Fantasy

[Hookbill the Goomba]

Calm down, you lot.

I was going to mention this in my previous post but couldn't find the exact quote. Fortunately, good master Legate had it as his signature. That's probably where I saw it, actually.

Originally Posted by On Fairy-Stories

For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it.

I think this is the point I was making earlier, if you think it valid. I have come across people in the past who thought the Lord of the Rings was too violent (books, not films, I did ask). My reaction indeed was 'I don't think it is'. Perhaps not compared to some stuff out there. I'm reading G.R.R Martin's A Game of thrones at the moment; this is a tad more graphic. But I get the impression from interviews and so on that that is what he wanted to do.

Tolkien, on the other hand, shies away from the graphic violence, as we have discussed. In the quote above I think we have a possible answer as to why this may be. One of the reasons I have loved Middle Earth is the fact that Tolkien delights in the brightness and good in his world. There are plenty of writers out there discussing the more gory details of war. I think Tolkien was writing, as he says, much for his own pleasure. A man who finds little pleasure in blood and guts, won't be in a hurry to pen it.

That's not to say there aren't the tragic and less desirable parts of the Legendarium. But plot is dependent on these things. The battle of Pelenor field would not have hit me so hard and remained in my memory if not for the passing of Théoden.

The tragic parts, such as the Scouring of the Shire and others, serve a much deeper purpose than simply balancing out good and evil. They effect the reader in a more emotional way than the blood and spilled entrails ever could. It is these events that hit hardest, that stay in the mind. Tolkien, I think, wanted his story to have these effects. The same things he had felt when reading myths and legends.