Aubrey the Malformed wrote:
Well, I think saying LotR is bad because it would be a bad RPG campaign is vaguely mental.
For those of you who may not have stumbled on this yourself, allow me to present: >DM of the Rings<
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I'm not surprised that the non-European analogues largely side with Sauron in LOTR. The books were written as Ur-European myth. How many times did hordes from Asia threaten Europe?
- Thraco-Cimmerians
- Scythians
- Celts
- Germans
- Goths
- Slavs
- Huns
- Mongols
- Turks
- Tourists
M{tm}:
** spoiler omitted **
You forgot the Persians!
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Aubrey the Malformed wrote:
Well, I think saying LotR is bad because it would be a bad RPG campaign is vaguely mental.
For those of you who may not have stumbled on this yourself, allow me to present: >DM of the Rings<
That is indeed an excellent web comic.
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Aubrey the Malformed wrote:
Well, I think saying LotR is bad because it would be a bad RPG campaign is vaguely mental.
For those of you who may not have stumbled on this yourself, allow me to present: >DM of the Rings<
I have seen this - most amusing. But it more about roleplayers than really about the LotR.
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Well, I think saying LotR is bad because it would be a bad RPG campaign is vaguely mental. It's a book. All books railroad - you have no choice about what the author has written. In what way is LotR different to that? Name me a book that, you know, gave you a choice.Not the reason I dislike LotR (I gave my main problem with it on another post). But it is an observation for all those who talk about LotR and RPGs...
Besides, it gave a start to all those fantasy books which have a map in the beginning and you can immediately guess that the main characters will be visiting every bloody place in that map (I am quite sure we all have read these...and I rather liked first two Eddings pentalogies).
But bashing the book because of a horde of lousy imitators is bad form, and I veer away from it.About railroading...kind of as a side effect of the poor characterization LotR suffers from, when I read it I do get a feeling that the main characters are not actually, you know, doing much, they are just spectators in their own story (well, except Gandalf and the less said about him, the better). This is something many of those pulp guys did much better, "by this axe I rule" and all that. Their characters were active participants in their stories (and incidentally I agree that those stories serve as much better influence for RPGs).
I don't get that from the beginning, and no wonder it is my favorite part of the book, up until the hobbits get to Bree. And then when they come back to Shire and find out about Saruman, the book again gets better. Much of the stuff in between is just clocking miles between nice sceneries.
There are some great books out there which embrace the whole "grinding and inevitable destiny" theme and those do it well too (this is a popular theme in many books connected to King Arthur mythos...)
And as said about racism and chauvinism, I can take Tolkien as a product of his own time. And I agree that the dominant theme is about, well, nostalgia about disappearance of English countryside as opposed to industrialization. Which brings in nice moments but occasional nice moments don't support a thousand-page book.
A semantic question: does it count as trolling if I would just as well tell these things in real life? And have actually done so? I have heard too many conversations about fantasy literature turning into rhapsody of LotR where no other book matters (well, maybe Silmarillion in a pinch) that nowadays I just go for the throat when the subject comes up...
Well, Magdalena, I didn't think you were trolling, just putting your point across in vivid style. We have corresponded enough to know each other's style and you have always been balanced and shown good judgement. My beef is more about people in general beating up poor old Tolkien for racism/sexism/religious mania/class snobbery or whatever (like the person I corresponded with before, as I alluded in my previous post) and trying to find it in his work, while at the same time we are busy slapping ourselves on the back for our "tolerance" because we are reading unexpurgated tracts from pulp writers with overt racism/sexism and whatever.
I can understand not thinking his style is great - most of the pulp writers are better stylists - and I certainly don't think he was perfect (I think The Hobbit is better than LotR, though must smaller in scope and ambition, while the Silmarilion is deeply tedious, albeit it is a cut-and-paste job by Christopher Tolkien knocked out for a quick buck).
I see slightly what you mean about the spectator bit, though I don't particularly agree (and the characterisation of half the Fellowship as comic relief in the films grated significantly). Tolkien wasn't engaging in the wish-fulfilment of being an uber-warrior (possibly unlike Howard, who was a complete loon with a mother fixation) but more of creating (and experiencing) an epic similar to the Volsung saga or Kalavela (sorry about the spelling - I'm sure you can correct it). And let's face it - characterisation isn't a strong point in those works either. LotR is a curious hybrid between novel and saga, and that is probably where it feels weird.
(And I'm with you on the maps - it was cool when Tolkien did it, but my heart sinks when I see a map in a fantasy book now. In fact, I gave up doing maps for my campaigns when I realised they simply hedge in the imagination.)
- most of the pulp writers are better stylists -
Spews hot coffee all over his laptop screen.
Better stylists? Uh, no way. Faster plotters, yes. (But I agree with you completely on your read of the webcomic.)
LotR is a curious hybrid between novel and saga, and that is probably where it feels weird.
I doubt that this can be overemphasized. It only seems "not weird" to people because they have grown so used to it and to its influence. When the book first appeared, memory says it excited much comment along these lines: there just had not been anything like it before. (It kind of makes me wish that JRRT could have published the Silmarillion first, and really fried people's brains.)
And yes, Patrick, good list. I'd add Arabs and then Moors separately, since the Mediterranean world was really one through Late Antiquity and had strong relations at later points as well.
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"Norman!"
Actually, loon is probably too strong a word in the case of Howard. But his (alleged) suppressed homosexuality almost certainly fed into the character of Conan and similar rough, tough combative heroes with big muscles and so on - pure beefcake.
Actually, loon maybe isn't to strong a word. He did try to kill himself after his dog died, after all. Now, there is nothing wrong in being fond of a pet, but......
OT:
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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Better stylists? Uh, no way. Faster plotters, yes. (But I agree with you completely on your read of the webcomic.)
I doubt that this can be overemphasized. It only seems "not weird" to people because they have grown so used to it and to its influence. When the book first appeared, memory says it excited much comment along these lines: there just had not been anything like it before. (It kind of makes me wish that JRRT could have published the Silmarillion first, and really fried people's brains.)
As an aside, I'm planning to dig out some quotes about bloodlines to firmly establish Tolkien's constant use of ancestry as a theme (and that doesn't mean families, any more than Adam does in Lewis).
What do you mean by "stylist"? If you're talking prose, there's any number of "pulp writers" who write better prose than Tolkien did. He's not great shakes in that department.
As far as not having been anything like LotR before - any great book is somewhat unique, but I'd certainly place The Once and Future King as similar, likewise Moorcock's fantasy (which would drive MM nuts, I'm sure). Note by "similar" I don't mean identical, both authors strike me as having produced fantasy of epic scope.
The book is actually highly derivative of myth and legend, and while I'm quite sure none of them were laid together in the fashion Tolkien did before, the majority of the elements in the book aren't staggeringly original. Many of the initial negative reviews of LotR actually laid into it for being too pedestrian in theme and execution, in fact.
I don't think the Silmarillion is in danger of frying anything except through sheer boredom and pomposity. Stick with the trilogy, it's his master work.
I doubt we are going to come to agreement on much of anything in this neighborhood literarily speaking, Russ, so argument seems beside the point...too bad I don't get paid for it like in Monty Python. You don't like his prose; I do; ad finitum. You have reasons; I have counter-reasons; no one is convinced. (For fans of JRRT, I will merely note that you may enjoy the Silmarillion as an audio book more than the book itself--I recommend the recording. When I obtained it for my middle school daughter, her reaction was not boredom, but "Wow," followed by hours of rapt listening.)
As to uniqueness, White's book is quite different, and Moorcock's work is later. If I wanted to stir the pot, I'd offer my reflections on Moorcock's literary value compared to Tolkien, but I shall pass. Again, I am not saying that Tolkien invented fantasy literature. I'm saying that, in Aubrey's terms, he created something unique that caused some literary confusion, head-scratching, and complaint as well as success and popularity. If you meant "derivative" in a neutral sense, I'd have no problem agreeing with you. Since it seems to be meant to come with a negative evaluation in this instance, I'll demur. I shall call it, "creative use". I see it in terms of a contrasting analogy between Tolkien and his materials on the one hand and early Brooks and Tolkien on the other.
Sure, ancestry is a theme, no argument there...although I may be happy to comment on any quotes you care to produce. (The difference between family and larger groups is a difference of degree, not of kind.) But that does not equal, "some human bloodlines are innately superior to other human bloodlines." Note that, for example, if I thought that everyone who was a Bach was generally musically superior to non-Bachs, due to genes or birthright or whatever my conception might be, that does not mean that I am a racist. (I might also believe that Bachs were congenitally stupid or alcoholics or something like that.) One could believe in a divine right of kings, for example, and not be a racist. Recognizing or proposing differences does not mean that one believes one group is of more value than another group on any absolute scale, whatever the measure might be (humanity, before the law, before God, etc.) While there is generally a movement afoot to explode the category of racism, I will likely resist most efforts in those directions. (I firmly believe the category should mean something and should have teeth. If it means everything, it means nothing.) There may be plenty of beliefs we disagree with, or do not like, or even find offensive, that aren't racist.
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Sure, ancestry is a theme, no argument there...although I may be happy to comment on any quotes you care to produce.
I'd be interested in seeing these quotes as well.
Though I predict just about anything that can be produced can be countered with examples on how these so-called mighty ancestral bloodlines nearly brought Middle-Earth to ruin. The Numenoreans, despite being "uber-men", were massively flawed. Isildur is just the most well known example.
Yeah. And notice I said "a" theme. In LotR, I really don't see ancestry as being a major theme. And again, even then there would be a major distinction between any concepts of ancestry Tollers had and the kind of pseudo-scientific/political theories of race, bloodline, etc that he is documented as ridiculing and rejecting.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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Yeah. And notice I said "a" theme. In LotR, I really don't see ancestry as being a major theme.
If it's not a major theme, what is? It's up there with poetry and linguistics in terms of sheer word count devoted to it in his books.
Even leaving aside the considerable amount of appendix space dedicated to lineage, how many times do we see phrases like "Gimli son of Gloin" in the books?
I don't think there's ever been a fantasy series *more* concerned with ancestry.
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Yeah. And notice I said "a" theme. In LotR, I really don't see ancestry as being a major theme. And again, even then there would be a major distinction between any concepts of ancestry Tollers had and the kind of pseudo-scientific/political theories of race, bloodline, etc that he is documented as ridiculing and rejecting.
I agree entirely. I think the bloodline theme is actually the inverse of what Russ is saying. The Numenoreans believe they are superior, hence their downfall. It is this arrogance that leads to the destruction of Numenor, the collapse of the great kingdoms in Middle-Earth, the loss of stability and order, and the near success of Sauron on multiple occasions.
Throughout the Lord of the Rings, Aragorn struggles with his place in the world. Gandalf can be seen as a keen political manipulator. It is possible that Denethor is right about Gandalf, even if his views are a bit extreme. Aragorn is of the bloodline but he does not necessarily deserve to sit on the throne. While this happens to be the correct course of action for all of Middle-Earth, it doesn't mean there wasn't some doubt about the proper course of action. Many felt the bloodline was too weak.
As for the Haradrim, I think it is important to consider their alliances in the context of their history. They suffered under the Numenoreans after they extended the hand of frienship. The Haradrim eventually fell under the dominion of the Black Numenoreans. In later years, the people of Harad were in constant conflict with Gondor over a myriad of issues.
I don't think Tolkien was trying to depict the Haradrim as inherently evil or inferior. They made an alliance based on their history. It is this theme that plays more deeply in The Lord of the Rings than bloodline. The consequences of past events have bearing on the present.
Ancestry in terms that might be construed as racist, was what I specifically meant. Even more broadly, to what extent is any character's ancestry decisive for their essential value in the tale? Sure, it is very important in the case when one has an inherited right to kingship, but Frodo is not reduced to being a reduplication of Bilbo, or Gimli of Gloin, etc. Even generalizations are only true of individuals so far in the tale. Legolas may be a paragon of elves, but he is not a stereotype: witness his developing relationship with Gimli. Gimli may be very much a dwarf, but he is more than Generic Dwarf--as his relationship to Legolas and Galadriel attest. If you look at his depiction of the hobbits, I would almost say that Tolkien creates stereotypes because he delights in traducing them!
The main themes of power, evil, goodness, friendship, humility, duty, corruption, simplicity, and nature all determine each other, but if ancestry were dropped completely from the book, I am not sure that I see how these themes would be decisively effected by its loss--even if LotR is more concerned with ancestry than any other work of the genre.
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Yeah. And notice I said "a" theme. In LotR, I really don't see ancestry as being a major theme.If it's not a major theme, what is? It's up there with poetry and linguistics in terms of sheer word count devoted to it in his books.
Even leaving aside the considerable amount of appendix space dedicated to lineage, how many times do we see phrases like "Gimli son of Gloin" in the books?
I don't think there's ever been a fantasy series *more* concerned with ancestry.
Okay, you are conflating two different points in an attempt to prove your stance.
Tolkien was writing a mythological structure based deeply in the Norse/Icelandic traditions. He was using traditional European naming constructs to lend verisimilitude to the story. The man was a friggin' philologist. There is a difference between major theme and world building.
Creating lineages and history is not the same as claiming certain bloodlines are superior to others. Researching the bloodline of the kings of England does not inherently mean I believe those kings were superior in anyway. But they certainly had more impact on history than Joe the Smith in the village of Withywindle.
But you know what's great about Tolkien? He actually takes common people, the hobbits, turns them into modern analogues and allows them to take a central role in the story. These are people who have no great bloodlines. They come from the back end of Middle-Earth. And yet, despite that, they perform actions that not even Gandalf or Aragorn could ever hope to achieve.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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Okay, you are conflating two different points in an attempt to prove your stance.
No. I'm disagreeing with the specific assertation, made repeatedly in this thread, that Tolkien was unconcerned with bloodlines and ancestry, eventually modified to it being a theme, but not a major one. Secondary to the issue of race, but an attempt was made to claim that Tolkien was unconcerned with bloodlines, which he most assuredly was.
Please don't strawman me.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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Some quotes regarding blood and race in Lord of the Rings. Note I'm not making an effort to provide commentary or context - this isn't a scholarly article, though you can find such if you wish. Besides, as I've said more than once, I don't view Tolkien as overtly or deliberately racist. I do think that like all authors, he is a product of his time, and his book reflects ideas that would now be considered outdated. There are counter-examples available in the book as well, my point is more how some people have reached the conclusion that Lord of the Rings included some racist ideas: namely, that particular races are better, mainly the Numenoreans, and particular races are savage.
Page numbers refer to the 1994 Houghton-Mifflen omnibus edition.
"Believe not that in the land of Gondor the blood of Numenor is spent, nor all its pride and dignity forgotten." (p. 239)
"for Mordor has allied itself with the Easterlings and the cruel Haradrim" (p. 239)
"And we love them: tall men and fair women, valiant both alike, golden-haired, bright-eyed and strong; they remind us of the youth of Men, as they were in the Elder Days. Indeed it is said by our lore-masters that they have from us of old this affinity with us that they are come from those same Three Houses of Men as were the Numenoreans in the beginning" (p. 663)
"For so we reckon men in our lore, calling them the High, or Men of the West, which were the Numenoreans; and the Middle Peoples, Men of the Twilight, such as are the Rohirrim and their kin that dwell still far in the North; and the Wild, the Men of Darkness" (p. 663)
"but our kin from afar off, unlike the wild Easterlings or the cruel Haradrim" (p. 663)
"and out of the Far Harad black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues" (p. 828)
"Maybe you discern from far away the air of Numenor." (p. 667)
"But there are few left in Middle-earth like Aragorn son of Arathorn. The race of Kings from over the Sea is nearly at an end." (p. 215)
"that is just what the Rangers are; the last remnant in the North of the great people, the Men of the West." (p. 215)
"And ever since that day the race of Numenor has decayed, and the span of their years has lessened." (p. 238)
"and the blood of the Numenoreans became mingled with that of lesser men." (p. 238)
"and it was a thing unheard of before that the heir of the crown, or any son of the King, should wed one of lesser and alien race...His queen had been a fair and noble lady, but short-lived according to the fate of lesser Men, and the Dunedain feared that her descendants would prove the same and fall from the maesty of the Kings of Men." (p. 1022)
"After the return of Eldacar the blood of the kingly house and other houses of the Dunedain become more mingled with that of lesser Men." (p. 1023)
Any mistakes in transcription can assuredly be blamed on me.
Keep in mind my original intention was (and remains) to illustrate how the debate comes about in the first place. It's a bit more than can be dismissed with "hogwash", though at the same time I think anyone who claims Tolkien is endorsing theories of racial supremity are stretching the truth beyond any possible credibility.
Note: if you read this and think I'm saying Tolkien was racist or the Lord of the Rings is racist, please reread the post. I'm not, and don't wish to address that point again.
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Okay, you are conflating two different points in an attempt to prove your stance.No. I'm disagreeing with the specific assertation, made repeatedly in this thread, that Tolkien was unconcerned with bloodlines and ancestry, eventually modified to it being a theme, but not a major one. Secondary to the issue of race, but an attempt was made to claim that Tolkien was unconcerned with bloodlines, which he most assuredly was.
Please don't strawman me.
I am not strawmanning you, I am calling you out. You keep changing your point. Your assertion was that Tolkien used bloodlines to reinforce a theme of superiority. When that argument fell through due to a lack of knowledge on your part, you shifted your statement. Now you are starting that bloodlines are a major part theme of the stories. I answered your assertion in that regard as well. They play a part but they are apart of one man's life long desire to build a deep and integrated setting.
Using Gimil, son of Gloin, is no different than you saying Russ Taylor. It tells the listener (or reader) your lineage. Nearly every character's lineage is given. But this hearkens back to the old mythic tradition of the Norse. Or, for that matter, the Bible. That is the point. Not to support some agenda of superiority. Which was your initial claim.
No one said that bloodline wasn't a theme. Instead, the counterpoint that was made was that Tolkien wasn't using bloodline and ancestry to support racism. I believe ancestry plays an important role in so much as it supports the theme of deep history.
It is amazing how easily people will fall back on a strawman accusation when they can't accurately argue the point they are making.
So which is it? Is Tolkien a racist or not? Or are you now going to stick to your more benign statement that ancestry is a major theme because you can't come up with anything that colors Tolkien as a racial supremacist? Because, honestly, I was never arguing that ancestry doesn't appear in the story.
Your line of reasoning went thusly:
-Tolkien portrays the ancestry of certain characters to show how certain people are superior to others.
-You were challenged. You ignore the challenge. Now you claim ancestry is a major theme based on phrases similar to "Gimil, son of Gloin".
-Possible reasons for that usage were pointed out to you.
-You choose to ignore those statements. Strawman accusation.
If you can't debate this subject by providing educated points, then this discussion is done. Prove your stance. Stop stepping away from it while crying foul.
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Some quotes regarding blood and race in Lord of the Rings. Note I'm not making an effort to provide commentary or context - this isn't a scholarly article, though you can find such if you wish. Besides, as I've said more than once, I don't view Tolkien as overtly or deliberately racist. I do think that like all authors, he is a product of his time, and his book reflects ideas that would now be considered outdated. There are counter-examples available in the book as well, my point is more how some people have reached the conclusion that Lord of the Rings included some racist ideas: namely, that particular races are better, mainly the Numenoreans, and particular races are savage.
So when you said these things:
I thought about tossing those grenades out into the thread :) Four books, nearly devoid of significant female characters. What women there are are almost entirely passive, with one notable exception. And yet Salvatore credits Tolkien with advancing the genre beyond chainmail bikinis *sighs*. The race elements are also subtle - the typical issue of every good human being white, while every bad human is a minority, but also the fantasy staple that your ancestry is what matters most of all...I'm not sure if Tolkien meant to be endorsing the idea that some races are just better than others, but it's what he wound up writing.
The less trivial argument involves the potrayal of which human races are admirable in the books. Basically, the closer a group is to the European-analog Numenoreans, the better their character is likely to be. The Easterling and Haradrim are human allies of Mordor, and distinctly non-European. There are also the Wild Men that fight the Rohirrrim, who are white, but not related to the men of Numenor (which the Rohirrim were believed to be).
The Black Numenoreans stand as a somewhat effective counter-example.
Regardless of how you feel about those betrayals, Tolkien's epic is very much supportive of the theory that character is somehow rooted in bloodline. The root of a lot of the racial criticism is that his example of superior human blood was the European-looking men of the west.
What you really meant to say was you can see how people reached the idea that Tolkien was racist. Not that you believe Tolkien was racist yourself?
I can't help it if certain people believe Tolkien was a racist. I can try to argue the point that I don't think he was. I think Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Will and Grace were both damaging to the acceptance of gay rights. But I am willing to explore why someone else might not think so.
Your initial statements were definitive. Tolkien supports the idea that character is apart of bloodline. Thus the result. Your subsequent statements are more ephemeral. Not because they don't have value, but because the ideas behind them deal with perception. And perception is not something that can be easily debated. You provide reasons and I present counter-reasons. But such "soft debates" are never solved and I don't think anyone would argue that some people claim Tolkien is racist or sexist because of something they read in The Lord of the Rings. Of course they do. The same applies to most literature.
But stating that some people find The Lord of the Rings racist and your earlier statements are two different things. I apologize if I somehow missed that this was your point. But I don' think you ever claimed to be playing Devil's Advocate here and that changes the entire tenor of the discussion.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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Edit: deleted opening comments that weren't productive or completely accurate, toning down the language somewhat as well.
Let's dissect some of this:
"Calling me out" - No need to call annyone out, I'm not interested in fighting or even acrimony.
"Changing my point" - I never had a particularly rabid point to make. Merely that you could find some issues with race and gender in the books. When that was disputed, I pointed out what some of them are. If you're looking for someone who said Tolkien's racist, look elsewhere. I think I've pretty much been focused on that point, but I did drift into an aside when challenged about the the idea that he never talked about "bloodlines in the modern sense", which I do admit to being a sentence that baffles me a bit (I don't follow what "in the modern sense" would mean).
"Gimli son of Gloin" was a bit of humor that obviously failed. If desired, I can comb through the boook and give you lots of examples of discussions of bloodline and ancestry outside the appendix of the book. But that shouldn't be necessary for anyone who's read it - ancestry is a common part of the narrative, and not just in the style of address.
"No one said that bloodline wasn't a theme":
Maikrurion: "He nowhere talks about bloodlines or races in this modern sense"
As I've said, I can't make sense of what "modern" has to do with that sentence. Tolkien's use of lineage is in accordance with modern usages. That's why I digressed into the idea that he did in fact talk about bloodlines.
"So which is it? Is Tolkien a racist or not?"
Well, that is what I think of as a strawman again, since I've repeatedly said he was not.
"Tolkien portrays the ancestry of certain characters to show how certain people are superior to others.
"You were challenged. You ignore the challenge."
I'd suggest you check the the thread. I said I'd dig up some relevant quotes regarding blood and race in the books, and I did in fact dig up said relevant quotes. I don't think I was actually ever "challenged" to do so, by the way
"Prove your stance"
My stance that you can pick out elements of race in the books that don't come off so well in modern times? I'd say it has been so demonstrated in the quotes, your mielage may vary. But my stance was never that Tolkien was a racist, so I'm sure I've failed to prove that.
I also think I've established that Tolkien portrayed the Dunedain as superior men. I would agree they weren't flawless.
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The jist of what I said was this:
-Yes, I got angry. Perhaps we were talking at cross purposes. But I don't think directly addressing something you said is constructing a strawman. I wasn't purposefully misconstruing your position, at least not as I perceived it.
- I thought my points were calm and cogent up to the point where you stated I was trying to strawman you. I think they were directly in response to everything you said. I don't make it a habit to twist someone's argument to support my point. Leveling a strawman claim is a common internet tool to shut someone else down and it pretty much makes me about as angry as I can get. I could have handled it better. I apologize. The personal insults on my part were uncalled for.
- I am not the only one arguing from the supposition that the statement was one of definitive (Tolkien was a racist) and not a subjective (some people think Tolkien is a racist and here is why). As I said, if I made a mistake and missed some clue about this, I apologize. The statements I quoted seemed strong, but if you were playing Devil's Advocate, I understand.
- Finally, I am not sure where we can go with this discussion if the point is to say some people find The Lord of the Rings racist and not the debate "Was Tolkien racist?" Of course some people find the story racist. Others find it boring. Some might find it homophobic for all I know. Perception is tricky to argue and I would never claim there wasn't material that be construed as racist, sexist, and classist in LotR. But I feel about the same when it comes to most works of literature.
I reread our earlier exchanges, in concern that I might have mis-stated something or forgotten something I said. I find that my comment that “the claim that JRRT's work is 'very much supportive' etc is pure hogwash, and easy to defeat. He nowhere talks about bloodlines or races in this modern sense. Sure, families and compatriots are portrayed as having a kind of corporate character, but that has nothing to do with bloodline and everything to do with world-building and storyline. “ I was surprised to see that your (Russ') initial statement was actually “Tolkien's epic is very much supportive of the theory that character is somehow rooted in bloodline,” and thought, my, how could I some out so strongly against such a relatively benign statement? “Somehow” rooted in bloodline, you say. Well, I suppose my own character is “somehow rooted” in bloodline, if by bloodline we mean my genetic heritage, or even that plus my cultural heritage. But this would go no way in my mind towards substantiating any accusation of racism. But then we come to the talk of “superior human blood” and the identification of it with, perhaps not merely European-looking, but proto-European humans. I am at pains to note that, as you say, this is not your position, but the root of (others') arguments that JRRT was racist.
So let us turn to the quotations that you raise in support of this assertion. What do we have? Proud assertions of heritage or “blood”. In the same way, I might talk of strength of the ancient Egyptians, the ancient Chinese, or the Romans or the Ethiopians, though I am none of these, and would not take ethnic pride to mean that I, or my own group(s), were inherently, essentially, “racially” inferior to these groups to which I do not belong. The Haradrim may be cruel, because they made themselves cruel, not because they have bad blood. (On the other hand, what if they were genetically predisposed to sociopathic and sadistic behavior at an occurrence higher than the baseline population? Would that make such a discovery, or science, racist?) Comparatively, the Easterlings may be wild in comparison to the men of the West. I don't find such a comparison any more racist than the statement that the Germanic tribes were barbarians on the borders of Rome. By the standards of the Romans, and of myself, such they were. It doesn't mean that I think Germanic barbarians deserve extermination or enslavement, etc. If I call one people great in comparison to another in a certain instance, and perhaps with certain characteristics in mind, I do not necessarily dehumanize whatever group they are contrasted with in the instance. If I compare the ethnic clothing of the imperial Chinese or the courtly Japanese poorly with the formal wear of my own culture, I may feel a genuine loss, regret—perhaps even shame—that the three-piece suit has displaced such noble and beautiful garb in their home countries. It doesn't mean that I hand the reins of my government over to them or give up my language out of this recognition. If there were a group of humans who lived longer than the rest of us, I'm sure we would recognize their advantage and envy it, rather than deny that they were greater in terms of lifespan, and that we were lesser.
In short, it is not the mere instances of mentions of “blood” that constitute evidence, but the interpretation and weighing of evidence as relevant to and supportive of the claim of racism. So just as if someone were able to produce a similar list of mentions of smoking in LotR, and used it to claim that the story encouraged smoking as one of its themes (a claim that would at least have the advantage over the claim of racism given that JRRT did smoke), it would not be so much that I could not, with justification and perhaps aplomb, dismiss it as hogwash because of its relative unimportance to the story.
I don't see where I denied that Tolkien was at all concerned with ancestry/bloodlines. My denial is that he is concerned with these in the modern senses of these terms and their racist uses, as my quote above shows. My modification to admit that it might be a minor theme, was for the sake of clarification--I generally have in mind important or major themes when I talk about themes. I don't begrudge discussion of minor themes, but if they start controlling readings of works, something's up. I agree with you that I can understand these accusations, in terms of receiving them as speech acts. But when it comes to understanding where these accusations are coming from, they are more understandable in terms of material outside of Tolkien, rather than in the books.
EDIT: Russ, I somewhere missed or forgot what you said about my talk of the "modern" sense of bloodline language not making sense to you. Sorry about that. Seems like I was doing several things at once, and by the time this got posted, the discussion had moved on somewhat with me unawares. By it, I don't mean "modern language versus archaic language". I mean, talk about blood meant something very different in contexts outside race theory in the US (and Latin America), and before eugenics and Nazism. Tolkien's concept of blood is an ancient one of ethnic pride, familial ties, the contributions of formative civilizations, the heritage of heroes. It is not a concept that was systematically used to enforce hegemony on modern scales, with the kind of absolutist and supremacist ideologies that necessarily produce genocides, permanent slave classes, etc. I am not saying that such concepts could not have been developed in certain circumstances where they were used to contribute to such atrocities (on the principle that anything good could be used for/turned into evil) but that they were not essentially racist, nor racist in Tolkien's use/understanding of them. Again, sorry if my lack of clarification was frustrating--hopefully this helps.
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Fantastic stuff..
Thank you Mairkurion for expressing the point significantly more effectively than I could right now.
It appears I left my internal censors, writing/typing skills, and talent for debate in bed this morning.
In any case, your ability to clearly express everything I was thinking is much appreciated.
Honestly though, I do let my anger get away from way too often. I really need to learn to control that side of my personality.
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I was also led to believe that White Castle was very similar to Krystal burgers in the south.From what I remember of White Castles from my road trip years (and years, and years) ago, they're pretty much identical. Same shape, same size, same taste. A gut grenade by any other name...
Oh yes, eating at White Castle while on a road trip is certainly a recipe for disaster. :)
Alleynbard, you probably just braided your beard a little too tightly last time...or have you been playing 4e again?
Btw, friends, I know I let Erik Mona send me out on a run for White Castles a while back, with his mesmerizing advertising, and posted about it. I just want to say, don't eat them two days in a row. Give your system a day or two to recover before having them for lunch again. I will go into no further details.
You forgot the Persians!
I'm not surprised that the non-European analogues largely side with Sauron in LOTR. The books were written as Ur-European myth. How many times did hordes from Asia threaten Europe?
- Thraco-Cimmerians
- Scythians
- Celts
- Germans
- Goths
- Slavs
- Huns
- Mongols
- Turks
- Tourists
M{tm}:
** spoiler omitted **
[stern hobbit voice] THIS ... IS ... SHIRE!!! [/stern hobbit voice]
I am sure I missed a few hordes here and there (after all there were ..hordes of them <rimshot>). As M{tm} pointed out I missed one of the most explosive Late Antiquity conquests in the wake of Muhammed's revalations of the Qu'ran and the founding of Islam. Though I usually don't think of the founding of the Islamic Caliphate as a 'Horde from Asia'. That phrase to my mind brings up the barbarian tribes sweeping in from Central Asia. I guess it's all in the perception of things.
It is easy to pooh pooh a writer, especially when measuring them up with the yardstick of today's moral standards. No less than China Mieville slammed H.P. Lovecraft for being a racist and a Nazi sympathizer. And indeed, sadly, he was. He was also from an old Yankee family and self-admittedly more of a 18th Century man than a 20th Century one. Does that make his stories less interesting? Not to me. I enjoy his work even if I wince at a few of the phrasings. I don't agree with many artists' views on politics, but I try to remain neutral and just read the stories/listen to the music/watch the movies without a value judgement, especially when said artist is many years dead. Who knows what value judgements the future will hold Perdido Street Station to?
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I was reminded of that when, for whatever reason I happened upon a link to a webpage still up containing rafts and reams of stuff I wrote for 2nd edition (if you're interested, you can find it here).
Jason Thank you ! Thank you!
Consider all of your 2 ed work here pillaged and raped for the campaign filled with grognards I DM for !!
Mairkurion {tm}
Baron A. H.,
Mrs. M might not take to kindly to it...she already thinks I spend too much time on the boards!
I see slightly what you mean about the spectator bit, though I don't particularly agree (and the characterisation of half the Fellowship as comic relief in the films grated significantly). Tolkien wasn't engaging in the wish-fulfilment of being an uber-warrior (possibly unlike Howard, who was a complete loon with a mother fixation) but more of creating (and experiencing) an epic similar to the Volsung saga or Kalavela (sorry about the spelling - I'm sure you can correct it). And let's face it - characterisation isn't a strong point in those works either. LotR is a curious hybrid between novel and saga, and that is probably where it feels weird.
I agree that LotR is a hybrid between novel and saga, and as a stylistic exercise it is brave but IMO not that succesful. It falls short from both sides, lacking stylistic grandeur of sagas (and Hobbit and Silmarillion), and yet it also doesn't achieve the personal touch of a proper novel. YMMV, depending on what factors you put more weight on.
Also I wouldn't knock down characterization in sagas or Kalevala either, actually for me that is one of the more interesting points of Kalevala, that many of the stories are morally very ambiguous and you won't find too many people there concerned with abstract good or evil. And lest we forget, our major cultural hero is very much a hero but he is also a dirty old man who drives a young girl to suicide, does not hesitate to lie or steal to further common good and/or his personal gain and tries to kill Jesus. Nordic sagas are also full of most curious heroes...
That of course is also one issue with Tolkien, I am familiar with the same material he took some of his best stuff from :) (obviously not all of it, but enough to spot several shared themes...)
Tolkien IMO was engaging in some wish-fulfilment but it was more on societal level than personal...bourgeois countryside of Shire and all that. But Howard was indeed more personal in this, and definitely very unstable person (and Lovecraft also strikes me as a guy who was somewhat out of synch from the world surrounding him...)
About racism, indeed I'd probably be closer to truth in describing Tolkien as structuralist with Victorian upbringing. He does have that binary opposition good-bad-white-black-light-darkness-etc. thing going on (and incidentally I have never liked structuralists) and in parts I am also reminded for a contemporary writer who rarely gets called racist but who was obviously very fond of traits being passed from generation to generation and effect of, shall we say, breeding...Agatha Christie. Or maybe it's just some offshoots of English class system which rubs some people the wrong way :)
About racism, indeed I'd probably be closer to truth in describing Tolkien as structuralist with Victorian upbringing. He does have that binary opposition good-bad-white-black-light-darkness-etc. thing going on (and incidentally I have never liked structuralists) and in parts I am also reminded for a contemporary writer who rarely gets called racist but who was obviously very fond of traits being passed from generation to generation and effect of, shall we say, breeding...Agatha Christie. Or maybe it's just some offshoots of English class system which rubs some people the wrong way :)
Here, Magdalena, I really think you hit the (or at least, "a") nail on the head. Tolkien's morality, his politics, his upbringing in an hierarchical Christian world (and more to the point, Catholic), not only color, but pervade and in some cases commit him to things that not only turn many contemporaries off, but throw them into a black-biled rage. And while I think there's an argument to be made that he offered some minor critique of some of these things from within this worldview, he did not outright reject even the parts he critiqued (example, a gentleman and his man). These may be good reasons to hate Tolkien, beyond style and taste.
Don't call this structuralism, however. That's a mistake in linguistics foisted on us by a French linguist and his postmodern fans, and JRRT would have rejected it (he may actually have commented on it, I just don't know where. Others may read this and be ready to talk about structuralism, something I absolutely refuse to do beforehand. But I know enough about it to say its something different from what you are identifying in Tolkien.) There are probably some good things to call these features, but I should get back to work rather than ponder that point right now. Cheers!
PS After I posted, I realized that your very id of this as "structuralist" may be due to academic abuse on the part of some of these postmodern fans, and thus the source of your "hatred" of structuralism. A hatred I heartily share. But this would be something foisted on JRRT in the act of interpretation--a heavy dose of theory. As a linguist, he would have rejected the theory. As a writer, I'm sure he'd have the same kind of reaction to it as most people imbued with common sense, who have not been programmed by the postmodern academy. (There, have I offended anyone? Hopefully none of those so minded hang out in this small corner of the world. Then it would truly be like the Shire... :) But since I have to put up with this in my vocational life and argue about it there, I have no interest in doing so in one of my havens.)
Though I predict just about anything that can be produced can be countered with examples on how these so-called mighty ancestral bloodlines nearly brought Middle-Earth to ruin. The Numenoreans, despite being "uber-men", were massively flawed. Isildur is just the most well known example.
Wasn't the main reason why the non-Westerners (Haradrim, Variags, Easterlings, etc.) went over to Sauron because of the way they'd been abused by the Numenoreans in the past, and Sauron promised them revenge?
Tolkien was a catholic in protestant England, and he witnessed trench warfare first hand. These factors would tend to fuel the escapist-mentality in general so I wouldn't exactly call it wish fulfillment. He hung around with guys that like to speak old English. That says it all. I've been dying to get into this all day, but then it got all "Don't strawman me..."
I wrote a 20 page paper on the biographical basis of some of the elements in LOTR and the Silmarillion as opposed to Epic source material (like the Edda'a and Norse stuff) The guy had a strange life.
I was going to dig the paper out and quote myself (it was written on a typewriter) but who really needs more hot air on here?
I personally love the guy, I love the Silmarillion, and I listen to it on cd for fun during my commute. I get into work all hyped up on "Aure Enteluva!" and the Fens of Serech.
of course then I get b%!+#-slapped by work and modern life but for a little while I WAS THERE!
Welcome, Amardolem. I think it was in Lewis' essay "On Science Fiction," that he recounts Tolkien's response to charges of "escapism". The only people against escape are the jailers.
pfft.
It's a pet gripe of mine that when anyone ever says "Middle-earth is cliched and fluffy," or "Tolkien is a happy-ever-after writer," they are clearly showing they have only read LORD OF THE RINGS, and possibly not understood Tolkien's themes in that book. When Richard Morgan was recently blathering on about how his (admittedly decent) novel THE STEEL REMAINS was going to single-handedly pull epic fantasy out of the Tolkienesque mould with its homosexual protagonist, sex and violence (and no, he hadn't read Gemmell, Erikson, Martin or Bakker who've been doing this for decades), the first thing that came to mind is that he obviously hadn't read THE SILMARILLION, complete with its incest and nihilistic tendencies: no-one 'wins' in THE SILMARILLION, they only ever (barely) survive, usually to face more pain, suffering and war later on.
the Silmarilion is deeply tedious, albeit it is a cut-and-paste job by Christopher Tolkien knocked out for a quick buck.
This is an intriguing definition of 'quick', since JRR Tolkien worked on the book for 56 years, spending the last five or six years of his life transforming it into a publishable form and then his son then spent another four years editing it into shape. And then suffered massive amounts of angst that he'd gotten it wrong, so then spent a further twenty years publishing every single note Tolkien ever wrote on Middle-earth so the fans could make up their own minds.
Whenever anyone trots out the "Chris Tolkien did this for the money," claim, they never seem to take into account the fact that CT actually gets all the royalties from THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS, so if money was his aim he could have just sat at home with his feet up and watched it come rolling in rather than working fairly hard for 25 years to create books that have sold a tiny fraction of THE HOBBIT by itself, let along LotR.
Welcome, to the boards, Werthead.
Thanks for your comments about Christopher. Whatever room there is for legitimate criticism of his work, he has clearly dedicated a monumental amount of labor in loving memory to his father, and in dedication to his fans. I'd feel much poorer without the Silmarillion and the Children of Hurin, and I look forward to getting hold of the new retellings of the Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun.
But you know what's great about Tolkien? He actually takes common people, the hobbits, turns them into modern analogues and allows them to take a central role in the story. These are people who have no great bloodlines. They come from the back end of Middle-Earth. And yet, despite that, they perform actions that not even Gandalf or Aragorn could ever hope to achieve.
Couldn't it also be said that, as heroes of the classic stripe, the hobbits (or at least Frodo) fail? After all, when Frodo finally reaches the Mouth of Doom, he doesn't toss the One Ring in. He tries to claim it.
How many modern fantasy series have the hero choke at the last minute?
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But you know what's great about Tolkien? He actually takes common people, the hobbits, turns them into modern analogues and allows them to take a central role in the story. These are people who have no great bloodlines. They come from the back end of Middle-Earth. And yet, despite that, they perform actions that not even Gandalf or Aragorn could ever hope to achieve.Couldn't it also be said that, as heroes of the classic stripe, the hobbits (or at least Frodo) fail? After all, when Frodo finally reaches the Mouth of Doom, he doesn't toss the One Ring in. He tries to claim it.
How many modern fantasy series have the hero choke at the last minute?
Good point and a valid one. It is interesting that he does fail. I have sometimes wondered what Tolkien was thinking at that point. Much of his material has a bit of a defeatist quality to it.
[i]The Road to Middle-Earth[i] by Tom Shippey touches on that idea. If you have not read it, I highly recommend it. I rather enjoyed it.