A hundredth re-read of the LotR

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by skip spence

Actually, I don´t think he was trying make a point at all here, no, he was trying to set up a good story and succeeding well I may add.

I'm indeed agreeing with you here. I'm not saying Tolkien tried to make a point or another there, but he was probably mainly just laying a nice groundwork to the situation the main characters were in - and what they needed to face in the future while not knowing it themselves as yet to be sure. I mean it was a good point you made about the "adventurous hobbits", even if they were ready or readier to see the larger possibilities of the world (and sure Bilbo and even Frodo had first hand experience of elves and so on), they were still not in the end quite ready for it when it actually came upon them.

But what I was pointing at was merely that the discussion between Ted and Sam reminds one strongly of certain debates people go through in RL and of those I think the prof was not ignorant of - none the less as the first thing coming to one's mind reading the passage is the question regarding the existence of God which Tolkien clearly had faith in.

Like the naïve atheist who says: "you say there is a God, then prove it, show it/her/him to us!" (sounds so like Ted Sandyman!). And that is an easy one, as no one can prove as non-existent anything that is claimed to be immaterial. No one can prove that ösaodjhvöwoefdbh doesn't exist if I say ösaodjhvöwoefdbh is an immaterial being who can't be perceived but manages the whole universe - no more can you prove there is no Spaghetti-Monster behind all of creation (if you've heard of that).

So here: Tolkien - Naïve atheists 1-0

But what caught my mind was that the similar situation arises within "faith-communities" which deny the existence of certain non-seen entities like atoms or quarks - or the non-plain empirical principles of evolution (things that have such a wide scope in time human memory alone can't tell us of it). And looking at the way Tolkien presents the scorn of Ted and the other hobbits supporting him just led me to try a different angle on the whole thing.

And everyone ever lived or visited a traditional community knows full well what Tolkien is at there even if we're not talking about faith or science. Anything new or odd is wrong and only the things the communities are used to are right. In that I think Tolkien might have even tried to "prove a point" but that probably wasn't anything very important - merely a scholarly joke stemming fgrom his own experiences...? Who knows?

But really it was just a trial to look at a thing from a different angle and to arouse new thoughts and not so much trying to prove a point or saying Tolkien tried to prove a point there, or anything like it.


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Maybe this is a good place for a general declaration of principle just to avoid any future misunderstandings (and I'm not saying skip especially misunderstood me as I think he was right in his criticism by way of pointing at another very plausible intepretation indeed): I'm not writing these things as if I'm trying to uncover what Tolkien "really meant". I don't believe I - or anyone else - has access to that. But I'd love to explore different ways in which one might see things written in the books, or whether there are unexplored perspectives to them we might gain if we looked into them. So I'm only after more fruitful perspectives. If anyone - myself included - gets a new perspective from these then it is a good thing and we have succeeded.

Originally Posted by skip

May remind you of this earlier statement of yours, Nogrod.

Yes you may indeed. And I promise to hold that social-injustice perspective down in the (near) future... maybe when we get to know the elven or dwarven societies - or the orc-ones - I might be tempted to come back to them...