I admit the snide remark amused me, coming after my post which included references to other notable writers in the fantasy genre – all of which I have read at some point or other. I didn’t even include in that listing Mervyn Peake – the Gormennghast books are about the least “plot driven” titles in the fantasy genre. But because I defend Tolkien so ardently, I must not read anything else.
Biographically speaking – I actually came to Tolkien late in my reading. Heck, I read E.R. Eddison before I read Tolkien. I’d read a lot of classical stories, Shakespeare, and science fiction before I ever picked up a volume by JRRT. But… we can’t all carry our reading resumes around in a cyber-pocket for all and sundry to know where we’re coming from. Hey ho.
I almost agree with this. It seems that Tolkien had created this great world and just had to show us as much of its cool parts as possible even if he had to tweak the plot to get that to happen (Tom Bombadil’s forest, Amon Sul, Amon Hen, Moria are all contenders). I get around this feeling by imagining that the stuff he doesn’t show us is just as awesome
Well said Scribbler. I look forward to the paper. Kim’s comments do reveal a very modern perspective influenced by not only movies but computer and Playstation/Xbox games where the plot is tantamount, character development is non-existent. While our “interlocutor” mentions character, he gets it wrong complaining that Aragorn is 2 dimensional. Of all characters in the novel, Aragorn is certainly not a 2 dimensional cardboard character!
I mostly agree with your comments regarding the Scouring being about character. But I would also add that there is an important plotting aspect to the Scouring and structural that while secondary to the character and thematic issues in the chapter, are to mind only slightly secondary.
See I think we could have a very civil discussion on which characters Tolkien developed well (Denethor, Gollum, and others - Aragorn was only fully developed if you consider the material in the Appendices; otherwise he’s rather flat I think ). We could also discuss Tolkien’s foreshadowing - all those dreams, all the little hints about things possibly going badly in the Shire (or just wait for Scribbler’s paper). We could also discuss which landscapes worked the best for you - I could picture Bree, so much of Mordor, the Shire of course. Now Lorien, I could never picture very well from JRRT’s description. Or whether there are parts of the plot that don’t work for you - I thought the change in Theoden was way too abrupt, for example
I don’t think Tolkien was perfect. But he did create one of my favorite books & I do enjoy discussing it.
If the OP is wrong then why develop the character of Fatty Bolger? (Fatty BTW is my wife’s favorite character. The one sensible enough to avoid the dirt, sweat, and blood of the journey.)
It’s interesting: I would actually have agreed to some extent with the idea of the “genericness” of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. I mean less that we’re not put in contact with fascinating landscapes–Moria especially is still one of the most eerie and successful sceneries I’ve read about. I mean more that beyond the lands that our characters go through, I know nothing about Middle Earth. Gondor–how does it work? Are there just Osgiliath and Minas Tirith? Are the farms, hamlets, agriculture? Is there commercial traffic on the Anduin? Are there roads? How does the Longbottom leaf get transported to Orthanc? What’s happening between the Shire and the Gray Havens?
To me, Middle Earth has always seemed strangely empty. Perhaps it’s actually an artifact of the maps that I so much enjoy in Tolkien, but which are too, largely empty spaces.
Enterprise - I’m sure some doper LOTR experts will come along but until then - the empitness was explained away for some regions. It wass said they were depopulated by wars, famine, and plague in the past & were slowly rebuilding population. Trade along the Anduin, near Laketown, along the Great Road & with cultures to the South was all very briefly alluded to in various chapters. As for Gondor, the farmlands outlying Minas Tirith were evacuated before the big siege. Was Dol Amroth considered another city in Gondor? Other cities were mentioned as Aragorn traveled to the Paths of the Dead.
Darn you JRRT! We obviously needed hundreds of more pages of descriptions of Middle Earth!
The people I mentioned in post #69 made one more suggestion of what to read if you want to know how Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings. They suggested reading his published letters. The mentions of the writing process are scattered throughout them, but put together it is an interesting account of how Tolkien wrote.
We sure do! At any rate, yeah, I’m sorry, I realize the “in world” explanations for at least some of these empty spaces, I just wanted to say that that notwithstanding, Middle Earth’s always felt somewhat empty and, in that, somewhat “underrealized”. This is actually not a failing that’s just Tolkien’s–I’m not sure I’ve read a fantasy series or novel that got me a real sense of a lived-on, lived-in land (Joe Abercrombie comes to mind as a possibility, but even with him, it took something like five novels to get that…).
Fascination discussion here, wish I had more time to participate in it fully.
And though it’s been pointed out already, I do want to reiterate the point that critics have had at JRRT for his particular writing style since LOTR (and to a lesser extent “The Hobbit”) was published, deducting points for his many flaws and unorthodoxies, and relating how it should have been done differently.
But despite JRRT’s unconventional writing style (or perhaps because of it), he still managed to write the most popular single work of fiction written in the past 150 years. (Considering LOTR as one volume, as JRRT did.)
I agree that there is a strange, underrealized emptiness to almost all places that were not in The Hobbit and did not hold central importance to Lord of the Rings (mostly southern Eriador and Harad.)
But, while the places in The Hobbit were empty, I would not call them “underrealized”. They were empty but lovingly depicted as so. It’s part of the more fairy-tale aspect of The Hobbit.
That said, it is jarring how there seems to be two different characterizations on the continent, a line running from south of The Shire through somewhere south of Rivendell and then veering sharply south to continue its eastern jog past Mirkwood. Everything south of that seems to be of a different character than that to the North. The depopulation of the northern part of Middle-Earth is poetic and Romantic. The seeming emptiness and unfinishedness of the southern part is problematical, especially since they weren’t really depopulated (containing Haradrim and Dunlendings, respectively) but they feel so.
Well, I would argue that the character of Fatty Bolger is in, fact, NOT developed practically at all. He EXISTS, yes, but he’s referred to more often than he actually appears - when we hear about “Frodo’s friends” helping him pack and move, Fredregar is mentioned a couple of times, but he basically doesn’t appear in person except during the scenes at Crickhollow, and truthfully, I can’t really remember him doing anything in any of those except essentially saying “You lot are crazy, I’m staying in the Shire!” (And fleeing from the Ringwraiths)
Fatty is no more “developed” than Erestor, or Galdor, or Haldir or Hama. He’s a minor character who appears because there’s a role to be filled from a “making the world seem real” perspective, and he fills it.
That’s a good point about the difference between The Hobbit and the greater narrative of The Lord of the Rings, and indeed, I was very much talking about southern Eriador, like the further reaches of the Baranduin.
A note about the “barren” Hobbit landscape: As originally conceived by JRRT, the events of The Hobbit took place in the 1st age, not terribly long after the rise of men. So one would expect lots of open, uninhabited frontier, in that setting.
As a side note, in the first draft of TH, the story took place in Beleriand, and Beren and Luthien were mentioned as being living folks.
