[Dwarin Thunderhammer]

Kingcarlton you are missing our point entirely. It would also serve you well to write your posts in a less inflamitory manner. I try very hard to be netutral in all thingw. Including the literature I read. I give every author a fair shake.

My reasoning is not faulty. The premise of a journey is used and re-used. It is impossible to write a story without a journey, whether it would be emotional, mental or physical. It is basic, it is needed, it is a plot. Matricide is simplym a part of a plot, it is not a lot. I am stating that you can write without matricide. It is a part of a whole. You are making a logical fallicy. I reject a part, so you assume I am rejecting the whole. That is simply not true. Writing without some sort of journey is like writing without words. it simply cannot be done.

I must confess, I am not the originator of this idea. I borrowed it from Aristotle, the greek philosopher. He holds the psoition that for a story to truly be trajic it must not be pure spectacle. Spectacle being actions that have happened to the protaganist. Things such as a death of a relative, collapse of a business, losing a limb, etc. Like I was saying matricide is a crutch. People use it to stimulate emotion. It is an easy way out. The action of a mother dying automatically brings emotion. It is there immediately you feel pity for the protaginist, before you even get to know him. As opposed to knowing the charachter, and beginning to identify with him as his journey turns to sadness. The second is much more rewarding. You know and identify with the charachter instead of just reading about him. To be sure it is more difficult, ut nothing that is wonderfull is achieved without difficulty. The harder you work the more beatutifull the creation will be.

It is very easily violated when it is used as a central motive to a story. It is simply easier to write that as an excuse to go "questing". To avenge the death of the mother. Which is easier, to write the death of a mother, or to write a plot where the protaganist starts out a normal average person and then is affected by the actions of the story? Let me try to explain it this way. When the mother has died you have a track to write on, like a train. You have a set of hard and fast rules by which your charachter behaves. When you develop the charachter as the story goes along you have much more flexibility and movement as the charachter develops like a plane. You have to decide how the protaginist will react, and how those actions will affect others.

Now to the subject of Tolkein. I can onl think of one place where he used matricide as pathos. That was the tale of Turin Turambur, and in that the main pathos was the rejection from doriath. I that story, the beautifull story of the silmarillion was painted already, Turambur's mother was only a glint in the whole book. Frodo's matricide was used only metioned briefely in a tavern as gossip and it did not go farher than that. It was explaining why Frodo lived with Bilbo. Aragorn's wasn't even mentioned in the books. We don't even hear about Sams mom, it dosn't say either way. Maybe sam was a clone [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img] . Tolkein never used Matricide as a cheap thrill. To be clear there are authors that use it well. Including tolkein and Lewis, but they are far outweighed by those who use it wrong.

[ April 23, 2002: Message edited by: Dwarin Thunderhammer ]