I think Rowling is a much better character writer than Tolkien. She is able to get her readers to care alot more for her characters than JRR did, at least for me. There's no denying that Tolkien was more scholarly and meticulous however, and I think his stories have a mythic quality which Rowling's lack, no matter how hard she tries. Her characters are too human to be mythic. Plus I don't like the lesson of Rowling's books, either: "A hero is someone who manages to survive scrape after scrape through baffling luck and coincidence, no matter how unlikely that may be."
I prefer my heroes to succeed because of their guts and talent, not because the pitiful spell or whatever that they use to try to block the bad guy's death ray JUST HAPPENS to have a peculiar reaction with HIS PARTICULAR death ray (or whatever) and everything turns out fine. Endings like that just devalue the whole struggle to me. They are nothing more than cheap schmaltz and teach the kids that luck (Harry) is better than brains, talent, or anything else.
PS. Though at least Rowling didn't copy Tolkien's rewrite of elves like just about everyone else.
Hey amybody remember Dark Sun elves. They were tall, tan and ran real fast accross the desert. I thought they were cool.
They were still hippy gypsies consttantly on the move. exploiting any opportunity that might present it self.
I had no problem with the Dark Sun Elves when I ran a Dark Sun Campaign. In that world they worked - and anyway they were not some kind of super race of msytical ancient tree huggers with abbarent PC types that ran around slaughtering monsters and whining for more treasure.
I have to admit that I found the world views presented in the forms of GRR Martin's Westeros...
Now if he would just get on with the plot already instead of constantly killing the main characters. I felt his series degenerated somewhat into the same quagmire that Robert Jordan fell into. The story line barely progresses and is simply caught in a never ending series of sub plots.
That said writing good Fantasy Fiction must be very hard work as I can't really think of any writers of fantasy fiction that I would stack up there with some of the best writers of Science Fiction.
In fact the best Fantasy Fiction I have read recently was Otherland which really was not fantasy fiction at all but shared many of it's themes. A little slow to start with but basically brilliant IMO.
Some stuff about Harry Potter.
I absolutely LOVED the Order of the Stick where Thogg killed Harry!
"Stoppus Badguyus!"
"Little man talk funny." WHACK.
Oh, man, I was rolling for at least five minutes after that one!
The cosmology of Middle-Earth is saturated with Tolkien's belief, derived from his understanding of Roman Catholic Christianity, that this world is Fallen and getting worse all the time, fixed on an inevitable progression from Grace to Sin. Each age is worse than its predecessor: its peoples less noble, its catastrophes more grave. I think that's a pretty awful way of looking at the world.
How is that Catholic? How is it even Christian? The Fall is from the Old Testament. That makes it Judaic. And it's an article of faith of Islam as well. And the stories from the Old Testement parallel even older Sumerian and Akkadian myths.
Beyond that, the desecent from an ideal past is very much a part of Greek and Roman mythology, Celtic mythology. Heck, even Chinese mythology. If you look at it in a certain way, even Cherokee or Mayan mythology...
Humans love to idealize the past.
And to bring this around back on topic, it seems that it is exactly that trait that most posting here HATE about the elves.
Death-a-phobic (necrophobic? mortiphobic? what is it?)
It would be thanatophobic.
How is that Catholic? How is it even Christian? The Fall is from the Old Testament. That makes it Judaic. And it's an article of faith of Islam as well. And the stories from the Old Testement parallel even older Sumerian and Akkadian myths.
I wasn't suggesting that it was an exclusively Catholic doctrine; I'm well aware that it's not, thank you. I was merely commenting that the reason Tolkien built it into his world of Middle Earth was because he was a Catholic, and that it's an instance of where his own beliefs and ideas shine through in a way which makes the story unpleasant for me.
There are other Catholic elements of the setting - the singular Creator Eru Iluvatar, the hierarchy of the Ainur (Melkor and Manwe, the Valar, the Maiar), the self-imposed noninterference policy of Eru which prevents him from putting a stop to Melkor's plans . . .
Even the idea that Eru must be a fictional name for the Christian God in which Tolkien believed, and that Eru's works and actions must be defendable as works and actions that God would undertake in that universe, stems from a fairly conservative Catholic belief that it would be inappropriate to write about a creator who was unlike the Creator in any respect.
None of this is exclusively Catholic - there is nothing new under the sun, to paraphrase Ecclesiastes - but the reason it's in Tolkien's work is because he was concerned with imbuing his work with what he considered a proper moral and theological framework.
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None of this is exclusively Catholic - there is nothing new under the sun, to paraphrase Ecclesiastes - but the reason it's in Tolkien's work is because he was concerned with imbuing his work with what he considered a proper moral and theological framework.
I don't really want to go there, since I've been there before, but.....
The one thing that always seems lacking in your comments on this matter is actual proof. Could you actually show where you are deriving you view that Tolkien was getting all this from his Catholic beliefs? Can you actually demonstrate that was what he was trying to do? I'm asking this in a spirit of enquiry. I'm also not asking you just to repeat your view of Catholic doctrine, or your opinions, but some sort of textual evidence. I don't just see the LotR (and certainly not the Hobbit) as a Catholic allegory. And if you are talking about the Silmarillion, he didn't even want that published - it's notes and jottings whacked out by his family for a quick buck. And I find it slightly silly that you imply that ALL he was doing was writing the Old and New Testament in Elvish - there is a lot more to Middle Earth than that, especially the derivations from Northern European pre-Christian mythology.
Your views on the thing are quite clear, and I'm not asking you to justify not liking Tolkien. But I just want some of this religious stuff you see in it backed up. I know it's not easy on this medium, but I would appreciate it.
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I was merely commenting that the reason Tolkien built it into his world of Middle Earth was because he was a Catholic....
Wow! That's pretty good. I tried to read a dead man's mind once (I had just read Brian Lumley's Necroscope), but it never worked out for me. The fact that you are unequivocally stating Tolkien's frame of mind at the time he wrote LotR seems to suggest that you have succeeded. Congratulations. Can you try to find out where Jimmy Hoffa really is?
I think J.K. Rowling is clearly a better writer than Dan Brown, and I enjoy her work for what it is while loathing his for what it is.
Word !!!
It certainly places a serious strain on my tolerance for awkward prose! (/snark)
Fair enough, but I won't hear a bad word against LOTR chapter 2 "the shadow of the past". Hand on heart, that chapter gets me going everytime..and then it takes another 3 chapters ( and 5 months!! 5 months !!!) to get out of the bloody SHIRE !!!
Death-a-phobic (necrophobic? mortiphobic? what is it?)It would be thanatophobic.
ooooooh. thanks. good word.
Thanatophobic Elves.
hmmm. you have sparked my imagination in cruel and unusual ways this morning. I see a problem for my players on the horizon. thanks again. I would laugh maniacally but I dont want my boss to know that I am plotting woe and destruction.
Elves may get pretty inured to the idea of death, as they see everything around them die and die and die (except maybe a sequoia or two or maybe a bristlecone pine if they like hanging out in the desert).
How about the fear of permanent injury? If you lose an eye, a limb, or even just get a nasty scar you will be carrying it around a very long time. And regenerate is a very high level spell. Elves may recoil from instances where they fear permanent bodily injury (unless there is some appropiate healing to hand).
How is that Catholic? How is it even Christian? The Fall is from the Old Testament. That makes it Judaic. And it's an article of faith of Islam as well. And the stories from the Old Testement parallel even older Sumerian and Akkadian myths.I wasn't suggesting that it was an exclusively Catholic doctrine; I'm well aware that it's not, thank you. I was merely commenting that the reason Tolkien built it into his world of Middle Earth was because he was a Catholic, and that it's an instance of where his own beliefs and ideas shine through in a way which makes the story unpleasant for me.
There are other Catholic elements of the setting - the singular Creator Eru Iluvatar, the hierarchy of the Ainur (Melkor and Manwe, the Valar, the Maiar), the self-imposed noninterference policy of Eru which prevents him from putting a stop to Melkor's plans . . .
Even the idea that Eru must be a fictional name for the Christian God in which Tolkien believed, and that Eru's works and actions must be defendable as works and actions that God would undertake in that universe, stems from a fairly conservative Catholic belief that it would be inappropriate to write about a creator who was unlike the Creator in any respect.
None of this is exclusively Catholic - there is nothing new under the sun, to paraphrase Ecclesiastes - but the reason it's in Tolkien's work is because he was concerned with imbuing his work with what he considered a proper moral and theological framework.
Tolkien may have been a Catholic, but he was Don at Oxford, and due to his specialty, was very aware of the effects of an overlay of Christianity on non-Christian story. Like, say Beowulf, for which he is one of the two most important translators and commentators.
In fact, his very early material that led up to Middle Earth was much more overtly tied to our reality, religion and all. And he carefully removed all evidence of that from his work.
And none of this is exclusively Catholic, but Tolkien was very aware of what he was writing, how he was writing it and what he wanted in it and out of it. His societies are purposefully secular.
Of course, the author/artist is always and forever dead from the moment a second person reads his or her work. So you can find anything and everything you want to in Tolkien. And it is there. 'Cause post-modernists say so. :-)