Another short quote from the same book:
>Those who refuse to listen to dragons are probably doomed to spend their lives acting out the nightmares of politicians. We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark; and fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language of the night.
This reminds me of a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories”:
>Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion.
>O: [Fantasy is] certainly regarded as less than serious fiction.
>P: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy.
>Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different icongraphy, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that.
>(Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself.”
--Sir Terry Pratchett
Pratchett is second only to Tolkien. And Tolkien only did one thing and did it really well. Pratchett did a different thing each book and nailed it. Stuff that other authors spin out into 12 enormous doorstoppers.
Like I’m not actually saying that say Wheel of Time is just Equal Rites but longer. But Equal Rites does nail a fair few of those ideas in a much shorter time frame. Small Gods also could be a whole book series.
Pratchett is like Monty Python: he went out and energetically used a load of good ideas, where other authors might have stuck to more deeply exploring one.
I just read equal rites for the first time and I’m on mort now. Terry pratchett is my new favorite author after only le guin. Granny Weatherwax is the GOAT
I read Ursula Le Guin as a teenager - it was good. A few years ago I found a book hers on Bookbeat (audio book) and listened to that on my commute.
I will admit to sitting in the car for 20-30 minutes when I arrived just to continue listening to the way she told the tale, the worlds she built, the characters and how everything fitted together. Truly one of the great authors.
I was going to ask you where you found a copy of Language of the Night because I've been looking for it for a while, and I just googled and found out there's an ebook (and maybe a new print book as well) coming out in May of this year! Woohoo!
[https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-language-of-the-night](https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-language-of-the-night)
Any mention of Tolkien's "simplisticness" or "black and white morality" is really missing on such key characters as Boromir, Denethor, Gollum or Saruman, Thorin and Thranduil, not to mention Lobellia Saquet's redemption arc, Sam's encounter with the dead Haradrim soldier. And this is just from the main novels. Both the appendix and the Silmarillion are full or morally greys characters - Helm, Earnur, Thingol, Feanor, Turin, Hurin, Maeglos, Maldon, Fingon, etc.
The setting isn't really black and white. LotR can be because that was the point of the journey. That good people in difficult times would try to make mostly the right choices. That when they made bad choices they'd try to fix it. The exceptions stand out to reaffirm the general good choices everyone made.
The context in which those choices were made are important. Rohan helped Gondor despite basically being left to face Saruman alone. They went with what they had even though their numbers had been scattered by their own problems. Gondor held in spite of Denethor's stupidity. Faramir went to defend Osgiliath even though it was obviously a spiteful choice and tactically insane. Him and his men achieved the best they could. Aragorn took his men to the black gates despite the fact he couldn't possibly win. Because a greater victory might be achieved by their defeat.
I don't know how realistic it really is but Tolkien created a story in which people mostly tried to achieve the best good in every situation they were in. Despite a world telling them they couldn't win (and they actually couldn't win) and they should give up.
Tolkien's Denethor supposed to be a great man who is ultimately crushed by the weight of his burdens. Jackson's Denethor is an egotistical creep. He is not necessarily a bad character (in the sense of being poorly written or ill-suited to his role in the narrative), but it is not a faithful adaptation.
I often feel like when people think they're criticizing Tolkien they're really criticizing Peter Jackson. I love those films like all Fantasy fans of certain age but they are massively different from what Tolkien wrote right down to the themes.
Fantasy fans of any age should appreciate those movies. They're a relic of an era in cinema before studios started actively filing off any directorial or authorial authenticity from their flagship blockbusters. But, they had a level of production never before afforded to genre films, especially fantasy, during that era.
They are truly unique in the modern cinematic landscape.
The reason Dune is doing so well, and the reason the new Mad Max will do so well, is that people are starved for a competently-made sci-fi action movie that has a genuine sense of artistic intent (and, in the case of Dune, themes actually worth thinking about after the end of the movie).
As the world gradually starts to crave literally *any* fantasy or sci-fi action-adventure that doesn't feel like it was written by the same writing team as every single other genre-fiction action movie, I hope people look back on LotR and demand better from Hollywood.
Though, The Hobbit damaged PJ's legacy perhaps irreparably, given that they were the epitome of the modern, "trying to be Marvel", written-by-committee, hollow, sterile, safe blockbuster.
That particular instance is in both sources. Though in the books the decision to send Faramir on a suicide mission was done by a council with Denethor just not intervening because he was pissed Faramir hadn't brought him the ring.
In the books, Denethor is the one pushing for Faramir to defend Osgiliath and the walls around the Pelennor, and it's a sound military decision - callous, because it's extremely dangerous and they're sure to lose after causing damage, but a sound strategy.
Yeah, Brett Deveraux’s blog, ACOUP, has a great breakdown of how Denethor’s actions in the book actually make military sense and he’s not just sending Faramir to commit suicide, even though he’s still callously saying he doesn’t care if Faramir lives or dies.
Movie Denethor is perfect for what the movies needed, but he’s a very different character indeed.
Hell, I remember rereading the Council of Elrond recently and being surprised at how much it felt like an allegory for Climate Change. Gandalf has to persuade everyone assembled to do the difficult thing that might work, destroying the Ring, while everyone else wants to take easy half-measures that definitely won't.
It would have been much easier to hide the Ring in Rivendell, to give it to Tom Bombadill, to give it to Boromir or to let Aragon wield it against Sauron, but all those easy options were doomed to failure. Gandalf knows taking the Ring to Mordor is a long shot, but he also understands that in desperate circumstances, desperate measures are required.
And even short of the climate, I've seen this attitude from people in my life. You've got a problem, but you're not prepared to take the difficult steps that might fix it, so you do something easy instead and the problem remains unsolved.
You see it so, so often in life and in other peoples situations it’s mind boggling, and yet I’m not sure there’s a single one of us that isn’t also guilty of it at some point(s) ourselves. That alluring promise of ‘what if I could do this the way I want to and get not only the thing I/we need, but everything I want, and/or nothing I don’t want’, meanwhile, on the outside, we or the people around us, are looking at that person thinking “You’re outta your mind. You’re going to lose out on what you need all in pursuit of what you want.”
Really is a timeless story there, and a great choice to use it by Tolkien.
Objection: Denethor’s decision to send out Faramir to try to hold at Osgiliath is an objectively good decision militarily. A slow fighting retreat to bleed the orcs and buy more time for Rohan to arrive is the best course of action. It feels as though you are criticizing Jackson’s films more than Tolkien‘s books, because Denethor as he appears in the book is a downright excellent military commander. Was the decision to send out a force dangerous? Sure, but it is objectively the best decision in context. **Denethor is not stupid**.
A lot of people like to pretend that "moral clarity" equals "simplisticness" so that they can go deluding themselves that moral turpitude and endless compromising of one's principles is just being "complex" and "deep", not taking the easy way out.
It's related to the phenomenon of prasing "morally grey" characters, by which it's meant sexually attractive psychopaths.
They also conflate right and wrong with black and white. Right and wrong certainly exist in that world but it is not necessarily black and white. The Noldor didn't decide that they were going to do evil.. they sought to defeat the dark lord and recover what was left of the light of the trees.
Despite seeking the light and fighting the darkness, they create three Ages of tragedy for Middle Earth. Galadriel recognizes this clearly by the end.. not dark but beautiful and terrible as the morning and the night. Fair as the sea and the sun and the snow upon the mountain. "All shall love me and despair."
Is moral clarity not simple? If morality were clear, then we wouldn’t debate for millennia over right and wrong, good and bad, utility and harm. From the flip side, comments like this feel dismissive of everyone who experience only gray morality.
Gah Le Guin goes so hard. I almost enjoy her scholarly essays more than her books. She's so intelligent and well spoken.
You've reminded me of a [blog](https://www.ursulakleguin.com/adaptation-tales-of-earthsea) she wrote about Miyazaki's *Tales From Earthsea*, loosely based on her Earthsea Cycle. She was asked if she liked it, and likes it well enough, but takes issue with the story for bearing little resemblance to the themes of her novels:
>"The moral sense of the books becomes confused in the film. For example: Arren's murder of his father in the film is unmotivated, arbitrary: the explanation of it as committed by a dark shadow or alter-ego comes late, and is not convincing. Why is the boy split in two? We have no clue. The idea is taken from A Wizard of Earthsea, but in that book we know how Ged came to have a shadow following him, and we know why, and in the end, we know who that shadow is. The darkness within us can't be done away with by swinging a magic sword.
>But in the film, evil has been comfortably externalized in a villain, the wizard Kumo/Cob, who can simply be killed, thus solving all problems.
>In modern fantasy (literary or governmental), killing people is the usual solution to the so-called war between good and evil. My books are not conceived in terms of such a war, and offer no simple answers to simplistic questions."
Christ, I'm still enraged at the missed chance of that adaptation. Ghibli and Le Guin should have been a match made in heaven and instead we got this weird shallow smooshing together of four books into one film... Honestly she was way too charitable in her review of it.
I remember being in the theater when The Two Towers ended. Gollum giving in to his evil half and deciding to lead the hobbits to their deaths and it pans out to Mordor and fire and that music- *you are lost you can never go home.* I sat in that theater till the lights came on.
>It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy?
That’s beautiful and I’m amazed I’ve never seen it before! Thank you!
I once made a similar point about Gollum in *The Hobbit*. He is Bilbo’s alter ego, if Bilbo had never found his courage and had been trapped in the orc caves forever.
I've always felt since I first encountered her books, that if I was ever tasked with picking a human to trust with the weilding of magic, Ursula K Le'Guin would be first on the list.
I love the orc conversation between Shagrat and Gorbag. They are old friends. Talk about going off and setting up together on their own. After 20+ readings I have a whole new appreciation for orcs.
Didn't one of them kill the other over a shiny piece of mail the very same day they had that conversation? I wouldn't read to much into ork "friendship" honestly
Didnt say I did. I know quite a few people who would shiv a friend to retain a “shiny piece of mail” worth the entire shire. My point was they actually became “real” in that conversation.
Just because a relationship ends in violence, that doesn't mean there was never any love there. Sometimes the people we feel the most strong anger or jealousy towards are the people we love the most. The great thing about stories is that storytellers can express the extreme aspects of the human experience by using extreme examples such as with close friends committing murder to make a point. (And yes, I know they're orcs, but they're behaving a lot like humans.)
> And indeed he does this, and his good people tend to be entirely good, though with endearing frailties, while his Orcs and other villains are altogether nasty.
Believe it or not, most of Tolkien's works eschew this for much more complex characters, and were rejected by publishers. Characters like Feanor, Maeglin and Turin Turambar are indeed morally "grey" characters, and even in *The Lord of the Rings* you have characters like Saruman and Boromir who believe they're doing the right thing, and slide in either direction.
I would argue that the most overlooked aspect of Tolkien's world is that, unlike our own, there really is a Devil out there trying to destroy the people who just want to make a living, and like the case of the hobbits, be left alone, to do as they wish. In such a world, you're either 'good' or you're not. But even *then* there is a ton of nuance. Bill Ferny abused his animals. Barliman scorned the rangers.
And how would you even categorize Radagast? He abandoned people and decided to live with nature, even as the world fell to peril. Is that "evil"? It certainly isn't "good." But he wasn't one of the bad players.
The fact that a group of people can be molded into a force of pure hatred isn't so hard to fathom for me. I've seen enough hatred in other people *to kill other people* even if it means killing kids, the disabled, or people who are demonstrably innocent of any crime. Humans are capable of such things; if Tolkien figured out a way to separate them from the get-go, more power to him.
It has become in vogue to read fantasy as political, a la GRRM, but LotR is not political, it is spiritual. Le Guin clearly gets this, though opts for altogether more psychology-flavored language to express it when Tolkien would have used theological.
That's a fascinating way to put it and is, I think, a pretty interesting way of looking at the three authors' respective work. Tolkien, through spirituality, LeGuin through psychology, Martin through history.
I think when people describe Tolkien as "black and white" what they mean is that his world is very clear on the right and wrong thing to do. There are morally grey characters like Boromir or Saruman who were good and fell to temptation, but both their stories end with them doing explicitly bad things. Saruman was good and then became bad. Boromir was good, became bad, and then did a good thing in the end. Tolkien's characters can change, obviously, but they change between being good and bad. As Le Guin says here, there are the bright figures and the shadow figures.
This is fine, the moral clarity and good vs. evil aspect are clear themes Tolkien is focusing on, but I hesitate to recall many times when a LOTR character does something "grey" in the sense of the story can't really come down one way or the other. Boromir makes the case of using the Ring to save Minas Tirith, which is understandable, but the book makes explicit that would be the wrong thing. Gollum vacilates between good and evil throughout the story, but it's clear that Smeagol helping Frodo is good and trying to take the Ring is evil. Aragorn is the rightful King, by both blood and countenance and is crowned such.
Compare this to the archtypical "morally grey" fantasy, ASoIaF. GRRM has none of the "moral clarity" of Tolkien. He loves putting his characters in places where there are no right decisions, and refrains from making it clear what should have happened. Should Ned have carried out Robert's will as Robert wrote it, as he swore to do, or should he have altered it like he did, committing treason, because he knows Joffrey isn't legitimate? It's debatable. All of Martin's characters exist in a state of being both good and bad, and it's left to the reader to decide who to root for in the muck.
>I think when people describe Tolkien as "black and white" what they mean is that his world is very clear on the right and wrong thing to do.
If by world you mean only LOTR, yes. If you include the Silmarillion, no. For a simple example - were the Noldor right or wrong to rebel against the Valar and leave Valinor?
>but it's clear that Smeagol helping Frodo is good and trying to take the Ring is evil
Gollum trying to take the Ring is what enables its destruction though. And him helping Frodo is in large part driven by selfish self-serving motives. It was *useful* to Frodo but does that actually make it morally "good"?
You're right that most of my comment applies to The Hobbit and LOTR, just because that's what the original post, but even in the Silmarillion, I think it's clear the Noldor rebelling and going West is a case like Adam eating of the fruit, an act of rebellion that causes the long term decline of Middle-Earth. If Feanor handed over the Silmarils after Ungoliant destroys the Two Trees, the Valar would have recreated the Trees, Melkor would have never gotten them and his plans would have failed. The fact that the rebellion directly lead to the Sundering of the Elves, the Kinslaying and the Doom of Mandos seems to parallel Adam and his family driven out of the Garden.
I'd argue similarly that the message of the ending isn't that Gollum being evil is what allows the Ring to be destroyed, it's Frodo's pity in let him survive, a supremely good act, and in Eru Iluvatar's divine will taking even Gollum as an instrument. The text heavily hints that Gollum's doom is tied to the oath that Frodo demands Smeagol swear on the precious, which is a direct result of Frodo's pity in choosing an alternative to killing him. I think the message of the ending isn't that "The quest succeeded *because* Gollum was evil," it's "The quest succeed *in spite* of it". If Gollum hadn't been evil and faithfully guided Frodo through Mordor, he likely would have avoided the wound from Shelob and other trials from RotK, which may have made it easier to resist the temptation at the Cracks of Doom.
It's a very Catholic message from Tolkien, that the perfect will of Eru incorporates even evil, like Eru incorporating the Discord of Melkor into the Music or God using Satan and the sin of Man to allow Christ to sacrifice himself and save the world.
Lord of the Rings is way more morally complex than either its most ardent fans or detractors (or even Tolkien for that matter) want to admit.
In the end the quest only succeeds because Frodo uses the Ring to compel Gollum ("If you touch me ever again you shall be cast yourself into the fire of doom") thus committing the most evil act possible: robbing another being of their free will. What Tolkien is really saying (whether he meant to or not) is that good cannot triumph over evil in the mortal sense because no mortal being is too pure to be corrupted. Evil can only defeat itself. The best good can do is to survive and resist with the knowledge (based on faith) that good in the immortal sense is stronger.
In Tolkien's universe, good is the tree with a trunk that is too broad and hard to be cut down. Evil is the axe.
> In the end the quest only succeeds because Frodo uses the Ring to compel Gollum ("If you touch me ever again you shall be cast yourself into the fire of doom") thus committing the most evil act possible: robbing another being of their free will.
That wasn't Frodo using the power of the Ring, nor did he rob Gollum of anything. Gollum made a promise, an *oath*, and he swore that oath on the thing that mattered most to him in the world: the Ring. Frodo spelled out the consequences of breaking that oath, but the decision to make the promise and to break it fell fully onto Gollum. This has nothing to do with anything the Ring can do specially. It's simply how promises work, or are supposed to work.
See, in fairy tales and mythology, swearing an oath is a serious thing. Being an oathbreaker was one of the worst things you can be to ancient societies because they had little else to bind their society together. Breaking an oath was tantamount to casting everything into chaos, so their stories reflected this. Lying is bad enough but lying after you swore an oath? That was a wound in the social fabric that cried out for divine retribution, for the gods themselves to strike this person down, preferably in the most ostentatious manner possible as a sign to everyone else that oathbreaking will not ever be tolerated.
Gollum died because that's what happens to oathbreakers. Frodo was not involved in that beyond being the object of the oath.
>Being an oathbreaker was one of the worst things you can be to ancient societies because they had little else to bind their society together. Breaking an oath was tantamount to casting everything into chaos, so their stories reflected this. Lying is bad enough but lying after you swore an oath? That was a wound in the social fabric that cried out for divine retribution, **for the gods themselves to strike this person down, preferably in the most ostentatious manner possible as a sign to everyone else that oathbreaking will not ever be tolerated.**
the men of dunharrow learned this the hard way when the breaking of their oath to isildur
Most people don’t understand that the Commandment about not taking the name of The Lord in vain isn’t about cussing or saying ‘Jesus Christ!’ when you hit your finger with the hammer, it’s about swearing an oath in the name of The Lord and then breaking it. If you swore on God’s name to do something and you broke that vow, that was a major thing and that’s why people are still asked to swear on The Bible (or another holy book).
Frodo was more involved: he cursed Gollum to be cast into the fire if he would touch him again, and Gollum did, and he fell into the fire. But Gollum breaking his oath is also relevant to this – it made him receptive for the curse.
You can compare it to the Oathbreakers and Isildur: the Oathbreakers broke their oaths, but that alone didn't turn them into ghosts. Isildur's curse did that. But had they not broken their oath, Isildur wouldn't have had the power over them, and had he cursed them it wouldn't have had any effect.
For Frodo, it was done out of a defensive position because Gollum was attacking him. But using the Ring in such a way also gave the Ring more power over him, so that Frodo was even less able to let go of the Ring when he was supposed to not long after this moment.
This isn't Tolkien's interpretation of the story, though you're correct that Tolkien thought of Evil as self-defeating and Good's primary goal in enduring.
Frodo remained Good, that's why he and his quest were saved by God in the logic of the story. What he says to Gollum is thius likely a prophecy, not a curse; Frodo isn't robbing, he's warning.
Frodo wasn't saved because he "remained good". He eventually claimed the One Ring for himself, he wasn't indomitable. Noone would have been. He was saved because he showed Gollum while he still could:
> "He (and the Cause) were saved – by Mercy : by the supreme value and efficacy of Pity and forgiveness of injury. Corinthians I x. 12-13 may not at first sight seem to fit – unless 'bearing temptation' is taken to mean resisting it while still a free agent in normal command of the will."
– J.R.R. Tolkien
Frodo's words to Gollum were more than a warning, and I think it's reasonable to describe them as a curse. But they only had potency because Gollum broke his oath, making him receptive for the curse's effect. It's like Isildur also cursed the Oathbreakers when they broke their oath. Without broken oath, the curses have no power, but without the curse, a broken oath doesn't automatically turn you into a ghost – or in Gollum's case let's you fall into the fire. It needs both a curse and a broken oath for something like that.
Whether Tolkien intended it or not, I think my reading is still a valid one given the information given in text itself. I would also argue that making a prophecy is itself a form of manipulation.
And I would say that even if we accept that Frodo remained good, the fact that the Ring was able to corrupt even him suggests that good is not absolute for anyone other than Eru (who defines its nature by his very existence) and possibly Bombadil (who was created as part of a much simpler story).
>I would also argue that making a prophecy is itself a form of manipulation.
Me to a robber: "If you come into my house I will shoot you!"
Robber:
Me:
Cops: You've stolen the robber's free will!
Self-defense is generally considered a pretty valid reason to take another person's life. And yes, some people are "forced" into a life of crime for lack of better options; it's not always black and white. But choosing to attempt to force entry to someone's house is still a choice where people would understand that they might be putting their own health at risk. Just like Gollum had a choice.
>In the end the quest only succeeds because Frodo uses the Ring to compel Gollum ("If you touch me ever again you shall be cast yourself into the fire of doom") thus committing the most evil act possible: robbing another being of their free will.
Sounds like Gollum made a choice to touch Frodo. How is this robbing him of free will?
That isn't my reading of the story, but I'm upvoting and commenting because it's an interesting interpretation that can be supported by the text and we need more comments like yours.
Thanks for making me think!
It’s about the providence of God. Gollum was spared because he still had a part to play. Frodo is defeated by desire at the last second but through divine providence the ring is still destroyed.
The ring corrupted Frodo to save itself and its master but it’s same corruption on Gollum lead to its doom.
Frodo didn't, "manipulate," Gollum. Gollum was stalking him with the intent to kill him and take the Ring, and he was caught. The obvious thing for Frodo to do in that circumstance would be to kill Gollum since there was no other way to stop him. He would have been fully within his right to do so as it is no evil thing to kill someone dead-set on trying to kill you when there's no convenient authority to whom you can remand the attempted murderer. This was the course to which Gollum had committed himself instead of doing literally anything else with his life.
Frodo then offered Gollum an alternative: swear an oath to act as a faithful guide and do no harm to Frodo or Sam, because he couldn't be trusted to be let go on his own. The quoted line about Gollum being cast into the fire is just *boilerplate consequences* in this world because oath-breaking was one of the most serious violations of the societal order in ancient societies and Tolkien was all about making a preindustrial mythology for England. Frodo was in no way using the power of the Ring or otherwise casting a spell. He was saying, "Hey, just a reminder that you swore an oath on the thing that means the most to you, and in Middle-Earth, breaking that kind of oath has Deadly-Serious Consequences."
The tendency to shadowbox against fantasy, and especially against Tolkien, is truly one of the most frustrating things about discussing media with people who are more familiar with political lenses of analysis. Le Guin is right to take this more Jungian approach.
Idk, I've read the full quote in context and despite his declared love/respect for Tolkien he proceeds to ask some really silly questions that are answered by the books (or if not the books by Tolkien in supplementary material) that suggests that he maybe hasn't read them.
I have a pretty good idea of Aragorn's tax policy (probably quite low from his own subjects) and whether or not he would've kept a standing army but I actually read the books and have some idea of how Medieval/feudal society is structured. The sentence came at the end. The one place in a book where you more or less *have to* start writing "easy sentences" that summarize what happens next or you'll never finish.
The only thing that's a real question is orc genocide because Tolkien was never fully decided on what orcs actually *are*. At one point he was playing with the idea that they're just manifest evil spirits and killing their physical form doesn't even kill them. The only solid answer we have is the Uruk-hai as corrupted elves as the general theme with Tolkien is that Morgoth and his servants cannot create- only alter what Eru Ilúvatar has created. I don't recall much indication that there even are orc babies in their "orc cradles" to be killed. Though, I'll admit it is one case where Tolkien himself was unclear/undecided.
It was a ridiculous criticism. And it *was* criticism. For a while I tried the generous reading of "maybe he's just saying he's more interested in taxes than battles" but that is why I looked for the quote in context. And everyone says ridiculous things from time to time so if it had been some offhand remark from when he was less known or a dredged up old forum post or something I'd feel more understanding. But the dude was accepting an award.
I don't know if he needs to "respect his elders" (not a sentiment I care for) but I do wish ***he*** understood feudalism and/or how Medieval taxes/armies worked.
The 'tax policy' thing was just a random example. In that quote, I think GRRM just wanted to know how did Aragorn rule the kingdom in much more detail. People focus too much on that one specific thing (tax policy), thanks to memes which are designed to portray things on one side.
I'm not even much of a fan of ASOIAF and even I van recognise what GRRM said wasn't something meant in a negative way. Its very easy for people who may not agree with the themes in GRRM's books to use the isolated quote and make GRRM look bad.
Well one thing is certain....Argorn's tax policy would no doubt be much more fair and just and lenient to the people than that of his distant ancestors :) hehe.
>"In the second stage, the days of Pride and Glory and grudging of the Ban, they begin to seek wealth rather than bliss. The desire to escape death produced a cult of the dead, and they lavished wealth and an on tombs and memorials. They now made settlements on the west-shores, but these became rather strongholds and ‘factories’ of lords seeking wealth, and the Númenóreans became tax-gatherers carrying off over the sea evermore and more goods in their great ships. The Númenóreans began the forging of arms and engines."
>–J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter No. 131
:) heheheh...sorry could't resist hehe...but jokes aside...this one thing though exaggerated it shows the differences in interests....Martin misses the point though with that....Aragorn's reign is beginning just as the story of Lord of the Rings ends...and the tale itself is not about depicting the wielding power, governing, politics, but also his interests in the mundane minutiae the sheer detail and lore....and one can find it in Tolkien works too once one delves deep enough...but again different focuses....for Martin a thing like....Gondor's civil war the Kin-stride with all it's political machinations and war cruelty and all that would be in focus while Tolkien made it on the periphery :)
>"When the confederates led by descendants of the kings rose against him, he opposed them to the end of his strength. At last he was besieged in Osgiliath, and held it long, until hunger and the greater forces of the rebels drove him out, leaving the city in flames. In that siege and burning the Tower of the Dome of Osgiliath was destroyed, and the palantír was lost in the waters.
>The Return of the King, LoTR Appendix A, Annals of the Kings and Rulers: Gondor and the Heirs of Anárion
>...
>"Castamir had not long sat upon the throne before he proved himself haughty and ungenerous. He was a cruel man, as he had first shown in the taking of Osgiliath. He caused Ornendil son of Eldacar, who was captured, to be put to death; and the slaughter and destruction done in the city at his bidding far exceeded the needs of war. This was remembered in Minas Anor and in Ithilien; and there love for Castamir was further lessened when it became seen that he cared little for the land, and thought only of the fleets, and purposed to remove the king's seat to Pelargir.
>The Return of the King, LoTR Appendix A, Annals of the Kings and Rulers: Gondor and the Heirs of Anárion
Martin in turn would probably made entirel plot revolving around that :). And then still one can find numerous details about the politicsm economy and stuff like that in Middle-earth so it's not like Tolkien's works are devoid of that.
Of course Tolkien himself had made enough of lore and details to often answer such questions! :)
>"[To] be Prince of Ithilien, the greatest noble after Dol Amroth in the revived Númenórean state of Gondor, soon to be of imperial power and prestige, was not a 'market-garden job' as you term it. Until much had been done by the restored king, the P. of Ithilien would be the resident march-warden of Gondor, in its main eastward outpost — and also would have many duties in rehabilitating the lost territory, and clearing it of outlaws and orc-remnants, not to speak of the dreadful vale of Minas Ithil (Morgul). I did not, naturally, go into details about the way in which Aragorn, as King of Gondor, would govern the realm. But it was made clear that there was much fighting and in the earlier years of A.'s reign expeditions against enemies in the East. The chief commanders, under the King, would be Faramir and Imrahil; and one of these would normally remain a military commander at home in the King's absence."
>The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Edited by Humphrey Carpenter, Letter 244 to a reader of The Lord of the Rings, circa 1963
>>"In the second stage, the days of Pride and Glory and grudging of the Ban, they begin to seek wealth rather than bliss. The desire to escape death produced a cult of the dead, and they lavished wealth and an on tombs and memorials. They now made settlements on the west-shores, but these became rather strongholds and ‘factories’ of lords seeking wealth, and the Númenóreans became tax-gatherers carrying off over the sea evermore and more goods in their great ships. The Númenóreans began the forging of arms and engines."
Different times, different rules. For one thing there isn't a whole nation of Numenoreans existing in the 4th age anymore. The Numenoreans in the second age came from the West and settled/created strongholds on lands that already had settlers on them. How do you think the Dunlendings and the Harad started hating the Numenoreans (and eventually Gondor and Rohan, who are descendents of Numenoreans)?
Since no more colonising is happening in the 3rd/4th age, it's not likely things would go the same way.
>but again different focuses....
I do agree. Different authors have different focus and interests. However, I'm still surprised so many people took what Martin said as an insult. While you may not agree, I would have thought it's pretty clear where he's coming from. Aragorn has had no experience ruling as a king. All he has is but his name and his bloodline, but that doesn't mean you know the ins and outs of being a good king. I think that's where Martin's concern was.
You seem to have missed my point a bit with the mention of the tax gathering hehe, first it was more of a half-jokingly stated...but again this quote proves that such things as 'taxes' existed in Middle-earth hehe (not to mention The Hobbit and other places in Lotr, are mentioned also such things as...tolls and so on), and second yeah you don't have to explain it to me...the Numenoreans of the Second Age are different from the Gondorians of the Third (the case of the Dunlendings and the Haradrim and other native peoples is a whole complex topic in itself...the numenorean imperialism and colonialism that is explicitly shown as part of their fall and corruption to shadow etc. the Second Age colonial empire of Numenor laid ground for the future Realms-in-Exile) and in any case it was to show the difference...Aragorn is a more noble Numenorean who encapsulates their virtues and good sides...Aragorn bloodline is one of the purest of numenorean blood (and there's not many 'pure-blood' Numenoreans left...obviously there is still a lot of numenorean blood among the Gondorians and Arnorians, the so called Dunedain of the South and Dunedain of the North but they are dwindling in numbers in Third Age). In a way this is an example of the culture and civilization and it's trappings. Numenorean culture also in that time became materialistic, obsessed with wealth and power and so on. Which is something that can lead to corruption and so on. As a side note the Harad as the target makes sense, a) it was little explored land and the Numenoreans of Second Age, their sailors explored the coasts much southwards beyond anything we know from lotr maps, and b) it was rich with resources, as is usually the case with exotic lands it was rich in gold and ivory and other stuff, and when the Numenoreans became greedy and power hungry no wonder the Haradrim became one of the targets of subjugation, economic exploitation, enslavement and military conquest.
As for the Aragorn skills as a ruler....I think you're mistaken....Aragorn has been prepared for leadership role and has been leading people (not to mention being a military commander with great experience by the time of War of the Ring, which in such societies gives into the skills of a leader). Aragorn before becoming king was also a Chieftain of the Dunedain of the North and has been ruling what's left of his people, when he is not away adventuring and exploring and serving in the armies of Gondor and Rohan:
>"Ecthelion II […] encouraged all men of worth from near or far to enter his service, and to those who proved trustworthy he gave rank and reward. In much that he did he had the aid and advice of a great captain whom he loved above all. Thorongil men called him in Gondor, the Eagle of the Star, for he was swift and keen-eyed, and wore a silver star upon his cloak; but no one knew his true name nor in what land he was born. He came to Ecthelion from Rohan, where he had served the King Thengel, but he was not one of the Rohirrim. He was a great leader of men, by land or by sea, but he departed into the shadows whence he came, before the days of Ecthelion were ended.
>Thorongil often counselled Ecthelion that the strength of the rebels in Umbar was a great peril to Gondor, and a threat to the fiefs of the south that would prove deadly, if Sauron moved to open war. At last he got leave of the Steward and gathered a small fleet, and he came to Umbar unlooked-for by night, and there burned a great part of the ships of the Corsairs. He himself overthrew the Captain of the Haven in battle upon the quays, and then he withdrew his fleet with small loss. But when they came back to Pelargir, to men's grief and wonder, he would not return to Minas Tirith, where great honour awaited him."
The life experience, the knowledge and wisdom, justice, it must be noted that Aragorn knows well his people, their laws and culture and history, he is not merely a warrior, but also a learned man, a scholar almost, well educated.
And one can say that Tolkien and Martin would be fundamentally different in understanding what really makes a 'good king'. For Tolkien politics are a taint....as he wrote about Denethor:
>"I dislike the use of ‘political’ in such a context; it seems to me false. It seems clear to me that Frodo’s duty was 'humane’ not political. He naturally thought first of the Shire, since his roots were there, but the quest had as its object not the preserving of this or that polity, such as the half republic half aristocracy of the Shire, but the liberation from an evil tyranny of all the 'humane’*–including those, such as 'easterlings’ and Haradrim, that were still servants of the tyranny.
>Denethor was tainted with mere politics: hence his failure, and his mistrust of Faramir. It had become for him a prime motive to preserve the polity of Gondor, as it was, against another potentate, who had made himself stronger and was to be feared and opposed for that reason rather than because he was ruthless and wicked. Denethor despised lesser men, and one may be sure did not distinguish between orcs and the allies of Mordor. If he had survived as victor, even without use of the Ring, he would have taken a long stride towards becoming himself a tyrant, and the terms and treatment he accorded to the deluded peoples of east and south would have been cruel and vengeful. He had become a 'political’ leader: sc. Gondor against the rest."
Tolkien's idea of kingship is something else than Martin would probably have in mind. For example take what the Aragorn's judgement of Beregond was, the examples of his early decisions, the details of his early reign that we DO know. Besides Aragorn wasn't some naive simpleton, he knew how to talk to people, how to use diplomacy, and when necessary be stern. Qualities of a leader are a complex issue, Aragorn has many and the actual fundamental basis in terms of knowledge. And I bet he would be capable of dealing with the rulership, he knows the people well enough: "...and went alone far into the East and deep into the South, exploring the hearts of Men, both evil and good, and uncovering the plots and devices of the servants of Sauron."
In a way Lord of the Rings does provides a contrast between tyranny and kingship, Sauron's leadership, anyone who would look at it, no doubt we can say that he was a strong, powerful ruler, who micromanaged things to high efficiency, but he was a tyrant who ruled through fear, force and subterfuge, he was a plotter and schemere, a chessmaster one can say, who played the long game, but was so into this game that he lost the sight of the simple things and people themselves, he was still considered wise, as Gandalf said "For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts." In Tolkien's words it's in general terms 'tyranny vs kingship, moderated freedom, vs comulsion' and so on. Sauron has many qualities that would make him a great ruler, a great king, he is strong and capable, but lost all moral limitations.
>"But like all minds of this cast, Sauron's love (originally) or (later) mere understanding of other individual intelligences was correspondingly weaker; and though the only real good in, or rational motive for, all this ordering and planning and organization was the good of all inhabitants of Arda (even admitting Sauron's right to be their supreme lord), his plans, the idea coming from his own isolated mind, became the sole object of his will, and an end, the End, in itself."
Tolkien said that:
>"He still had the relics of positive purposes, that descended from the good of the nature in which he began: it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and coordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction. (It was the apparent will and power of Melkor to effect his designs quickly and masterfully that had first attracted Sauron to him.)"
But nobody would want to have that sort of leader wouldn't they? :) Under Sauron's reign many ambitious and loyal would be able to prosper and thrive, but any sign of opposition and any freedom would be quelled. Additionally Sauron made sure that his servants are given economical wellbeing, and so on. Heheh, he is basically the totalitarian nightmare, and his desire is to "...it was the creatures of earth, in their minds and wills, that he [Sauron] desired to dominate."
The One Ring in simplified terms is basically a mind control tool :). Also to say more about Aragorn as king, the political structure of Gondor as Tolkien intended.
>"A Númenórean King was monarch, with the power of unquestioned decision in debate; but he governed the realm with the frame of ancient law, of which he was administrator (and interpreter) but not the maker. In all debatable matters of importance domestic, or external, however, even Denethor [Steward of Gondor] had a Council, and at least listened to what the Lords of the Fiefs and the Captains of the Forces had to say."
>The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Edited by Humphrey Carpenter, Letter 244 to a reader of The Lord of the Rings, circa 1963
The terms used, fieds, lords and so on are also not exactly the feudal in the sense that we understand, because they are having uniqye in-universe meanings, fief in Gondor is merely division of the realm, aministrative region, not personal property of a lord granted by the king, lords are local governors etc. they form the Great Council of Gondor and so on. Even knight as a term has different meaning in Middle-earth.
And at last this idea of Martin that 'good man does not alway make a good ruler' is also kind of explored in Tolkien's various texts, one can find numerous examples, king Tar-Palantir (Inziladun) for instance, a morally upstanding 'good guy' and yet ineffective king, who could not prevent the further corruption of his people, he had strong political opposition, by his own brother no less, and of course there are examples of people we can simply call....jerks who were great rulers :)...sons of Feanor almost obliged to be assholes hehe and yet the Caranthir was a great and capable ruler of his realm in Beleriand etc.
GRRM was saying he wanted fantasy that finds drama in the making of messy and difficult political decisions. That's what he wrote in ASOIAF. It doesn't track to say that Tolkien satisfied that desire because we can extrapolate from Aragorn's character and introduce what we know about medieval society from outside the text. No it's not a damning criticism of Tolkien but it's not supposed to be condemnatory.
I know I wrote a lot but...
>For a while I tried the generous reading of "maybe he's just saying he's more interested in taxes than battles" but that is why I looked for the quote in context.
Should I go pull up the quote? It is most definitely critical and everyone who has repeated it after him has used it critically and he's had all the time in the world to clarify if he somehow stumbled his words at an award acceptance speech (something I would've thought he'd given time and thought to).
"*Governing is difficult and I've always been interested in what happens after the battle is won*" is really not the same sentence as "*And Aragorn ruled wisely and well for 100 years’ or something. It’s easy to write that sentence. But I want to know what was his tax policy...*"
To read it that charitably would be to ignore what he actually said and how the quote has been used since. At a stretch I can see his 2014 quote in a better light (though it wouldn't make his fans any less insufferable in how they ran with it) but I also think it wouldn't have been difficult to actually just say that he wanted a Fantasy that explores navigating politics IF that had been what he meant.
But fair enough, he's launched 1,000 brain-dead "but what's his tax policy" comments based on communicating poorly.
I recognise that mine is a generous reading, but it's the only one that tracks given that GRRM is actually _not_ more interested in taxes than battles.
As you've pointed out, and he admits himself, he does not pay much attention to the "economics" of feudal societies.
The best encapsulation he's given of his project is when he quoted Faulkner to say that the only thing worth writing about is the _human heart in conflict with itself._ That's the best way to understand why detailed and complicated moral decisions that rulers have to make are so important to him.
I've read the full quote and I believe it's fair to say it is a gentle criticism that's not seeking to condemn or dismiss Tolkien at all. GRRM describes it as a "quibble":
> This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with.
But as far as I know, the provenance of the quote is an [interview for Rolling Stone](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/), not an awards acceptance speech. Are we thinking of the same one?
The interview question and context of the quote clarifies my reading. It's clear that he wanted to tell a story where a major theme is that it's hard even for good people to do the right thing when it comes to politics, and that simply having good people in power is not enough.
As for his fans, what can I say? People are bizarrely tribal about these things and love out of context soundbites. The tax policy thing is repeatedly if not wilfully misunderstood by his fans, and yeah, they can indeed be very annoying about it.
I was thinking of his 2019 speech at Trinity College Dublin for the Burke Award. His 2014 speech I could read more generously since it definitely aligns more with the reading you're giving it. I don't tend to think of authors as "responsible for" their fans (god what a nightmare that would be) but I wish he might have communicated the point a bit better especially if he was going to do it twice. But I admit that may be unfair carry-over annoyance directed at him from a whole decade's worth of really annoying fallout from it.
If that's respect, I'd hate to see what disrespect coming from him looks like.
But really, *ASOIAF* is to *LOTR* what *His Dark Materials* is to *Chronicles of Narnia*. The whole thing serves as a rebuke to Tolkien's idealism, to the idea that there's good in the world and that it's worth fighting for.
>If that's respect, I'd hate to see what disrespect coming from him looks like.
Just because you love sonething doesn't mean you can't critique it. GRRM said something based on what he would ideally like to see in LOTR. I wish there was more info on the Blue Wizards to the point I have many ideas of how they could be implemented into the 3rd or even 4th age. Doesn't mean I hate Tolkien. GRRM has said on several occasions that Tolkien was a big impact on his creative upbringing as a writer.
I don't doubt that's true, but see my above comment. Lewis was a huge impact on Pullman as well.
The main point is that there's more depth and complexity to Tolkien than the Martins and Moorcocks of the world give credit for.
Perhaps I'll eat crow when *A Dream of Spring* comes out.
> If that's respect, I'd hate to see what disrespect coming from him looks like.
I think that would look like GRRM not writing ASOIAF because he wouldn't be interested in engaging with Tolkien's works.
>*His Dark Materials* is to *Chronicles of Narnia*. The whole thing serves as a rebuke to Tolkien's idealism, to the idea that there's good in the world and that it's worth fighting for.
If you are saying that *His Dark Materials* is not about what is good and worth fighting for, I don't know what to say to you.
That particular line was more in reference to Martin v Tolkien; Pullman's never made any secret of the fact that his whole reason in writing HDM was to have a cage match with CSL.
I always thought it was more a rebuke to humanity as a whole rather than Tolkien. Starting a petty civil war when a massive threat is bearing down on them is pretty much how we're handling climate change.
I think the example provided by Lady Stoneheart lays the groundwork for how Jon Snow's resurrection is going to go. The issue with Gandalf's resurrection is that he's basically just good ol' Gandalf again after the first few pages, cheapening the transformation of death. Revenant Jon Snow is probably not going to be good ol' Jon Snow.
I think in that case both Martin and the general public, misses the point....Tolkien himself points out the difference and the cost of that 'death' it had on Gandalf:
>"Gandalf really 'died', and was changed: for that seems to me the only real cheating, to represent anything that can be called 'death' as making no difference. 'I am G. the White, who has returned from death'. Probably he should rather have said to Wormtongue: 'I have not passed through death (not 'fire and flood') to bandy crooked words with a serving-man'. And so on. I might say much more, but it would only be in (perhaps tedious) elucidation of the 'mythological' ideas in my mind; it would not, I fear, get rid of the fact that the return of G. is as presented in this book a 'defect', and one I was aware of, and probably did not work hard enough to mend. But G. is not, of course, a human being (Man or Hobbit). There are naturally no precise modern terms to say what he was. I wd. venture to say that he was an incarnate 'angel'– strictly an γγελος: 2 that is, with the other Istari, wizards, 'those who know', an emissary from the Lords of the West, sent to Middle-earth, as the great crisis of Sauron loomed on the horizon. By 'incarnate' I mean they were embodied in physical bodies capable of pain, and weariness, and of afflicting the spirit with physical fear, and of being 'killed', though supported by the angelic spirit they might endure long, and only show slowly the wearing of care and labour
>Why they should take such a form is bound up with the 'mythology' of the 'angelic' Powers of the world of this fable. At this point in the fabulous history the purpose was precisely to limit and hinder their exhibition of 'power' on the physical plane, and so that they should do what they were primarily sent for: train, advise, instruct, arouse the hearts and minds of those threatened by Sauron to a resistance with their own strengths; and not just to do the job for them. They thus appeared as 'old' sage figures. But in this 'mythology' all the 'angelic' powers concerned with this world were capable of many degrees of error and failing between the absolute Satanic rebellion and evil of Morgoth and his satellite Sauron, and the fainéance of some of the other higher powers or 'gods'. The 'wizards' were not exempt, indeed being incarnate were more likely to stray, or err. Gandalf alone fully passes the tests, on a moral plane anyway (he makes mistakes of judgement). For in his condition it was for him a sacrifice to perish on the Bridge in defence of his companions, less perhaps than for a mortal Man or Hobbit, since he had a far greater inner power than they; but also more, since it was a humbling and abnegation of himself in conformity to 'the Rules': for all he could know at that moment he was the only person who could direct the resistance to Sauron successfully, and all his mission was vain. He was handing over to the Authority that ordained the Rules, and giving up personal hope of success.
>That I should say is what the Authority wished, as a set-off to Saruman. The 'wizards', as such, had failed; or if you like: the crisis had become too grave and needed an enhancement of power. So Gandalf sacrificed himself, was accepted, and enhanced, and returned. 'Yes, that was the name. I was Gandalf.' Of course he remains similar in personality and idiosyncrasy, but both his wisdom and power are much greater. When he speaks he commands attention; the old Gandalf could not have dealt so with Théoden, nor with Saruman. He is still under the obligation of concealing his power and of teaching rather than forcing or dominating wills, but where the physical powers of the Enemy are too great for the good will of the opposers to be effective he can act in emergency as an 'angel' – no more violently than the release of St Peter from prison. He seldom does so, operating rather through others, but in one or two cases in the War (in Vol. III) he does reveal a sudden power: he twice rescues Faramir. He alone is left to forbid the entrance of the Lord of Nazgûl to Minas Tirith, when the City has been overthrown and its Gates destroyed — and yet so powerful is the whole train of human resistance, that he himself has kindled and organized, that in fact no battle between the two occurs: it passes to other mortal hands. In the end before he departs for ever he sums himself up: 'I was the enemy of Sauron'. He might have added: 'for that purpose I was sent to Middle-earth'. But by that he would at the end have meant more than at the beginning. He was sent by a mere prudent plan of the angelic Valar or governors; but Authority had taken up this plan and enlarged it, at the moment of its failure. 'Naked I was sent back – for a brief time, until my task is done'. Sent back by whom, and whence? Not by the 'gods' whose business is only with this embodied world and its time; for he passed 'out of thought and time'. Naked is alas! unclear. It was meant just literally, 'unclothed like a child' (not discarnate), and so ready to receive the white robes of the highest. Galadriel's power is not divine, and his healing in Lórien is meant to be no more than physical healing and refreshment.
>But if it is 'cheating' to treat 'death' as making no difference, embodiment must not be ignored. Gandalf may be enhanced in power (that is, under the forms of this fable, in sanctity), but if still embodied he must still suffer care and anxiety, and the needs of flesh. He has no more (if no less) certitudes, or freedoms, than say a living theologian. In any case none of my 'angelic' persons are represented as knowing the future completely, or indeed at all where other wills are concerned. Hence their constant temptation to do, or try to do, what is for them wrong (and disastrous): to force lesser wills by power: by awe if not by actual fear, or physical constraint. But the nature of the gods' knowledge of the history of the World, and their part in making it (before it was embodied or made 'real') – whence they drew their knowledge of the future, such as they had, is pan of the major mythology. It is at least there represented that the intrusion of Elves and Men into that story was not any pan of theirs at all, but reserved: hence Elves and Men were called the Children of God; and hence the gods either loved (or hated) them specially: as having a relation to the Creator equal to their own, if of different stature. This is the mythological-theological situation at this moment in History, which has been made explicit but has not yet been published."
Even in the story itself the character wonder and notice the difference in Gandalf!
>"'Did you get any news, any information out of him?'
>'Yes, a good deal. More than usual. But you heard it all or most of it: you were close by, and we were talking no secrets. But you can go with him tomorrow, if you think you can get more out of him — and if he'll have you.'
>'Can I? Good! But he's close, isn't he? Not changed at all.'
>**'Oh yes, he is!' said Merry, waking up a little, and beginning to wonder what was bothering his companion. 'He has grown, or something.** He can be both kinder and more alarming, merrier and more solemn than before, I think. He has changed; but we have not had a chance to see how much, yet.'....
>'Well, if Gandalf has changed at all, then he's closer than ever that's all,' Pippin argued."
The only real difference between Martin resurrections of his characters like Lady Stoneheart and Beric Dondarion is that in their cases their 'deaths' were shown as taking away something from them....and in Gandalf's case he is grown, enhanced! But he is also a different type of being for whome death means something entirely different :). And it further depicts the difference between Tolkien and Martin....in how in death they both see something different. Tolkien in Tolkien's world death is not supposed to be 'evil' bad thing but something natural that was only corrupted with fear by the Enemy, in Martin it's a typical mortal fear death as darkness. Tolkien's maybe a bit hopeful.
Why do people in this sub get so personally offended that GRRM doesn't pray at the altar of tolkien like everyone else lol this is why fantasy became stagnant in the first place
Because he hasn't outdone the master; he's written an overblown, overrated, nihilistic grimdark without providing any sort of aspirational light at the end of the tunnel (which is probably why he can't finish it). His own work has an even more derivative setting because he lacks Tolkien's bacground in linguistics, philosophy and humanism. His plot twists become predictable because all you have to do is find the most sympathetic character to guess who's going to die next (except Tyrion, because not even Martin has the guts to kill off his most popular character).
As to derivative, I'd say Gene Wolfe and Dan Simmons were doing a far better job taking fantasy lit in a new direction in the decade before *GOT* first came out.
There's no there there, once you get passed your initial impressions, but he has the nerve to demand why there isn't orc genocide in Tolkien.
He did. He completely rejected Tolkiens black and white fantasy that many other authors followed as well, pretty much writing a book that's as grounded as fantasy can get.
And to say the plot twists are predictable is just hindsight talking lol. There's a reason the Red Wedding started an entire generation of people just reacting to shows
Yes, it is with the benefit of hindsight, but once you see it you can't unsee it. Like any transgression, what starts out as shocking and interesting eventually becomes dull. That's the weakness that comes from making subversion the main crux of your story. Your readers begin to see it coming a mile away.
Daenerys becoming the villian was indeed a shocking plot twist; it also made no sense and killed all the goodwill people had for the show, and will severely color reception of the next two books (whenever they're published).
It's pretty telegraphed in the books that Daenerys is not going to be the Savior that some people expect. I wasn't shocked at all about the ending of the show, though I wish they had spent more time showing her fall.
If the show actually perfectly aligns with what GM had in mind for *A Song of Spring*, based on audience and critical reaction, I think that pefectly illustrates the weakness of what happens when the only magic trick up your sleeve is subversion. You become so obsessed with twists that you forget to have a coherent plot.
I'm not really getting what you are saying here. I don't think Daenerys' descent into paranoia is subversion, there's a fair bit of foreshadowing going on. I find asoiaf to be very compelling with or without "subversion".
1. You're the first person I've heard from (with the exception of Benioff and Weiss) to say that about Daenerys. It is the minority view, that's why season 8 went over like Boston's second album.
2. The subversion was its selling point, however. The plot twists, the feeling of "Who's going to die next?", the violence, the betrayals, the "realism." All this is what set the series apart. There is no Song of Ice and Fire without subversion.
I have read the books, and I disagree with the idea that her descent into madness is told well in the books. She has moral dilemmas, and she sometimes makes bad/wrong decisions, but she also tries to learn from them and strives to do good. I know we are supposed to think "oh she is ambitious and she will do anything for the throne" but I think here GRMM fails at "show dont tell", as I don't really see how Danny is different than so many other Lords in the book, including Jon Snow. Yet she is the only know who is claimed to show that she is going to turn evil.
Because Tolkien is the GOAT.
I get that /r/fantasy doesn't overlap with all the sports sub, or at least, likely won't overlap, but the same conversations are had there when it comes to GOATs.
The conversation is this....you respect them. You don't throw shade of any kind at them. You don't minimize or even scrutinize their work or their legacy. Why? Because that's the respect they get for being the GOAT.
Oh, *fuck* that noise. That is the most anti-intellectual, discussion-stifling, vapid bullshit I've ever heard. This is just facile fanboying elevated to a standard expectation through pressure to conform.
Nobody should be considered above reproach or criticism, and not everyone agrees on anyone's purported majesty. Nobody should be able to wear their popular reputation like Kevlar.
It's okay to disagree. But the point of being a fan is to be a *fanatic*. You don't always have to be logical. You can be, dare I say, illogical and irrational.
And across all fandoms, GOATs are 100% above reproach. They are the king of the mountain. What they say is the closest thing thing to Gospel within their domain, and the rest of us fans have to suck it up and accept it.
For example, if Tiger Woods said that golf balls need to be reduced flight, the PGA Tour damn well better institute it. Why? Because he's the fucking GOAT, is why. And no one can or will shit on his opinion because there's no better opinion than the GOAT.
Same goes for Tolkien. Slander or criticism or scrutiny towards Tolkien is sacrilege, and won't be taken kindly. He is the GOAT. What he said and did for the genre IS above reproach.
>It's okay to disagree...
>Slander or criticism or scrutiny towards [subject] is sacrilege...
Repeating the worst take I've heard in a long time isn't making it any more compelling, especially with the added element of inherent contradiction. So simply allow me to repeat: this is empty nonsense.
Yeah, a lot of people will think it's nonsense, but we're fans, we're going to be irrational, and it makes the enjoyment of our fandom way more fun than being logical all the time.
I, for one, will continue to stan Tolkien and all the other GOATs and will throw a BF and write a letter when I see someone throw shade at them.
*"Their pan in the story is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of 'Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill': I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war."*
Who is Sauron's mirror image then? Who is Shelob's? Dang, so sad the lady is gone, I'd been fun to have her answer...
Going with Galadriel seems the obvious choice: the remembrance of truth and preserving of the past vs the always renewed schemes and lies. The Eagles vs Shelob, flight versus laying in wait in tunnels. But isn't Galadriel rather the Balrog's opposite? Sauron in his tower stands alone... unless we count in Frodo, who ends with nine fingers. Big vs Small, deceptive vs earnest, Bagend vs Barad-Dur, staying in a tower vs going on adventure. What tips the scales is Sam, the lowly gardener, a friend through thick and thin. Sauron has no Sam, cannot have a Sam, because he cannot bond in friendship with another... well, of course, there's Gollum/Smeagol. Gollum loves the Precious but hates its origins, hates Sauron. Gollum doesn't want Sauron healed and whole. This is like a person who loves hot dogs but hates pigs. If Gollum truly loved the Precious, he would be glad it has a good host, but no, he wants it for himself. His is not the pure love that is a theme in Tolkien's work. Sam, on the other hand, wants the best for Frodo and cares for him after it all. If you truly love hot dogs, you love pigs. And if you love pigs, why would you hurt them for hot dogs? So Gollum does not love the ring, not truly, but he is totally lost in delusion.
But what is interesting is how all the "dark" people, despite constant infighting, were all in reality bound together by the ring of power, and its destruction made their "love" for each other disappear. They run away and hide, losing all unity. The "light" people of middle-earth are all separate and suspicious of each other at first. The council of Elrond is actually a remarkable event, and happens because Gondor is clearly going down. The renewed alliance would be too late. Not so the "dark" peoples, who have Uruk-Hai besides Goblins, and Trolls without batting an eye. Who truly is evil in middle-earth? Here, we have the artificial love of the ring vs the living love of the... well now... what is the Ring Of Power's mirror? What is the mirror of the One Ring? Get ready for a slam dunk.
Bill the pony, the tenth companion.
\*crowd roars in applause and stands up\*
The Ring is a burden. Bill bears them. Bill eats grass and apples. The Ring eats... well souls it looks like. The Ring makes you invisible. Bill lifts you up if you ride him. Bill leaves too soon. The Ring is there the entire time. The Ring is obvious. Bill is not. Bill is alive. The Ring is not. Rather than eek every useful amount of work from Bill and take him into Moria, the Fellowship decides to spare him a grisly fate, even if it's not helpful. The Ring is said to be a weapon. Bill is a pony, cute and fluffy.
Ah, the final bit I can't escape. Who is Bilbo's reverse echo? Which evil soul scrabbles in the dark with the opposite of words? It would seem to be... Tolkien himself? The author, watching his son go to WW2, as Bilbo watches Frodo leave on a hopeless quest. Tolkien, wracked with worry his wife will be damned, that his country will be destroyed. Tolkien, selfish and clever, not going into the infantry and living while his friends die. So, Bilbo pens the tale of Middle-Earth, while Tolkien does the tale of... Middle-Earth also. There... there is the chip in the mirror. Bilbo needs to write of Earth, 3rd planet from the Sun to balance the scales. But Bilbo is old and cannot. The task falls to Frodo, Tolkien's son... but the book is done, the Ring destroyed, the Elves leaving, there is nothing more to write about... except the tidbit of GRRM: does Aragorn kill the Orc babies? Perhaps we should not have the 3rd Rock From The Sun leak into Middle-Earth. Perhaps Middle-Earth should leak into here? So we come to it. Nurture vs Nature. Original sin of the ape with guns vs the innocence of the cat born with claws. Did Frodo have free will? Do we? The Ring bound them all together... wasn't it actually good? Aren't all the people of Earth swayed by LOTR? It's the most popular fantasy book. Isn't it a tragedy Earth is without the guidance of Angels? The Demons are more than willing to help... Ah, but perhaps we should think of Tom Bombadil and realize hell is other people. And what makes a person but words? Cat only needs meow. All the words... the words... the words... evil? But they let me say: "I love you." Yet it is action, not acting, that proves love. So words must be actions. Gosh, I think everyone is a computer programmer except me these days! And aren't words at their utmost force when in rhyme? Perhaps we should all try to write a rhyme or two and share it with each other.
Something to think about... well then!
The Sorrow Of Earth And New Beginnings
From the blazing fire of my iron heart
I throw some words like a dart
And wish you a happy spring
And a heart with a merry ring
Nothing to it
Rhyming a bit
Go for a walk and be fit
Go for a talk and be a tit
Then apologize
You don't know from where it can rise
But love comes in every size
And beneath it hatred dies
Maybe I'll come back to this poem
In a sleep called REM
But I don't think so
The rhymes must match for it to go
These numbers are universal, eternal
These words shallow as breath
But perhaps they avoid death
And we put a bridge, traversal, eternal
Between us and them
Oh my no, it's just sleep called REM
Good book tho, I say smacking my old gums
While... while... while... thumbs?
Well... well... well...
it's better than ending on my bum!
Considering they're both Maiar, a closer, more immediate mirror image is actually Gandalf. Where the Balrog hides in the darkness and licks its wounds at the end of the First Age, Gandalf walks the day and acts to bring about a better world.
People take shots at Tolkien because they don’t understand or oppose the spiritual quality of the story. LOTR is extremely Catholic and western. If you hate those things or what they represent the story is inaccessible.
Sounds like sugar coated BS to me. If someone like Goodkind wrote this, people would shit all over it. But because it's Le Guin everyone thinks it's grand, despite its rambling nature.
Honestly her arguments just reemphasize the shallowness to me. LotR was never meant to be a book of ethics, it’s meant to be a timeless classic and that’s fine. If I want a thinker, I’ll read Dune. I read LotR for the adventure and the simplicity, and that’s okay. Let’s not try to pretend there’s some depth that exists in the ethics of Tolkien’s world though: pretending that a thing is something that it is not is disrespectful towards what it actually is.
Tom Shippey would like to have a word with you.
[https://www.amazon.com/Road-Middle-Earth-Tolkien-Created-Mythology/dp/0618257608](https://www.amazon.com/Road-Middle-Earth-Tolkien-Created-Mythology/dp/0618257608)
[https://www.amazon.com/J-R-R-Tolkien-Century-Tom-Shippey-ebook/dp/B00I7JFC68/?\_encoding=UTF8&pd\_rd\_w=23E5s&content-id=amzn1.sym.cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf\_rd\_p=cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf\_rd\_r=131-6772418-2834546&pd\_rd\_wg=NOaEx&pd\_rd\_r=6e9a8216-79d0-4b05-8ada-6e5e03a06022&ref\_=aufs\_ap\_sc\_dsk](https://www.amazon.com/J-R-R-Tolkien-Century-Tom-Shippey-ebook/dp/B00I7JFC68/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=23E5s&content-id=amzn1.sym.cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_p=cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_r=131-6772418-2834546&pd_rd_wg=NOaEx&pd_rd_r=6e9a8216-79d0-4b05-8ada-6e5e03a06022&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk)
Or you could read the new edition of Tolkien's letters that just came out, showing him to be a widely read, deep thinking, humane man who put a lot more thought into his work than most people think.
Another short quote from the same book: >Those who refuse to listen to dragons are probably doomed to spend their lives acting out the nightmares of politicians. We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark; and fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language of the night.
This reminds me of a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories”: >Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion.
>O: [Fantasy is] certainly regarded as less than serious fiction. >P: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy. >Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different icongraphy, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that. >(Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself.” --Sir Terry Pratchett
Pratchett is second only to Tolkien. And Tolkien only did one thing and did it really well. Pratchett did a different thing each book and nailed it. Stuff that other authors spin out into 12 enormous doorstoppers. Like I’m not actually saying that say Wheel of Time is just Equal Rites but longer. But Equal Rites does nail a fair few of those ideas in a much shorter time frame. Small Gods also could be a whole book series. Pratchett is like Monty Python: he went out and energetically used a load of good ideas, where other authors might have stuck to more deeply exploring one.
I just read equal rites for the first time and I’m on mort now. Terry pratchett is my new favorite author after only le guin. Granny Weatherwax is the GOAT
My god she had such a way with words
I read Ursula Le Guin as a teenager - it was good. A few years ago I found a book hers on Bookbeat (audio book) and listened to that on my commute. I will admit to sitting in the car for 20-30 minutes when I arrived just to continue listening to the way she told the tale, the worlds she built, the characters and how everything fitted together. Truly one of the great authors.
i literally read that and rushed to post the same comment only to find you'd done it first
Wow, this lady could write. Who knew?
One day, producers will notice a brilliant female author laying around and then, hopefully, everyone will.
Oh god, please no. The last Earthsea adaptation was an utter disgrace.
The studio Ghibli one?
A24 had the rights to a TV series. The last update on it was fall 2019 :(
I was going to ask you where you found a copy of Language of the Night because I've been looking for it for a while, and I just googled and found out there's an ebook (and maybe a new print book as well) coming out in May of this year! Woohoo! [https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-language-of-the-night](https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-language-of-the-night)
God, she was a master. May she rest in peace.
Nightmares of politicians or fantasies?
Any mention of Tolkien's "simplisticness" or "black and white morality" is really missing on such key characters as Boromir, Denethor, Gollum or Saruman, Thorin and Thranduil, not to mention Lobellia Saquet's redemption arc, Sam's encounter with the dead Haradrim soldier. And this is just from the main novels. Both the appendix and the Silmarillion are full or morally greys characters - Helm, Earnur, Thingol, Feanor, Turin, Hurin, Maeglos, Maldon, Fingon, etc.
The setting isn't really black and white. LotR can be because that was the point of the journey. That good people in difficult times would try to make mostly the right choices. That when they made bad choices they'd try to fix it. The exceptions stand out to reaffirm the general good choices everyone made. The context in which those choices were made are important. Rohan helped Gondor despite basically being left to face Saruman alone. They went with what they had even though their numbers had been scattered by their own problems. Gondor held in spite of Denethor's stupidity. Faramir went to defend Osgiliath even though it was obviously a spiteful choice and tactically insane. Him and his men achieved the best they could. Aragorn took his men to the black gates despite the fact he couldn't possibly win. Because a greater victory might be achieved by their defeat. I don't know how realistic it really is but Tolkien created a story in which people mostly tried to achieve the best good in every situation they were in. Despite a world telling them they couldn't win (and they actually couldn't win) and they should give up.
Book Denethor wasn't stupid at all. The movies kinda did him dirty.
Tolkien's Denethor supposed to be a great man who is ultimately crushed by the weight of his burdens. Jackson's Denethor is an egotistical creep. He is not necessarily a bad character (in the sense of being poorly written or ill-suited to his role in the narrative), but it is not a faithful adaptation.
I often feel like when people think they're criticizing Tolkien they're really criticizing Peter Jackson. I love those films like all Fantasy fans of certain age but they are massively different from what Tolkien wrote right down to the themes.
Fantasy fans of any age should appreciate those movies. They're a relic of an era in cinema before studios started actively filing off any directorial or authorial authenticity from their flagship blockbusters. But, they had a level of production never before afforded to genre films, especially fantasy, during that era. They are truly unique in the modern cinematic landscape. The reason Dune is doing so well, and the reason the new Mad Max will do so well, is that people are starved for a competently-made sci-fi action movie that has a genuine sense of artistic intent (and, in the case of Dune, themes actually worth thinking about after the end of the movie). As the world gradually starts to crave literally *any* fantasy or sci-fi action-adventure that doesn't feel like it was written by the same writing team as every single other genre-fiction action movie, I hope people look back on LotR and demand better from Hollywood. Though, The Hobbit damaged PJ's legacy perhaps irreparably, given that they were the epitome of the modern, "trying to be Marvel", written-by-committee, hollow, sterile, safe blockbuster.
Massively different yet probably the best fantasy book to movie adaption I can think of.
That particular instance is in both sources. Though in the books the decision to send Faramir on a suicide mission was done by a council with Denethor just not intervening because he was pissed Faramir hadn't brought him the ring.
In the books, Denethor is the one pushing for Faramir to defend Osgiliath and the walls around the Pelennor, and it's a sound military decision - callous, because it's extremely dangerous and they're sure to lose after causing damage, but a sound strategy.
Yeah, Brett Deveraux’s blog, ACOUP, has a great breakdown of how Denethor’s actions in the book actually make military sense and he’s not just sending Faramir to commit suicide, even though he’s still callously saying he doesn’t care if Faramir lives or dies. Movie Denethor is perfect for what the movies needed, but he’s a very different character indeed.
Hell, I remember rereading the Council of Elrond recently and being surprised at how much it felt like an allegory for Climate Change. Gandalf has to persuade everyone assembled to do the difficult thing that might work, destroying the Ring, while everyone else wants to take easy half-measures that definitely won't. It would have been much easier to hide the Ring in Rivendell, to give it to Tom Bombadill, to give it to Boromir or to let Aragon wield it against Sauron, but all those easy options were doomed to failure. Gandalf knows taking the Ring to Mordor is a long shot, but he also understands that in desperate circumstances, desperate measures are required. And even short of the climate, I've seen this attitude from people in my life. You've got a problem, but you're not prepared to take the difficult steps that might fix it, so you do something easy instead and the problem remains unsolved.
You see it so, so often in life and in other peoples situations it’s mind boggling, and yet I’m not sure there’s a single one of us that isn’t also guilty of it at some point(s) ourselves. That alluring promise of ‘what if I could do this the way I want to and get not only the thing I/we need, but everything I want, and/or nothing I don’t want’, meanwhile, on the outside, we or the people around us, are looking at that person thinking “You’re outta your mind. You’re going to lose out on what you need all in pursuit of what you want.” Really is a timeless story there, and a great choice to use it by Tolkien.
Objection: Denethor’s decision to send out Faramir to try to hold at Osgiliath is an objectively good decision militarily. A slow fighting retreat to bleed the orcs and buy more time for Rohan to arrive is the best course of action. It feels as though you are criticizing Jackson’s films more than Tolkien‘s books, because Denethor as he appears in the book is a downright excellent military commander. Was the decision to send out a force dangerous? Sure, but it is objectively the best decision in context. **Denethor is not stupid**.
I feel like you’re talking more about the movies than Tolkien’s books…
Not to remind that Rohirrim-Dunlending conflict is fully grey and 'political' in nature.
A lot of people like to pretend that "moral clarity" equals "simplisticness" so that they can go deluding themselves that moral turpitude and endless compromising of one's principles is just being "complex" and "deep", not taking the easy way out. It's related to the phenomenon of prasing "morally grey" characters, by which it's meant sexually attractive psychopaths.
They also conflate right and wrong with black and white. Right and wrong certainly exist in that world but it is not necessarily black and white. The Noldor didn't decide that they were going to do evil.. they sought to defeat the dark lord and recover what was left of the light of the trees. Despite seeking the light and fighting the darkness, they create three Ages of tragedy for Middle Earth. Galadriel recognizes this clearly by the end.. not dark but beautiful and terrible as the morning and the night. Fair as the sea and the sun and the snow upon the mountain. "All shall love me and despair."
The cynic's complexity.
I find people do the same when they equate "Realism" with just being "dark" or "cynical".
I would certainly try to formulate that with more charity but you are not wrong.
Is moral clarity not simple? If morality were clear, then we wouldn’t debate for millennia over right and wrong, good and bad, utility and harm. From the flip side, comments like this feel dismissive of everyone who experience only gray morality.
I absolutely agree. His characters are incredibly nuanced.
Gah Le Guin goes so hard. I almost enjoy her scholarly essays more than her books. She's so intelligent and well spoken. You've reminded me of a [blog](https://www.ursulakleguin.com/adaptation-tales-of-earthsea) she wrote about Miyazaki's *Tales From Earthsea*, loosely based on her Earthsea Cycle. She was asked if she liked it, and likes it well enough, but takes issue with the story for bearing little resemblance to the themes of her novels: >"The moral sense of the books becomes confused in the film. For example: Arren's murder of his father in the film is unmotivated, arbitrary: the explanation of it as committed by a dark shadow or alter-ego comes late, and is not convincing. Why is the boy split in two? We have no clue. The idea is taken from A Wizard of Earthsea, but in that book we know how Ged came to have a shadow following him, and we know why, and in the end, we know who that shadow is. The darkness within us can't be done away with by swinging a magic sword. >But in the film, evil has been comfortably externalized in a villain, the wizard Kumo/Cob, who can simply be killed, thus solving all problems. >In modern fantasy (literary or governmental), killing people is the usual solution to the so-called war between good and evil. My books are not conceived in terms of such a war, and offer no simple answers to simplistic questions."
Christ, I'm still enraged at the missed chance of that adaptation. Ghibli and Le Guin should have been a match made in heaven and instead we got this weird shallow smooshing together of four books into one film... Honestly she was way too charitable in her review of it.
it actually adds quite a lot, thanks
I miss Ursula. What a mind. And what a heart.
Just as people often confuse complexity with depth, the same is true with simplicity and shallowness. You can have a lot of depth to a simple story.
Simplistic and simple don't mean the same thing, at least, connotationally
I remember being in the theater when The Two Towers ended. Gollum giving in to his evil half and deciding to lead the hobbits to their deaths and it pans out to Mordor and fire and that music- *you are lost you can never go home.* I sat in that theater till the lights came on.
Yeah that ending is mwah chefs kiss 🤌
>It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy?
That’s beautiful and I’m amazed I’ve never seen it before! Thank you! I once made a similar point about Gollum in *The Hobbit*. He is Bilbo’s alter ego, if Bilbo had never found his courage and had been trapped in the orc caves forever.
Likewise, Bilbo and Thorin could be seen as two sides of the same coin.
I've always felt since I first encountered her books, that if I was ever tasked with picking a human to trust with the weilding of magic, Ursula K Le'Guin would be first on the list.
She's my president candidate lol
I love the orc conversation between Shagrat and Gorbag. They are old friends. Talk about going off and setting up together on their own. After 20+ readings I have a whole new appreciation for orcs.
Didn't one of them kill the other over a shiny piece of mail the very same day they had that conversation? I wouldn't read to much into ork "friendship" honestly
Didnt say I did. I know quite a few people who would shiv a friend to retain a “shiny piece of mail” worth the entire shire. My point was they actually became “real” in that conversation.
Sméagol and Déagol were friends, no?
Just because a relationship ends in violence, that doesn't mean there was never any love there. Sometimes the people we feel the most strong anger or jealousy towards are the people we love the most. The great thing about stories is that storytellers can express the extreme aspects of the human experience by using extreme examples such as with close friends committing murder to make a point. (And yes, I know they're orcs, but they're behaving a lot like humans.)
> And indeed he does this, and his good people tend to be entirely good, though with endearing frailties, while his Orcs and other villains are altogether nasty. Believe it or not, most of Tolkien's works eschew this for much more complex characters, and were rejected by publishers. Characters like Feanor, Maeglin and Turin Turambar are indeed morally "grey" characters, and even in *The Lord of the Rings* you have characters like Saruman and Boromir who believe they're doing the right thing, and slide in either direction. I would argue that the most overlooked aspect of Tolkien's world is that, unlike our own, there really is a Devil out there trying to destroy the people who just want to make a living, and like the case of the hobbits, be left alone, to do as they wish. In such a world, you're either 'good' or you're not. But even *then* there is a ton of nuance. Bill Ferny abused his animals. Barliman scorned the rangers. And how would you even categorize Radagast? He abandoned people and decided to live with nature, even as the world fell to peril. Is that "evil"? It certainly isn't "good." But he wasn't one of the bad players. The fact that a group of people can be molded into a force of pure hatred isn't so hard to fathom for me. I've seen enough hatred in other people *to kill other people* even if it means killing kids, the disabled, or people who are demonstrably innocent of any crime. Humans are capable of such things; if Tolkien figured out a way to separate them from the get-go, more power to him.
It has become in vogue to read fantasy as political, a la GRRM, but LotR is not political, it is spiritual. Le Guin clearly gets this, though opts for altogether more psychology-flavored language to express it when Tolkien would have used theological.
That's a fascinating way to put it and is, I think, a pretty interesting way of looking at the three authors' respective work. Tolkien, through spirituality, LeGuin through psychology, Martin through history.
Martin through politics. Plenty of history in Tolkien as well
I think that Le Guin was a very spiritual writer as well, but she was writing from a Taoist perspective rather than a Christian one.
That's a good point. And also you can also look at any of those same authors' books through any lens, I wasn't trying to restrict it.
There is politics in the spirituality of environmental issues.
Totally. I recommend watching the YouTube series “Like Stories of Old” - he does a great analysis of LOTR explaining it in basically this context too.
I think when people describe Tolkien as "black and white" what they mean is that his world is very clear on the right and wrong thing to do. There are morally grey characters like Boromir or Saruman who were good and fell to temptation, but both their stories end with them doing explicitly bad things. Saruman was good and then became bad. Boromir was good, became bad, and then did a good thing in the end. Tolkien's characters can change, obviously, but they change between being good and bad. As Le Guin says here, there are the bright figures and the shadow figures. This is fine, the moral clarity and good vs. evil aspect are clear themes Tolkien is focusing on, but I hesitate to recall many times when a LOTR character does something "grey" in the sense of the story can't really come down one way or the other. Boromir makes the case of using the Ring to save Minas Tirith, which is understandable, but the book makes explicit that would be the wrong thing. Gollum vacilates between good and evil throughout the story, but it's clear that Smeagol helping Frodo is good and trying to take the Ring is evil. Aragorn is the rightful King, by both blood and countenance and is crowned such. Compare this to the archtypical "morally grey" fantasy, ASoIaF. GRRM has none of the "moral clarity" of Tolkien. He loves putting his characters in places where there are no right decisions, and refrains from making it clear what should have happened. Should Ned have carried out Robert's will as Robert wrote it, as he swore to do, or should he have altered it like he did, committing treason, because he knows Joffrey isn't legitimate? It's debatable. All of Martin's characters exist in a state of being both good and bad, and it's left to the reader to decide who to root for in the muck.
I'm not sure GM wants us to root for any of them.
>I think when people describe Tolkien as "black and white" what they mean is that his world is very clear on the right and wrong thing to do. If by world you mean only LOTR, yes. If you include the Silmarillion, no. For a simple example - were the Noldor right or wrong to rebel against the Valar and leave Valinor? >but it's clear that Smeagol helping Frodo is good and trying to take the Ring is evil Gollum trying to take the Ring is what enables its destruction though. And him helping Frodo is in large part driven by selfish self-serving motives. It was *useful* to Frodo but does that actually make it morally "good"?
You're right that most of my comment applies to The Hobbit and LOTR, just because that's what the original post, but even in the Silmarillion, I think it's clear the Noldor rebelling and going West is a case like Adam eating of the fruit, an act of rebellion that causes the long term decline of Middle-Earth. If Feanor handed over the Silmarils after Ungoliant destroys the Two Trees, the Valar would have recreated the Trees, Melkor would have never gotten them and his plans would have failed. The fact that the rebellion directly lead to the Sundering of the Elves, the Kinslaying and the Doom of Mandos seems to parallel Adam and his family driven out of the Garden. I'd argue similarly that the message of the ending isn't that Gollum being evil is what allows the Ring to be destroyed, it's Frodo's pity in let him survive, a supremely good act, and in Eru Iluvatar's divine will taking even Gollum as an instrument. The text heavily hints that Gollum's doom is tied to the oath that Frodo demands Smeagol swear on the precious, which is a direct result of Frodo's pity in choosing an alternative to killing him. I think the message of the ending isn't that "The quest succeeded *because* Gollum was evil," it's "The quest succeed *in spite* of it". If Gollum hadn't been evil and faithfully guided Frodo through Mordor, he likely would have avoided the wound from Shelob and other trials from RotK, which may have made it easier to resist the temptation at the Cracks of Doom. It's a very Catholic message from Tolkien, that the perfect will of Eru incorporates even evil, like Eru incorporating the Discord of Melkor into the Music or God using Satan and the sin of Man to allow Christ to sacrifice himself and save the world.
Well said from a master of the genre.
from the CREATOR of the genre He's the Architect, and the rest of us are just players on his Cones of Dunshire
Ursula Le Guin, not Tolkien.
Even if the above poster *were* talking about Tolkien, he didn't create the genre.
> from the CREATOR of the genre *Frowns in Beowulf*
*Raises finger in Gilgamesh*
*Glances at the Tale of Glorp*
*Sniffs in Don Quixote*
Always turn to Le Guin for wisdom. Thank you, Ms. Le Guin, even after all these years you are teaching me new things.
Lord of the Rings is way more morally complex than either its most ardent fans or detractors (or even Tolkien for that matter) want to admit. In the end the quest only succeeds because Frodo uses the Ring to compel Gollum ("If you touch me ever again you shall be cast yourself into the fire of doom") thus committing the most evil act possible: robbing another being of their free will. What Tolkien is really saying (whether he meant to or not) is that good cannot triumph over evil in the mortal sense because no mortal being is too pure to be corrupted. Evil can only defeat itself. The best good can do is to survive and resist with the knowledge (based on faith) that good in the immortal sense is stronger. In Tolkien's universe, good is the tree with a trunk that is too broad and hard to be cut down. Evil is the axe.
> In the end the quest only succeeds because Frodo uses the Ring to compel Gollum ("If you touch me ever again you shall be cast yourself into the fire of doom") thus committing the most evil act possible: robbing another being of their free will. That wasn't Frodo using the power of the Ring, nor did he rob Gollum of anything. Gollum made a promise, an *oath*, and he swore that oath on the thing that mattered most to him in the world: the Ring. Frodo spelled out the consequences of breaking that oath, but the decision to make the promise and to break it fell fully onto Gollum. This has nothing to do with anything the Ring can do specially. It's simply how promises work, or are supposed to work. See, in fairy tales and mythology, swearing an oath is a serious thing. Being an oathbreaker was one of the worst things you can be to ancient societies because they had little else to bind their society together. Breaking an oath was tantamount to casting everything into chaos, so their stories reflected this. Lying is bad enough but lying after you swore an oath? That was a wound in the social fabric that cried out for divine retribution, for the gods themselves to strike this person down, preferably in the most ostentatious manner possible as a sign to everyone else that oathbreaking will not ever be tolerated. Gollum died because that's what happens to oathbreakers. Frodo was not involved in that beyond being the object of the oath.
>Being an oathbreaker was one of the worst things you can be to ancient societies because they had little else to bind their society together. Breaking an oath was tantamount to casting everything into chaos, so their stories reflected this. Lying is bad enough but lying after you swore an oath? That was a wound in the social fabric that cried out for divine retribution, **for the gods themselves to strike this person down, preferably in the most ostentatious manner possible as a sign to everyone else that oathbreaking will not ever be tolerated.** the men of dunharrow learned this the hard way when the breaking of their oath to isildur
Most people don’t understand that the Commandment about not taking the name of The Lord in vain isn’t about cussing or saying ‘Jesus Christ!’ when you hit your finger with the hammer, it’s about swearing an oath in the name of The Lord and then breaking it. If you swore on God’s name to do something and you broke that vow, that was a major thing and that’s why people are still asked to swear on The Bible (or another holy book).
Frodo was more involved: he cursed Gollum to be cast into the fire if he would touch him again, and Gollum did, and he fell into the fire. But Gollum breaking his oath is also relevant to this – it made him receptive for the curse. You can compare it to the Oathbreakers and Isildur: the Oathbreakers broke their oaths, but that alone didn't turn them into ghosts. Isildur's curse did that. But had they not broken their oath, Isildur wouldn't have had the power over them, and had he cursed them it wouldn't have had any effect. For Frodo, it was done out of a defensive position because Gollum was attacking him. But using the Ring in such a way also gave the Ring more power over him, so that Frodo was even less able to let go of the Ring when he was supposed to not long after this moment.
This isn't Tolkien's interpretation of the story, though you're correct that Tolkien thought of Evil as self-defeating and Good's primary goal in enduring. Frodo remained Good, that's why he and his quest were saved by God in the logic of the story. What he says to Gollum is thius likely a prophecy, not a curse; Frodo isn't robbing, he's warning.
Frodo wasn't saved because he "remained good". He eventually claimed the One Ring for himself, he wasn't indomitable. Noone would have been. He was saved because he showed Gollum while he still could: > "He (and the Cause) were saved – by Mercy : by the supreme value and efficacy of Pity and forgiveness of injury. Corinthians I x. 12-13 may not at first sight seem to fit – unless 'bearing temptation' is taken to mean resisting it while still a free agent in normal command of the will." – J.R.R. Tolkien Frodo's words to Gollum were more than a warning, and I think it's reasonable to describe them as a curse. But they only had potency because Gollum broke his oath, making him receptive for the curse's effect. It's like Isildur also cursed the Oathbreakers when they broke their oath. Without broken oath, the curses have no power, but without the curse, a broken oath doesn't automatically turn you into a ghost – or in Gollum's case let's you fall into the fire. It needs both a curse and a broken oath for something like that.
Frodo remained good, since Tolkien explicitly said that Frodo's failure wasn't a moral one. Failing an impossible task isn't wrong.
What does it mean to be "good"? I never said Frodo was wrong.
It means doing the right thing, where possible.
Whether Tolkien intended it or not, I think my reading is still a valid one given the information given in text itself. I would also argue that making a prophecy is itself a form of manipulation. And I would say that even if we accept that Frodo remained good, the fact that the Ring was able to corrupt even him suggests that good is not absolute for anyone other than Eru (who defines its nature by his very existence) and possibly Bombadil (who was created as part of a much simpler story).
>I would also argue that making a prophecy is itself a form of manipulation. Me to a robber: "If you come into my house I will shoot you!" Robber:
Me:
Cops: You've stolen the robber's free will!
\*whispers\* technically killing someone would be robbing them of their free will in the ultimate sense \*pedantically runs away\*
"It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he's got, and all he's ever gonna have."
Self-defense is generally considered a pretty valid reason to take another person's life. And yes, some people are "forced" into a life of crime for lack of better options; it's not always black and white. But choosing to attempt to force entry to someone's house is still a choice where people would understand that they might be putting their own health at risk. Just like Gollum had a choice.
Oh I wasn't trying to start a moral argument, I'm in an annoying mood and wanted to make myself laugh lol, wasn't disagreeing with anything
Your interpretation is in extremely bad faith and deliberately ignores 99.9% of the actual context. That's NOT what a valid reading looks like.
>In the end the quest only succeeds because Frodo uses the Ring to compel Gollum ("If you touch me ever again you shall be cast yourself into the fire of doom") thus committing the most evil act possible: robbing another being of their free will. Sounds like Gollum made a choice to touch Frodo. How is this robbing him of free will?
That isn't my reading of the story, but I'm upvoting and commenting because it's an interesting interpretation that can be supported by the text and we need more comments like yours. Thanks for making me think!
It’s about the providence of God. Gollum was spared because he still had a part to play. Frodo is defeated by desire at the last second but through divine providence the ring is still destroyed. The ring corrupted Frodo to save itself and its master but it’s same corruption on Gollum lead to its doom.
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Frodo didn't, "manipulate," Gollum. Gollum was stalking him with the intent to kill him and take the Ring, and he was caught. The obvious thing for Frodo to do in that circumstance would be to kill Gollum since there was no other way to stop him. He would have been fully within his right to do so as it is no evil thing to kill someone dead-set on trying to kill you when there's no convenient authority to whom you can remand the attempted murderer. This was the course to which Gollum had committed himself instead of doing literally anything else with his life. Frodo then offered Gollum an alternative: swear an oath to act as a faithful guide and do no harm to Frodo or Sam, because he couldn't be trusted to be let go on his own. The quoted line about Gollum being cast into the fire is just *boilerplate consequences* in this world because oath-breaking was one of the most serious violations of the societal order in ancient societies and Tolkien was all about making a preindustrial mythology for England. Frodo was in no way using the power of the Ring or otherwise casting a spell. He was saying, "Hey, just a reminder that you swore an oath on the thing that means the most to you, and in Middle-Earth, breaking that kind of oath has Deadly-Serious Consequences."
Thank you for this. I think I will finally, after almost three decades on this fine Earth of ours, read some of her work now
The tendency to shadowbox against fantasy, and especially against Tolkien, is truly one of the most frustrating things about discussing media with people who are more familiar with political lenses of analysis. Le Guin is right to take this more Jungian approach.
That entire book made a huge impression on me when I was young.
Someone needs to contact Le Guin's spirit and lock GRRM in a room with her so he can learn respect for his elders.
GRRM has massive respect for Tolkien. But some memes of out of context quotes made it seem like that wasn't the case.
Idk, I've read the full quote in context and despite his declared love/respect for Tolkien he proceeds to ask some really silly questions that are answered by the books (or if not the books by Tolkien in supplementary material) that suggests that he maybe hasn't read them. I have a pretty good idea of Aragorn's tax policy (probably quite low from his own subjects) and whether or not he would've kept a standing army but I actually read the books and have some idea of how Medieval/feudal society is structured. The sentence came at the end. The one place in a book where you more or less *have to* start writing "easy sentences" that summarize what happens next or you'll never finish. The only thing that's a real question is orc genocide because Tolkien was never fully decided on what orcs actually *are*. At one point he was playing with the idea that they're just manifest evil spirits and killing their physical form doesn't even kill them. The only solid answer we have is the Uruk-hai as corrupted elves as the general theme with Tolkien is that Morgoth and his servants cannot create- only alter what Eru Ilúvatar has created. I don't recall much indication that there even are orc babies in their "orc cradles" to be killed. Though, I'll admit it is one case where Tolkien himself was unclear/undecided. It was a ridiculous criticism. And it *was* criticism. For a while I tried the generous reading of "maybe he's just saying he's more interested in taxes than battles" but that is why I looked for the quote in context. And everyone says ridiculous things from time to time so if it had been some offhand remark from when he was less known or a dredged up old forum post or something I'd feel more understanding. But the dude was accepting an award. I don't know if he needs to "respect his elders" (not a sentiment I care for) but I do wish ***he*** understood feudalism and/or how Medieval taxes/armies worked.
The 'tax policy' thing was just a random example. In that quote, I think GRRM just wanted to know how did Aragorn rule the kingdom in much more detail. People focus too much on that one specific thing (tax policy), thanks to memes which are designed to portray things on one side. I'm not even much of a fan of ASOIAF and even I van recognise what GRRM said wasn't something meant in a negative way. Its very easy for people who may not agree with the themes in GRRM's books to use the isolated quote and make GRRM look bad.
Well one thing is certain....Argorn's tax policy would no doubt be much more fair and just and lenient to the people than that of his distant ancestors :) hehe. >"In the second stage, the days of Pride and Glory and grudging of the Ban, they begin to seek wealth rather than bliss. The desire to escape death produced a cult of the dead, and they lavished wealth and an on tombs and memorials. They now made settlements on the west-shores, but these became rather strongholds and ‘factories’ of lords seeking wealth, and the Númenóreans became tax-gatherers carrying off over the sea evermore and more goods in their great ships. The Númenóreans began the forging of arms and engines." >–J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter No. 131 :) heheheh...sorry could't resist hehe...but jokes aside...this one thing though exaggerated it shows the differences in interests....Martin misses the point though with that....Aragorn's reign is beginning just as the story of Lord of the Rings ends...and the tale itself is not about depicting the wielding power, governing, politics, but also his interests in the mundane minutiae the sheer detail and lore....and one can find it in Tolkien works too once one delves deep enough...but again different focuses....for Martin a thing like....Gondor's civil war the Kin-stride with all it's political machinations and war cruelty and all that would be in focus while Tolkien made it on the periphery :) >"When the confederates led by descendants of the kings rose against him, he opposed them to the end of his strength. At last he was besieged in Osgiliath, and held it long, until hunger and the greater forces of the rebels drove him out, leaving the city in flames. In that siege and burning the Tower of the Dome of Osgiliath was destroyed, and the palantír was lost in the waters. >The Return of the King, LoTR Appendix A, Annals of the Kings and Rulers: Gondor and the Heirs of Anárion >... >"Castamir had not long sat upon the throne before he proved himself haughty and ungenerous. He was a cruel man, as he had first shown in the taking of Osgiliath. He caused Ornendil son of Eldacar, who was captured, to be put to death; and the slaughter and destruction done in the city at his bidding far exceeded the needs of war. This was remembered in Minas Anor and in Ithilien; and there love for Castamir was further lessened when it became seen that he cared little for the land, and thought only of the fleets, and purposed to remove the king's seat to Pelargir. >The Return of the King, LoTR Appendix A, Annals of the Kings and Rulers: Gondor and the Heirs of Anárion Martin in turn would probably made entirel plot revolving around that :). And then still one can find numerous details about the politicsm economy and stuff like that in Middle-earth so it's not like Tolkien's works are devoid of that. Of course Tolkien himself had made enough of lore and details to often answer such questions! :) >"[To] be Prince of Ithilien, the greatest noble after Dol Amroth in the revived Númenórean state of Gondor, soon to be of imperial power and prestige, was not a 'market-garden job' as you term it. Until much had been done by the restored king, the P. of Ithilien would be the resident march-warden of Gondor, in its main eastward outpost — and also would have many duties in rehabilitating the lost territory, and clearing it of outlaws and orc-remnants, not to speak of the dreadful vale of Minas Ithil (Morgul). I did not, naturally, go into details about the way in which Aragorn, as King of Gondor, would govern the realm. But it was made clear that there was much fighting and in the earlier years of A.'s reign expeditions against enemies in the East. The chief commanders, under the King, would be Faramir and Imrahil; and one of these would normally remain a military commander at home in the King's absence." >The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Edited by Humphrey Carpenter, Letter 244 to a reader of The Lord of the Rings, circa 1963
>>"In the second stage, the days of Pride and Glory and grudging of the Ban, they begin to seek wealth rather than bliss. The desire to escape death produced a cult of the dead, and they lavished wealth and an on tombs and memorials. They now made settlements on the west-shores, but these became rather strongholds and ‘factories’ of lords seeking wealth, and the Númenóreans became tax-gatherers carrying off over the sea evermore and more goods in their great ships. The Númenóreans began the forging of arms and engines." Different times, different rules. For one thing there isn't a whole nation of Numenoreans existing in the 4th age anymore. The Numenoreans in the second age came from the West and settled/created strongholds on lands that already had settlers on them. How do you think the Dunlendings and the Harad started hating the Numenoreans (and eventually Gondor and Rohan, who are descendents of Numenoreans)? Since no more colonising is happening in the 3rd/4th age, it's not likely things would go the same way. >but again different focuses.... I do agree. Different authors have different focus and interests. However, I'm still surprised so many people took what Martin said as an insult. While you may not agree, I would have thought it's pretty clear where he's coming from. Aragorn has had no experience ruling as a king. All he has is but his name and his bloodline, but that doesn't mean you know the ins and outs of being a good king. I think that's where Martin's concern was.
You seem to have missed my point a bit with the mention of the tax gathering hehe, first it was more of a half-jokingly stated...but again this quote proves that such things as 'taxes' existed in Middle-earth hehe (not to mention The Hobbit and other places in Lotr, are mentioned also such things as...tolls and so on), and second yeah you don't have to explain it to me...the Numenoreans of the Second Age are different from the Gondorians of the Third (the case of the Dunlendings and the Haradrim and other native peoples is a whole complex topic in itself...the numenorean imperialism and colonialism that is explicitly shown as part of their fall and corruption to shadow etc. the Second Age colonial empire of Numenor laid ground for the future Realms-in-Exile) and in any case it was to show the difference...Aragorn is a more noble Numenorean who encapsulates their virtues and good sides...Aragorn bloodline is one of the purest of numenorean blood (and there's not many 'pure-blood' Numenoreans left...obviously there is still a lot of numenorean blood among the Gondorians and Arnorians, the so called Dunedain of the South and Dunedain of the North but they are dwindling in numbers in Third Age). In a way this is an example of the culture and civilization and it's trappings. Numenorean culture also in that time became materialistic, obsessed with wealth and power and so on. Which is something that can lead to corruption and so on. As a side note the Harad as the target makes sense, a) it was little explored land and the Numenoreans of Second Age, their sailors explored the coasts much southwards beyond anything we know from lotr maps, and b) it was rich with resources, as is usually the case with exotic lands it was rich in gold and ivory and other stuff, and when the Numenoreans became greedy and power hungry no wonder the Haradrim became one of the targets of subjugation, economic exploitation, enslavement and military conquest. As for the Aragorn skills as a ruler....I think you're mistaken....Aragorn has been prepared for leadership role and has been leading people (not to mention being a military commander with great experience by the time of War of the Ring, which in such societies gives into the skills of a leader). Aragorn before becoming king was also a Chieftain of the Dunedain of the North and has been ruling what's left of his people, when he is not away adventuring and exploring and serving in the armies of Gondor and Rohan: >"Ecthelion II […] encouraged all men of worth from near or far to enter his service, and to those who proved trustworthy he gave rank and reward. In much that he did he had the aid and advice of a great captain whom he loved above all. Thorongil men called him in Gondor, the Eagle of the Star, for he was swift and keen-eyed, and wore a silver star upon his cloak; but no one knew his true name nor in what land he was born. He came to Ecthelion from Rohan, where he had served the King Thengel, but he was not one of the Rohirrim. He was a great leader of men, by land or by sea, but he departed into the shadows whence he came, before the days of Ecthelion were ended. >Thorongil often counselled Ecthelion that the strength of the rebels in Umbar was a great peril to Gondor, and a threat to the fiefs of the south that would prove deadly, if Sauron moved to open war. At last he got leave of the Steward and gathered a small fleet, and he came to Umbar unlooked-for by night, and there burned a great part of the ships of the Corsairs. He himself overthrew the Captain of the Haven in battle upon the quays, and then he withdrew his fleet with small loss. But when they came back to Pelargir, to men's grief and wonder, he would not return to Minas Tirith, where great honour awaited him." The life experience, the knowledge and wisdom, justice, it must be noted that Aragorn knows well his people, their laws and culture and history, he is not merely a warrior, but also a learned man, a scholar almost, well educated. And one can say that Tolkien and Martin would be fundamentally different in understanding what really makes a 'good king'. For Tolkien politics are a taint....as he wrote about Denethor: >"I dislike the use of ‘political’ in such a context; it seems to me false. It seems clear to me that Frodo’s duty was 'humane’ not political. He naturally thought first of the Shire, since his roots were there, but the quest had as its object not the preserving of this or that polity, such as the half republic half aristocracy of the Shire, but the liberation from an evil tyranny of all the 'humane’*–including those, such as 'easterlings’ and Haradrim, that were still servants of the tyranny. >Denethor was tainted with mere politics: hence his failure, and his mistrust of Faramir. It had become for him a prime motive to preserve the polity of Gondor, as it was, against another potentate, who had made himself stronger and was to be feared and opposed for that reason rather than because he was ruthless and wicked. Denethor despised lesser men, and one may be sure did not distinguish between orcs and the allies of Mordor. If he had survived as victor, even without use of the Ring, he would have taken a long stride towards becoming himself a tyrant, and the terms and treatment he accorded to the deluded peoples of east and south would have been cruel and vengeful. He had become a 'political’ leader: sc. Gondor against the rest." Tolkien's idea of kingship is something else than Martin would probably have in mind. For example take what the Aragorn's judgement of Beregond was, the examples of his early decisions, the details of his early reign that we DO know. Besides Aragorn wasn't some naive simpleton, he knew how to talk to people, how to use diplomacy, and when necessary be stern. Qualities of a leader are a complex issue, Aragorn has many and the actual fundamental basis in terms of knowledge. And I bet he would be capable of dealing with the rulership, he knows the people well enough: "...and went alone far into the East and deep into the South, exploring the hearts of Men, both evil and good, and uncovering the plots and devices of the servants of Sauron." In a way Lord of the Rings does provides a contrast between tyranny and kingship, Sauron's leadership, anyone who would look at it, no doubt we can say that he was a strong, powerful ruler, who micromanaged things to high efficiency, but he was a tyrant who ruled through fear, force and subterfuge, he was a plotter and schemere, a chessmaster one can say, who played the long game, but was so into this game that he lost the sight of the simple things and people themselves, he was still considered wise, as Gandalf said "For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts." In Tolkien's words it's in general terms 'tyranny vs kingship, moderated freedom, vs comulsion' and so on. Sauron has many qualities that would make him a great ruler, a great king, he is strong and capable, but lost all moral limitations. >"But like all minds of this cast, Sauron's love (originally) or (later) mere understanding of other individual intelligences was correspondingly weaker; and though the only real good in, or rational motive for, all this ordering and planning and organization was the good of all inhabitants of Arda (even admitting Sauron's right to be their supreme lord), his plans, the idea coming from his own isolated mind, became the sole object of his will, and an end, the End, in itself." Tolkien said that: >"He still had the relics of positive purposes, that descended from the good of the nature in which he began: it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and coordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction. (It was the apparent will and power of Melkor to effect his designs quickly and masterfully that had first attracted Sauron to him.)" But nobody would want to have that sort of leader wouldn't they? :) Under Sauron's reign many ambitious and loyal would be able to prosper and thrive, but any sign of opposition and any freedom would be quelled. Additionally Sauron made sure that his servants are given economical wellbeing, and so on. Heheh, he is basically the totalitarian nightmare, and his desire is to "...it was the creatures of earth, in their minds and wills, that he [Sauron] desired to dominate." The One Ring in simplified terms is basically a mind control tool :). Also to say more about Aragorn as king, the political structure of Gondor as Tolkien intended. >"A Númenórean King was monarch, with the power of unquestioned decision in debate; but he governed the realm with the frame of ancient law, of which he was administrator (and interpreter) but not the maker. In all debatable matters of importance domestic, or external, however, even Denethor [Steward of Gondor] had a Council, and at least listened to what the Lords of the Fiefs and the Captains of the Forces had to say." >The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Edited by Humphrey Carpenter, Letter 244 to a reader of The Lord of the Rings, circa 1963 The terms used, fieds, lords and so on are also not exactly the feudal in the sense that we understand, because they are having uniqye in-universe meanings, fief in Gondor is merely division of the realm, aministrative region, not personal property of a lord granted by the king, lords are local governors etc. they form the Great Council of Gondor and so on. Even knight as a term has different meaning in Middle-earth.
And at last this idea of Martin that 'good man does not alway make a good ruler' is also kind of explored in Tolkien's various texts, one can find numerous examples, king Tar-Palantir (Inziladun) for instance, a morally upstanding 'good guy' and yet ineffective king, who could not prevent the further corruption of his people, he had strong political opposition, by his own brother no less, and of course there are examples of people we can simply call....jerks who were great rulers :)...sons of Feanor almost obliged to be assholes hehe and yet the Caranthir was a great and capable ruler of his realm in Beleriand etc.
GRRM was saying he wanted fantasy that finds drama in the making of messy and difficult political decisions. That's what he wrote in ASOIAF. It doesn't track to say that Tolkien satisfied that desire because we can extrapolate from Aragorn's character and introduce what we know about medieval society from outside the text. No it's not a damning criticism of Tolkien but it's not supposed to be condemnatory.
I know I wrote a lot but... >For a while I tried the generous reading of "maybe he's just saying he's more interested in taxes than battles" but that is why I looked for the quote in context. Should I go pull up the quote? It is most definitely critical and everyone who has repeated it after him has used it critically and he's had all the time in the world to clarify if he somehow stumbled his words at an award acceptance speech (something I would've thought he'd given time and thought to). "*Governing is difficult and I've always been interested in what happens after the battle is won*" is really not the same sentence as "*And Aragorn ruled wisely and well for 100 years’ or something. It’s easy to write that sentence. But I want to know what was his tax policy...*" To read it that charitably would be to ignore what he actually said and how the quote has been used since. At a stretch I can see his 2014 quote in a better light (though it wouldn't make his fans any less insufferable in how they ran with it) but I also think it wouldn't have been difficult to actually just say that he wanted a Fantasy that explores navigating politics IF that had been what he meant. But fair enough, he's launched 1,000 brain-dead "but what's his tax policy" comments based on communicating poorly.
I recognise that mine is a generous reading, but it's the only one that tracks given that GRRM is actually _not_ more interested in taxes than battles. As you've pointed out, and he admits himself, he does not pay much attention to the "economics" of feudal societies. The best encapsulation he's given of his project is when he quoted Faulkner to say that the only thing worth writing about is the _human heart in conflict with itself._ That's the best way to understand why detailed and complicated moral decisions that rulers have to make are so important to him. I've read the full quote and I believe it's fair to say it is a gentle criticism that's not seeking to condemn or dismiss Tolkien at all. GRRM describes it as a "quibble": > This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. But as far as I know, the provenance of the quote is an [interview for Rolling Stone](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/), not an awards acceptance speech. Are we thinking of the same one? The interview question and context of the quote clarifies my reading. It's clear that he wanted to tell a story where a major theme is that it's hard even for good people to do the right thing when it comes to politics, and that simply having good people in power is not enough. As for his fans, what can I say? People are bizarrely tribal about these things and love out of context soundbites. The tax policy thing is repeatedly if not wilfully misunderstood by his fans, and yeah, they can indeed be very annoying about it.
I was thinking of his 2019 speech at Trinity College Dublin for the Burke Award. His 2014 speech I could read more generously since it definitely aligns more with the reading you're giving it. I don't tend to think of authors as "responsible for" their fans (god what a nightmare that would be) but I wish he might have communicated the point a bit better especially if he was going to do it twice. But I admit that may be unfair carry-over annoyance directed at him from a whole decade's worth of really annoying fallout from it.
If that's respect, I'd hate to see what disrespect coming from him looks like. But really, *ASOIAF* is to *LOTR* what *His Dark Materials* is to *Chronicles of Narnia*. The whole thing serves as a rebuke to Tolkien's idealism, to the idea that there's good in the world and that it's worth fighting for.
>If that's respect, I'd hate to see what disrespect coming from him looks like. Just because you love sonething doesn't mean you can't critique it. GRRM said something based on what he would ideally like to see in LOTR. I wish there was more info on the Blue Wizards to the point I have many ideas of how they could be implemented into the 3rd or even 4th age. Doesn't mean I hate Tolkien. GRRM has said on several occasions that Tolkien was a big impact on his creative upbringing as a writer.
I don't doubt that's true, but see my above comment. Lewis was a huge impact on Pullman as well. The main point is that there's more depth and complexity to Tolkien than the Martins and Moorcocks of the world give credit for. Perhaps I'll eat crow when *A Dream of Spring* comes out.
> If that's respect, I'd hate to see what disrespect coming from him looks like. I think that would look like GRRM not writing ASOIAF because he wouldn't be interested in engaging with Tolkien's works.
Like he's doing right now?
>*His Dark Materials* is to *Chronicles of Narnia*. The whole thing serves as a rebuke to Tolkien's idealism, to the idea that there's good in the world and that it's worth fighting for. If you are saying that *His Dark Materials* is not about what is good and worth fighting for, I don't know what to say to you.
That particular line was more in reference to Martin v Tolkien; Pullman's never made any secret of the fact that his whole reason in writing HDM was to have a cage match with CSL.
I always thought it was more a rebuke to humanity as a whole rather than Tolkien. Starting a petty civil war when a massive threat is bearing down on them is pretty much how we're handling climate change.
GRRM didn't have an issue with Tolkien not writing about the tax policy. What he did have an issue with is bringing back Gandalf.
But bringing back Jon Snow is okay?
I think the example provided by Lady Stoneheart lays the groundwork for how Jon Snow's resurrection is going to go. The issue with Gandalf's resurrection is that he's basically just good ol' Gandalf again after the first few pages, cheapening the transformation of death. Revenant Jon Snow is probably not going to be good ol' Jon Snow.
I think in that case both Martin and the general public, misses the point....Tolkien himself points out the difference and the cost of that 'death' it had on Gandalf: >"Gandalf really 'died', and was changed: for that seems to me the only real cheating, to represent anything that can be called 'death' as making no difference. 'I am G. the White, who has returned from death'. Probably he should rather have said to Wormtongue: 'I have not passed through death (not 'fire and flood') to bandy crooked words with a serving-man'. And so on. I might say much more, but it would only be in (perhaps tedious) elucidation of the 'mythological' ideas in my mind; it would not, I fear, get rid of the fact that the return of G. is as presented in this book a 'defect', and one I was aware of, and probably did not work hard enough to mend. But G. is not, of course, a human being (Man or Hobbit). There are naturally no precise modern terms to say what he was. I wd. venture to say that he was an incarnate 'angel'– strictly an γγελος: 2 that is, with the other Istari, wizards, 'those who know', an emissary from the Lords of the West, sent to Middle-earth, as the great crisis of Sauron loomed on the horizon. By 'incarnate' I mean they were embodied in physical bodies capable of pain, and weariness, and of afflicting the spirit with physical fear, and of being 'killed', though supported by the angelic spirit they might endure long, and only show slowly the wearing of care and labour >Why they should take such a form is bound up with the 'mythology' of the 'angelic' Powers of the world of this fable. At this point in the fabulous history the purpose was precisely to limit and hinder their exhibition of 'power' on the physical plane, and so that they should do what they were primarily sent for: train, advise, instruct, arouse the hearts and minds of those threatened by Sauron to a resistance with their own strengths; and not just to do the job for them. They thus appeared as 'old' sage figures. But in this 'mythology' all the 'angelic' powers concerned with this world were capable of many degrees of error and failing between the absolute Satanic rebellion and evil of Morgoth and his satellite Sauron, and the fainéance of some of the other higher powers or 'gods'. The 'wizards' were not exempt, indeed being incarnate were more likely to stray, or err. Gandalf alone fully passes the tests, on a moral plane anyway (he makes mistakes of judgement). For in his condition it was for him a sacrifice to perish on the Bridge in defence of his companions, less perhaps than for a mortal Man or Hobbit, since he had a far greater inner power than they; but also more, since it was a humbling and abnegation of himself in conformity to 'the Rules': for all he could know at that moment he was the only person who could direct the resistance to Sauron successfully, and all his mission was vain. He was handing over to the Authority that ordained the Rules, and giving up personal hope of success. >That I should say is what the Authority wished, as a set-off to Saruman. The 'wizards', as such, had failed; or if you like: the crisis had become too grave and needed an enhancement of power. So Gandalf sacrificed himself, was accepted, and enhanced, and returned. 'Yes, that was the name. I was Gandalf.' Of course he remains similar in personality and idiosyncrasy, but both his wisdom and power are much greater. When he speaks he commands attention; the old Gandalf could not have dealt so with Théoden, nor with Saruman. He is still under the obligation of concealing his power and of teaching rather than forcing or dominating wills, but where the physical powers of the Enemy are too great for the good will of the opposers to be effective he can act in emergency as an 'angel' – no more violently than the release of St Peter from prison. He seldom does so, operating rather through others, but in one or two cases in the War (in Vol. III) he does reveal a sudden power: he twice rescues Faramir. He alone is left to forbid the entrance of the Lord of Nazgûl to Minas Tirith, when the City has been overthrown and its Gates destroyed — and yet so powerful is the whole train of human resistance, that he himself has kindled and organized, that in fact no battle between the two occurs: it passes to other mortal hands. In the end before he departs for ever he sums himself up: 'I was the enemy of Sauron'. He might have added: 'for that purpose I was sent to Middle-earth'. But by that he would at the end have meant more than at the beginning. He was sent by a mere prudent plan of the angelic Valar or governors; but Authority had taken up this plan and enlarged it, at the moment of its failure. 'Naked I was sent back – for a brief time, until my task is done'. Sent back by whom, and whence? Not by the 'gods' whose business is only with this embodied world and its time; for he passed 'out of thought and time'. Naked is alas! unclear. It was meant just literally, 'unclothed like a child' (not discarnate), and so ready to receive the white robes of the highest. Galadriel's power is not divine, and his healing in Lórien is meant to be no more than physical healing and refreshment. >But if it is 'cheating' to treat 'death' as making no difference, embodiment must not be ignored. Gandalf may be enhanced in power (that is, under the forms of this fable, in sanctity), but if still embodied he must still suffer care and anxiety, and the needs of flesh. He has no more (if no less) certitudes, or freedoms, than say a living theologian. In any case none of my 'angelic' persons are represented as knowing the future completely, or indeed at all where other wills are concerned. Hence their constant temptation to do, or try to do, what is for them wrong (and disastrous): to force lesser wills by power: by awe if not by actual fear, or physical constraint. But the nature of the gods' knowledge of the history of the World, and their part in making it (before it was embodied or made 'real') – whence they drew their knowledge of the future, such as they had, is pan of the major mythology. It is at least there represented that the intrusion of Elves and Men into that story was not any pan of theirs at all, but reserved: hence Elves and Men were called the Children of God; and hence the gods either loved (or hated) them specially: as having a relation to the Creator equal to their own, if of different stature. This is the mythological-theological situation at this moment in History, which has been made explicit but has not yet been published." Even in the story itself the character wonder and notice the difference in Gandalf! >"'Did you get any news, any information out of him?' >'Yes, a good deal. More than usual. But you heard it all or most of it: you were close by, and we were talking no secrets. But you can go with him tomorrow, if you think you can get more out of him — and if he'll have you.' >'Can I? Good! But he's close, isn't he? Not changed at all.' >**'Oh yes, he is!' said Merry, waking up a little, and beginning to wonder what was bothering his companion. 'He has grown, or something.** He can be both kinder and more alarming, merrier and more solemn than before, I think. He has changed; but we have not had a chance to see how much, yet.'.... >'Well, if Gandalf has changed at all, then he's closer than ever that's all,' Pippin argued." The only real difference between Martin resurrections of his characters like Lady Stoneheart and Beric Dondarion is that in their cases their 'deaths' were shown as taking away something from them....and in Gandalf's case he is grown, enhanced! But he is also a different type of being for whome death means something entirely different :). And it further depicts the difference between Tolkien and Martin....in how in death they both see something different. Tolkien in Tolkien's world death is not supposed to be 'evil' bad thing but something natural that was only corrupted with fear by the Enemy, in Martin it's a typical mortal fear death as darkness. Tolkien's maybe a bit hopeful.
That's the irony, isn't it? To be fair, it hasn't happened yet in the books. Maybe it's one of the plot points GRRM has a hard time with now.
On that, we can agree.
Technically he hasn't published that bit yet :'(
Why do people in this sub get so personally offended that GRRM doesn't pray at the altar of tolkien like everyone else lol this is why fantasy became stagnant in the first place
I don't see fantasy as stagnant. It just doesn't lose older traditions entirely while new ones arise and change.
Because he hasn't outdone the master; he's written an overblown, overrated, nihilistic grimdark without providing any sort of aspirational light at the end of the tunnel (which is probably why he can't finish it). His own work has an even more derivative setting because he lacks Tolkien's bacground in linguistics, philosophy and humanism. His plot twists become predictable because all you have to do is find the most sympathetic character to guess who's going to die next (except Tyrion, because not even Martin has the guts to kill off his most popular character). As to derivative, I'd say Gene Wolfe and Dan Simmons were doing a far better job taking fantasy lit in a new direction in the decade before *GOT* first came out. There's no there there, once you get passed your initial impressions, but he has the nerve to demand why there isn't orc genocide in Tolkien.
He did. He completely rejected Tolkiens black and white fantasy that many other authors followed as well, pretty much writing a book that's as grounded as fantasy can get. And to say the plot twists are predictable is just hindsight talking lol. There's a reason the Red Wedding started an entire generation of people just reacting to shows
Yes, it is with the benefit of hindsight, but once you see it you can't unsee it. Like any transgression, what starts out as shocking and interesting eventually becomes dull. That's the weakness that comes from making subversion the main crux of your story. Your readers begin to see it coming a mile away. Daenerys becoming the villian was indeed a shocking plot twist; it also made no sense and killed all the goodwill people had for the show, and will severely color reception of the next two books (whenever they're published).
It's pretty telegraphed in the books that Daenerys is not going to be the Savior that some people expect. I wasn't shocked at all about the ending of the show, though I wish they had spent more time showing her fall.
If the show actually perfectly aligns with what GM had in mind for *A Song of Spring*, based on audience and critical reaction, I think that pefectly illustrates the weakness of what happens when the only magic trick up your sleeve is subversion. You become so obsessed with twists that you forget to have a coherent plot.
I'm not really getting what you are saying here. I don't think Daenerys' descent into paranoia is subversion, there's a fair bit of foreshadowing going on. I find asoiaf to be very compelling with or without "subversion".
1. You're the first person I've heard from (with the exception of Benioff and Weiss) to say that about Daenerys. It is the minority view, that's why season 8 went over like Boston's second album. 2. The subversion was its selling point, however. The plot twists, the feeling of "Who's going to die next?", the violence, the betrayals, the "realism." All this is what set the series apart. There is no Song of Ice and Fire without subversion.
Valid point. Jon Snow's death is another pointless twist cause he will be revived anyway.
I have read the books, and I disagree with the idea that her descent into madness is told well in the books. She has moral dilemmas, and she sometimes makes bad/wrong decisions, but she also tries to learn from them and strives to do good. I know we are supposed to think "oh she is ambitious and she will do anything for the throne" but I think here GRMM fails at "show dont tell", as I don't really see how Danny is different than so many other Lords in the book, including Jon Snow. Yet she is the only know who is claimed to show that she is going to turn evil.
**Thank you.**
Because Tolkien is the GOAT. I get that /r/fantasy doesn't overlap with all the sports sub, or at least, likely won't overlap, but the same conversations are had there when it comes to GOATs. The conversation is this....you respect them. You don't throw shade of any kind at them. You don't minimize or even scrutinize their work or their legacy. Why? Because that's the respect they get for being the GOAT.
Oh, *fuck* that noise. That is the most anti-intellectual, discussion-stifling, vapid bullshit I've ever heard. This is just facile fanboying elevated to a standard expectation through pressure to conform. Nobody should be considered above reproach or criticism, and not everyone agrees on anyone's purported majesty. Nobody should be able to wear their popular reputation like Kevlar.
It's okay to disagree. But the point of being a fan is to be a *fanatic*. You don't always have to be logical. You can be, dare I say, illogical and irrational. And across all fandoms, GOATs are 100% above reproach. They are the king of the mountain. What they say is the closest thing thing to Gospel within their domain, and the rest of us fans have to suck it up and accept it. For example, if Tiger Woods said that golf balls need to be reduced flight, the PGA Tour damn well better institute it. Why? Because he's the fucking GOAT, is why. And no one can or will shit on his opinion because there's no better opinion than the GOAT. Same goes for Tolkien. Slander or criticism or scrutiny towards Tolkien is sacrilege, and won't be taken kindly. He is the GOAT. What he said and did for the genre IS above reproach.
>It's okay to disagree... >Slander or criticism or scrutiny towards [subject] is sacrilege... Repeating the worst take I've heard in a long time isn't making it any more compelling, especially with the added element of inherent contradiction. So simply allow me to repeat: this is empty nonsense.
Yeah, a lot of people will think it's nonsense, but we're fans, we're going to be irrational, and it makes the enjoyment of our fandom way more fun than being logical all the time. I, for one, will continue to stan Tolkien and all the other GOATs and will throw a BF and write a letter when I see someone throw shade at them.
Yeah, there's little point in discussion with THAT kind of fan, though. Appreciation without critique isnt worth interacting with.
It would be like if Tolkien had a quote disparaging Beowulf or the Kalevala.
*"Their pan in the story is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of 'Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill': I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war."*
No, it would be like GRRM disparaging Tolkien
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Okay, so they can be wrong together.
Who is Sauron's mirror image then? Who is Shelob's? Dang, so sad the lady is gone, I'd been fun to have her answer... Going with Galadriel seems the obvious choice: the remembrance of truth and preserving of the past vs the always renewed schemes and lies. The Eagles vs Shelob, flight versus laying in wait in tunnels. But isn't Galadriel rather the Balrog's opposite? Sauron in his tower stands alone... unless we count in Frodo, who ends with nine fingers. Big vs Small, deceptive vs earnest, Bagend vs Barad-Dur, staying in a tower vs going on adventure. What tips the scales is Sam, the lowly gardener, a friend through thick and thin. Sauron has no Sam, cannot have a Sam, because he cannot bond in friendship with another... well, of course, there's Gollum/Smeagol. Gollum loves the Precious but hates its origins, hates Sauron. Gollum doesn't want Sauron healed and whole. This is like a person who loves hot dogs but hates pigs. If Gollum truly loved the Precious, he would be glad it has a good host, but no, he wants it for himself. His is not the pure love that is a theme in Tolkien's work. Sam, on the other hand, wants the best for Frodo and cares for him after it all. If you truly love hot dogs, you love pigs. And if you love pigs, why would you hurt them for hot dogs? So Gollum does not love the ring, not truly, but he is totally lost in delusion. But what is interesting is how all the "dark" people, despite constant infighting, were all in reality bound together by the ring of power, and its destruction made their "love" for each other disappear. They run away and hide, losing all unity. The "light" people of middle-earth are all separate and suspicious of each other at first. The council of Elrond is actually a remarkable event, and happens because Gondor is clearly going down. The renewed alliance would be too late. Not so the "dark" peoples, who have Uruk-Hai besides Goblins, and Trolls without batting an eye. Who truly is evil in middle-earth? Here, we have the artificial love of the ring vs the living love of the... well now... what is the Ring Of Power's mirror? What is the mirror of the One Ring? Get ready for a slam dunk. Bill the pony, the tenth companion. \*crowd roars in applause and stands up\* The Ring is a burden. Bill bears them. Bill eats grass and apples. The Ring eats... well souls it looks like. The Ring makes you invisible. Bill lifts you up if you ride him. Bill leaves too soon. The Ring is there the entire time. The Ring is obvious. Bill is not. Bill is alive. The Ring is not. Rather than eek every useful amount of work from Bill and take him into Moria, the Fellowship decides to spare him a grisly fate, even if it's not helpful. The Ring is said to be a weapon. Bill is a pony, cute and fluffy. Ah, the final bit I can't escape. Who is Bilbo's reverse echo? Which evil soul scrabbles in the dark with the opposite of words? It would seem to be... Tolkien himself? The author, watching his son go to WW2, as Bilbo watches Frodo leave on a hopeless quest. Tolkien, wracked with worry his wife will be damned, that his country will be destroyed. Tolkien, selfish and clever, not going into the infantry and living while his friends die. So, Bilbo pens the tale of Middle-Earth, while Tolkien does the tale of... Middle-Earth also. There... there is the chip in the mirror. Bilbo needs to write of Earth, 3rd planet from the Sun to balance the scales. But Bilbo is old and cannot. The task falls to Frodo, Tolkien's son... but the book is done, the Ring destroyed, the Elves leaving, there is nothing more to write about... except the tidbit of GRRM: does Aragorn kill the Orc babies? Perhaps we should not have the 3rd Rock From The Sun leak into Middle-Earth. Perhaps Middle-Earth should leak into here? So we come to it. Nurture vs Nature. Original sin of the ape with guns vs the innocence of the cat born with claws. Did Frodo have free will? Do we? The Ring bound them all together... wasn't it actually good? Aren't all the people of Earth swayed by LOTR? It's the most popular fantasy book. Isn't it a tragedy Earth is without the guidance of Angels? The Demons are more than willing to help... Ah, but perhaps we should think of Tom Bombadil and realize hell is other people. And what makes a person but words? Cat only needs meow. All the words... the words... the words... evil? But they let me say: "I love you." Yet it is action, not acting, that proves love. So words must be actions. Gosh, I think everyone is a computer programmer except me these days! And aren't words at their utmost force when in rhyme? Perhaps we should all try to write a rhyme or two and share it with each other. Something to think about... well then! The Sorrow Of Earth And New Beginnings From the blazing fire of my iron heart I throw some words like a dart And wish you a happy spring And a heart with a merry ring Nothing to it Rhyming a bit Go for a walk and be fit Go for a talk and be a tit Then apologize You don't know from where it can rise But love comes in every size And beneath it hatred dies Maybe I'll come back to this poem In a sleep called REM But I don't think so The rhymes must match for it to go These numbers are universal, eternal These words shallow as breath But perhaps they avoid death And we put a bridge, traversal, eternal Between us and them Oh my no, it's just sleep called REM Good book tho, I say smacking my old gums While... while... while... thumbs? Well... well... well... it's better than ending on my bum!
I think Glorfindel is the Balrog’s opposite. They each have one pivotal scene where the company is crossing an obstacle (ford and bridge).
Considering they're both Maiar, a closer, more immediate mirror image is actually Gandalf. Where the Balrog hides in the darkness and licks its wounds at the end of the First Age, Gandalf walks the day and acts to bring about a better world.
People take shots at Tolkien because they don’t understand or oppose the spiritual quality of the story. LOTR is extremely Catholic and western. If you hate those things or what they represent the story is inaccessible.
Not true at all. It is entertainment, not everyone needs entertainment to align with their personal beliefs.
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because trans women are not men, and because it’s not up to Rowling to decide that
Sounds like sugar coated BS to me. If someone like Goodkind wrote this, people would shit all over it. But because it's Le Guin everyone thinks it's grand, despite its rambling nature.
Hi George! Finished Book 6 yet?
It's a simple and comforting feel-good story written in moderately good prose. That doesn't mean it's simplistic or lacks depth.
Honestly her arguments just reemphasize the shallowness to me. LotR was never meant to be a book of ethics, it’s meant to be a timeless classic and that’s fine. If I want a thinker, I’ll read Dune. I read LotR for the adventure and the simplicity, and that’s okay. Let’s not try to pretend there’s some depth that exists in the ethics of Tolkien’s world though: pretending that a thing is something that it is not is disrespectful towards what it actually is.
Tom Shippey would like to have a word with you. [https://www.amazon.com/Road-Middle-Earth-Tolkien-Created-Mythology/dp/0618257608](https://www.amazon.com/Road-Middle-Earth-Tolkien-Created-Mythology/dp/0618257608) [https://www.amazon.com/J-R-R-Tolkien-Century-Tom-Shippey-ebook/dp/B00I7JFC68/?\_encoding=UTF8&pd\_rd\_w=23E5s&content-id=amzn1.sym.cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf\_rd\_p=cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf\_rd\_r=131-6772418-2834546&pd\_rd\_wg=NOaEx&pd\_rd\_r=6e9a8216-79d0-4b05-8ada-6e5e03a06022&ref\_=aufs\_ap\_sc\_dsk](https://www.amazon.com/J-R-R-Tolkien-Century-Tom-Shippey-ebook/dp/B00I7JFC68/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=23E5s&content-id=amzn1.sym.cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_p=cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_r=131-6772418-2834546&pd_rd_wg=NOaEx&pd_rd_r=6e9a8216-79d0-4b05-8ada-6e5e03a06022&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk) Or you could read the new edition of Tolkien's letters that just came out, showing him to be a widely read, deep thinking, humane man who put a lot more thought into his work than most people think.