I started off disagreeing with davem, that Tolkien did show war 'as it was', but he's right - there
is something oddly sanitised about how he presents war of this style (in fact war of any type -
all war is grim). I know what davem means - it's not that we don't have descriptions of sinews being torn from bodies and eyes popping as arrows meet them, it's that we don't actually know how many of these people died or were injured
at all.
This shouldn't really be an issue, however it
is very much an issue if Tolkien was trying to tell his readers about the cruelty and brutality of war. How can we know just how cruel and brutal war is if all we are shown is clean swords and high words on the battlefield? It wasn't like that. War of that type was bloody and visceral and we merely get glimpses and have to fill in the gaps ourselves. And if we have no knowledge of the realities of a medieval style battle and all we have to go on are films and TV shows then we're never going to get a picture of just why this war was brutal.
If Tolkien was trying to avoid showing us medieval warfare as it was then we have to ask why? Him trying to ape classical literature isn't really acceptable as a reason to my mind as his primary interest was not in classical literature but in Northern epic and the Icelandic sagas certainly don't scrimp on brutality.
War does odd things to the mind. I wonder if Tolkien actively tried to avoid the grimmer realities, and why did he do this? Did he do it in some way to try and make his heroes seem somehow 'higher' than us? We know Eomer has a 'fell' mood on him but we don't know what he does. To some he will cleanly chop off Orc heads, but to others he would likely be cutting ears off living Orcs and laughing as he does so. Should Tolkien have left room for us to read into it what we liked according to our knowledge of military history?
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Originally Posted by Bethberry
In many ways Tolkien partakes of a certain Edwardian (if not Victorian) attitude towards military pursuits, so it is quite possibly a cultural value he demonstrates.
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Yes, I think you're onto something here. Tolkien, despite his experience, seems to cling more to the old world view of battle if we merely take his descriptions of military action as an example (neatly leaving aside any underlying philosophy...too much a can of worms). Like the older style war memorials, his depictions of war are what you could almost call undemocratic - we see the leaders mostly, the main characters, we see very little of the 'ordinary Tommy' shaking in his boots as Orcs swarm around him. It's a very old view of things - to be swept away after WWI, and exemplified by a change in the statuary - see the stark and democratic Cenotaph designed by Lutyens which commemorates no one leader, but all involved equally.
To be fair, it may be a necessity of the way he writes as we follow characters and experience Middle-earth through their eyes and conversations, and to bring in random other characters may disrupt that flow. But still there are sticking points as davem says, like the various death scenes which are wholly unrealistic. Still sad of course, but not real, and not enough to put us readers off taking up swords.
Interesting too, as prior to WWI death in War (and out of war, too, so it seems) was almost taken as a given and was something that in general was not abhorrent, and seen as inevitable or as fulfilling a 'duty' but nowadays it's universally seen as utterly tragic, often criminal and evil; and with that shift in thought we also moved from Arts which focussed on the leaders/heroes and moved into Arts which examined the ordinary folk caught up in it all. Did Tolkien move on too?
It's a question worth asking and not trying to avoid just because we love Tolkien so much!
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Originally Posted by Andsigil
(Ironically, I find Pullman to the personification of Tolkien's Melkor: bitter at not being able to create, he instead takes the creations of others, twists them, and then congratulates himself on his own genius.)
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I beg to differ 100%
