Fantasy

[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?