Fantasy

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Rumil

Yes, obviously no graphic descriptions of horrendous injuries.

No, the clues are there if you look for them

What on earth am I on about? Well, JRRT wrote when every adult knew more than they wished about the reality of war, his generation, what was left of it, served in the horror of trenches, then everyone was exposed to total war and strategic bombing in WW2. So he doesn't need to describe it all in graphic terms.

Those that know are given the cues - Sam deploring the battle of men versus men, the dead marshes, the decapitated head missiles, it is plain that there are atrocities and 'grossness' in Middle Earth warfare, but they are left, mostly, to the imagination. Surely this is even more disturbing? I'm thinking Alien (horror film) versus Aliens (action film). The less you describe, the more you force the reader's imagination into overdrive.

On the other hand, could the book have been too graphic? Was Tolkien writing for children, teenagers or adults? If it were in any part the first two, then graphic violence would not have been permitted in the 50s.

There's no need for graphic descriptions of injuries, but likewise, there was no need for Tolkien to simply gloss over the fact that Eomer, Aragorn, Legolas etc must have done things like cut the arms and legs off Orcs, put arrows in the eyes of Variags and decapitate Men of Khand. Our heroes simply disappear and a couple of pages later there is a battle won. It's interesting looking in HoME as the final product is not too much different from the notes he wrote.

That's particularly pertinent when it comes to Tolkien's writing style as he is so often accused of lingering descriptions of landscapes and so forth, and we all know he can write lingeringly and effectively of horrors, but when it comes to battles, we almost get little more than a synopsis. Especially with Pelennor. It was OK for people of Tolkien's generation to simply read a rough outline and then fill in the gaps, but to people born since 1945 and who have never served or read much about warfare then battle is just something out of a video game - filling in the gaps isn't possible.

Originally Posted by Morthoron

And if anyone has spoken at length to any war vet (like my father, a WWII vet, for instance), they recall the glorious events or the fun times they had. You have to literally pry any reminiscences of horror out of them with a crowbar (if they'll reveal them at all). They don't want to talk about it unless they are forced to (and this is particularly true of WWI and WWII vets for some reason). Tolkien's reminiscences of horror (like the faces in the Dead Marsh) are subtle reminders of his personal war experiences, rather than the overt statements made by Owen, Sassoon or Erich Maria Remarque.

I think this goes to the heart of it. It's likely that Tolkien had no artistic reason for leaving out the details of battle at all, it's probable that he simply did not like to write about it because it was painful.

So we know that Eomer got a blood lust on him, but we don't know what atrocities he commits. We know there must have been a body count as the good guys won, but we don't know how they won beyond the kind of description of strategy you might find in a text book. And our heroes must have been brutal - can you imagine the Orcs giving any quarter? Not a bit. And so nor would our heroes have done.

It was Tolkien's perogative to do this of course, but if he was intending to portray war as bad, as something to be avoided, then did he do the right thing?

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

It was Tolkien's perogative to do this of course, but if he was intending to portray war as bad, as something to be avoided, then did he do the right thing?

My take on Tolkien is that he viewed war like millions of other WWI or WWII vets, it had to be done. I say WWI and WWII because those were perhaps the last two 'righteous' wars that had to be fought to rid the world of an ultimate grasping evil (any beyond those, wars get so muddied one isn't quite sure who is exactly right or wrong and which party is evil). The wars in both the Hobbit and LotR are of a defensive nature, and beyond that Tolkien is quick to point out that war of an aggressive nature is an evil, as when the Numenoreans went from benevolent teachers to cruel tyrants of Middle-earth.

That's a quick take, anyway. I'm rapidly typing this while pounding down some coffee before I leave for work. I am sure, like everything else Tolkien, there are points to the contrary I have not considered in my groggy state.

P.S. So, Lal, what I was trying to convey regarding Tolkien was that he certainly put forth the proposition that war is inherently evil and that peace is an infinitely better lifestyle; however, he also stressed attention to duty, of loyalty and self-sacrifice that was a mirror of all the young lads of the BEF and the American volunteers (and yes, all those silly French persons too) who without complaint surrendered their lives at the Somme, the Ardenne and Belleau Wood. Tolkien's view tends toward the bravery of the individuals in war (both great and small characters) and how single acts of valor instill that feeling throughout the corp, rather than the nameless and faceless masses that are mowed down as they near enemy lines, or the ones who died of gangrene in a field hospital or of wasting diahrrea in a latrine.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

My take on Tolkien is that he viewed war like millions of other WWI or WWII vets, it had to be done. I say WWI and WWII because those were perhaps the last two 'righteous' wars that had to be fought to rid the world of an ultimate grasping evil (any beyond those, wars get so muddied one isn't quite sure who is exactly right or wrong and which party is evil). The wars in both the Hobbit and LotR are of a defensive nature, and beyond that Tolkien is quick to point out that war of an aggressive nature is an evil, as when the Numenoreans went from benevolent teachers to cruel tyrants of Middle-earth.

Yet I always see that the War of the Ring is a 'righteous' war and one carried out to rid the world of evil, and whereas WWII is usually seen in that way too, WWI isn't, it's more often seen as a pointless war in which whole brigades were slaughtered just to advance a trench by a few yards in the mud.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Yet I always see that the War of the Ring is a 'righteous' war and one carried out to rid the world of evil, and whereas WWII is usually seen in that way too, WWI isn't, it's more often seen as a pointless war in which whole brigades were slaughtered just to advance a trench by a few yards in the mud.

The European political lunacy that led up to WWI was pointless; the generals' (particularly the French generals, with the BEF in a subordinate role) reliance on the Offensive as the only strategy was pointless; the German refusal to seek a mediated settlement after realizing three months into the War that they could not win, and at best would spend years in a bloody stalemate, yet kept on blindly fighting anyway, was pointless; the Versailles Peace Treaty, a vengeful and counterproductive piece of vendetta, which virtually guaranteed a second war, was pointless.

However, the British, French, American, Australian and Canadian men (as well as countless other allied countries) who fought on the front lines did not consider that expending their lives for a few feet of precious ground was pointless. The Germans and their Austro-Hungarian allies were aggressors intent on carving up Europe (which they would eventually achieve in WWII), and they would have succeeded, to the detriment of European history, had the Guns of August not been silenced.

It was a horrible war, horribly managed. But the megalomaniacal Kaiser Wilhelm would have eventually forced a war one way or another even if Archduke Ferdinand had not been assassinated in Sarajevo. The war was an inevitably due to the belligerence and ego of one man: Wilhelm, just as 20 years later a second German fanatic would singlehandedly be the cause of over 20 million deaths.

[obloquy]

But again, its not the detail in which the fact is described, but the acknowledgement of the fact itself.

No, your issue is clearly with detail, not honesty. Tolkien acknowledges and portrays the gritty truth of war: lots of people die on both sides. That is "the fact," and anything more descriptive than that is "the detail in which the fact is described."

Even if Tolkien had written that all the warriors in those days died by disintegrating before any damage to their bodies occurred, it would still be an honest and acceptable depiction of war in Middle-earth. One could only accuse Tolkien of sanitizing warfare in this hypothesis if one imagines (irrationally) that Tolkien intended for the patently fantastic rules of an explicitly fantastic world to be transferred to the "Primary World" to illuminate certain truths. With the information Tolkien does provide, one might reasonably imagine all the severings and disembowelments one wishes. That Tolkien does not imagine them for us does not make his depiction dishonest, though it does indicate that preaching of the horrors of the battlefield was not his objective.

[davem]

Originally Posted by obloquy

No, your issue is clearly with detail, not honesty. Tolkien acknowledges and portrays the gritty truth of war: lots of people die on both sides. That is "the fact," and anything more descriptive than that is "the detail in which the fact is described."

My point is that one does not have to go into graphic descriptive detail, spending a paragraph describing the effect of a poleaxe blow to the face. One can simply state that 'X was hit in the face by a poleaxe' - rather than 'X was felled by a blow'. The first brings home the horror of battle in a way the second doesn't (&, btw, removes X's chance of making a profound farewell speech in the way that most men who fell in battle were denied that. They didn't get the chance to say goodbye.)

Even if Tolkien had written that all the warriors in those days died by disintegrating before any damage to their bodies occurred, it would still be an honest and acceptable depiction of war in Middle-earth. One could only accuse Tolkien of sanitizing warfare in this hypothesis if one imagines (irrationally) that Tolkien intended for the patently fantastic rules of an explicitly fantastic world to be transferred to the "Primary World" to illuminate certain truths.

Tolkien repeatedly claimed that 'Middle-earth' was our Primary world in the ancient past. The same rules apply - a sword blow or arrow strike will have exactly the same effect on the Pelennor as it would at Crecy.

That Tolkien does not imagine them for us does not make his depiction dishonest, though it does indicate that preaching of the horrors of the battlefield was not his objective.

Which actually creates the impression that the battlefield is not all that horrible a place - or at least not as horrible as it actually was. If rape is used as a weapon of war & a means of intimidation (as it pretty much always has been) we may not require a writer to describe the act in detail, but we would require him not to refer to it as 'making love to the women on the opposing side without their consent'.

If we look at the slaughter of Towton, or Agincourt ( soldiers screaming in pain sans limbs & innards, faces crushed & hacked open with bladed weapons, men at arms trampled & suffocating in the mud, mutilation of the dead & dying, men fleeing in terror being cut down - often by their own side, or executed later for 'cowardice', etc) are we to take it that that kind of thing didn't happen on the Pelennor against Easterlings & Southrons at the hands of Gondorians & Rohirrim , or that it happened, but Tolkien chose not to mention it? If its the latter then our whole impression of the nobility of the Men of the West is dealt a body blow. If its the former, then they were so different from men in battle in the primary world, particularly in the dark age & medieval period, then we have no real connection with them emotionally & psychologically anymore than we have with Robert E Howard's 'mighty-thewed barbarian'.

(This must be my fifth edit - but I wanted to just go back to Obloquy's statement:

Even if Tolkien had written that all the warriors in those days died by disintegrating before any damage to their bodies occurred, it would still be an honest and acceptable depiction of war in Middle-earth.

Which goes to the heart of this thread - how much freedom does a writer of Fantasy have? Does he or she have the right to depict war, & death in battle, as a nice, clean, civilised thing or God as a senile old fake? Is it simply the case that a writer of fantasy can set down on the page whatever they can imagine, or do we have the right to request they reside within particular boundaries? It would seem to me that many more folk are offended by Pullman's employing his freedom as a writer of fantasy to depict God in the way he does than they are by Tolkien's cleaned up & sanitised battlefields.

What I've been wondering all along is why that would be the case - or is it simply that they like what Tolkien did but dislike what Pullman did - are the boundaries to be set for a Fantasy writer's freedom determined simply by personal taste or whim? Pullman is not justified because I didn't like what he did, but Tolkien is justified because I did like what he did?

[skip spence]

While the depictions of battle are sanitized in The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings they are not so in The Silmarillion. I will quote a few parts from the chapter "Of The Fifth Battle".

The beginning of the battle:

The Captain of Morgoth sent out riders with tokens of parley [...] With them they brought Gelmir, son of Guilin [...] and they had blinded him. Then the heralds of Angband showed him forth, crying: 'We have more such at home, but you must make haste if you would find them; for we shall deal with them all when we return even so.' And they hewed off Gelmir's hands and feet, and his head last, within sight of the Elves, and left him.

By ill chance, at that place in the outworks stood Gwindor of Nargothrond, the brother of Gelmir. Now his wrath was kindled to madness, and he leapt forward on horseback, and many riders with him; and they pursued the heralds and slew them, and drove on deep into the main host. And seeing this all the host of the Noldor were set on fire...

Of the fall of Fingon:

At last Fingon stood alone with his guard dead about him; and he fought with Gothmog, until another Balrog came behind and cast a thong of fire about him. Then Gothmog hewed him with his black axe, and a white flame sprang up from the helm of Fingon as it was cloven. Thus fell the High King of the Noldor; and they beat him into the dust with their maces, and his banner, blue and silver, they trod into the mire of his blood.

Of the fall of Huor:

There, as the sun westered on the sixth day, and the shadow of Ered Wethrin grew dark, Huor fell pierced with a venomed arrow in his eye, and all the valiant Men of Hador were slain in a heap; and the Orcs hewed their heads and piled them as a mound of gold in the sunset.