Fantasy

[davem]

LadyBrooke - Thanks for a thoughtful contribution. Again, its difficult - despite being accused a few times of wanting to see graphic depictions of violence, I'm not suggesting any such thing. The point I was making is simply that we do not get a real sense of the animal horror of battle, & the question I was asking is simply this - 'Knowing the truth, that a battle is a terrible, ugly, disgusting place (medieval battlefields stank - of blood, vomit & excrement. The sreams of the wounded & dying were so terrible that they would be burned into the memories of those who experienced them even into old age - something which is still the case, even in our own 'modern' warfare). Many posters have given reasons why Tolkien avoided that aspect of battle, but my main question remains unanswered - 'Should Tolkien have avoided that aspect, & does the omission leave out something of vital importance?' And, again, why are his depictions of the suffering & death of the land so graphic (of Mordor -

"The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about. High mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows. ..."

people in the story, however badly wounded, don't 'vomit the filth of their entrails' on the earth but the earth itself does.

And something really weird just happened - googling to get that last quote I came across this essay, a review of the Jackson movies http://leesandlin.com/reviews/05_0107.htm which says many of the things I've been saying here (see, its not just me)

What's odd, though, is that Tolkien himself knew exactly how fake it was. For all you can tell from the movie, Peter Jackson might never have witnessed a violent act in his entire life, but Tolkien had been in battle: he had been a signalman on the front lines in World War I. He learned there firsthand that battle is squalid and gory and desperately confused. But when he wrote The Lord of the Rings he deliberately turned his back on the reality and put this pale Arthurian kitsch in its place.

That's not to say that the reality is missing. In fact Tolkien's experience of real warfare pervades The Lord of the Rings -- just in disguise. You can detect its presence from the quality of his prose, which tends to grow more forceful and impassioned whenever the secret subject makes itself felt.....

The Lord of the Rings is essentially a recasting of the war into an emotionally bearable form. Everything that made the war such a psychic torment is carefully contained, or eliminated from Middle Earth altogether. Nobody in the hobbit fellowship displays cowardice under fire; nobody ever accidentally kills somebody on his own side; nobody goes mad in the heat of battle. The warriors don't get bored or irritable or horny on their long journey to Mordor; not even the studly Aragorn ever sneaks away from camp at night to look for the nearest elf bordello. The few people in the book who oppose the war invariably turn out to be under the malign influence of Sauron. Even at the climax before the Black Gate of Mordor, when our heroes make a useless, suicidal charge against a fixed position (as tended to happen quite often on the western front), nobody suggests, even as a theoretical possibility, that their noble commanders might be fools.

It's an adolescent view of war, which is one reason the book tends to take adolescent readers by storm. You can see it reflected in every frame of the movie's battle scenes, which are teenage daydreams to the highest power, spiffy and dry-cleaned and sparklingly pretty, the best video games ever. The on-screen body count may be higher than Saving Private Ryan and Dawn of the Dead combined, but when the camera swoops and dives and soars over the swarming chaos of the virtual battlefield, somehow it never catches a glimpse of anybody writhing gracelessly in agony or sloppily bleeding to death. No wonder the movie copped only a PG-13 rating for its "epic battle scenes." "Epic" evidently means "wholly unreal." It's not true violence; it's barely even movie violence. It's just a million orcs blowing up real good, the way orcs are supposed to.

This fantasy may have been emotionally necessary for Tolkien. But it's dangerous for the rest of us to buy into. The danger isn't that we're bound to be disillusioned -- it's that we might not be. If the perennial success of the book and the celestial box office of the movies prove anything, it's that too many people still daydream of war in exactly the same way Tolkien did (in some cases because they learned it from him). Tolkien advocated a war of annihilation against the orcs, and that's harmless, because there are no such things as orcs. But then a real war breaks out, and orcs mysteriously start appearing on the other side. During World War II, Nazi propagandists called black American soldiers monkeys; American propagandists called Japanese soldiers monkeys. At Helm's Deep, Gimli and Legolas hold a contest to see how many orcs they can kill. Ask yourself whether anybody might be playing that game right now in Iraq.

The Lord of the Rings ends with the enemy not just defeated but annihilated: Sauron and all his works go up in a puff of smoke and are never seen in Middle Earth again. Even for a daydream, this is pretty infantile. But given the terms of Tolkien's war, is there any other way it could have gone?

David Jones was psychically broken by World War I, and, unlike Frodo, he didn't get to sail for elf heaven to be healed. He dedicated In Parenthesis to the soldiers he fought beside, "to the memory of those with me in the covert and in the open from the blackwall the broadway the cut the flats the level the environs" -- but he also dedicated it to "the enemy front-fighters who shared our pains against whom we found ourselves by misadventure." Frodo writes his memoirs at the end of The Lord of the Rings, but there's no such dedication to the orcs.

OK, now I don't go all the way with the writer - Tolkien was writing an 'epic romance' not reportage. I think he fails to appreciate Tolkien's art, & insults his work unnecessarily... but I don't think he's completely wrong. A very real, vital aspect of war is absent from Tolkien's war epic, & I certainly think its valid to ask why that's so, & what that means.

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

Originally Posted by davem

OK, now I don't go all the way with the writer - Tolkien was writing an 'epic romance' not reportage. I think he fails to appreciate Tolkien's art, & insults his work unnecessarily... but I don't think he's completely wrong. A very real, vital aspect of war is absent from Tolkien's war epic, & I certainly think its valid to ask why that's so, & what that means.

Hmm, didn't you just say that Tolkien was writing an epic romance, not a war epic? That, perhaps, is why something about war is "missing" from Tolkien's work, I think: he's not really writing about war. He's writing about a changing world, about the growing pains of a world shifting from one in which "magic" is real to one in which it is only a memory, and a fading memory at that. The world of Men will not be without its own achievements, but the Art he so often associates with the Elves will not be of such a high degree; if I recall correctly, Faramir acknowledges this in his talks with Frodo, saying that the Men of Gondor have become more like the lesser Men of Rohan, and have lost much of their knowledge and skills that once made them the greatest of Men. I do think that the ravages of war upon the land made a great impression on Tolkien, and this comes across clearly in his writing. His experience with the human suffering it entailed may have been too personal for him to communicate effectively (or in a manner which would have felt appropriate to him). We do see some of it in the suffering of Frodo, and the changes wrought on the other Hobbits of the company, and as someone recovering from PSTD, I find it quite sufficient. Others will not, obviously. To each their own.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Ibrîniðilpathânezel

Hmm, didn't you just say that Tolkien was writing an epic romance, not a war epic? That, perhaps, is why something about war is "missing" from Tolkien's work, I think: he's not really writing about war. He's writing about a changing world, about the growing pains of a world shifting from one in which "magic" is real to one in which it is only a memory, and a fading memory at that. T.

No - he is writing about war. He's just not writing about it realistically. People die on the field, but they don't really die. Like in those old westerns, when shot they grab their chests & fall over stone dead, quickly & cleanly. They end up dead - & the tragedy of that is plain for all to read; the loss felt by those who survive them is undoubted - they just don't DIE an ugly, animal death to get there, & anyone who has read any mistory of war knows that that's how people did die in battle.

Tolkien wrote about a war, about battles, about killing. He wrote a novel about death in which no-one really dies - they just get dead.

[Rumil]

Hi all,

Davem, mst say that in some aspects I do agree with you, while inclining to your 'opposition' in others. As I've not entirely sorted the 'whys and wherefores' in my own head, I'll confine myself to nitpicking the article you quoted.

Nobody in the hobbit fellowship displays cowardice under fire

Though the soldiers of Minas Tirith do

nobody goes mad in the heat of battle

Eomer gets rather carried away at the Pelennor

The warriors don't get bored or irritable or horny on their long journey to Mordor

Who knows? Practically nothing is said of the warriors on their journey to Mordor!

at the climax before the Black Gate of Mordor, when our heroes make a useless, suicidal charge against a fixed position

No they don't, they defend the 2 ash hills

nobody suggests, even as a theoretical possibility, that their noble commanders might be fools

though the Rohirrim come pretty close to it on the way to Helm's Deep

Nobody in the hobbit fellowship displays cowardice under fire; nobody ever accidentally kills somebody on his own side; nobody goes mad in the heat of battle. The warriors don't get bored or irritable or horny on their long journey to Mordor; not even the studly Aragorn ever sneaks away from camp at night to look for the nearest elf bordello. The few people in the book who oppose the war invariably turn out to be under the malign influence of Sauron. Even at the climax before the Black Gate of Mordor, when our heroes make a useless, suicidal charge against a fixed position (as tended to happen quite often on the western front), nobody suggests, even as a theoretical possibility, that their noble commanders might be fools.

All of these happen (in 1st Age context) with Turin and his pals

[LadyBrooke]

Okay I think I understand what you’re saying now davem and will try to address what you’re asking. Do I think that Tolkien avoided the horror of war, should he have avoided that aspect, and does it leave out something of vital importance?

Well, in LotR and TH I do think that something of the true horror of war is missing, aspects we can see quite clearly in CoH and Sil. Pondering why this is I was reminded of something that one of my great-uncles once said. He said that the horror was something that could not be described by him because it was something that was such a personal part of him that he could not lay it bare before other people. At the same time though he wrote it all down but he kept it locked in a safe because he didn’t want others to see it. Perhaps this is part of the reason why LotR and TH are so sterilized. It is very hard to publish something dealing with a personal piece of you even if it is a fictionalized account.

Also some people deal with stress and grief in different ways and perhaps the nice warfare of LotR and the horrors of the Sil and CoH are simply the different ways that Tolkien dealt with his memories. I cannot remember where I read it, but wasn’t LotR’s writing difficult for Tolkien during WWII. Perhaps this is because he had to face the reality of war again as his sons were fighting and he couldn’t ignore it in his writings.

Now for the second part of the question, should he have avoided that aspect? I am a big supporter of the thought that a writer’s principle responsibility is to write what is right for that writer. It would be easy to say yes or no, but in the end I don’t think it would have been LotR if he had changed that aspect of it, and more importantly it wouldn’t have been the story he wanted to tell. So in the end I have to say that he did what was right for him.

Finally, I don’t know. I think even if he had included the most horrific elements of war he could have imagined it wouldn’t have rivaled the reality of war in our present time because there are no machine guns or gas chambers in ME. Therefore did he leave out something of vital importance? I can’t answer that question. If we say that he did, where does the buck stop? Do we start going after every book for not having a realistic view of war? Do we go after Shakespeare for misrepresenting historical events? Nancy Drew for not being true to the Great Depression? s it leave out something of vital importance?

[Morthoron]

davem,
The reviewer is, of course, correct on some points; however, he loses his moral high ground by being utterly ignorant of the original story, and even of PJ Jackson's intent for the movies.

The Lord of the Rings is essentially a recasting of the war into an emotionally bearable form. Everything that made the war such a psychic torment is carefully contained, or eliminated from Middle Earth altogether. Nobody in the hobbit fellowship displays cowardice under fire; nobody ever accidentally kills somebody on his own side; nobody goes mad in the heat of battle. The warriors don't get bored or irritable or horny on their long journey to Mordor; not even the studly Aragorn ever sneaks away from camp at night to look for the nearest elf bordello. The few people in the book who oppose the war invariably turn out to be under the malign influence of Sauron. Even at the climax before the Black Gate of Mordor, when our heroes make a useless, suicidal charge against a fixed position (as tended to happen quite often on the western front), nobody suggests, even as a theoretical possibility, that their noble commanders might be fools.

Does Aragorn being horny for someone other than Arwen make the movie better? Does getting the clap from a bar wench in Edoras somehow enrich the story, and what other more important item needed to be edited out to make way for yet another secondary storyline in a tale already overflowing with separate storylines? Do you think Tolkien got into someone's pants in France, ignoring the fact that Edith was waiting for him back home? Would he ignore his Catholicism for a cheap night out?

Nobody in the Fellowship displays cowardice? I would suggest the Fellowship was chosen precisely because they could overcome fear. They all display doubts and fears at times, but they move ahead in spite of them, just as millions of other soldiers have over the centuries. Cowardice in a disciplined army is an anomaly, not the rule, and those that flee are branded for life.

As someone already pointed out, Aragorn's army at the Black Gate defends two hills, not as Jackson portrayed the charge in the movie; however, what does it matter that they defended hills or attacked head on? It was a suicide mission, a tactical means of buying time for the real mission to succeed. They knew they were outnumbered, and they knew they had no chance of winning. I would suggest the only fool in this instance is the reviewer, who just doesn't get it.

It's an adolescent view of war, which is one reason the book tends to take adolescent readers by storm. You can see it reflected in every frame of the movie's battle scenes, which are teenage daydreams to the highest power, spiffy and dry-cleaned and sparklingly pretty, the best video games ever. The on-screen body count may be higher than Saving Private Ryan and Dawn of the Dead combined, but when the camera swoops and dives and soars over the swarming chaos of the virtual battlefield, somehow it never catches a glimpse of anybody writhing gracelessly in agony or sloppily bleeding to death. No wonder the movie copped only a PG-13 rating for its "epic battle scenes." "Epic" evidently means "wholly unreal." It's not true violence; it's barely even movie violence. It's just a million orcs blowing up real good, the way orcs are supposed to.

Again, would the movie had been better if it received an R rating? How about going all the way and just making it X rated, with Saturnalian Rohirrim copulating wildly with their horses and dwarves bumping stubbies, while orcs eat the brains of children as they quiver with still beating hearts? Does that somehow make the movie (or the book, for that matter) better? The reviewer in his blithe inanity wishes to restrict the viewing of the movie to adults, and not just ordinary adults, but those who relish burst craniums and spewing disembowlments (and whore houses on a weekend furlough). The enduring legacy of Lord of the Rings is that it can be read by children and adults, and enjoyed by a wide spectrum of readers. Why pick on just Lord of the Rings? How about the utter lack of graphic violence in Star Wars? Or the Narnia Chronicles? Or the Wizard of Oz, for that matter? I want to see the crushed body of the Wicked Witch of the East pulled in fleshy shreds from under Dorothy's house!

Originally Posted by davem

people in the story, however badly wounded, don't 'vomit the filth of their entrails' on the earth but the earth itself does.

OK, now I don't go all the way with the writer - Tolkien was writing an 'epic romance' not reportage. I think he fails to appreciate Tolkien's art, & insults his work unnecessarily... but I don't think he's completely wrong. A very real, vital aspect of war is absent from Tolkien's war epic, & I certainly think its valid to ask why that's so, & what that means.

Bottom line, if it contained the type of graphic realism you are asserting is necessary, I most likely would not have been allowed to read it in grade school because it would not have been allowed in the library, and a fundemental part of my literary experience would have been witheld. My daughter would not be allowed to read it, nor could she watch the movie with me, and an endearing part of the bond we share would be utterly lost.

I'll take the fantasy over the disembowelments.