There is a reason for this that goes back to Tolkien's personal beliefs about goodness and evil in the world. Both in the actual narrative of the LotR and in his personal letters, there are indications that Tolkien felt it wasn't too wise to dabble too deeply in the study of "evil". Otherwise, one might end up in Saruman's shoes. Given JRRT's personal values, there is no way the author would ever have produced an extensive narrative or record that reflected the experiences of the "losers" of the late Third Age.

There is another way of looking at this, however. I think we are oversimplifying things if we only speak of "winners" and "losers". There are many other voices in the historical record, and these voices are not identical. Just take a look at Silm. Although the translation is supposedly by Bilbo, the dominent voice is that of the Elves. Their perspective colors what is put in and left out of the narrative. It also influences our view of other peoples, especially the Dwarves. Some of the most direct instances of the "human" voice occur in Morgoth's Ring, for example in the interchange between Andreth and Finrod. In LotR, by contrast, there is much more evidence of a hobbit perspective.

. . .

I do think it's clear that there is a hobbit voice in LotR. Perhaps not on every page, but it is is especially evident in two places: the early chapters in the Shire and the experience in Minas Tirith and Rohan. If someone like Aragorn had written those later chapters, he would have taken much for granted because it was already familiar to him. For the hobbits, everything is new and exciting, and it is their perspective and detailed descriptions of Gondor (and Rohan) that are passed on to the reader, who is also a newcomer on the scene.

As far as "biased" goes.....this is what I would say. There is no such thing as "unbiased" history. It simply doesn't exist. Every history has an interpretation underlying it, and the same holds true for Tolkien. That he did not try to express the viewpoint of Sauron is not a shortcoming: it is part of his interpretation.

The line between writing "good" and "bad" history is very fine. Every historian is entitled to an interpretation. It is only when there is blatant distortion of the facts that we cross the line from history to propaganda. Tolkien, to my knowledge, did not do this (at least in the context of the world he created). And although we primarily have the ideas and viewpoints of the "good guys" in LotR, Tolkien was also careful to give us some hints about Boromir and Saruman, folks who weren't wholly in one or the other camp. (Indeed, the author even tells us that at one point Sauron was "good".)

My real desire is not to get the perspective of the "bad" Sauron. I truly think that would be boring, since it's more likely to read as simplistic propaganda rather than history. But I would love to be inside Saruman's head as he was gradually won over to the Shadow, or to experience Boromir's torment in deciding whether to try and snatch the Ring, or, best yet, Frodo's inner growth at the same time as he is being tempted by the Ring.

If we're going to have history written by a true baddie, my own preference would not be Sauron but a narrative composed by the Ring itself. That does have certain possibilities, and would answer any number of perplexing questions.

Cami ......like Bilbo.... back after a long journey on the road.

P.S. A side comment. Isn't it interesting how many of us (including me) love to play the baddies in RPG's? Is it our own human nature that lures us to an ivestigation of the dark side or a desire to fill in what Tolkien left out?

I wouldn't at all disagree, Child, that there are many exceptions to the general statement that the victors write history. Your example of the South's continuing presence in the narrative about the American Civil War is one good example. EDIT: I would, however, suggest that in part the Southern perspective was able to survive because the administrative and geographical parameters that existed before the war were maintained after the war, despite the burnings of cities and towns. Northerners did not arrive en mass to become the legislators of the South nor were the boundaries of the states gerrymandered. More than just literacy assures survival.

Nor is literacy alone enough to ensure survival. END OF EDT For example, after the Norman Invasion, much of the Old English record was lost. OE manuscripts--as I'm sure you know--were often torn apart and used to create spines of Middle English manuscripts. The OE corpus we have today is a much diminished one from what we can glean existed before 1066. It is my understanding that it was only with the development of an historical sense in the 19th Century that the OE records began to be salvaged in any appreciable extent. EDIT Here, Tolkien was in his element as part of the historical rediscovery of the pre-Norman era.END OF EDIT

Of course, the even earlier records of the Celts and the original British inhabitants, who predated the Danish and Germanic invasions, have been lost. I'm not sure how extensive literacy was or whether there was a class which preserved their records, but the Christians did a good job of eradicating pagan records, a habit which persisted until the mid 20th Century, as evidenced by the efforts in my country to make the potlach illegal and to penalise any First Nations people who maintained the old rituals. Children were even taken out of their parents' homes and sent to residential schools to be educated in Christian ways. Which fate I suppose is preferable to that of the Boetiuk Indians of Newfoundland who were hunted and killed. We do have records of the witch trials because we have been able to go back and find evidence. But the point remains that many voices have been lost and must be retrieved by later generations.

Yet this is to go off topic, so let me return to my thoughts about Tolkien on the historical record. One of the points about LotR which fascinates me is this very idea of trying to make Good dramatically interesting and to touch only in the most indirect way upon the thoughts of the 'baddies'. I'm sure Tolkien was aware of the pitfall Milton made in Paradise Lost of making Satan more interesting than Adam and Eve and the other Angels. It is almost a truism among some sets that Good does not make good dramatic potential. I suppose this was one of the reasons for the changes made to Faramir's character for the movie trilogies.

I would agree that an exploration of Saruman's downfall would be fascinating; it is too facile, for my tastes, simply to be told that his desire for arcane knowledge was his downfall; I am made too uncomfortably aware of the traditional Catholic arguments against, for instance, the education of women and the teaching of science and math. (When I say this, I don't wish to insult those who follow Catholicism; I will simply say this is my opinion based on some of my reading of the 1911 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia.) But where I think this adage about history being written by the winners comes true in LotR lies in the depiction of the Easterlings, the men of Harad, even the Dunlendings. Of course this is easy to complain about! How much longer would the book have been to include their full histories.

Your points about the RPGs is interesting, as I can point to Fordim's games in The Shire and Rohan for my own interest here. But the story of the Ring itself! Now that would be something. Imagine its difficulty fitting itself to the various fingers. I wonder what kind of diet it would have to go on in order to size down or up. (Sorry, I've just come from perusing some REB and I guess the silliness of parody is on my mind.)

I am rushed, so likely I have been quilty of too broad generalisations here. Again, a wonderful post, Child.