131–140 of 193 posts
Tolkien wrote the essential story - for our time : An evil force works not by open destruction, but through lies to cause despair and corruption. The good people of the world allow themselves to be influenced by it; they embrace despair and abandon goodness and all resistance; or they are corrupted and even help the enemy. The primary actor is a wise old man who travels around, not using great powers, but waking them…
Tolkien wrote the essential story - for our time : An evil force works not by open destruction, but through lies to cause despair and corruption. The good people of the world allow themselves to be influenced by it; they embrace despair and abandon goodness and all resistance; or they are corrupted and even help the enemy. The primary actor is a wise old man who travels around, not using great powers, but waking them…
"The primary actor is a wise old man…" And that is why it is hard to call that a myth for our time. Young people’s contempt for the now-elderly generation (they’re Boomers) has reached incredible heights. Moreover, though Gandalf rarely displayed his power, everyone outside the Shire suspected that he did possess power and belonged to an elite, and today there is great distrust of elites. I think a lot of idealistic…
Citations needed, really. While young people do not look at old with awe or submissively, claim that they somehow uniquely or unusually look down at us seems wrong to me. And also, the little that exists seems to me more of reactive to hostility some in older generation seems to have quite openly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The primary actor is a wise old man…" And that is why it is hard to call that a myth for our time. Young people’s contempt for the now-elderly generation (they’re Boomers) has reached incredible heights. Moreover, though Gandalf rarely displayed his power, everyone outside the Shire suspected that he did possess power and belonged to an elite, and today there is great distrust of elites. I think a lot of idealistic…
> Young people’s contempt for the now-elderly generation (they’re Boomers) has reached incredible heights. Citations needed, really. While young people do not look at old with awe or submissively, claim that they somehow uniquely or unusually look down at us seems wrong to me. And also, the little that exists seems to me more of reactive to hostility some in older generation seems to have quite openly.
Here you go.[0][1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_boomer
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/baby-boome...
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On the other hand, while the great old powers were waging fruitless war, it was the little people who struck the decisive blow, so perhaps it’s a lesson for our time of how both bottom-up and top-down can collaborate.
This is a profound misreading; royal birthright, aristocracy, and the ruling class are not taken to task or shown to be "fruitless" at all in Tolkien, and while today we may read Frodo as "the common man" his contemporary presentation is firmly (pastoralist and conservative English) upper middle class. The Baggins are landed gentry, not "the little people".
https://users.pfw.edu/wootdm01/bilbo.html
Personally I think that as well as their local status, their class can also be analyzed from a global perspective, where the hierarchy of the wider world goes Eru > Ainur > Maiar > Eldar/Edain > Other Men/Elves > maybe Dwarves > everything else including Hobbits. In global Arda it matters not that Frodo was amongst the wealthiest and highest-status Hobbits - they are viewed as marginal by the other races, and it was this very marginal status that caused the “higher” races to overlook their potential, which is a large part of how they succeeded.
I’ll also defend the idea that the military strategizing of Great Men was for nought. We are told quite clearly that the ring is the only hope for free peoples; that even if it is kept from Sauron, his forces will inevitably win. The Elves recognized this hopelessness (as part of the overall decline of “magic” in the world) and were slowly abandoning Middle Earth. Aside from Aragorn and possibly Faramir, the ruling Men are depicted as weak and flawed. The elite Elves and Men had ultimately failed - even after defeating Morgoth, Sauron had prevailed; even after defeating Sauron, he had returned. Further battle was positioned as noble but most definitely fruitless, unless the ring could also be destroyed. The greatest contributions of Men are taken to be those that assist or buy time for the Hobbits. No, they’re not taken to task for this multi-generational failure, and royal birthright prevails, but then Tolkien as a Catholic wasn’t aiming to demonstrate anything about class liberation - hence my reading of the story as being one of cross-class collaboration, and the wider point being that achieving meaningful change is likely to involve “big people” and “little people” finding ways of working together.
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> At one point it was supposed to be a single movie. It could have deviated completely from the books, it could have been super cheaply made. The problem, if you will, with a great but imperfect work of art is that no one else will attempt the same work again. Because it has already been done and it's hard to top a smashing success. If it had been a bad LotR movie, one would be able to hope, probably reasonably, that…
It seems pretty inevitable that there will eventually be a TV series style live action LOTR— in theory that should give the breathing room necessary for the story to unfold over 30-50 hours rather than 8-9.
Yes, in theory longer format should have more space to breath. In practice, we will get dialogs that will make you cringe, removal of everything that is not straightforward action, compression of everything nuanced into a single talking point and massive change in characters and plots.
Tolkien wrote the essential story - for our time : An evil force works not by open destruction, but through lies to cause despair and corruption. The good people of the world allow themselves to be influenced by it; they embrace despair and abandon goodness and all resistance; or they are corrupted and even help the enemy. The primary actor is a wise old man who travels around, not using great powers, but waking them…
Yeah, not much has changed in that regard. Though we likely have very different ideas of what that evil is nowadays.
Wow. So this is what an actual book review by someone that knows how to actually write looks like. Yes, Tolkien is a literary mastermind, but set that aside for a minute: I feel lucky to have read the review itself. If modern book reviews in mainstream media were still written this well, I think more people would read books!
Modern book reviews are often written by authors. Try the NY Times Book Review, NY Review of Books, or London Review of Books, to start.
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I don't like the deus ex machina trick of turning Gandalf the Grey into Gandalf the White. That's like Spock's inner eye lid. BTW the primary actors are Sam and Frodo and their friendship where one carries the burden of the ring and the other carries his friend.
You don't think the plot was put out in advance for Gandalf to not die in Moria? Or what do you mean? I guess he had to disappear for the fellowship to break up. If I remember correctly, you don't get to know that he technically did die in Moria. That is background lore.
That's comic book logic.
Boromir's death was far better plotwise.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't like the deus ex machina trick of turning Gandalf the Grey into Gandalf the White. That's like Spock's inner eye lid. BTW the primary actors are Sam and Frodo and their friendship where one carries the burden of the ring and the other carries his friend.
I don't think you can criticize "deus ex machina" as a plot device when it's, from go, literally "ex deus" - Gandalf is on a mission (/ missions) from god, and Eru's not gonna let him get off so easily.
Ex deus is cheap
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't think the plot was put out in advance for Gandalf to not die in Moria? Or what do you mean? I guess he had to disappear for the fellowship to break up. If I remember correctly, you don't get to know that he technically did die in Moria. That is background lore.
Tricking the reader to think he died to let him return more powerful when he is needed. That's comic book logic. Boromir's death was far better plotwise.