Yep - I did originally post this as Lal - one of the problems of sharing a computer...
Quote:
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"it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long now steeped in poetry."
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War, real, true, war, is not 'purged of the gross', though. War
is gross - except, perhaps, in Tolkien's depiction, where is is tragic, moving, heart-breaking, but never really, truly,
gross. If Pelennor Fields was depicted in all its Primary World reality, with the ground a bloody morass, men dying in agony, trying to stuff their spilled entrails back into their stomachs, screaming for their mothers & sweethearts, with arrows & spears skewering them, limbs missing (oh, imagine Braveheart meets the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan), then we'd have a very different take on the event, & on the story as a whole. And let's not forget the attrocities committed out of fury & vengeance on helpless & dying opponents.
Oh, & all the 'good guys' line up to fight - there are no white feathers handed out, no-one deserts, either from cowardice or sheer bloody terror (& thus there's no need for such 'cowards' to be executed as a lesson to others....)
What we do get is a competition between Legolas & Gimli to see who can slaughter the most Orcs.
But why is all that missing? And is it ok that its missing? Does the fact that Tolkien was writing a 'Fantasy' novel excuse that absence?
Is 'purging the gross' sufficient excuse?