Fantasy - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

davem · 12-04-2008, 12:36 AM

Not much time for a long reply at the moment, but I did want to just throw out the following -

You're right in everything you say about Tolkien's motivation, about the sources he draws on & how hw has used them. But

Tolkien had seen real warfare. He knew how men behave in battle, & principally, he knew that when men fight & die such deaths are not clean & tidy, but dirty, painful & ugly, & usually leave the victim neither time nor capacity for a noble speech. A real life Boromir would in reality have been more likely to die screaming for his mother & spewing blood- & the sound of tens of thousands of such death screams (not just from men, but from animals too) across the Pelennor would have added an extra hellish dimension.

The real point is - Tolkien may be true to his traditional sources but he is lying through his teeth when it comes to the reality of death in battle - & he must have known he was lying . Does the fact that he was writing a 'fantasy' novel excuse him? Was he presenting the opposing view to a WWI veteran like Wilfrid Owen - or was he trying to pretend that he hadn't written what he did? One can right about a morally justified war, but ought one to lie about such a simple fact of human nature that when men fight & kill in battle they do horrible things to each other, & that an arrow in the gut, or a sword slash to the face, is a vicious & ugly way to die. Is such a 'fantasy' morally justifiable after the Somme?

Tolkien's 'sin' is not that he fails to depict violent death in a graphic way - its that he goes to the other extreme & shows it as too clean & neat.

12-04-2008, 12:36 AM	#20
davem Illustrious Ulair Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties Posts: 4,240	Not much time for a long reply at the moment, but I did want to just throw out the following - You're right in everything you say about Tolkien's motivation, about the sources he draws on & how hw has used them. But Tolkien had seen real warfare. He knew how men behave in battle, & principally, he knew that when men fight & die such deaths are not clean & tidy, but dirty, painful & ugly, & usually leave the victim neither time nor capacity for a noble speech. A real life Boromir would in reality have been more likely to die screaming for his mother & spewing blood- & the sound of tens of thousands of such death screams (not just from men, but from animals too) across the Pelennor would have added an extra hellish dimension. The real point is - Tolkien may be true to his traditional sources but he is lying through his teeth when it comes to the reality of death in battle - & he must have known he was lying . Does the fact that he was writing a 'fantasy' novel excuse him? Was he presenting the opposing view to a WWI veteran like Wilfrid Owen - or was he trying to pretend that he hadn't written what he did? One can right about a morally justified war, but ought one to lie about such a simple fact of human nature that when men fight & kill in battle they do horrible things to each other, & that an arrow in the gut, or a sword slash to the face, is a vicious & ugly way to die. Is such a 'fantasy' morally justifiable after the Somme? Tolkien's 'sin' is not that he fails to depict violent death in a graphic way - its that he goes to the other extreme & shows it as too clean & neat. __________________ “Everything was an object. If you killed a dwarf you could use it as a weapon – it was no different to other large heavy objects." Last edited by davem; 12-04-2008 at 01:29 AM.