cite?
I think PJ says on the DVD commentary that the scouring is out.
Hmmmmm. You’ve reminded me of Tolkien’s concept of eucatastrophe – it’s a bit hard to explain, so I’ll quote from “On Fairy Stories”:
This is what you have to keep in mind when considering LotR as tragedy – it is tragic, but only within the world; Tolkien leaves it open to something more.
(For another example of eucatastrophe in action see Tolkien’s allegorically autobiographical short “Leaf by Niggle.” I feel compelled to plug it; it’s a beautiful little story.)
So I’m going to have to buy ANOTHER director’s cut DVD of Lord of the Rings after the apocalypse?
Toad,
No, you will have to buy the seventeen disk DVD set for Silmarillion! First we have to talk someone into making it, of course.
Tris
I can’t wait to see how Jackson envisions the Fall of Gondolin!
I thought that part of what Tolkien was trying to do was to write a sort of pre-mythology for Europe. As such it was essential that the earth is left more or less as it appears in later (real) european myths. For example, I think that there is some hint that dragons survive the end of the Third age…
Wait, what is this you speak of G. Cornelius? Dragons surviving the third age? Did I miss something? Please detail…
There is a section on the survival of dragons at the end of this web-site:
http://gofree.indigo.ie/~warrenl/Tolkien/Dragons/TheGreatWorms.html
While most of what Tolkien wrote was probably formed by his experiences in WWI, I think the deeper subtext that runs through both the Silmarillion and LOTR is that all things are diminished over time. That is: things were somehow better in the past than the present. This is a persistent Urban Legend that seems to be impossible to eradicate. According to the DVD Tolkien “hated” technology. But he never had to live in a real medievil villlage. I bet for all of Tolkien’s hatred of technology, once he returned from the war he never had to (or wanted to) weave his own clothes, wash his own clothes, eat unrefrigerated food, or walk through streets awash with unprosessed sewage.
Well, consider also that Tolkien firmly believed that things change, often seemingly for the worse, but always revealing more of God’s mind. And he believed of the inevitable triumph of God’s will.
My First post.
You might want to look into Wagner’s opera “Twilight of the Gods” for some insight into the passing of Middle Earth.
While Tolkien was not creating a metaphor, he certainly would have been aware of other writers who wrote (or rewrote) myths.
Wagner’s story was in fact a ring trilogy that led to the passing of the gods. While Tolkien avoids the use of gods in LOTR, keep in mind that Wagner’s gods were more often than not demi-gods. That is humans with more powerful characteristics.
The whole “things were better in the past” thing isn’t an Urban Legend. It’s a plain ol’ unadorned Legend–like they had in the old days, when men were men and … um, but I digress.
Before the Industrial Revolution, pretty much everyone believed that things were better at some point in the distant past. The ancient Greeks had their myth of the Golden Age, while many enlightened folks during the 1700s thought that civilization had reached its apex with the ancient Greeks.
Things have changed since the Industrial Revolution. Nowadays, we all believe that things will be better in the future, with the rocket cars and the moving sidewalks and the videophones.
Wagner’s Ring was a four parter.
Welcome, Tagyerit.
Well, so’s Stuart Little a tragedy (the book, not the sugary movie). I really liked both LOTR and SL as a kid, because they were in such jarring contrast to the Disney vision of the world, and both rang true for me. People die, epochs end, the Long Ears and Short Ears leave only their statues on Easter Island… I’ve always detested fake, treacley literary endings, and I think this is due to my early exposure to works like LOTR that portrayed a more mixed experience.
A couple of things here…
First a spoiler… errr… call it an anti spoiler:
TTT does not show this. Of course one of the reasons is that the story doesn’t go that far in the movie. It may happen, just not in this movie. Remember, the movies don’t match up exactly with the books.
Now for Elanor. My hunch (not a spoiler) is that at the end of the movie, the whole thing is actually Sam reading the story to his daughter. This is how we’ll leave the film, seeing the Shire after Sam tucks his daughter in.
I knew I should have previewed…
Plus, it’s gotta suck to have your finger bitten off.
Yes and no. It’s a prelude plus three parts. Just like LOTR, to which The Hobbit is a prelude.
Tagyerit makes a good point. Actually a lot of epic quest cycles seem to end with victory but the world somehow diminished–specifically by some sort of magic going out of the world. Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle for instance, or Pullman’s His Dark Materials, or Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain books
LOTR is just so rich. Personally I would hate to dwell too long on the tragic sense of loss. If I’m not mistaken, the elves don’t die, but they do leave middle earth, which would be a loss for the hobbits, for example, but for the fact that as a race, the hobbits pretty much kept their distance.
One of the things that I find of interest, is the close association that Tolkien had with CS Lewis, and the sense of beauty and growth that Lewis imparts in the end of his books Lion, Witch and Wardrobe. Well its been a long time since I’ve read that series. Yet in my memory Lewis was trying to impart this beauty as the flip side of the coin to what we always feared would be a great loss. I’m kind of thinking out loud, so I’m not sure if this makes sense?
Rich