Fantasy

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

...We know Tolkien was capable of describing horrors without going OTT but also without simply glossing over them, and that included describing what happened in battles and skirmishes. He writes about them in other works, but why not in Lord of the Rings?

Actually, what might help here (I'll put my teacher head on now) is to look closely at the most significant part of the text for details of what actually happened on Pelennor, so here it is for your enjoyment:

Isn't the text you referenced the perfect example of an Anglo-Saxon elegaic verse? As I said before, Tolkien is offering a tale of Faery (or in this case, a legendary war if you prefer) in its classical form, presented as it would be heard by those in mourning of their battle-slain kin or for later generations as sung by bard or minstrel.

As far as Lord of the Rings being approached differently than Tolkien's other works (like the Silmarillion), with nothing further to go on but my own intuition, I believe LotR was written in its certain style because it was, after all, initially a sequel to The Hobbit, as required by his publishers. Tolkien, of course, pushed the envelope in his own inimitable manner, and forced integral elements of his own beloved mythology (The Sil) into LotR so that the story fell in line with the older chronology of Middle-earth without sacrificing the cute, little Hobbits his publisher was clamoring for (I can see Unwin now: "But dash it all, John Ronald, the hobbits...where are the blasted Hobbits?").

Hmmm...but it seems I've lost my train of thought, or where I was going with this, but as The Hobbit was a children's book, and whereas LotR is less so, it is still within the realm of being read to children without requiring censors and expletive deletions, and there are clear-cut villains (and heinous traitors who get their deserved comeuppance) who do nasty things, and noble heroes who are above reproach (or at least repent of their folly 'ere the end). Black and White with very little Gray (as we argued about a year or so ago) -- this is the make-up of Faery as Tolkien sees it, or at least as he presents it in LotR; whereas, things are not so black and white in The Sil (in fact, good guys are often the bad guys as well in the 1st Age, selfish and even Oedipal), which is a much more scholary and adult read than either The Hobbit of LotR.

[davem]

We recently got around to a similar discussion on another board, & I wanted to maybe take up the ideas here, This is part of a post I made there, regarding Tolkien's depiction of the suffering & death of the Land, as opposed to people..

Those are just examples - we all know the chapter, & the repeated emphasis on the damage done by Sharkey's ruffians. We also know what happens when the four companions return:

What's interesting is Sam's response:

The damage done to the Shire gets paragraph after paragraph. The destruction is described in graphic detail. The death of the 19 Hobbits gets a sentence & no account of how they died, whether quickly or slowly, in pain or not. Their burial gets another sentence. Then there's no further mention of them. The 'important' thing is the healing of the Shire, replacing the trees & putting right the damage to the land.

The 'culmination' of the chapter could have been the burial & the ceremony, & it would have been both beautiful & moving & brought home the central theme of the book - loss, & the inevitability of death. Instead what we get is a chapter that deals with the destruction & healing of the natural world .....,( oh, & by the way a few Hobbits got killed in the process, but let's not get sidetracked by trivialities....). Even our beloved Sam grieves over the loss of the trees more than anything else.....er..more than anything else - more than the fact that 19 innocent Hobbits gave their lives to save the Shire??

Again, the emphasis is on the destruction of the natural world, the pain & necessity of healing, Arda.

I've focussed there on the descriptions of the suffering of the Shire, but the depictions of the suffering & death of the land of Mordor is even more graphic & sickening. Why is Tolkien's hand freer when he is depicting the pain & death of the land than when he is depicting the pain & death of people?

EDIT

Another aspect of the reality of war that is worth considering is the suffering of non-combatants during wartime. The women & children have been evacuated from Minas Tirith, which again means that we are spared some of the real horror of war. This from Randle Holme III (1627-99), describing the (English - yes, we also had one.....) Civil War siege of Chester in December 1645

Eleven huge granadoes like so many tumbling demi-phaetons threaten to set the city, if not the world, on fire. This was a terrible night indeed, our houses like so many split vessels crash their supporters and burst themselves in sunder through the very violence of these descending firebrands ... Another Thunder-crack invites our eyes to the most miserable spectacle that spite could possibly present us with – two houses in the Watergate skippes joint from joint and creates an earthquake ... The grandmother, mother and three children are struck stark dead and buried in the ruins of this humble edifice, a sepulchre well worth the enemy's remembrance. But for all this they are not satisfied, women and children have not blood enough to quench their fury, and therefore about midnight they shoot seven more in hope of greater execution, one of these last lights in an old man's bedchamber, almost dead with age, and sends him some few days sooner to his grave then perhaps was given him. The next day six more break in amongst us one of which persuade an old woman to beare the old man company to heaven, because the times were evill. Our ladyes all this while, likewise merchants, keepe their sellers (ie cellars) & will not venture forth in these tymes of danger

[LadyBrooke]

(This is every thought I’ve had reading the entire thread, so some of this deals with stuff from pages back. It is also very long and possibly incoherent.)

To me the greatest horror (or victim) of war is not the dead, but those who, though living, are unable to cope or recover from what they experienced. This is what struck me the most about the ending of Lord of the Rings - Frodo is unable to find healing when he goes home. And though we can hope that he does find it over the sea, is that really a happy ending? I can’t consider it one because he (and Bilbo) are separated from their friends and families. And that to me is the greatest tragedy - one that I have seen too often in real life - those who are living but at the same time not, who are still fighting the war everyday in their minds. And Tolkien shows this with Frodo.

Dealing with the issue of lung cancer and Hobbits smoking, forgive me if I’m wrong, but was it even known at the time Tolkien was writing the books that smoking could kill people. From what I recall from my last Health class that link was only discovered in the late 60s or the 70s, while the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were written/published before that - in which case it would have been impossible for Tolkien to have dealt with that issue - in the same way it would have been impossible for say Shakespeare to have predicted that one day some idiots would try to dislike “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” because they think Oberon’s use of that flower resembles a date rape drug - yes, that is what some people I have the misfortune to have to spend time with think. Also some people have mentioned that people of Tolkien’s generation and the next would have been able to comprehend the reality of war and fill in the blanks but later generations wouldn’t. And this is one reason given for why Tolkien should have filled in the details. I have to disagree, for I believe that a writer’s utmost responsibility is to write the story they like, not a story for people generations and decades later. I haven’t seen the fact that very few people can comprehend the reality of life in Greece or Medieval Britain given as a reason to not read the Iliad or the legends of King Arthur.

The fact that Tolkien doesn’t describe agonizing deaths in LotR doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. Theoden’s death for one would have been absolutely horrific - especially if the horse wasn’t instantly dead but managed to kick him before dying. A horse lying across any part of your body can crush/shatter the bones. As somebody who has owned or taken care of 7 different horses and a miniature horse in the past year and some odd months I can safely say that a terrified horse is dangerous and will hurt you even if you are their favorite person in the world. The fact that he was able to gasp out a final speech does not mean that it wasn’t horrific. There is also the Dead Marshes which show that contrary to my generations view (and here I show how young I am, that the only war I have ever seen is the Iraqi war) that soldiers’ bodies are always brought home, they aren’t. Sometimes they are left on the battlefield due to the sheer logistics of bringing them back. Sometimes they aren’t enough people left (Didn’t Tolkien say that Thraundial only brought a third of his people back?) The idea of faces staring back at me from where they fell in battle - orcs, elves, humans all mixed together - haunted me for weeks.

Also you can find examples of horrific deaths in the other books - especially the Sil with Finrod being torn to shreds by a werewolf, Morgoth trampling Fingolfin (or was it orcs and Fingon), that guy that got killed in the Paths of the Dead etc. But they too, aren’t described in deep detail - we don’t get “and Finrod’s blood was splattered all over the walls, with his one of his arms lying in the corner, blah, blah, etc. etc.,” and that is part of what sets Tolkien apart. The fact that the horror is expressed without having to be graphic about it. He doesn’t have a responsibilty to describe the horrors of war to the public. Indeed, why should the reality of war have to be described to people in fiction? I would far prefer to have it taught in the schools, where people would have to deal with the reality of it, but so far none of my history classes have really touched on it. And I think most parents would throw a fit if school books started describing the reality of war for teenagers - Even when dealing with the Holocaust and Anne Frank most of my teachers have glossed over the eventual fate of her and the others.

Hmmm.......Trying to think of bad behavior on the part of the good guys (without actually going and getting the books, which requires going to the basement which does not have a good heating system, and it is currently in the 20s) all I can think of off the top of my head is the hunting of the Drudain (is that right?) by the Rohirrim. Certainly not good behavior.

[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.

[Gwathagor]

Originally Posted by LadyBrooke

To me the greatest horror (or victim) of war is not the dead, but those who, though living, are unable to cope or recover from what they experienced. This is what struck me the most about the ending of Lord of the Rings - Frodo is unable to find healing when he goes home. And though we can hope that he does find it over the sea, is that really a happy ending? I can’t consider it one because he (and Bilbo) are separated from their friends and families. And that to me is the greatest tragedy - one that I have seen too often in real life - those who are living but at the same time not, who are still fighting the war everyday in their minds. And Tolkien shows this with Frodo.

I think that it can be considered a happy ending; Frodo made a conscious sacrifice and was content with it. And sacrifice is beautiful.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Gwathagor

I think that it can be considered a happy ending; Frodo made a conscious sacrifice and was content with it. And sacrifice is beautiful.

Unless you're the sacrifice - in which case it probably hurts. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder .

Let's look at a specific example - one main charater's reaction to an event & how that even is presented to us readers. In the battle of Bywater 19 Hobbits are killed. They are (we assume) killed by Ruffians, not by 'Friendly Fire' in the chaos (though a reading of real wartime events - say from the English Civil Wars - reveals a lot of incidents of gross stupidity, not simply from the commanders, but from idiot soldiers discharging firearms at their own side, or from prisoners held on powder wagons being given lights for their pipes & blowing themselves & surrounding soldiers to pieces... however, I digress). 'kay, so, these Hobbits are killed....how? By Ruffians with knives, whips & clubs. How do we think they actually died? Blow to the head which brings instant death? Stab through the heart which leads to painless oblivion? No - maybe one or two of them if they were very lucky, but anyone who has read up on medieval combat will know that most of those deaths would have been drawn out affairs of possibly a few hours, with lots of blood, screaming & unpleasant odours. They would, in the main, have been Hobbiton Hobbits who Sam would have known all his life... but for him the felled trees 'were the greatest loss'. This isn't simply a refusal on Tolkien's part to give us the graphic detail of how people really die in battle - its a flat refusal to acknowledge that its actually bad. If Sam is truly more devastated by the loss of the trees than the loss of the Hobbits then there's something up with Sam. The idea that the Shire could drift back to normal afterwards & only Frodo carry a burden of pain & suffering says a lot about the other Hobbits capacity for not giving a damn about the loss of their friends.

So much death happens, but it has so little longs term effect on people - the survivors hold a funeral, sing a song about the fallen, & then plant some trees. And it seems to me that we don't actually question this - Tolkien's depiction of battle is romanticised - & that is my point: there are not only two alternatives - either you do what Tolkien did, & present death in battle with a romantic, elegiac glow or you go in for a pornographic depiction of blood, snot & vomit which would sicken the majority of readers & make the book unreadable. There is a third alternative - to acknowldge the horror of actual death by not simply stating 'X dozens, hundreds or thousands lay dead' or 'X was cut down by axes '& walked never again in the flowering meads of his homeland under the evening stars' - which is a way of not writing about how X died. As I said earlier - most of the casualties in LotR don't really die, they just get dead. Alive one second, dead the next with the unpleasant transition avoided.
LotR is about death, but its not about dying - which is odd in a war novel.

But, again, as I keep getting accused of wanting slo-mo close-ups of graphic violence in the book.... why does Tolkien shy away from the depiction of dying in a book about death, is that honest, & are we, as readers, deprived of something if that aspect is left out? We've been discussing on another thread the effect of medieval weaponry - the damage that an axe will inflict over that of a sword - & we've talked about how an axe, or battle hammer doesn't have to penetrate to kill, 'cos it will still break bones & burst internal organs beneath armour with the force of impact. How many people died on the Pelennor with that kind of injury? (What did they do with the corpses btw - another thing Tolkien avoids dealing with - the casualties (apart from the main characters), having made the quick, clean, painless transition from living to dead, conveniently disappear from the text without the need for the gathering up of body parts & burial of bits.

Tolkien is omitting facts here - facts he had learned from personal experience.

(Anyway, really have to run....)

[Gwathagor]

Originally Posted by davem

Unless you're the sacrifice - in which case it probably hurts. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Of course it hurts, but that does not detract from (and maybe adds to) the beauty of willing sacrifice - which, I should add, is objective and has nothing to with the beholder.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Gwathagor

Of course it hurts, but that does not detract from (and maybe adds to) the beauty of willing sacrifice - which, I should add, is objective and has nothing to with the beholder.

Including suicide bombers?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

The duality was present in Tolkien's mind, certainly. Here is a passage he wrote shortly after his war service:

'Aye, often enough,' said Eriol, 'yet not to the great wars of the earthly kings, which are cruel and bitter, whelming all in their ruin all the beauty of the earth and of those fair things that men fashion with their hands in times of peace -- nay, they spare not sweet women and tender maids, such as thou, Veanne Melinir, for then are men drunk with wrath and the lust of blood, and Melko fares abroad. But gallant affrays have I seen wherein brave men did sometimes meet, and swift blows were dealt, and strength of body and of heart was proven.'

Again, the 'great wars' are of Melko, as the ghastly moonscape of the Western Front was transferred to Sauron: it was almost as if Tolkien envisioned war as he knew it being the enemy, and wrote of its defeat by 'gallant affrays.'

Still, it's a bit much to expect a man like Tolkien to write with mud-and-dung realism. He never describes Aragorn relieving himself behind a bush, nor does he detail the process by which Sam and Rosie produced all those children. They are to be assumed, in the same way blood and gore are to be assumed.

There is probasbly something to be mined comparing the hopelessness of the War of the Jewels, written in its essentials in the shadow of the pointless First World War, with the triumphalism of the War of the Rings, written during the Second- even bloodier than its predecessor, but a war nonetheless with a point and a purpose.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Suicide bombers? Say, rather, kamikazes, in whose willingness to die in defense of their homeland by sinking enemy ships there was a terrible beauty. One could also mention Leonidas' Spartans.

[davem]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Still, it's a bit much to expect a man like Tolkien to write with mud-and-dung realism. He never describes Aragorn relieving himself behind a bush, nor does he detail the process by which Sam and Rosie produced all those children. They are to be assumed, in the same way blood and gore are to be assumed.

But are the blood & gore to be assumed? Does Tolkien really intend us to see the shattered, hacked up bodies, the adrenalin driven attrocities commited by the 'good' guys as well as the Orcs, the 'cowardice', the 'friendly fire' incidents, the 'camp followers'? Is 'all human life' (good & bad) to be found in Middle-earth? If I assume that some Gondorian troops tortured & mutilated Easterling prisoners, or that their commanders arranged for 'cowards' to be executed at dawn, is that acceptable? I'd say not - because those things clearly did not happen in M-e, anymore than people actually 'die' instead of going rather quickly & neatly from quick to dead (unless of course they have a moving death speech to make before the end).

And that still leaves the problem of Sam's grief being greater for lost trees than for lost Hobbits.

But the question still remains 'Should Tolkien have avoided that aspect, & does the omission leave out something of vital importance?'

Tolkien decided to omit real dying in his story about death - is that something he should have done? If he honestly knew, as he did, that death in battle was a horrible, sickening thing should he not have made that clear? And by omitting it did he not miss out one of the essential points of why death is terrible - death is a terrible thing not just because it deprives the survivors of the victim's presence, but because the ending of one's life on the field is gross, agonising & generally without dignity. In fact, he did not simply omit to mention he horror of dying in battle, he created a world in which such horror is largely absent. In battle one is reduced to the state of an animal in an abattoir, hacked down & left to die in the mud. One may die for a noble cause, but the way one dies is rarely noble & on the field a dying knight & his dying horse are far more similar than many like to think. Except in Middle-earth.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

But are the blood & gore to be assumed? Does Tolkien really intend us to see the shattered, hacked up bodies,

No more than he expects us to see reeking scat emerging from Strider's fundament.

the adrenalin driven attrocities commited by the 'good' guys... Is 'all human life' (good & bad) to be found in Middle-earth? If I assume that some Gondorian troops tortured & mutilated Easterling prisoners, or that their commanders arranged for 'cowards' to be executed at dawn,

Is 'all human life' (good & bad) to be found in Middle-earth? No, actually, I don't believe so. The Thrid Age was I think palpably different from whatever Age this is, and not just because the fantasy creatures are gone.

I sometimes liken Tolkien's idea of the progress of moral evil to an ink-drop in a glass of water: at first a distinct black globule, which starts to send out streamers and tendrils until it is all dissolved- but the water is now grey. We live in the Grey Age. The War of the Ring occurred when the ink-drop and its tendrils were still coherent- Sauron and his minions- but much of the water (Elves and many Men) was still largely clear or only slightly dingy. So, no, the Men of Gondor would not commit atrocities, just as, we are told, they do not lie, "not even [to] an Orc."

I'm not sure what really would have been gained had Tolkien written some grimly relativistic work wherein both sides were all right bastards. His thesis was that the Good exists and is worth defending, which remains true today as it did in the Forties- even though we know that the Allies didn't "set out with all unspotted soldiers." After all, his theory of Recovery is a process of viewing the world through a different prism.

[davem]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

No more than he expects us to see reeking scat emerging from Strider's fundament.

But were the broken, hacked up bodies actually there?Did people actualy DIE, or did they just get nicely DEAD.

I'm not sure what really would have been gained had Tolkien written some grimly relativistic work wherein both sides were all right bastards. His thesis was that the Good exists and is worth defending, which remains true today as it did in the Forties- even though we know that the Allies didn't "set out with all unspotted soldiers." After all, his theory of Recovery is a process of viewing the world through a different prism.

In WWI there were decent Germans - ordinary young men who fought bravely & died horribly - it wasn't a case of good allies & evil Huns. Same applies in WWII. Yet in M-e the enemy are uniformly evil & can be dispatched with impunity. We never feel the tragedy of war - the waste of life on both sides (apart from Sam's moment of questioning in Ithilien - Sam wonders if the young man is truly evil, but for all we know he might have been. Sam's questioning shows us Sam's humanity, but we never see any 'humanity' among the enemy. And if we had we wouldn't have the story we have. If we got to know the Easterlings or Southrons as people we wouldn't have been able to tolerate their easy slaughter.

So, the 'truth' about how people die in battle, what human beings do to each other on the field, is absent. Should it be? Its an omission, but do we lose or gain by that omission? To repeat my earlier point:

there are not only two alternatives - either you do what Tolkien did, & present death in battle with a romantic, elegiac glow or you go in for a pornographic depiction of blood, snot & vomit which would sicken the majority of readers & make the book unreadable. There is a third alternative - to acknowldge the horror of actual death by not simply stating 'X dozens, hundreds or thousands lay dead' or 'X was cut down by axes '& walked never again in the flowering meads of his homeland under the evening stars' - which is a way of not writing about how X died. As I said earlier - most of the casualties in LotR don't really die, they just get dead. Alive one second, dead the next with the unpleasant transition avoided.
LotR is about death, but its not about dying - which is odd in a war novel.

[obloquy]

Originally Posted by davem

But were the broken, hacked up bodies actually there?Did people actualy DIE, or did they just get nicely DEAD.

There's no reason to assume some kind of magic prevented the mutilation of bodies slain with the cruel weapons of the age. Therefore, that death happened in a real way seems patent enough, and Tolkien's refrainment is perhaps to do with this presumption.

So, the 'truth' about how people die in battle, what human beings do to each other on the field, is absent. Should it be? Its an omission, but do we lose or gain by that omission? To repeat my earlier point:

Yes, it should be absent. In part because what is happening in Middle-earth is largely NOT what "human beings do to each other," but rather what humans and orcs do to each other. Orcs are manifestly evil, intended to be strictly unsympathetic. One might argue that what orcs do to humans (or more broadly what any warring humanoids do to one another) might be relevant. But really, it seems pretty clear that Tolkien's purpose was decidedly not to illuminate these grisly truths, for those reasons you have yourself beaten to death. Perhaps one reason that Tolkien refuses to embrace an allegorical reading of his story is exactly your point: any correlation of LotR's conflicts to the wars of the 20th century would be dishonest and dehumanizing.

[davem]

Originally Posted by obloquy

There's no reason to assume some kind of magic prevented the mutilation of bodies slain with the cruel weapons of the age. Therefore, that death happened in a real way seems patent enough, and Tolkien's refrainment is perhaps to do with this presumption.

Nope. There is a very important reason to assume the mutilation of bodies with the cruel weapons of the age was absent- Tolkien created Middle-earth & it only contains what Tolkien included. Tolkien did not include the horrors of dying in battle. People don't die horribly, even when 'pierced by many arrows' or having a full size horse dumped on top of them. The most horrific death in LotR (Denethor's) can be dismissed (comfortably) as being his own fault. Why do we assume the reader will 'assume' that people will die in M-e in the same way as some poor bugger at Agincourt, Towton, Kineton Fight or the Somme? I didn't. My 'assumptions' of how people died in those battles was actually shaped by movies like Olivier's Henry V, or Knights of the Round Table & to an extent also by reading Tolkien . It was only when I began reading up on military history that I began to see what was absent in Tolkien's depictions of battle - & that was exactly the kind of thing I've brought up in this discussion.

Yes, it should be absent. In part because what is happening in Middle-earth is largely NOT what "human beings do to each other," but rather what humans and orcs do to each other.

Except that Hillmen, Eastgerlings & Southrons are also involved. So this is about what humans do to other humans - its just that Tolkien avoids dealing with it.

Orcs are manifestly evil, intended to be strictly unsympathetic. One might argue that what orcs do to humans (or more broadly what any warring humanoids do to one another) might be relevant.

Which is what I have been arguing. By offering us an unsympathetic foe Tolkien is able to have his heroes kill thousands of them with impunity & never suffer the inconvenience of having to ask if what they're doing is right, face the possiblity that they have 'sinned', or, most importantly in this context, show them any respect.

Perhaps one reason that Tolkien refuses to embrace an allegorical reading of his story is exactly your point: any correlation of LotR's conflicts to the wars of the 20th century would be dishonest and dehumanizing.

This is not about allegorising. Its about reality (or 'secondary reality'). Its also about what readers take from the story. Now, one can decide 'Its just a fantasy, pure escapism. It means nothing at all & has no value beyond a few hours entertainment.' But... if one does take that approach then one, surely, must treat the whole book that way - the beauty of the natural world, the self-sacrifice of Frodo, the depiction of the corrupting effect of desire for power & control - none of that, or even the incredible feat of imagination behind it all - all just escapism & without any relevance to the reader beyond escaping the harsh realities of the real world for a bit.

The point is - everything else is there, except the reality of how people die in battle, which is skipped over. They're alive, they're dead, & the corpses (with their neat, tidy & instantly & painlessly mortal wounds) nicely disappear to save the survivors the sordid necessity of shovelling up the body parts & heaving the hundreds of thousands of bits into a mass grave. Then the survivors can get on with composing a nice elegy & replacing the trees with a clear conscience. Middle-earth is the most beautifully, perfectly created secondary world, Tolkien's prose touches perfection in many parts of LotR & his vision, his understanding of the human condition is profound. His meditations on the nature of mortality against immortality provide some of the most thought provoking moments in the whole of literature.

But his battle scenes are all fake. There, & only there, does he descend into an Edwardian, Boy's Own, vision of knights in shining armour, of derring do on the battlefield, of Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori & in Tolkien it is sweet & glorious to die on the field - because death on the field is quick & painless, free from suffering.

[obloquy]

I submit that the problem lies entirely with you.

[davem]

Originally Posted by obloquy

I submit that the problem lies entirely with you.

That's certainly a detailed refutation of all my points. I clearly can't argue with such a cogently argued response........

[LadyBrooke]

Gwathagor, I can’t consider it a happy ending because to me a happy ending would have necessitated the entire Fellowship surviving and being happy. Obviously that’s not what happens. Aragorn gets Arwen, but she never gets to see her family (save perhaps Celeborn and the twins) again; Boromir is dead, his father goes insane and tries to burn his brother to death; Legolas gets the sea longing and has to sail, most likely leaving his father behind; Frodo has to sail leaving his friends and family. Sacrifice isn’t happy to me, it is tragic that sacrifice is ever neccesary.

Oh dear, it appears I’m not expressing my self clearly enough, davem, if you still think that I think that you advocate graphic violence. I don’t, and agree with you that Tolkien could have expressed more of the reality of war without having to go into graphic detail. What I think you do believe (and please correct me if I’m wrong) is that it is Tolkien’s responsibility to show the reality of war in his books because otherwise people might get the wrong view of war. I have to disagree you that it is his responsibility (and I am probably biased as a writer and artist) because I believe that a writer’s utmost responsibility is to write the story that they want.

In the same way I don’t read fairy tales and expect my love life to end up like a fairy tale princess, Narnia and expect my closet to contain a portal to another world, or Shakespeare and expect everybody to start talking in poetic meter, I don’t read LotR and expect a realistic view of war.

Even the most fantastic of books can teach us something - without having to be realistic to our own world. And truthfully, for my own generation, I am glad that there are books like LotR to stand contrary to such things as Grand Theft Auto and the massive shoot out battles that seem to be in every other movie or video game.

[littlemanpoet]

Original question:

is it right, or acceptable, to demand that Fantasy shouldn't explore certain ideas - if those ideas challenge, or attack, certain values or beliefs?

It seems to me that the reverse of this question ought to be posed as well:
Is it right or acceptable to demand that Fantasy ought to explore certain ideas - if those ideas harmonize with contemporary values --- such as the horrors, cruelties, and brutality of war?

Good Fantasy convinces, bad Fantasy doesn't. But bad Fantasy isn't a 'threat' to Churches or political regimes, or to anyone's personal beliefs - because bad fantasy doesn't convince: it feels fake. Only good fantasy is a threat - because it does convince - of its 'reality', the possibility that a world like that is possible (if only logically possible).

Perhaps it would be more useful to say that good fantasy doesn't descend into polemics and bad fantasy might. Pullman breaks his own spell with polemics. So to my mind, fantasy is not the prolbem people think it is, except to the weakminded who want to be told what to accept and reject without having to think for themselves.

Does good fantasy have to be rooted in reality to work?

Fantasy cannot help but be rooted in reality. It's still a sun whether green or yellow or beige. So the question becomes, "How rooted in reality must a fantasy work be to work as believable (legitimate) fantasy?" Do the author's causes follow to believable results?

Of course, it could be (and has been) argued that Tolkien didn't write fantasy at all, but a romance, as he said himself.

Well, Tolkien's depiction of fantasy eschewed an explicit depiction of Evil.

It depends on what you mean. The banality of orcs is pretty graphically conveyed. The potency of the witch king and the evil of the Morgul valley come across powerfully. Perhaps what is meant here is the degree of explicitness; which is, of course, the author's prerogative.

But it still leaves us with evil & ugliness of war being presented as, if not 'good' at least glorious...

Every author makes choices. Tolkien chose to imply rather than rake through the squalor of it. Why desire the squalor?

Tolkien was not against war. Meriadoc's answer to Frodo in the Scouring of the Shire shows that. A war to defend home and community was not merely legitimate but virtuous; not to defend is to succumb to cowardice.

Tolkien's 'sin' is not that he fails to depict violent death in a graphic way - its that he goes to the other extreme & shows it as too clean & neat.

This is a demand for Tolkien to do in regard to war what Edmund Wilson demanded regarding sex. To show the horror, cruelty, and brutality of war, was not Tolkien's point.

In the end, Tolkien really doesn't need an excuse for his choices.

[davem]

Originally Posted by LadyBrooke

What I think you do believe (and please correct me if I’m wrong) is that it is Tolkien’s responsibility to show the reality of war in his books because otherwise people might get the wrong view of war. I have to disagree you that it is his responsibility (and I am probably biased as a writer and artist) because I believe that a writer’s utmost responsibility is to write the story that they want.

Well, I'm just asking whether he should show the reality of war, & not so much whether people might get the 'wrong' view of war, but what kind of view of war they're being given, & why Tolkien chose to present war in that way. If Tolkien chose to depict war in one way rather than another why did he make that choice, & how does that affect the reader's perception of war? Do we gain something by having war & death in battle presented in Tolkien's 'romantic/elegiac' way, & if we do gain something by it what is that, & is what we gain good or bad? Do we lose something, & equally, is what we lose good or bad?

To expand the question I could ask, what was Tolkien's attitude to war, & did the way he presented it in LotR reflect his true feelings about it. Some have suggested that he was as 'graphic' & realistic in his depiction as the times (1940's) allowed in a novel, or as the genre he was writing in (epic romance) allowed. But is that true - is that the only reason for his choice? Does fantasy give carte blanche to an author? We've all seen the regular attacks on LotR that it is 'racist' - let's say it was blatantly racist, would the justification that 'Its fantasy' be acceptable? I'd say not (personal opinion).

I don’t read LotR and expect a realistic view of war.

But do you expect an unrealistic view of it?.

[davem]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

Every author makes choices. Tolkien chose to imply rather than rake through the squalor of it. Why desire the squalor?

.

Because the squalor is true - just as much as the honour, glory & self-sacrifice - & none of those are merely 'implied'

[Gwathagor]

You can't expect an author to include everything just because it's true. At what point is there enough detail? The author is always going to leave SOMETHING out, regardless of how hard he tries to be totally "realistic." So, what is included is determined by the themes of the story. Tolkien chose to focus on some of the nobler aspects of war and left the nastier stuff up to our imaginations. Both are equally real and legitimate subjects.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Gwathagor

Tolkien chose to focus on some of the nobler aspects of war and left the nastier stuff up to our imaginations. Both are equally real and legitimate subjects.

But I'm asking why Tolkien made the choice he did, what effect that has on his readers & what if anything would have been different if he had made the other choice - as well as whether his choice was legitimate.

Oh, another point - where are the crippled, maimed & blinded veterans in LotR?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by davem

But I'm asking why Tolkien made the choice he did, what effect that has on his readers & what if anything would have been different if he had made the other choice - as well as whether his choice was legitimate.

Just chiming in - as for the second question: Of course his choice was legitimate. He is the author. His choice is always legitimate. And obviously, he made this choice - he wanted the narration to look in a certain way. G. Orwell wrote his 1984 with the intention to seem dystopian, and so it was. H.P. Lovecraft wrote his Call of Cthulhu in order to be terrifying, he felt no need to include the mundane way the world goes. Both were coming from some realistic background in the first place, but just to underline their main points: the impression they intended to give to the reader. So did Tolkien. He did not want his reader to see massacred hundreds of bodies. It simply did not fit his concept. People who read what he wrote have the right to pick these books just because it fits their taste. Somebody who does not like Orwell or Lovecraft, feeling them too pessimistic or frigtening or generally discomforting, can pick something else. Somebody who would think Tolkien lacks something important, can pick something else. There are enough authors (and not necessarily just belles-lettres) who portray the war far more "realistically".

It is the same as asking if, in a children's tale of Little Red Riding Hood, the author is legitimate not to include the fact that somebody eaten by a wolf won't probably look very good after climbing out of somebody's stomach, not to speak of the poor beast itself.

Fantasy is fantasy mainly just because it is not that tightly bound by reality, and in contrary to other genres of literature, the author is not only allowed to, but one can almost say, expected to make up things on his own. Any book you write is biased by your point of view anyway, even if you tried to be super-realistic: even if you were writing a book about some real historical event, with the perfect historical circumstances and all, you will be putting some of your own personality into it. And as an author, you are expected to! (And speaking of that, even if you were a historian writing a history book, you will do that, however hard you tried to be objective. But that's another thing.)

As for what we gain (a reply to a question davem posted a few posts ago): It always depends on a reader anyway in which way he reacts to the book. Of course this one book he reads is not the only one book in the world, so the views presented by it are not crucial to one's reception of reality. Somebody just wants to relax and not think about the real war-slaughter at all, so he grabs Tolkien instead of something else.

If you ask, does not one get too idealistic/heroic/whatever view of war from the books? Perhaps, or I would rather say, if he already has one, it won't break it for him. But that's all it will do. So, it won't influence his point of view, in my opinion: it will just keep it steady on where it is. (For I don't think a person who knows about the blinded veterans and whatnot would be suddenly convinced, after reading LotR, that they don't exist.)

P.S. I admit I haven't been following the whole discussion... so apologies if I am not quite "up to date" or reacting from some "out-of-topic" perspective... just been reading this and decided to, erm, *looks up at the not exactly short post* chime in...

[obloquy]

Originally Posted by davem

That's certainly a detailed refutation of all my points. I clearly can't argue with such a cogently argued response........

What points?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

Just chiming in - as for the second question: Of course his choice was legitimate. He is the author. His choice is always legitimate.

And if the book was a racist fantasy which presented non-whites as subhuman would that also be legitimate? Is any kind of presentation of any kind of subject legitimate, or are there certain limits, certain requirements - & are those requirements merely temporal/societal?

Fantasy is fantasy mainly just because it is not that tightly bound by reality, and in contrary to other genres of literature, the author is not only allowed to, but one can almost say, expected to make up things on his own.

Ok....let's say that in LotR as it is Tolkien was to introduce a scene in which Gimli struck Sam on the head with his axe, with all his strength, & Sam simply laughed it off & the narrator added the wry comment 'Sam was known in Hobbiton for his thick skull'. No other explanation - no hidden mithril cap or magical protection supplied by Gandalf - would we accept that, or would it break the spell? I'd suggest it would do exactly that, because Tolkien has carefully set out the rules of his world & in that world a Hobbit's skull is not harder than an Orc's. If Gimli's ability to dispatch an Orc with a single blow of his axe is to be accepted then the same kind of blow cannot be allowed to simply disturb a couple of hairs on a Hobbit's head.

Do people in M-e die in the same way as people in the primary world? Do they survive war blinded & maimed? Do their body parts have to be gathered up for disposal? Does that aspect of war exist in M-e or does it not? My suggested answer would be 'Not for every reader'. Some readers will assume those things & 'see' them as they read the story, but other readers won't. Some will deny the existence of those things in M-e, & someone suggests they 'must have happened even if Tolkien doesn't mention them specifically' they will state very clearly 'No they didn't, because Tolkien was writing a tale 'purged of the gross' - the blood, vomit & excrement, the howling of the dying, all the unpleasant aspect of war didn't happen in M-e.

And yet, from many of the 'opposing' posts there seems to be a belief that that kind of thing did occur - its just 'implied' by Tolkien, implied subtly enough that those who want to ignore it can do so.....yet, if they acknowledge its existence (however obliquely it appears) why do they only feel comfortable if it can be safely ignored? If it happened why do they not want to know about it? Is it not as 'real' as the stars above the northern mists or the golden hair of Galadriel?

Originally Posted by obloquy

What Points?

Ok...if you read back through the posts by other people which contain quotes from me in little boxes, which are followed by responses to those quotes, well, those boxed quotes are the points I'm making. Apologies for any confusion.

[Pitchwife]

Before I come to davem's central question, I'd like to address two not-quite-so-central points that came up during the course of this discussion.

1. The matter of Sam and the trees. I think this needs to be considered in its original context. The passage you're referring to (at the beginning of The Grey Havens) deals with Sam being busy repairing the damages done to the Shire by Sharkey and his ruffians - such as tearing down the new Shirriff-houses, restoring Bagshot Row etc. To me it's quite clear that the trees were the worst loss and damage only as far as this kind of (reparable) devastation is concerned, and I don't think we're justified in concluding from this that Sam cared more for felled trees than he did for slain hobbits. True, we're not told about his feelings for the victims of the battle of Bywater, and you might argue that this is a flaw. On the other hand, the hobbits at least had a choice and a chance to defend themselves, while trees (outside of Fangorn and maybe the Old Forest) had not.

2.

By offering us an unsympathetic foe Tolkien is able to have his heroes kill thousands of them with impunity & never suffer the inconvenience of having to ask if what they're doing is right, face the possiblity that they have 'sinned', or, most importantly in this context, show them any respect.

Gandalf in The Siege of Gondor to Denethor:

And for me, I pity even his [=Sauron's] slaves.

And Faramir, Gandalf's pupil, in The Window on the West:

I would not snare even an orc with a falsehood.

Also, there is the matter of Éomer dismounting and fighting Uglúk sword to sword at the edge of Fangorn, which has been interpreted on another thread as E. recognizing and honouring valour even in an Orc. Spare hints, but worth considering.
The point, as I see it, is that the heroes of LotR had war forced upon them. The Orcs and other slaves of Sauron's were there, they were attacking the free peoples, and assuming as a given that they were not to be parleyed with (being driven by Sauron's malice), they had to be fought - which doesn't mean that at least some of our heroes (such as Gandalf and those educated by him) didn't regret the necessary killing.

Now to the central question: Should Tolkien have depicted the gruesome side of war more realistically, and how does his failure to do so shape our attitude towards war?
Speaking from personal experience, davem, I have to say that during my first (and second, and third, and probably fourth) reading of LotR, I read the battle scenes very much like you did - sanitized heroicism. Oddly, however, I didn't get the idea from them that war was something good and glorious (actually, I was busy demonstrating for nuclear disarmament and protesting against Pershing-II's at the time). I guess what impressed me most was the fact that it wasn't heroic deeds on the battlefield that won the War of the Ring and saved the world but the sacrifice of a single unarmed hobbit - showing that valour and bravery are not confined to the context of actual warfare.
I think a big part of the problem is inherited from the classic heroic literature that Tolkien was trying to emulate. As far as I remember, we don't see much gore and squalor in the Iliad or the Nibelungenlied, either. The problem, to me, seems to be that T tried to write an epic romance, but in the form of a novel that would appeal to mid or late 20th century readers. Obviously he succeeded to a considerable degree (or we wouldn't be here discussing this), but it may be debatable whether he succeeded completely.
Some modern (=post-Tolkien) fantasy writers have tried to improve on LotR in their depiction of battle-scenes, and I think it's worth the attempt. Robert Jordan, for instance (whatever may be said against him), does a good job at this (as you might expect from a Vietnam veteran), not neglecting the psychological impact of war on his characters, either. (If there are any RJ readers here, I'm thinking of the 'reaction shot' from Perrin's perspective after the battle of Dumai's Wells at the beginning of A Crown of Swords, among many others.) On the other hand, one of my issues with RJ is that while we're getting a fair impression of what his heroes are fighting against, he's not so good at showing us what they are fighting for - no Lothlorien, no White Tower of Ecthelion, no Rivendell, no Tom Bombadil & Goldberry, not even the homely comfort of hobbit life in the Shire.
Which makes me think - maybe Tolkien refused to wallow in the mire of realistic battle-scenes because he felt they would detract from or weaken the impression of the good that was more important to him to describe. On the other hand, the contrast might have made the beauty & glory of Middle-Earth more poignant. But I think it would have been an incredible feat to get both sides right, and maybe we'll just have to accept that our Professor, however much we may admire his achievement, had his limitations as a writer, just like anybody else.

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

Tolkien may not have gone on at length describing mutilation and the human atrocities of war, but he certainly did not utterly ignore them. To me, one of the most horrific passages of LotR is in "The Siege of Gondor":

Then among the greater casts there fell another hail, less ruinous but more horrible. All about the streets and lanes behind the Gate it tumbled down, small round shot that did not burn. But when men ran to learn what it might be, they cried aloud or wept. For the enemy was flinging into the City all the heads of those who had fallen fighting at Osgiliath, or on the Rammas, or in the fields. They were grim to look on; for though some were crushed and shapeless, and some had been cruelly hewn, yet many had features that could be told, and it seemed that they had died in pain, and all were branded with the foul token of the Lidless Eye. But marred and dishonoured as they were, it often chanced that a man would see again the face of someone that he had known, who had walked proudly once in arms, or tilled the fields, or ridden in upon a holiday from the green vales in the hills.

There are in Tolkien's letters many references to his feelings about war. In #73, written to his son in June of 1944, four days after the Normandy Invasion, Christopher had apparently asked him about his own experiences of writing while serving in the military, and he replied:

As for what to try and write: I don't know. I tried a diary with portraits (some scathing some comic some commendatory) of persons and events seen; but I found it was not my line. So I took to 'escapism': or really transforming experience into another form and symbol with Morgoth and Orcs and the Eldalie (representing beauty and grace of life and artefact) and so on; and it has stood me in good stead in many hard years since and still I draw on the conceptions then hammered out.

So it would seem that rather than write a tale depicting war in realistic, grisly detail, Tolkien preferred to write about the war in a more metaphysical sense, the ongoing War between Good and Evil, in which the battles are more symbolic than representational. In fact in letter 93, written on Christmas Eve of the same year (during which Tolkien was still working on LotR), he told Christopher:

C. Williams who is reading it all says the great thing is that its centre is not strife and war and heroism (though they are understood and depicted) but in freedom, peace, ordinary life and good liking. Yet he agrees that these very things require the existence of a great world outside the Shire -- lest they should grow stale by custom and turn into the humdrum....

Another interesting comment on his attitude toward war in general came in June of the following year in letter 101:

There is a stand-down parade of Civil Defence in the Parks in the afternoon, to which I shall prob. have to drag myself. But I am afraid it all seems rather a mockery to me, for the War is not over (and the one that is, or the part of it, has largely been lost). But it is of course wrong to fall into such a mood, for Wars are always lost, and The War always goes on; and it is no good growing faint!

He does not specify, but I cannot help but think "The War" means the eternal struggle between Good and Evil, which is at the core of much of the mythology he loved. He made another intriguing remark in his next letter (102, August 1945):

The news today about 'Atomic bombs' is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men's hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope 'this will ensure peace.'

In January of 1945 (letter 96), he wrote:

The appalling destruction and misery of this war mount hourly: destruction of what should be (and indeed is) the common wealth of Europe, and the world, if mankind were not so besotted, wealth the loss of which will affect us all, victors or not. Yet people gloat to hear of the endless lines, 40 miles long, of miserable refugees, women and children pouring West, dying on the way. There seem no bowels of mercy or compassion, no imagination, left in this dark diabolical hour. By which I do not mean that it may not all, in the present situation. . . be necessary and inevitable. But why to gloat! We were supposed to have reached a state of civilization in which it might still be necessary to execute a criminal, but not to gloat, or to hang his wife and child by him while the orc-crowd hooted. The destruction of Germany, be it 100 times merited, is one of the most appalling world-catastrophes. Well, well, you and I can do nothing about it. And that shd. be a measure of the amount of guilt that can justly be assumed to attach to any member of a country who is not a member of its actual Government. Well the first War of the Machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter -- leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant: the Machines. As the servants of the Machines are becoming a privileged class, the Machines are going to be enormously more powerful. What's their next move?

I think that these remarks almost more than any other reflect why Tolkien wrote LotR as he did. Machines are not human in any sense of the word, though they may be used by humans, and the greatest destruction they wreak are not on the bodies of the slain, but in how they wreak despair upon the human heart and soul, leaching it of hope, creating a world in which morals and ethics have no place, because they are not a part of the inhuman Machine. The ruination of entire countries -- such as Mordor -- is destruction painted on an even larger canvas than those of the slain on a battlefield; its scale is mythical, rather than "realistic," and Tolkien was creating a myth. He knew the horrors of war; that he chose to write of its "real" aspects as subtext makes perfect sense given the times through which he had already lived, and the horror he had already witnessed. Sometimes, "reality" can be understood best when it is presented in a different way and in a different light that frees one from the obvious horrors to see the even greater horrors that lie beneath. Moreover, it was his authorial choice to depict the story however he wished, and whether or not a reader approves of his choice is up to the individual. There really is no right or wrong.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by davem

And if the book was a racist fantasy which presented non-whites as subhuman would that also be legitimate? Is any kind of presentation of any kind of subject legitimate, or are there certain limits, certain requirements - & are those requirements merely temporal/societal?

It would be certainly legitimate. And now before you are shocked, let me explain.

The difference is between the legitimity and legality, if we can call it this way. You are legitimate to do something as long as you were given the option and power to do so. And the author was given both. Whatever he chooses to do with it is another thing.

His, and only his choice is, whether he reveres some authority, or is aware of his responsibility; as he holds, at least particularly, a responsibility for the others who are going to read his books. My opinion is of course that he should have in mind mainly the people who are going to read what he wrote. But that is not in relation just to himself and his own ego, but to any other subjects which are around him. An egoistic writer can write anything he wishes, of course later he would face the consequences (even in a simple example, let's say if he writes a racist books and publishes them, he can be jailed. But actually, I would rather put it on the level that he should care about those who read his books - if they are harmed by it - becoming racists - that is something he should not want to do, as that's the worst way, when you can harm somebody else by your writing). If he sat at home and wrote just for himself, nobody else but him would read it, he is not going to harm anybody - except himself. (And that also means something. Although, now we could start about how his cultivating some bad habits will eventually become a strong part of his personality and will therefore influence everybody he is in contact with. But that would be probably already getting too off-topic.) But if he does not care still - it is his choice.

But, back to the original question of yours again: Do you think the need to introduce maimed and blinded veterans is a thing which a writer who is conscious of his readers should put in there? Even though the main purpose of his book is not to make them aware of all the horrors war causes?

Ok....let's say that in LotR as it is Tolkien was to introduce a scene in which Gimli struck Sam on the head with his axe, with all his strength, & Sam simply laughed it off & the narrator added the wry comment 'Sam was known in Hobbiton for his thick skull'. No other explanation - no hidden mithril cap or magical protection supplied by Gandalf - would we accept that, or would it break the spell? I'd suggest it would do exactly that, because Tolkien has carefully set out the rules of his world & in that world a Hobbit's skull is not harder than an Orc's. If Gimli's ability to dispatch an Orc with a single blow of his axe is to be accepted then the same kind of blow cannot be allowed to simply disturb a couple of hairs on a Hobbit's head.

But you say it yourself: Tolkien has set certain rules of his world, and therefore, he won't introduce the scene with Gimli hitting him and Sam merely laughing. So what's the point?

Do people in M-e die in the same way as people in the primary world? Do they survive war blinded & maimed? Do their body parts have to be gathered up for disposal? Does that aspect of war exist in M-e or does it not? My suggested answer would be 'Not for every reader'. Some readers will assume those things & 'see' them as they read the story, but other readers won't. Some will deny the existence of those things in M-e, & someone suggests they 'must have happened even if Tolkien doesn't mention them specifically' they will state very clearly 'No they didn't, because Tolkien was writing a tale 'purged of the gross' - the blood, vomit & excrement, the howling of the dying, all the unpleasant aspect of war didn't happen in M-e.

And yet, from many of the 'opposing' posts there seems to be a belief that that kind of thing did occur - its just 'implied' by Tolkien, implied subtly enough that those who want to ignore it can do so.....yet, if they acknowledge its existence (however obliquely it appears) why do they only feel comfortable if it can be safely ignored? If it happened why do they not want to know about it? Is it not as 'real' as the stars above the northern mists or the golden hair of Galadriel?

Indeed, you said it. Not for every reader. I am just reminded of my discussion with a certain 'Downer whether there are gays in Middle-Earth. Pretty much the same case, in my opinion (although, of course, this subject is not addressed by Tolkien at all).

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

Speaking from personal experience, davem, I have to say that during my first (and second, and third, and probably fourth) reading of LotR, I read the battle scenes very much like you did - sanitized heroicism. Oddly, however, I didn't get the idea from them that war was something good and glorious (actually, I was busy demonstrating for nuclear disarmament and protesting against Pershing-II's at the time).

And this is one important point I had in mind. Relatedly: It happens to me often that I read books about something, and even though the author writes about something, it does not mean I accept it! That would be a pretty bad way of doing it, wouldn't it?

Of course, it is always dangerous (cf. author's responsibility) when you write something, as many people can easily accept something without their own thinking just when they read about it. However, still, it is not only the author's intention that makes the final picture. And even if the author had the best intentions in mind, no book is foolproof, as it is also subject to the reader's interpretation.

[obloquy]

Do people in M-e die in the same way as people in the primary world? Do they survive war blinded & maimed? Do their body parts have to be gathered up for disposal? Does that aspect of war exist in M-e or does it not? My suggested answer would be 'Not for every reader'. Some readers will assume those things & 'see' them as they read the story, but other readers won't. Some will deny the existence of those things in M-e, & someone suggests they 'must have happened even if Tolkien doesn't mention them specifically' they will state very clearly 'No they didn't, because Tolkien was writing a tale 'purged of the gross' - the blood, vomit & excrement, the howling of the dying, all the unpleasant aspect of war didn't happen in M-e.

Sure, there are evidently some irrational, thoughtless people who will choose to believe there is some kind of magical prevention of grisliness in Middle-earth. But most of us will have the sense to recognize that Tolkien's characters are flesh-and-blood. Not only do they have sex, defecate, and probably pop zits, they also have their flesh torn and their bones crushed in war--and their arteries severed, and their eyes pierced by arrows, and their limbs removed from their bodies, etc. etc.

If an author writes that a character slaughtered a pig for his guests, it does not make sense for him to explicate the details (the kill, the bleeding, the gutting, the roasting, the piglets left behind) unless he is interested in making a point about the slaughter of livestock. If he does not provide these details, what simpleton would imagine that no such details took place? Similarly, just because you did not understand what happens in medieval warfare when you first read Tolkien does not mean that Tolkien's description was dishonest in any way. Of course people in Middle-earth had their intestines ripped out and died screaming and clawing at the ground. It is implied by the presence of warfare itself.

Again, the problem is your own.

[Rumil]

This debate brings me (oddly) back to the reason I disliked the A-Team (stay with me here, on-topic soon!).

OK the A-Team was all jolly good fun adventure stuff, good guys, bad guys, making AFVs out of tin cans and sticky-backed plastic, but it always rather worried me that nobody got shot. In every other scene thousands of rounds were blatted off between the protagonists, but nobody was killed or even bled a little bit. I even remember a scene where a helicopter crashed into a 300-foot cliff, blew up and smashed into the ground, then the crew got out of the wreck and staggered around slightly dazed but none the worse for their certain-death encounter.

In a series aimed at kids and teenagers in the USA, where guns are commonplace, it seemed frankly dangerous to have a show with lots of gunfights but no dire consequences.

In a way you might say the same of Tolkien's battles but there is not the same sense of immediacy. Youngsters may, in terrible cases, fool about with guns with fatal consequences, but I think few will raise an orcish army and march on their foes' citadel.

Thinking back to old films, war stories etc. from the 40s-50s period, it seems common that battle deaths are treated unrealistically. Cowboys bite the dust with nothing more than 'Ah ya got me', fighter pilots say 'Ginger got the chop old man' and move on. Did JRRT write the way he did because the mores of the times were against gruesome reality or because he wished LoTR to be 'purged of the gross', I don't know, maybe a bit of both?

Certainly he did include more realism in Turin's tale, including plenty of maimed and wounded, battle-madness and cowardice. But this he did not publish.

Tolkien's battles are usually (not, I'll agree, always) written from the Historian's lofty standpoint, featuring more of the wide overview and deeds of commanders than the mud and blood experience of the Poor Bloody Infantry. If we go 'in-book' we find that our authors (the hobbits) are mostly not involved in the fighting in the great battles. Bilbo gets knocked out, Merry probably has his eyes tight shut during the charge of the Rohirrim, then the Witch King showdown takes him out of the battle. Pippin gets squashed into unconsiousness under a troll. The Battle of Bywater is probably written by Frodo who was not involved in the fighting apart from getting the hobbits to spare the surrendering ruffians.

Therefore the battle sections are mostly what was told second-hand to the hobbits by Gandalf, Aragorn etc. I think they would not feel the need to burden the cheery halflings with the true brutality. Who's to say they'd be wrong?

[Pitchwife]

Ibrin, thanks for posting the quote about the severed heads of the slain being used as ammunition during the Siege of Gondor. I had thought of that, but neglected to include it in my post.
Another example that has come to my mind was Gelmir being hacked to pieces by the Orcs before his brother Gwindor's eyes at the beginning of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad.
Perhaps one of the reasons that warfare is described more grimly in the Silmarillion is that Silm was written in a much more distanced, 'annalistic' style than LotR. Maybe Tolkien just couldn't bear to describe his own experience of war any closer, without that filter of talking about things that happened ages ago?

obloquy, slightly (but not entirely) off-topic - an appalling number of people in our time happily consumes meat without wanting to think about having to kill a living creature and handling a bleeding carcass (not me - I've butchered chickens with my own hands). Live animals are cute, and dead animals are tasty; the transition tends to be blithely ignored. One can always choose not to see what one doesn't want to see (which probably is what most of our politicians who send people to war do). Of course people in Middle-earth had their intestines ripped out, but did we think of that when we first read LotR? If you did, good for you; I didn't.

[obloquy]

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

obloquy...Of course people in Middle-earth had their intestines ripped out, but did we think of that when we first read LotR? If you did, good for you; I didn't.

But you recognize that those things are a certainty, which is my point. I was not saying that a person naturally imagines those details when reading LotR, only that if one considers it, one recognizes that they absolutely do occur given what we know about Middle-earth.

[Morthoron]

Excellent points, Obloquoy and Rumil, but since davem is in a rather obstinate mood, I don't think it much matters what can be said that hasn't already been reiterated several times in various forms throughout this circumlocutious thread. As I reviewed this discussion, I found myself going over the literal litany of points I made previously in regard to davem's objection/supposition/query about the lack of graphic/realistic violence in Lord of the Rings. It seems none of them suffice; ergo, I will merely repost the Compleat Catalogue of Copious Counterpoints for your edification.

And so, here we have a veritable laundry lists of reasons -- culled patiently from my posts -- as to why Tolkien did not dwell on graphic violence in his most famous novel. For those who wish conciseness, here are bullet points:

1. Tolkien subscribed to a classical representation of war that precludes the gross. He offered a 'dignified' presentation of a a fierce faery epic in the medieval mold (like TH White's Once and Future King, or its precursor Le Mort D'Arthur), which purges the utterly gross from its heroes, and does not dwell on the true mayhem and obscene violence that was medieval war.

2. The time period in which Tolkien was writing precluded such graphic presentations of reality (whether in a fantasy or fictional presentation in books or movies). And it is indisputable that there was heavier censorship and higher moral codes at the time.

3. The hope attendant in Tolkien's religion precluded him from falling prey to the cynicism of many of his literary peers who survived WWI.

4. We really don't see such presentations of graphic violence in fantasy literature until the late 1960's and 1970's (like Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant), or in films of a medieval nature even later on, like Braveheart (if you remember Excalibur from the 70's, it rarely even displays any blood on those ultra-shiny metal coifs).

5. I doubt very much that Tolkien's work would find its way into grade school (or primary school) libraries if he dwelt on clumps of brains and clots of hair and sodden buttocks like Sassoon. It is the restrained nature of the presentation that allows it to be enjoyed by eight year-olds and eighty year-olds alike.

6. At least two of the most important battles (to the plot, at least) are the Battle of Five Armies and the Battle before the Black Gates. In both cases, the battles are interrupted before they get heavy (in one, Bilbo is knocked unconscious, and the other Pippin is smothered beneath a troll). The actual battle scenes are described later under much more favorable circumstances. In any case, Hobbits are purported to be the principal authors of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and therefore were not directly involved in as much combat in comparison to other main characters.

7. The plot centers on the noble heroes (even Samwise the Everyman is Jack in the Beanstalk, for all intents and purposes), and the crises and eucatastophe are fairy tale in quality (a quest, a ring, the destruction of an immortal evil, etc.). Tolkien was strident, almost vehement, that LotR was not allegorical to WWI or WWII, and for good reason. It has nothing to do with real world conflicts; rather, it has everything to do with Faery and a rousing tale on the grand scale.

8. LotR was written initially as a sequel to The Hobbit, as required by his publishers. Tolkien, of course, pushed the envelope in his own inimitable manner, and forced through integral elements of his own beloved mythology. The Hobbit was always a children's book, and whereas LotR is less so, it is still within the realm of being read to children without requiring censors and expletive deletions.

9. His prose was considered archaic in style even when it was first published (and almost alien to the bulk of fiction produced in the 40's and 50's). Such attention to classical form leads inevitably to the death speeches (Shakespeare's plays are chock full of them), the lack of viciousness and sanguineness in the noble characters (like Aragorn or Faramir), the inevitable fall of evil characters, and the many tragic heroes in Tolkien's work that follow the Greek example (Turin and Boromir as prime examples). There is nothing 'modern' in Tolkien's writing.

10. And finally, adding graphic realism to Lord of the Rings would not necessarily make it better, make it more interesting, or more endearing. Again, in order to emphasize what should be obvious, it would eliminate any preteen reader from the book's near universal demographic appeal; and thus, the element of wonder and timeless appeal of the books would be sadly diminished.

P.S. Here's another: compare Lord of the Rings to the Silmarillion. The Sil is much darker, violent and Oedipal, but it is still purged of the gross in a classical manner. Nevertheless, The Silmarillion, an early Tolkien work, was not published until 1977 when such a tale (or series of tales) could find a readership that perhaps it could not have reached had it been published prior to Lord of the Rings. In any case, Tolkien's publishers did not show much enthusiasm regarding the project. They wanted The Hobbit II, not Hurin impregnating his sister.

[Rumil]

Or as Shagrat would put it-

Come here, and I'll squeeze your eyes out, like I did to Radbug just now

I'll put red maggot holes in your belly first

Quick as a snake Shagrat slipped aside, twisted round, and drove his knife into his enemy's throat.

'Got you Gorbag!' he cried, 'Not quite dead, eh? Well, I'll finish my job now.' He sprang on to the fallen body, and stamped and trampled it in his fury, stopping now and again to slash it with his knife. Satisfied at last, he threw back his head and let out a horrible gurgling yell of triumph. Then he licked his knife,

Oops - cross posted with Morth's upsum.