What was it all for?

[davem]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

My immediate reaction, I suppose, is "What does it matter?" My own reaction to Tolkien's works is more important to me than his purpose in writing them. But that may just be me.

But ... and I hesitate to ask this ... but, if you are seeking to establish Tolkien's purpose in writing what he did, does that not inevitably involve a consideration of his experiences, influences and sources - those things that led him to write it? And, quite apart from the difficulty of reaching any definitive conclusions on these issues, does that not therefore involve "breaking the thing down" in order to examine it?

Well, his experiences obviously provided the raw material - but the Legendarium is not a 'biography'. He srew on various literary sources, yet it is not a re-write of Northern Myth, or of the Bible. It is something else.

In the Beowulf 'allegory' the man built the Tower to be able to 'look out on the Sea' - ie, he built it for a purpose. After his death his friends come along & sdismantle the Tower to find out wher the stones came from.

Now, there are two ways of looking at most things - 'Where did it come from?' & 'What is it for?' Source analysis tells us a great deal in answer to the former question, but almost nothing in answer to the latter. Just because the former question is the easier to answer does not make it the more important, or more interesting, question.

Something drove a human being to spend 60 years of his life in the creation & perfection of something which has transfixed millions of readers for the last two generations & looks likely to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Leaving aside the Bible, one has to say that the other sources he used have not had such a profound effect. Why not? When we read about Surtr crossing Bifrost we are not as affected as when we read of Gandalf's stand against the Balrog. So, finding sources will not explain the effect the work has on us, nor will it explain why Tolkien chose that particular image out of all the ones Tolkien could have chosen from the Pagan sources he had to hand.

Tolkien spent 60 years doing something, & he must have had a reason for devoting such time & energy to it. He wasn't just using 'sources', he was using them for something.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Originally Posted by davem

he was using them for something.

Presumably it had something to do with telling a story.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Feanor of the Peredhil

Presumably it had something to do with telling a story.

What kind of story, & why did he want to tell it? Why was it so important that it be 'perfect'? What did he mean when he stated that he was all the time trying to discover 'what really happened'?

In the form of that 'story' he was trying to communicate some 'fact' which he believed to be 'external' (at least to his conscious mind')

One review of the Silmarillion asked the question 'How, given little over half a century, did one man become the creative equivalent of a people?' I'd also ask why? & 'What for?

Does it not also make you feel both awed & amazed at what a human being can do?

Originally Posted by Bb

How about he was bored and thought he could write a better yarn out of it all. Or how about he just couldn't let go of words, which told him things that he hadn't seen explored before about them.

Possibly. I just think its bigger (& deeper) than that..... He was 'driven', staying up late into the night over a period of many years. Boredom isn't a good enough explanation.

[Raynor]

Originally Posted by davem

Those things were the raw materials he used to do something - but what was that 'something'?

Well, if we take into considerations these two refferences:

Originally Posted by "He had been inside his language, Part Four, JRRT Biography, by H. Carpenter

But, said Lewis, myths are lies, even though lies breathed through silver. No, said Tolkien, they are not. And, indicating the great trees of Magdalen Grove as their branches bent in the wind, he struck out a different line of argument.
You call a tree a tree, he said, and you think nothing more of the word. But it was not a ‘tree’ until someone gave it that name. You call a star a star, and say it is just a ball of matter moving on a mathematical course. But that is merely how you see it. By so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.
We have come from God (continued Tolkien), and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a ‘sub-creator’ and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic ‘progress’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.

Originally Posted by Mythopoeia

The heart of man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
man, sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sow the seeds of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.

So, I would say the myths represent to him a spiritual path, which redeems us; this may not be the same thing with Christianity, but I doubt that for him, God/Truth was any other than the biblical one.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Raynor

So, I would say the myths represent to him a spiritual path, which redeems us; this may not be the same thing with Christianity, but I doubt that for him, God/Truth was any other than the biblical one.

Yeah - like I'm getting into that last one.....

You make two assumptions , though. First that of a 'spiritual path' & second of 'redemption'. Possibly. And yet non-religious folk who don't accept either of those things are affected by the work. He wanted to achieve something, felt driven to do it, as I said.

And back to the 'boredom' explanation, or that it was 'just a story' - the question I'd ask is, if it was all just for a story he wrote to avoid boredom, why has there been such a vociferous debate on his 'sources' - whatever the sources for something 'trivial' are they should not have inspired such ire on all sides. I suspect we all have a very deep sense that it is about something very important & very specific - if only in its effect on us - & we feel very annoyed when someone says its about something else...

[Raynor]

You make two assumptions , though. First that of a 'spiritual path' & second of 'redemption'.

"Objectively", those are assumptions. For Tolkien, whose motives we are considering here, they represent realities.

Yeah - like I'm getting into that last one

Well, let's agree to disagree (if its' even the case).

[davem]

Originally Posted by Raynor

"Objectively", those are assumptions. For Tolkien, whose motives we are considering here, they represent realities.

But this is to imply he was writing a work driven by his intention to 'redeem' his readers. Yet in his statements about 'discovering what really happened', & given Carpenter's statement that he was 'writing blind' its almost as if, as I said he was exploring Middle-earth, rather than inventing it. He was like Smith or Niggle in many ways. Yet what he produced has profoundly affected millions of readers. He is saying things that we all respond deeply to, introducing us to a world which is spookily real - few works of fiction have that 'inner consistency of reality'. Its as if (as a friend of mine said) Middle-earth is a real place, the characters & events seem not to be waiting for us to open the book & start reading it - its as if we are observers of another 'reality', another world which exists & goes on even when we are not observing it. Many of us, on some level, feel M-e to be a real, objectively existing place - as Tolkien himself apparently did.

Of course, that could just be his technical skill as a writer, but it may be something more.

What's interesting is that while his motivations change over the years (from 'moral regeneration', to myth creation for England, to 'mere' entertainment) the stories themselves essentially do not change - so its as if the tales & their setting exist independently of Tolkien's intentions for them.

He wants to set something down, actualise it in words on paper, bring it into the Primary world to share it with others - & those others respond to it.

EDIT Yes, I realise I'm possibly contradicting my original point when I say that its almost like the tales remain essentially unchanged even when the author's intention for them changes. But maybe that's an even more interesting line of enquiry...

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Originally Posted by davem

I suspect we all have a very deep sense that it is about something very important & very specific - if only in its effect on us - & we feel very annoyed when someone says its about something else...

Self preservation. Literature emotes. If a writer wanted to Say Something, he could just say it. But he doesn't. He covers the barest fact with painted lace, writes in calligraphy, dances with his words. If he wanted us to know, he would tell us. But instead, a literary master shows. He makes us feel.

And when we are told that he didn't mean for us to feel that way, we don't like it.

Given that, think about what he made us feel. Was he writing tragedy, such that in the end, we feel as though we have lost something and can never have it back?

Sure. Elves are gone. Frodo can't be healed. Life goes on, but nothing was as it once was. In the Bible, Job gets new kids, new goats, new whatever, and it's all Better Than Before, but it's not what it was. Tolkien did write a tragedy.

But he also wrote a comedy. And a romance. And a hero quest. He wrote fantasy and history and hope and wonder.

He wrote an epic. He took his readers through as many emotions as he could carefully draw out of them.

I'm less curious about what he was doing, what his final purpose was, than why that was his purpose.

Why would anybody actively manipulate emotion? Seems like a pretty sketchy thing to do. Power trip, anyone? Perhaps he was unpopular in junior high school.

I should be ignored.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Feanor of the Peredhil

I'm less curious about what he was doing, what his final purpose was, than why that was his purpose.

Me too - among other things. If we agree he intended to get somewhere we can speculate on where that was.

It strikes me that when most of us come across a magnificent stone building - columns, gargolyes, flying butresses, etc, our first, instinctive, question is 'What's it for, why was it built, why is it there?' Not 'I wonder where the stone came from?' And even if we do ask the latter question it usually follows the former, because we assume there is a reason for things to exist.

[alatar]

Originally Posted by davem

Possibly. I just think its bigger (& deeper) than that..... He was 'driven', staying up late into the night over a period of many years. Boredom isn't a good enough explanation.

Is there any information about his mental condition? I don't mean that negatively, but was there an addictive nature in any family member? Was there a possible obsessive/compulsive disorder? Was there a need to 'make something' to counter the destruction that he'd witnessed in the war?

Or was he just trying to avoid real life? Why do we post here, as been said, as don't we have better (and more productive/beneficial) things to be doing?

[Lalwendë]

I detect two strains to this. What did Tolkien want, and how should we be looking at it.

Why did he write LotR? I don't know. Why do I have an urge to stuff the garden full of plants every year? Why do I suddenly like painting in the brightest colours I can get hold of? Why do I make up stories in my head? I would say its simply the Creative Urge. Scientifically speaking it means he had a highly active frontal lobe (also common in mental illness). Pyschologically speaking that he had secret urges to express. Classically speaking it was his Muse um...fiddling with his head. We've all done it, even cavemen did it. If any of us knew why then we'd be rich.

Yes, he spent a lot of time on this work and you could say he had an obsession with it, but this may be partly to do with his perfectionism. Maybe he had a disorder relating to OCD or somesuch, but we can't possibly say that. Maybe it was simply his form of comfort and escape. He certainly tried to intellectualise his urge over the years, many of his statements showing how he matured with age - high-minded when young about moral regneration and suchlike he grew up after a while and realised he wasn't going to change the world. Which also shows that real wisdom lies in appreciating your own insignificance in the great structure of things.

But it all boils down to a creative urge, a strong one. He didn't just work on the world he created for LotR, he attempted, and even wrote, other stories. He drew complex maps. He fiddled with invented languages all his life. he was a competent and prolific artist. he created the Father Christmas Letters for his kids (what a cool and thoughtful father, better than some plastic from Toys R Us!). He wrote lectures. He taught.

How should we be looking at it? Well since Barthes said the Author is Dead in 1968, you can look at it any ruddy way you like, apparently. In fact most of 20th century critical theory (New Criticism, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Reader-response) has pretty much ignored the Author and what he or she intended. Though some Marxist criticism seraches out the hidden political agenda of the writer. When the TS give lots of talks on the life of Tolkien in the hope of illuminating us, they're pretty much living in Victorian times as far as Critical theory goes. However, funnily enough, most readers want a bit of biography, want a bit of contemporary context.

If you want to look at the text in and of itself, without reference to author or source, then you need to use New Criticism. Post Structuralism will look at the readers, and the sources, but not look at the text particularly. Reader Response gets us all in a group and asks us how it makes us feel (and then we have a group hug ). But ultimately Tolkien is a special case, as are some other fantasy writers, as he's not just a novelist but a world builder, and much of what we do is to find our way around in that world he created amongst the mass of information, so maybe no kind of theory at all is more valid than another.

[alatar]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

If any of us knew why then we'd be rich.

It's all biochemical then. (sorry, but just couldn't help that; blame those darn lobes. Will have them removed by popular demand.)

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

Tolkien spent 60 years doing something, & he must have had a reason for devoting such time & energy to it. He wasn't just using 'sources', he was using them for something.

How about he was bored and thought he could write a better yarn out of it all. Or how about he just couldn't let go of words, which told him things that he hadn't seen explored before about them.

btw, I really don't think one can generalise about how "we" aren't as moved by Surtr at Bifrost as by Gandalf at Moria. But I guess I'm just old fashioned enough to think that one person using the Royal We is enough.