The age of anxiety:

[Mithalwen]

To be fair he wasn't on to talk about LOTR he was on to talk about the Agge of Anxiety (topic of the symposium or whatever) - but I agree that it is easy to overlook the ambiguous characters inLOTR. The interview struck me particularly because I was thinking a lot about Saruman in connection to the Radio discussion.

However I suppose the difference is that while Saruman deludes some of the characters some of the time, the reader is left in no doubt that he is a wrong-un unlike in Northern Lights where the first scene (if I remember right) we see a subtle poisoning attempt by the heroine's custodians on Lord Asriel and left in a lot of doubt about him, Mrs Coulter and many others.

[davem]

Well, he's wrong in that LotR wasn't written after two world wars but during the second world war - maybe that's why there is such a clear division between good & evil in the book: when evil is so obvious its not too difficult to draw up sides.

Of course, the major difference between Tolkien & Pullman is that Tolkien had experienced war first hand, & knew what real evil was - he stated in one letter that there were Orcs & Angels on both sides. One thing Tolkien could not do as a result was think of evil in Miltonic terms - his 'Satan' is not a Byronic hero (a la Lord Asriel in HDM) offering defiance to God & liberation to man, but a gutless thug who, when the end comes doesn't go forth to face his foes & go down in a blaze of glory, but rather cowers in his deepest dungeon dreading the inevitable punishment for his crimes.

So, while Pullman can play games with evil, Tolkien cannot. Tolkien knows evil for what it is & can't pretend its otherwise than it is. Perhaps its true that Pullman's work does reflect the belief that this is an age of anxiety & that to him things are 'more complicated & murky', but I don't think things were that way for Tolkien. He'd seen the reality of evilmore starkly & clearly than Pullman & to him things weren't at all murky - they were clear & simple. Good & Evil to him were the same as they had always been, & it was a matter of recognising them & fighting against them. I suspect Tolkien would have said the problem wasn't that good & evil had become indefinable & relative ('one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter'), but that people didn't realise that its always been a case of fighting the long defeat....if you tell yourself that evil is relative you don't have to stand up to it. In short, I don't think Tolkien ever felt the kind of anxiety being discussed in the programme.

All of which probably makes no sense, because I'm trying to type this while nursing a teething six month old. Please feel free to pull the forgoing to pieces....

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by davem

All of which probably makes no sense, because I'm trying to type this while nursing a teething six month old. Please feel free to pull the forgoing to pieces....

Lucky you! Babies are just a wonder... well, they keep being wonderful later on as well...

I'm not wishing to pull your post to pieces but I'd like to add a different perspective to it.

Originally Posted by davem

So, while Pullman can play games with evil, Tolkien cannot. Tolkien knows evil for what it is & can't pretend its otherwise than it is. Perhaps its true that Pullman's work does reflect the belief that this is an age of anxiety & that to him things are 'more complicated & murky', but I don't think things were that way for Tolkien. He'd seen the reality of evilmore starkly & clearly than Pullman & to him things weren't at all murky - they were clear & simple. Good & Evil to him were the same as they had always been, & it was a matter of recognising them & fighting against them.

What I see as the problem here is that Tolkien surely knew evil and good firsthand but that was not along the lines of the armies like "we Brits good - those Germans bad". Still in his books baddies are bad as such and goodies are good (with the exceptions to the rule already noted here). I could easily see Tolkien thinking "war evil, massmurder evil, killing-industry evil - peace good, compradeship good, sacrifice beautiful" with his own experiences. But why did that led him to make orcs or Sauron or Morgoth or... more or less pure evil or bad as the enemy?

Okay. Even if Morgoth or Sauron might be interpreted symbolically or allegorically to stand for evilness itself, the bad in the world, the wars he depicts look just like the absurd waste of human life in both World Wars and still the other side in his stories are just heroes and the others are purely black. And that means the basic soldiers.

So I'm a bit puzzled about that.

Also, today we can't make that division into the goodies and baddies that easily. It's a shame but also something we should rejoice in! I'm no relativist myself but I think we have to admit that the enlightenment views that brought relativism about are the greatest achievements in our own culture.

Before the enlightenment we thought that all those who agreed with us were good / right / pure / civilised (etc.) and those who disagreed with us were bad / evil / wrong / inhumane / lower / devillish (etc.). It's only a good thing we have gotten rid of that thinking. Well most of us have. Good riddance!

But as soon as we start to see shadows of grey instead of just black and white we get into problems. How can one justify a view or stance if it's all just shades of grey?

It's practically impossible today to think of all the German or Russian soldiers of the second world war as immoral beasts or subhuman monsters. We know now that most of them were loving fathers of their families, brave fellows of their mates, guys who were just thrown into the situation they were thrown.

But the orcs were bad by nature - because of the way they were born?

Something bothers me here.

[Nogrod]

Mith you just bring forwards the pessimistic reality.

We tended to be "enlightened" for a couple of hundred years but now at the times of "the war on terror" we're slowly crawling back to the caves from where we will take that old stance: those thinking and behaving like us are good and right, those who don't are evil.

How about we asked for the reasons for all this hatred against the western world first? If those who hate us are not evil as such (as they can't be) then there has to be a reason.

And to come back to the topic of Tolkien: why didn't he make it clearer if he was such a pacifist we tend to think he were? So individual orcs weren't bad but it was the evil system that forced them to be that way? Do we ever find that on Tolkien?

[Eönwë]

What I find interesting are the individual Orcs that he describes. They all have different personalities which I find quite interesting, becasue at first it seemed that thaey were like machines, just blindly following Sauron, but then see them start arguments against each other, and other things. I like the idea that Tolkien has (stated above by davem) about there being Orcs & Angels on both sides. I think an example (in LOTR) of an orc on the good side (even though this is the tale where orcs are real, but just think about the symbolism) is Saruman. I'm sure there's an angel on the bad side, I just can't think of one now (possibly Gollum as Smeagol?).

I'm not sure if I made any sense there or if I actually said what I meant but, oh well.

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Eönwë

I'm not sure if I made any sense there or if I actually said what I meant but, oh well.

I think you made a lot of sense. I need to go to sleep now but I'll try come back to this later.

[Mithalwen]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

Mith you just bring forwards the pessimistic reality.

I may think pessimistically but I act positively on the whole.

I am running out of time today but thank you for all the responses so far ... I will come back to some tomorrow.. makes the effort to tyoe it up worth while!

[Lalwendë]

Tolkien wasn't 'all black and white' and nor does Pullman present a world where there is no trust or hope, so the statement made in the programme wasn't really correct in terms of detail. However the books have a broad 'feel' that can be described in that way; how much this is intentional in terms of what the authors intended is a moot point. I happen to think that the difference is down to style rather than down to anythign each author was trying to 'say' or 'represent'.

Tolkien was attempting to write a story which echoed folklore and myth, which operates in broad strokes, whereas Pullman writes in the modern style (post-Austen, you could maybe call it? ) which goes into characters' minds. This is why Tolkien appears to have written a black/white story and Pullman a more grey one. However, get into the detail, as I say, and things are very different...

What is interesting is that until recently, we knew who our 'enemies' were - in as far as we can be instructed by our masters exactly who to despise this week or next - in Tolkien's day it was the Germans or the Russians. Today we are told to hate someone new every day so we have no idea who 'the enemy' are, and it often turns out that the enemy is ourselves (how often do you read the newspaper to find out, for example, you are a scumbag because you gave your child cows' milk before the state sanctioned age of 12 months, or you do not deserve medical treatment because you like eating burgers).

I think that the difference is that Tolkien is able, through the style he attempts to use, to tell us who is good and bad, and the ambiguities stand out all the more for it; whereas Pullman's style does not permit such didacticism, in fact it's essential that the reader must decide for themselves.

Though I actually feel slightly more anxious if I am told who to hate. If everyone is bad, including me, then it's not such a problem

[davem]

Two things I've come across recently. One, an interview with Susan Greenfield about her new book:

Which means what? "All the things I said in the new book." Ah yes. ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century says people who spend a lot of time interacting through the screen can become emotionally detached, seeing life as a series of logical tasks that demand immediate reaction. Language gets crunched, along with the ability to imagine or analyse. Attention spans shorten. "Human beings always listened to stories and had long working memories. Now it's action, reaction, action, reaction."

What worries her most is a shift of focus from content to process. Think of a book about a princess locked in a tower, she says. You go on reading because you care about what happens to the princess. You're lost in the content of the story. Now think of a computer game about the same thing. "You don't give a stuff about the princess, do you? She's there as a goal." It's not about her. It's about you completing a task. "You focus on the process. The experience offered by a computer is the excitement of an anticipated reward. And frustration if you don't get it. In neurochemical terms, it's very similar to when you take a drug."

This is her specialist area. Rescuing the princess produces a chemical in the brain called dopamine, she says, which makes you feel good. But too much of it may damage the prefrontal cortex, and that can limit your ability to understand anything much beyond the here and now. Other addictions have the same effect.

"Many people like downhill skiing, or dancing, or wine, or sex, or food," says Greenfield. "Up until now, [pleasure seeking] has always been part of our lives but a polar opposite to seeking meaning. I fear we are shifting too much in favour of the literal, the hedonistic, the here and now, and losing meaning, context and content in favour of process.".......

She also explains antisocial behaviour this way. "If you're trapped on a sink estate and you don't even know the capital of France because you've been excluded from school, you're stuck in a literal world where all your stimulation comes from your sensations," she says. "So is it surprising that you will eat strong, greasy, salty food to stimulate the tastebuds? Or kick down doors, or take drugs? The only way you can drive your brain is by grabbing strong sensations." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...ns-825916.html

& a report on TORn about a new LotR based computer game:

For the evil campaign we have something interesting, in the books and the films they make reference to how horrible the world would be if Sauron were to acquire The One Ring, but there is not too much detail, we’ve taken that idea and run with it. For the evil campaign we’ve taken the end of the story and hit ‘rewind’ a little, and you get to play a Ringwraith who stops Frodo from destroying the Ring. You actually get to deliver the Ring to Sauron, this sets off a series of events where you get to play the side of evil with Sauron’s forces. Sauron resurrects his generals, The WitchKing, The Balrog, Saruman and more. You get to play on the evil side and ride oliphaunts, ride the wargs and basically get to play as your favorite evil villains. You get to go through all of Middle earth and sack The Shire, destroy Rivendell, confront Gandalf and Elrond, destroy Helms Deep, attack Minas Tirith and so on.

Xoanon: This is one of the first LOTR games where we get to play the bad guys and live out our darkest fantasies right?

Giz: Right, that’s the beauty of the game, because it’s very systematic, it’s not a very scripted game at all. http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2008...it/#more-28812

& I couldn't help feeling that that's exactly the kind of thing Greenfield is condemning - the guy behind the game states he is a 'fan' of the book. He clearly isn't. What he is is a fan of the 'stuff' Tolkien invented, not of the underlying philosophy/moral value system. You can be 'evil' as easily as you can be 'good' - because 'good' & 'evil' are simply 'sides' iin a game. The essential difference between Tolkien's work & this game 'based on' it is that this game has no 'characters' which suffer or grow, there's no-one to care about or get emotionally involved with - in Greenfield's words "You don't give a stuff about the princess, do you? She's there as a goal." It's not about her. It's about you completing a task. "You focus on the process. The experience offered by a computer is the excitement of an anticipated reward". This game is Tolkien's creation reduced to outlandish beings attempting to slaughter each other just to see who wins - & ultimately it doesn't actually matter who wins, because its only a 'game'. 'Action, re-action, action, re-action'.

[Hookbill the Goomba]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

I could easily see Tolkien thinking "war evil, massmurder evil, killing-industry evil - peace good, compradeship good, sacrifice beautiful" with his own experiences. But why did that led him to make orcs or Sauron or Morgoth or... more or less pure evil or bad as the enemy?

Okay. Morgoth or Sauron might be interpreted symbolically or allegorically to stand for evilness itself, the bad in the world. The wars he depicts look just like the absurd waste of human life in both World Wars but still the other side in his stories are just heroes and the others are purely black.

There are a few possibilities that spring to mind.
An 'evil race' is not only unrealistic but probably dangerous as well. One will probably find it much more plausible that these people have been corrupted by a powerful figure with ill motives. The orcs themselves, perhaps, are in need of liberation just as much as the 'free peoples' are.
Another possibility is down to the narrative structure. In a big adventure like this you need a focus point. A goal to be a chived and barriers to overcome. Sauron, I would argue, represents a sort of ultimate obstacle, the overbearing shadow of the story to keep the narrative going. The same goes for Morgoth.
These two things are related. Even in the Silmarillion we get a hint of it. Feanor curses Morgoth but not, interestingly, the Orcs (if I remember correctly). He is the focus of his ire and scorn. The Orcs, while, perhaps, representing an extension of his will, are not what he is fighting. He wants revenge on Morgoth.

I'm sure I read somewhere that C.S. Lewis commented on the attitude of some British soldiers who refused to believe the propaganda in the Newspapers and thought the Germans couldn't be all that bad. Perhaps Tolkien had witnessed similar things. It's not the people who are evil, as it were, but the power that drives them. This, again, likely derives from Tolkien's theology as well as experience.

But, as for the 'enlightenment', one must always be a little cautious of something that gives itself such a presumptive name.

Anxiety does seem like a major factor in a lot of the Lord of the Rings anyway. Frodo comments, of Saruman, that he wasn't evil in the beginning. Perhaps the threat of Sauron isn't just his ability to destroy, but his tendency to turn things to his will, to bend the hearts of his followers. Corruption seems to be a large theme in Tolkien and there are many examples of it.
We can see a lot of this fear and anxiety in the attitudes of The Hobbits. They don't like change. Bilbo, in The Hobbit, is very reluctant to go on a 'nasty disturbing' adventure that would make him 'late for tea'. The thing that Saruman does when messing with the Shire is to change it almost beyond recognition, not just in the physical land, but also in the people. Ted Sandyman was probably a good enough Hobbit when he wanted to be, but Saruman's influence couldn't have done him much good. The same probably goes for Bill Ferny and others.
Maybe I'm reading too much into it...
Fear of change has always been around, but the end of The Lord of the Rings points to a future in which, not only are they returning to the Golden Age of old, but are moving forward into a New Age; the Fourth Age. The Elves are leaving, their influence is pittering out. The Wizards are lost, dead or sailing away. As much as the Hobbits may dislike it, "The World is changing".

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Hookbill the Goomba

But, as for the 'enlightenment', one must always be a little cautious of something that gives itself such a presumptive name.

Will that account also for those who think they are "the righteous ones"? Or "newly born in truth", or...

[Eönwë]

Originally Posted by Hookbill the Goomba

"The World is changing".

Well, that is a recurring theme in Tolkien's books, with phrases like "sundered from the glory of old" (I don't know if that's actually a quote) or the like. All sorts of things get lost, like, for example the skill of gem-making. There is an ideological past (or sort of the opposite of a utopia, and I don't mean dystopia, though there's some of that too)................