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#1 |
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
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But its the kind of death, rather than the 'graphic' description of it, that I'm questioning - though Tolkien is actually quite graphic as far as descriptions of death go in his work. Its just that the 'graphic' detail confirms how clean & noble death in battle is in his world. Boromir is 'pierced with many arrows', & he dies in the arms of his King, confessing his sin & being absolved...but 'fortunately' not a one of those 'many' arrows hits him in the face & he doesn't utter his final words punctuated by bloody coughs.
Again, Tolkien acknowledges the inevitability of death but not the reality of how people actually die in battle. He lies about it. Now, its a fantasy novel, & Tolkien is free to create a secondary world where death in battle is always neat & clean & leaves one enough time to speak one's moving final words. But If Tolkien's claim that LotR is about Death is to be accepted, even given the fantasy form & the freedom it permits a writer, shouldn't we expect an honest depiction of the process? Even death in a just war (whatever a 'just war' is) is more often than not painful & ugly. |
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#2 | |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: The Deepest Forges of Ered Luin
Posts: 733
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There's no "sin" here in Tolkien's writing. I'm not certain why you've contrived an obligation for Tolkien to portray death scenes graphically. And if he's to be criticized for this contrived obligation, then you may as well fault him for not portraying love scenes as graphically as possible. Or for not having Noldor kings excuse themselves to use the bathroom and graphically describing that, as well.
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Even as fog continues to lie in the valleys, so does ancient sin cling to the low places, the depression in the world consciousness. Last edited by Andsigil; 12-05-2008 at 12:42 PM. |
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#3 | ||
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
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Its to do with how people die, not how graphically that death is described - or whether it should be/needs to be described realistically - go back to the Poul Anderson essay I linked to a while back http://www.sfwa.org/writing/thud.htm - is Anderson right? Even though Tolkien does not depict love scenes one assumes that the act takes place because there are children in the stories. One assumes that characters use the bathroom even though Tolkien doesn't mention it - & that is the whole point: if Tolkien was to depict love-making or toilet practices we would expect them (even if only obliquely) to be 'true' to the basic facts of the primary world (ie babies are not brought by the stork or get found under gooseberry bushes & bodily waste products do not turn into rainbow coloured bubbles which pop out of the character's ears). This is because Tolkien repeatedly stressed that 'Middle-earth' is meant to be this world in the ancient past. The original question was about how much freedom a writer of fantasy should have, & what boundaries, if any, are required. If a writer like Pullman can be criticised for his 'misrepresentation' of Christianity, can (should?) Tolkien be criticised for his 'misrepresentation' of death in battle (as just one example)? EDIT Quote:
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“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; 12-05-2008 at 01:05 PM. |
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#4 | |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: The Deepest Forges of Ered Luin
Posts: 733
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For example, I find Phillip Pullman to be petty and repulsive. He mocks Lewis and Tolkien- men who wrote for the good of people, and admits that he only wrote his series to tear down their works. (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.) The sad part is that, because he is crafty with words (and, oooooh, so avant garde, dahhhling...), people ignore that he's brassy, uncouth, and unimaginative. At the risk of being repetitive, it's quite sad that so many people like someone whose only objective is to tear good things down. Sad. Very sad. So, criticism of a bitter, petty iconoclast like Pullman is different from criticism of someone like Tolkien, who had no malice behind his work. As for Tolkien, graphic portrayal of death would take away from his writing style, which was based on lore (for lack of a better term) and, especially in the Silmarillion, reflective of that style. All I see are apples and oranges here.
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Even as fog continues to lie in the valleys, so does ancient sin cling to the low places, the depression in the world consciousness. |
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#5 |
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
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Again, its not about 'graphic' descriptions - its about the simple facts of how a person dies if, say, he is 'pierced by many arrows', or if his horse rears up & then falls on top of him. When you read that Boromir was laying there stuck like a pin cushion did you at any point think 'Hmm, I wonder whether that will have an adverse effect on his bodily well-being as it would if it happened to someone in our world?' Probably not. Boromir was pierced by many arrows. He died. The point is how someone in that position would have died. If Tolkien follows Primary world 'laws of nature' in having arrows kill a person, should he not also be bound by the same Primary world laws in depicting how they would kill him? We know how men in the heat of battle behave (& Tolkien had seen it first hand) so should he not depict it honestly?
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#6 | |
Shade with a Blade
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But authors have been lying in order to tell the truth for thousands of years, and I see no reason for them to stop now.
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Stories and songs. |
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#7 | |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: The Deepest Forges of Ered Luin
Posts: 733
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Even as fog continues to lie in the valleys, so does ancient sin cling to the low places, the depression in the world consciousness. |
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#8 |
Stormdancer of Doom
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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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...down to the water to see the elves dance and sing upon the midsummer's eve. |
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#9 | |
Cryptic Aura
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 6,003
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We really do not know how Tolkien coped psychologically with his war time experience and the loss of his close friends. We do know that something caused a writer's block during his writing of LotR during WWII. But we do not know if his writing was a deliberate, conscious falsehood or if rather it represents his imaginative preoccupation with battle epics such as Maldon and Beowulf. He is not writing 19C novels of realism (or empiricism as it sometimes is referred to). He is weaving something else entirely. We can discuss the quality of his depictions but in good faith we can't ascribe to him lies and falsehood. EDIT: Any more than, as Gwathagor mentions below, all artists are so described. I suppose this was why Plato gave poets a bad rep.
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I’ll sing his roots off. I’ll sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away. Last edited by Bęthberry; 12-05-2008 at 02:51 PM. |
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