# My Theory About LOTR (long) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 3, 2012, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766 "2012-05-03T15:59:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2012, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/41 "2012-05-04T12:54:51Z")
> [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](#): > > I think the scouring of the shire was probably meant to be their moment of glory. But in the end, the hobbits acquitted themselves quite well in the main part of the story, so there was no need of it. (…) > > But for me personally, the scouring of the shire does one thing I can’t forgive. It turns Saruman into a Snidely Whiplash style cartoon villain. Thanks for the thoughtful thread, **Kim**. I’ll agree that the Scouring of the Shire could have been left out, and readers would not have missed it. However, I like it, and often see it mentioned with fondness in discussions – it’s a good inclusion. Probably many episodes could have been left out with just a few narrative patches needed to cover their omission. You’re right in that it was not needed to show the hobbits’ heroism, but that was not its purpose. Instead it translated the need for extraordinary heroism into the need for everyday heroism. A battle with 100,000 casualties is going to be an intellectual abstraction, but a story where 15 of your neighbors are killed is something that can be grasped by almost anyone. ## Saruman’s degradation was also an interesting tale. After his staff has broken, he was just a smart, bitter guy with an attitude. No great powers. But Tolkien’s point was that he did not have to be shattered by his downfall. It is \*\*not \*\*better to rule in hell than to be a decent member of society. Saruman made his choice and it ended up with him being stabbed by a grubby underling. I’m not sure Middle Earth is substantively different than the Hyborean Age – just exquisitely filled out. They’re both prehistoric Earths with gods, demons, warring nations. Howard ties his to the Earth’s timeline more than JRRT, but not with any passion or precision. ---
**Author:** ![well\_he\_s\_back](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3ab097/32.png) [@well\_he\_s\_back](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/well_he_s_back)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2012, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/42 "2012-05-04T13:36:46Z")
yes, thanks for the thoughtful thread, although I disagree with many of your points Kim. As already stated, I think the Scouring is vital. (we can quibble about the definition of epilogue. If Tolkien had retained the horrible bit he wrote where Sam is talking years later with his daughter Elanor, that would have been a true epilog.) I think the evil Saruman shows is frightening and true. The inconsistencies you see in the book that bother you never bothered me, and i just finished a slow reread of it, so I’m pretty aware of the pacing and tone. I especially disagree with your need to restructure ‘Fellowship’. Telling the story from the hobbits’ point of view increases the tension. Including ‘non-essential’ story bits allows for time to flesh out the characters a bit and make us care about them more. ---
**Author:** ![shantih](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f6c823/32.png) [@shantih](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shantih)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2012, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/43 "2012-05-04T13:51:23Z")
> [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](#): > > I think the scouring of the shire was probably meant to be their moment of glory. But in the end, the hobbits acquitted themselves quite well in the main part of the story, so there was no need of it. And you can sort of see that in their reactions, when they learn what’s been going on. They more or less say, “What’s all this nonsense? We’re heroes, we’re not putting up with this!” Then it all sort of goes away. It’s all over and done with in a single chapter. > > But for me personally, the scouring of the shire does one thing I can’t forgive. It turns Saruman into a Snidely Whiplash style cartoon villain. Saruman is supposed to be a powerful wizard – one of the Maiar – not a moustache twirler. Regarding your last point, I thought it was rather brilliant of the Professor to demonstrate the banality of evil: Saruman the White, stripped of power and position, resurfacing as Sharkey, showing his malice and pettiness and dying from a knife wound in the back from his own minion. Regarding your first, I felt the Scouring of the Shire was to show not only that there were no corners of Middle Earth left untouched by the shadow of evil but also so that we could see how the hobbits had grown over the course of their journey. ---
**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2012, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/44 "2012-05-04T15:01:24Z")
> [@shantih](#): > > I thought it was rather brilliant of the Professor to demonstrate the banality of evil: Saruman the White, stripped of power and position, resurfacing as Sharkey, showing his malice and pettiness (…) Numerous parts of LOTR evoke (in me) images of Nazis, Hitler, Napoleon or Mussolini. I’m sure Tolkien strove to avoid obvious political symbolism, still when you’re writing about dictatorial warlords in the middle of the 20th century there are going to be some relationship to actual events. In the Scouring, Saruman was a petty bully with good oratorical skills. Most dictators start out as petty bullies, and if they’re nipped in the bud they don’t end up plunging the world into chaos. I don’t know that Tolkien was advocating democracies being more aggressive about quashing local bullies before they became powerful, but if you lived through the World Wars it would be hard not to feel that way. The hobbits came back from Gondor ready to meet the challenge, but its a situation that will arise again and again over the centuries and the battle is never completely won. ---
**Author:** ![Airk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de053/32.png) [@Airk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airk)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2012, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/45 "2012-05-04T15:03:21Z")
I think the fundamental flaw in this entire theory is that it is approaching the entire situation as if Tolkein were a modern author, who was sitting down and plotting all this stuff out in advance, and honestly, that runs contrary to everything I’ve ever read about the man’s creative process. There’s a reason the Professor decided to represent this as a story he “discovered” rather than a story he “wrote” and it has to do with his fundamental mindset when creating this stuff. I find the very idea that he had everything parcelled out neatly in an “Okay, Frodo will be the PoV character for a while, with Sam tagging in later when Frodo is too corrupted, and we’ll need a hobbit for Rohan and a Hobbit for Gondor…” fashion to be completely groundless based on all indications, and without that degree of preplanning, the entire theory comes crashing down. ---
**Author:** ![Alka\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2012, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/46 "2012-05-04T16:32:14Z")
I meant to add, sorry if my post comes across as a little harsh **Kim** , but it seems you haven’t checked your facts before putting your theory together. You’ve obviously spent some time thinking about it, but I think you’ve started from the wrong place. There is a lot of published material covering the development of his works, and his letters shed a lot of light on what he thought about various aspects of Middle Earth. I’ve found it an interesting thread, as it’s encouraged me to think about some aspects of the story I hadn’t given much thought before. ---
**Author:** ![Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ee7513/32.png) [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kim_o_the_Concrete_Jungle)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2012, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/47 "2012-05-04T23:48:10Z")
> [@](#): > > I think the fundamental flaw in this entire theory is that it is approaching the entire situation as if Tolkein were a modern author, who was sitting down and plotting all this stuff out in advance… Nothing that I’ve spoken about here would suggest conscious pre-planning on Tolkien’s part. In fact, the pacing problems I’ve noted in Fellowship would suggest a lack of it. To me, Tolkien comes across as a very organic writer. He’s not interested in the typical writerly sort of stuff like plot-arcs, tone, pacing, foreshadowing, and the dramatic curve. He’s interested in the details – the language, the history, the incidental poetry, the landscape. When you compare LOTR to something written in a much more systematic way (say, Michael Moorcock’s Hawkmoon series), the difference is obvious. ---
**Author:** ![scop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@scop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scop)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/48 "2012-05-06T02:27:31Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > In that context, maybe. But Gulliver was a sailor, not someone staying at home, and while he may not have been aware of the specific fantastic places he found, he certainly saw many nearly as fantastic from his perspective. > It is not clear to me how much the hobbits knew, or wanted to know, about the outside. Actually Gulliver was an educated man and a surgeon who took employment aboard ship. The point of Gulliver’s Travels and the “fantastic” places he finds himself in is to parody a) travel genre writing and b) to satirize contemporary politics in Europe. The fantastic is not all that important other than to place the satire in an unfamiliar place in order to highlight the satire. ---
**Author:** ![scop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@scop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scop)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/49 "2012-05-06T02:30:29Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > For all practical purposes, the Scouring wasn’t part of the story. It wasn’t a historical event within the context of the story and it didn’t occur during the main storyline. It was the second-to-last chapter in the trilogy and was essentially an epilogue. Its purpose was to show that the events of the book had been so significant that its effects reached even into isolated areas like the Shire, which had never before been touched by outside events. But that just reinforces the point that up until the very end of the story, the Shire had been an isolated area untouched by outside events. No. The Scouring is as vital to the novel as the first chapter, they in fact form a “ring composition” in the novel. Others have expressed the theme in those chapters better than the above, but I refer you up thread rather than merely repeat. ---
**Author:** ![scop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@scop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scop)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/50 "2012-05-06T02:37:41Z")
> [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](#): > > He wasn’t bound to follow slavishly, and indeed he didn’t, because starting with the Two Towers he let his non-hobbit characters have chapters to themselves without a hobbit intermediary. > > Writing from the perspective of Hobbits was probably a deliberate artistic decision in the beginning. It’s what he did in The Hobbit, to good effect. But in LOTR it just didn’t work out so well, which leads to the pacing problems that are evident in Fellowship Of the Ring. While we’re visiting Tom Bombadil and slogging through the Midgemarsh with the Hobbits, the real story is what Gandalf’s doing off in Isengard. > > Halfway through, the story comes to a screeching halt while we go back and recap all of that. If Tolkien’s manuscript had gone to a more hands-on editor (someone like John W Campbell for instance), I imagine it might have come back with the direction to rewrite Fellowship from the point of view of Gandalf. > > And yet, we know that Tolkien was not a careless or unskilled writer. Something else has to account for the oddities we find in LOTR – chiefly the pacing issues in Fellowship, the sometimes flat characterizations, and the inconsistencies in the tone. Hence, my theory… I confess that I think you need to read and think more about this. The techniques of pacing and interlace that Tolkien used are well-known, well-accepted, and evident to those, like his original European, educated audience, who read more than modern fantasy novels. There are no “pacing issues”: Chapters of high intensity and adventure are followed by chapters of rest and those are followed by a chapter of preparation for the next adventure. That’s good construction and pacing. The use of conversations and dialogue to fill in what other characters have been up to is also a good technique and leaves the reader desiring more. And your theory doesn’t work, founded as it is on a belief that is simply contrary to fact. ---
**Author:** ![scop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@scop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scop)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/51 "2012-05-06T02:43:02Z")
> [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](#): > > Re: Comparisons with Gulliver… > > Gulliver’s Travels is Jonathan Swift’s take on the traditional quest plot. LOTR is Tolkien’s take on it. I think the differences are trivial, because the main difference is that Tolkien’s Middle Earth is a self-contained secondary world, and so the Shire is necessarily placed within it. But in that first chapter, Tolkien goes out of his way to establish the shire as familiar and mundane – to the extent he refers to it as “the shire” instead of by it’s proper name (Arthedain, I think), and gives everyone folksy sounding nicknames like Merry and Pippin and Fatty. > > Even so, what’s central to the quest plot is the idea of the journey. The journey itself drives the action of the story, and it’s motivations are pretty-much secondary to that. (It’s not significant that Alice and Gulliver don’t appear to have any particular motivation.) Compare this to tragedy, where the hero’s fatal flaw drives the action, or the traditional comedy where a misunderstanding between the principle characters drives the story. You can see the quest plot at work in LOTR and in Gulliver’s Travels. It’s also somewhat in the Pilgrim’s Progress, though I’d classify that more as an allegory. It’s parodied in Don Quixote. It goes at least as far back as The Odyssey. There is no “quest” in Gulliver’s Travels. It is evident that in Tolkien’s work, the motivations are not secondary, and that LoTR (unlike The Hobbit) is not mere journey tale. ---
**Author:** ![scop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@scop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scop)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/52 "2012-05-06T02:47:18Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > How could it not be? The main climax has already happened. How can there be another rise of conflict during the falling action? How can it be presented as anything other than an epilogue? So? Simple stories have a single climax. The success of Tolkien is that there are a series of climaxes…climax, falling action, rising action, new climax… ---
**Author:** ![scop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@scop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scop)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/53 "2012-05-06T02:52:34Z")
> [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](#): > > I think the scouring of the shire was probably meant to be their moment of glory. But in the end, the hobbits acquitted themselves quite well in the main part of the story, so there was no need of it. And you can sort of see that in their reactions, when they learn what’s been going on. They more or less say, “What’s all this nonsense? We’re heroes, we’re not putting up with this!” Then it all sort of goes away. It’s all over and done with in a single chapter. > > But for me personally, the scouring of the shire does one thing I can’t forgive. It turns Saruman into a Snidely Whiplash style cartoon villain. Saruman is supposed to be a powerful wizard – one of the Maiar – not a moustache twirler. I’ve addressed this notion upthread already, so won’t merely repeat. But Saruman has lost his power…go back and read The Two Towers. Saruman’s downfall also teaches a lesson about evil: compare Saruman at the end with Faustus in Marlowe’s version of the tale. ---
**Author:** ![scop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@scop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scop)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/54 "2012-05-06T03:06:45Z")
> [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](#): > > Nothing that I’ve spoken about here would suggest conscious pre-planning on Tolkien’s part. In fact, the pacing problems I’ve noted in Fellowship would suggest a lack of it. > > To me, Tolkien comes across as a very organic writer. He’s not interested in the typical writerly sort of stuff like plot-arcs, tone, pacing, foreshadowing, and the dramatic curve. He’s interested in the details – the language, the history, the incidental poetry, the landscape. When you compare LOTR to something written in a much more systematic way (say, Michael Moorcock’s Hawkmoon series), the difference is obvious. I think you’re both wrong on this one. LoTR is a carefully constructed, complex work that borders on being a “cycle”, albeit a small one. There are no pacing problems save in the mind of certain readers who need to be thrilled on every page; Tolkien’s careful plotting, careful constructions of points of contact between various threads, the complex interlacing, the tone change, the constant foreshadowing, and dramatic curve’s construction and the structure of the novel as a whole point to a man hyper concerned with those issues as well as language, history, poetry and landscape. That some readers don’t see the systematic artistry of the author does not mean the artistry is not present. ---
**Author:** ![Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ee7513/32.png) [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kim_o_the_Concrete_Jungle)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/55 "2012-05-06T04:13:51Z")
> [@](#): > > There are no pacing problems save in the mind of certain readers who need to be thrilled on every page; Every time you have to stop the forward motion of the story and have a pages-long wodge of exposition, you’ve pretty much failed as a writer. I can’t put it any plainer than that. ---
**Author:** ![Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ee7513/32.png) [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kim_o_the_Concrete_Jungle)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/56 "2012-05-06T04:20:18Z")
> [@](#): > > But Saruman has lost his power… Exactly. His part of the story was over and done with. Why bring him back for the scouring of the shire? ---
**Author:** ![well\_he\_s\_back](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3ab097/32.png) [@well\_he\_s\_back](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/well_he_s_back)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/57 "2012-05-06T04:54:21Z")
Kim - Tolkien’s pages of exposition kept me enthralled. He did not fail as a writer. I can’t put it any plainer than that. and as was stated by other posters Saruman is used in Scouring to show the banality and pettiness of evil. would not have worked with an unknown character in that position. I seriously don’t see the problems with pacing, pov, or scouring etc that you do. They are not problems with the work so much as just stuff that you personally don’t like. not a failing of the author necessarily. ---
**Author:** ![Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ee7513/32.png) [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kim_o_the_Concrete_Jungle)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/58 "2012-05-06T05:13:51Z")
> [@](#): > > LoTR is a carefully constructed, complex work that borders on being a “cycle”, albeit a small one. There are no pacing problems save in the mind of certain readers who need to be thrilled on every page; Tolkien’s careful plotting, careful constructions of points of contact between various threads, the complex interlacing, the tone change, the constant foreshadowing, and dramatic curve’s construction and the structure of the novel as a whole point to a man hyper concerned with those issues as well as language, history, poetry and landscape. Yes, Tolkien put a lot of work into it. But LOTR’s plotting is nothing to write home about. Nor is the interlacing of various threads. As I’ve pointed out, the dramatic curve is all over the place, because the scouring of the shire is step down from dramatic battles that precede it, and Gandalf’s imprisonment in Orthanc doesn’t make it into the book at all except as post-hoc exposition. The landscapes of middle earth are at best generic. Those aspects of LOTR I’d describe as mostly adequate, but not particularly notable, and I can think of plenty of other books that do it better. ---
**Author:** ![well\_he\_s\_back](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3ab097/32.png) [@well\_he\_s\_back](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/well_he_s_back)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/59 "2012-05-06T05:29:14Z")
honestly, Gandalf being imprisoned “offscreen” never bothered me in all my rereads of the book. The Scouring never seemed like a ‘step down’ to be. The plotting and the landscapes are strong suits - I understand you less and less with every post. we can agree to disagree, and I definitely disagree. ---
**Author:** ![Scribbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5fc32e/32.png) [@Scribbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scribbler)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766/60 "2012-05-06T06:15:17Z")
**Kim** , although I find your considerations interesting, it seems you came to them without taking much time to find out more about Tolkien and his work, judging merely by your reading of LOTR. The result is you operate from several misconceptions about how the LOTR came into being. Others have pointed out _The History of Middle-earth_, which shows fully the changes he made along the way (and they were _many_) - not just in characters, but in plot. But more than that, you breezily commented that you didn’t think he gave much attention to foreshadowing (among your other breezy dismissals), something I find astonishing. Tolkien _not_ concerned with foreshadowing? Frodo’s dream of the kings while at Tom Bombadil’s is foreshadowing of Aragorn (down to the green gem he wears as King Elessar); Sam looking in the Mirror of Galadriel is explicit foreshadowing of the choice Sam will have to make in the pass of Cirith Ungol; Boromir’s information at the Council of Elrond that his brother had had the summoning dream _several_ times, but he only once - that’s a foreshadowing of how Faramir handles meeting the Ring far better than Boromir. One could write several papers about foreshadowing in LOTR. Also, although you have a fair grasp of fantasy as a genre, there wasn’t much “tradition” before Tolkien began his creation. Other than the tradition of heroic and epic literature from ancient to medieval times. Before Tolkien began his world creation during WW I, there wasn’t much “tradition” in the genre other than William Morris and Lord Dunsany. Everyone else dates after he’d already set his foot on that fantasy pathway – Howard, Lovecraft, Cabel, Eddison. The “ordinary hero” is more prominent in fairy-tale tradition than in heroic/epic fantasy. And Tolkien knew the difference between the two traditions, although he drew from both. And just as a stickler for “period” in English lit (it was my major), Tolkien comes from the Edwardian era, not the Victorian. He is definitely a 20th century writer. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-theory-about-lotr-long/620766.md?page=4)