[lindil]

I love the view that it is the readers fault for not seeing the depth in the characters.

Fault, to me implies that it is some sort of sin to be less than super-conscious at any given moment.

Of course there is something to the idea that not all books are written to be read the same way, and thusly, some through willfulness, ignorance or lack of sensitivity, will miss the boat entirely.

I am sure there are great works of Art that I have stood before in a museum, and got virtually nothing from, that a trained artist or lover of art, could look at and feel the state of the painter, felt his heart open in response or appreciation, or feel whatever emotion or idea was being embedded into the work.


What one gets out of anything: a movie, a lecture, a book, even one's own ponderings can very vastly from person to person [obviously] and equally importantly to my mind, but far less generally accepted, it is never a constant variable within the same person.

I look at and experience Tolkien [and a few other art forms, like Tai-Chi Chuan, some of the music of Yes - not too mention prayer and meditation] as an exercise in awareness. It is something I repeat over and over over the years. And I find I am rewarded with depth and quality [of characters, subtlty of plot, appreciation of new levels of archtypal and elemental themes and images, etc] every time I read LotR and Silm and co.

I would also point that it is absolutely no defence to state that one should be willing to read numerous sources in order to understand the characters. An author should put all the necessary information in the story itself and not rely on additional (unpublished) sources.

This brings up several intersting points:

1- JRRT wanted, and rather intensely at that, to publish the Silm in conjunction with the LotR. This would have given, for instance, literally thousands of years of back history to a character like Aragorn, we would already understand what 'the Heir of Isildur' means in a far greater sense had the above publishing happened as JRRT wished. This would in turn influence our [or at least it would my] reading of his actions in FotR.

However this did not happen. So can one fault JRRT for not putting all of Elrond's or Galadriel's or even Sauron's backstory
into the LotR ?

As we read in the 'official Biography':

It was possible to say that The Lord of the Rings stood up as an independent story, but becuase it included obscure references to the earlier mythology it would be better if the two books could be published together.

Tolkien also said something on the order of: 'The two [Silm and LotR] are one to me'.

So for Tolkien 'The story' could not be put into 'story' it was far, far too large. To large to put into one volume [or three], to large to write in a decade or as it proved for JRRT even in 60 years. He had tapped into a mine, so rich and deep that there was no procedures in place for maximizing or streamlining it's output. As Sam says on the border of Morder [showing a depth to his character that simply can not be appreciated fully till the Silmarillion is read],

'...Beren now, he never thought he was going to get that Silmaril from the Iron Crown in Thangorodrim, and yet he did...and why I never thought of that before! We've got - you've got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady gave you! Why, to think of it, were in the same tale still! It's going on. Don't the great Tales ever end?'

.

2- Unlike most other writers JRRT was dealing with an extremely deep and organic [I would say] method and style of writing, that has more to do with The Bible and Homer and the Church Fathers than 'modern; writers. He was not content to write a story and be done with it. Like Niggle's Tree his Legendarium has/took on a life of it's own, and to his credit, he tried to follow this, rather than force it. This being, I believe part of his approach, one can not expect that everything will be told all at once.

Of course you are free to expect it Eurytus, but you also will be disappointed.

On the otherhand, while I personally wished JRRT had finished a full blown 3 volume Silmarillion as he had plannned, I take great delight in assembling and experiencing all of the leaves from the Tree of the Legendarium that are still being found : The Osanwe-Kenta, the Letters, the linguistic bits, the History of Middle-Earth [of course], the commentary on Elvish pilgrimages and prayer in The Road Goes Ever on, etc.

The Legendarium [and thus the characters within it] are like parts of a mosaic, maybe 1/2 of it left from the original, the rest being slowly re-assembled over the decades.

For varying reasons this is bound to be a useless or frustrating or boring process to some, maybe even to many.

Indeed for me the Legendarium has become, like Tai-Chi and music and Church part of the way I think and feel and see the world. the characters may not be three dimensional, but they are often four.

I guess Eurytus, I would offer you one further analogy to use to look at the Legendarium [and within that JRRRT's style and the characters]. A garden.

While a garden is a specific peice of ground, everyting about it is dependant on something from outside itself. Seeds, Sun, a human to tend it. And what one will get from it is not a foregone conclusion. Indeed some may only get weeds, others enough to live off of and thrive. Even the type of music played around it [according to research mentioned in the Secret Life of Plants] will influence it's growth rate.

-L

[ November 15, 2003: Message edited by: lindil ]