Fantasy

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by LadyBrooke

But, and this is one of my soapboxes, today many people want to view historical people and authors from a viewpoint that is not even contemperary to the author, but is a modern viewpoint. Perhaps this is just me - who in recent weeks has been exposed to far too many editorials blasting such people as Abraham Lincoln - but I surely don’t expect Tolkien to have kept 21st century readers in mind while writing a book in the aftermath of two World Wars. Nobody coming out of either World War would have needed to have been reminded that war is a bad thing. They knew it, they lived it, and quite frankly they were sick of it. For some of them LotR probably served as the same thing it did for Tolkien according to one of the above quotes - escapism.

Yes, all too true! That's exactly what I think as well. Though, with writing what I said above, I had in mind just the author himself - his point of view, the audience he estimates, or which he can estimate to read him. Of course he cannot know what the clima in the society will be like some hundred years later. That's a part of why I said no book is foolproof. But, my point was directed exactly to the author's choices, given his position according to his knowledge. But otherwise, I definitely agree with what you said.

[LadyBrooke]

And indeed when writing that I didn't have you in particular in mind. I was actually reading another thread at the same time I was going through this thread and writing my response and poeple on that thread seemed to be expecting Tolkien to have guessed what his readership would be like now, when I believe that he expected his books to have a quite limited readership.

Besides like I said it's a soapbox of mine - just like Celeborn. You really don't want to get me started on him.

[Bêthberry]

*whispers* Celebrian *coughs*

LadyBrooke, thanks for quoting that letter from Tolkien about transforming his experience/ seeking a distraction. This was something I had suggested some posts back, that Tolkien's fascination with war epics was related to his own wartime experience in WWI and was not necessarily a deliberate lie.

[LadyBrooke]

Coughhalforcscough

Thank you Bêthberry, but the credit for the quotes must go to Ibrin who was the one who looked them up in the first place and not me. I simply recopied them from her post and added my thoughts to them. For some reason though her name didn't show up even though I quoted them from her post.

[Hookbill the Goomba]

Something that has struck me about The Lord of the Rings and, indeed, most of the Legendarium, has been the fact that, as you say, davem, violence is not depicted in grotesque or detailed terms. There are glimpses here and there, but nothing to the extent of the heroic deeds and so on. What strikes me as the possible reason is that Tolkien simply did not want to do this. When reading his essay On Fairy Stories as well as the forward to The Lord of the Rings (I vaguely remember something from the letters, but it's been so long since I read them-) that Tolkien was writing what he wanted.

That, in itself, is a dream, I have to say. So often I have been told by tutors on my Creative Writing course that you have to include a, b and c in a healthy balance whether you like it or not. There is merit in this, granted. Issues should be dealt with, things addressed and considered. It does not make them easy or pleasant to write about.

With The Hobbit being chiefly a children's book, Tolkien can be very much forgiven for the lack of violence. Indeed, with The Lord of the Rings being a sequel it almost, but not quite, could be expected that violence and graphic horror would not have the same presence. However, because The Lord of the Rings is directed at and appeals to an older audience, Tolkien had the liberty to do so. But he does not. Or, perhaps, will not.

With The Silmarillion, Children of Hurin and so on, we have much broader strokes of the stories; details are left out because the vastness of the tail, you might say, thrusts it aside. Had the detail been the same in The Silmarillion as it was in The Lord of the Rings, could it be contained within the bounds of a paperback? Probably not; it would probably collapse in on itself and create a black hole.

Tolkien seems to relish and toughly enjoy telling us about the heroic deeds as well as the tragic tales. There we find some of his best writing. We enjoy it. We relish it. We are here discussing it. After all, what was Tolkien's duty other than to tell the story? Indeed, even that was not a duty, as such, but a need within him.

Besides all this, to my mind, Middle Earth was, for so long, a place beset with evil and horror. The seemingly endless war with Melkor and the battles with Sauron must have plagued their minds. Therefore, any act of heroism, I should think, would be savored and remembered. It would not surprise me if the same was true of heroic tales of our own world were born from the same mindset. Places racked with war seeking any way to think of better things. Who knows?