Fantasy

[davem]

Originally Posted by Andsigil

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..

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?

[Gwathagor]

Originally Posted by davem

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?

If we are going to set down that rule, the trouble then becomes deciding to what extent and in what detail he must represent his scene in order for it to be depicted "honestly." Regardless of the author, regardless of the book, there will always be information left out - and so, according your principle, every single work of literature is simply a different degree of dishonesty.

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.

[Andsigil]

Originally Posted by davem

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?

Again, I ask you why you contrive this obligation for him to depict violence graphically. And if violence has to be, then why not sex, too? Or mundane functions of the body? Etc, etc, ad infinitum.

[mark12_30]

"it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long now steeped in poetry."

[Lalwendë]

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?

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.

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!

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.)

I beg to differ 100%

[davem]

Yep - I did originally post this as Lal - one of the problems of sharing a computer...

"it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long now steeped in poetry."

War, real, true, war, is not 'purged of the gross', though. War is gross - except, perhaps, in Tolkien's depiction, where is is tragic, moving, heart-breaking, but never really, truly, gross. If Pelennor Fields was depicted in all its Primary World reality, with the ground a bloody morass, men dying in agony, trying to stuff their spilled entrails back into their stomachs, screaming for their mothers & sweethearts, with arrows & spears skewering them, limbs missing (oh, imagine Braveheart meets the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan), then we'd have a very different take on the event, & on the story as a whole. And let's not forget the attrocities committed out of fury & vengeance on helpless & dying opponents.

Oh, & all the 'good guys' line up to fight - there are no white feathers handed out, no-one deserts, either from cowardice or sheer bloody terror (& thus there's no need for such 'cowards' to be executed as a lesson to others....)

What we do get is a competition between Legolas & Gimli to see who can slaughter the most Orcs.

But why is all that missing? And is it ok that its missing? Does the fact that Tolkien was writing a 'Fantasy' novel excuse that absence?

Is 'purging the gross' sufficient excuse?

[Rumil]

Weell,

Does the Prof minimise the suffering and grossness of war?

Go not to the elves for they will say both yes and no!

Yes, obviously no graphic descriptions of horrendous injuries.

No, the clues are there if you look for them

What on earth am I on about? Well, JRRT wrote when every adult knew more than they wished about the reality of war, his generation, what was left of it, served in the horror of trenches, then everyone was exposed to total war and strategic bombing in WW2. So he doesn't need to describe it all in graphic terms.

Those that know are given the cues - Sam deploring the battle of men versus men, the dead marshes, the decapitated head missiles, it is plain that there are atrocities and 'grossness' in Middle Earth warfare, but they are left, mostly, to the imagination. Surely this is even more disturbing? I'm thinking Alien (horror film) versus Aliens (action film). The less you describe, the more you force the reader's imagination into overdrive.

On the other hand, could the book have been too graphic? Was Tolkien writing for children, teenagers or adults? If it were in any part the first two, then graphic violence would not have been permitted in the 50s.

I think Tolkien knew how gross mediaeval warfare was, the Viking blood-eagle etc. As for Towton, the likelihood is that most people were killed when fleeing, not during the fighting, but that makes little difference really. He hints rather than describes, perhaps that is all that was possible at the time?

I must say that certain authors who depict violence most graphically seem to enjoy writing about that sort of thing a bit too much, this to me is un-attractive. The Prof had been there, seen all that and didn't (for the sake of his own and his readers' sanity) wish to dwell on it.

This doesn't seem unreasonable to me, wonder if he would have written it differently nowadays?

[Morthoron]

Rumil brings up several good points, and the more one considers Tolkien's battles (I am speaking of those in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit), the more we find Tolkien eschewing direct combat sequences altogether for battles being recounted after the fact. At least two of the most important battles (to the plot, at least) are the Battle of Five Armies and the Battle before the Black Gates. In both cases, the battles are interrupted before they get heavy (in one, Bilbo is knocked unconscious, and the other Pippin is smothered beneath a troll). The actual battle scenes are described later under much more favorable circumstances.

And if anyone has spoken at length to any war vet (like my father, a WWII vet, for instance), they recall the glorious events or the fun times they had. You have to literally pry any reminiscences of horror out of them with a crowbar (if they'll reveal them at all). They don't want to talk about it unless they are forced to (and this is particularly true of WWI and WWII vets for some reason). Tolkien's reminiscences of horror (like the faces in the Dead Marsh) are subtle reminders of his personal war experiences, rather than the overt statements made by Owen, Sassoon or Erich Maria Remarque.

Tolkien's books are epics presented in a classical, nearly mythological form (the Sil more so than LotR, but nevertheless legendary elements literally appear on every page); therefore, the plot centers on the noble heroes (even Samwise the Everyman is Jack in the Beanstalk, for all intents and purposes), and the crises and eucatastophe are fairy tale in quality (a quest, a ring, the destruction of an immortal evil, etc.). Tolkien was strident, almost vehement, that LotR was not allegorical to WWI or WWII, and for good reason. It has nothing to do with real world conflicts; rather, it has everything to do with Faery and a rousing tale on the grand scale.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Rumil

I think Tolkien knew how gross mediaeval warfare was, the Viking blood-eagle etc. As for Towton, the likelihood is that most people were killed when fleeing, not during the fighting, but that makes little difference really. He hints rather than describes, perhaps that is all that was possible at the time?

But again, its not the detail in which the fact is described, but the acknowledgement of the fact itself. And I'm principally asking whether its acceptable to avoid mentioning it. Does Tolkien honestly depict the facts of warfare - & if so, is that ok, as he's writing a 'fantasy'.

The Prof had been there, seen all that and didn't (for the sake of his own and his readers' sanity) wish to dwell on it.

So, he does 'sanitises' warfare? He makes it seem less brutal & ugly than it is? War is good guys vs bad guys & those who fall in battle are granted a heroic death? As I said, this avoids the need to question the morality of war - no-one in M-e would question whether it was right to fight against Sauron - hence no white feathers being handed out & no-one runs, or panics or suffers shell-shock & gets taken away & shot at dawn. There's this whole dimension of warfare which is entirely absent from Tolkien's depiction of warfare - & its the most difficult part. Did Tolkien avoid it because it wouldn't have been 'acceptable' at the time he was writing, or simply because he didn't want to have to deal with that kind of thing? Does writing fantasy excuse one avoiding unpleasant facts of reality - & if so, what value does it actually have?

[Andsigil]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I beg to differ 100%

Lalwendë,
You are most free to beg and differ, and do both at 100%. I'll find Pullman and his cheap works loathsome, regardless.


davem,
Again, Tolkien depicts love in the Rings and in the Silmarillion. However, he doesn't get bogged down describing, as Shakespeare called it, "the beast with two backs". Nor is there any need. Nor, most importantly, would it fit the style of writing he used which was reflective of ancient epics.

So, why contrive this odd requirement for him to describe war in bloody detail? Just curious, but why is it so important to you?