Fantasy

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by skip spence

While the depictions of battle are sanitized in The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings they are not so in The Silmarillion. I will quote a few parts from the chapter "Of The Fifth Battle".

Yes, this is maybe the oddest thing. We know Tolkien was capable of describing horrors without going OTT but also without simply glossing over them, and that included describing what happened in battles and skirmishes. He writes about them in other works, but why not in Lord of the Rings?

In fact, in Lord of the Rings, he is also perfectly capable of describing the pain Frodo felt as he was stabbed, and the fight with the Wargs in Hollin, and we even get a little (but not a lot) more description of the military action at Helm's Deep. So why, when it gets to the mother of all battles, does he skip most of it out? It's interesting comparing the actual text with the outlines in HoME because there's not too much more descriptive text added...

Actually, what might help here (I'll put my teacher head on now) is to look closely at the most significant part of the text for details of what actually happened on Pelennor, so here it is for your enjoyment:

Hard fighting and long labour they had still; for the Southrons were bold men and grim, and fierce in despair; and the Easterlings were strong and war-hardened and asked for no quarter. And so in this place and that, by burned homestead or barn, upon hillock or mound, under war or on field, still they gathered and rallied and fought until the day wore away.

Then the Sun went at last behind Mindolluin and filled all the sky with a great burning, so that the hills and the mountains were dyed as with blood; fire glowed in the River, and the grass of the Pelennor lay red in the nightfall. And in that hour the great Battle of the field of Gondor was over; and not one living foe was left within the circuit of the Rammas. All were slain save those who fled to die, or to drown in the red foam of the River. Few ever came eastward to Morgul or Mordor; and to the land of the Haradrim came only a tale from far off: a rumour of the wrath and terror of Gondor.

Aragorn and Eomer and Imrahil rode back towards the Gate of the City, and they were now weary beyond joy or sorrow. These three were unscathed, for such was their fortune and the skill and might of their arms, and few indeed had dared to abide them or look on their faces in the hour of their wrath. But many others were hurt or maimed or dead upon the field. The axes hewed Forlong as he fought alone and unhorsed; and both Duilin of Morthond and his brother were trampled to death when they assailed the mumakil, leading their bowmen close to shoot at the eyes of the monsters. Neither Hirluin the fair would return to Pinnath Gelin, nor Grimbold to Grimslade, nor Halbarad to the Northlands, dour-handed Ranger. No few had fallen, renowned or nameless, captain or soldier; for it was a great battle and the full count of it no tale has told. So long afterward a maker in Rohan said in his song of the Mounds of Mundburg:

We heard of the horns in the hills ringing,
the swords shining in the South-kingdom.
Steeds went striding to the Stoningland
as wind in the morning. War was kindled.
There Theoden fell, Thengling mighty,
to his golden halls and green pastures
in the Northern fields never returning,
high lord of the host. Harding and Guthlaf,
Dunhere and Deorwine, doughty Grimbold,
Herefara and Herubrand, Horn and Fastred,
fought and fell there in a far country:
in the Mounds of Mundburg under mould they lie
with their league-fellows, lords of Gondor.
Neither Hirluin the Fair to the hills by the sea,
nor Forlong the old to the flowering vales ever,
to Arnach, to his own country returned in triumph;
nor the tall bowmen, Derufin and Duilin, to their dark waters,
meres of Morthond under mountain-shadows.
Death in the morning and at day's ending
lords took and lowly. Long now they sleep
under grass in Gondor by the Great River.
Grey now as tears, gleaming silver,
red then it rolled, roaring water:
foam dyed with blood flamed at sunset;
as beacons mountains burned at evening;
red fell the dew in Rammas Echor.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

...We know Tolkien was capable of describing horrors without going OTT but also without simply glossing over them, and that included describing what happened in battles and skirmishes. He writes about them in other works, but why not in Lord of the Rings?

Actually, what might help here (I'll put my teacher head on now) is to look closely at the most significant part of the text for details of what actually happened on Pelennor, so here it is for your enjoyment:

Isn't the text you referenced the perfect example of an Anglo-Saxon elegaic verse? As I said before, Tolkien is offering a tale of Faery (or in this case, a legendary war if you prefer) in its classical form, presented as it would be heard by those in mourning of their battle-slain kin or for later generations as sung by bard or minstrel.

As far as Lord of the Rings being approached differently than Tolkien's other works (like the Silmarillion), with nothing further to go on but my own intuition, I believe LotR was written in its certain style because it was, after all, initially a sequel to The Hobbit, as required by his publishers. Tolkien, of course, pushed the envelope in his own inimitable manner, and forced integral elements of his own beloved mythology (The Sil) into LotR so that the story fell in line with the older chronology of Middle-earth without sacrificing the cute, little Hobbits his publisher was clamoring for (I can see Unwin now: "But dash it all, John Ronald, the hobbits...where are the blasted Hobbits?").

Hmmm...but it seems I've lost my train of thought, or where I was going with this, but as The Hobbit was a children's book, and whereas LotR is less so, it is still within the realm of being read to children without requiring censors and expletive deletions, and there are clear-cut villains (and heinous traitors who get their deserved comeuppance) who do nasty things, and noble heroes who are above reproach (or at least repent of their folly 'ere the end). Black and White with very little Gray (as we argued about a year or so ago) -- this is the make-up of Faery as Tolkien sees it, or at least as he presents it in LotR; whereas, things are not so black and white in The Sil (in fact, good guys are often the bad guys as well in the 1st Age, selfish and even Oedipal), which is a much more scholary and adult read than either The Hobbit of LotR.

[davem]

We recently got around to a similar discussion on another board, & I wanted to maybe take up the ideas here, This is part of a post I made there, regarding Tolkien's depiction of the suffering & death of the Land, as opposed to people..

Those are just examples - we all know the chapter, & the repeated emphasis on the damage done by Sharkey's ruffians. We also know what happens when the four companions return:

What's interesting is Sam's response:

The damage done to the Shire gets paragraph after paragraph. The destruction is described in graphic detail. The death of the 19 Hobbits gets a sentence & no account of how they died, whether quickly or slowly, in pain or not. Their burial gets another sentence. Then there's no further mention of them. The 'important' thing is the healing of the Shire, replacing the trees & putting right the damage to the land.

The 'culmination' of the chapter could have been the burial & the ceremony, & it would have been both beautiful & moving & brought home the central theme of the book - loss, & the inevitability of death. Instead what we get is a chapter that deals with the destruction & healing of the natural world .....,( oh, & by the way a few Hobbits got killed in the process, but let's not get sidetracked by trivialities....). Even our beloved Sam grieves over the loss of the trees more than anything else.....er..more than anything else - more than the fact that 19 innocent Hobbits gave their lives to save the Shire??

Again, the emphasis is on the destruction of the natural world, the pain & necessity of healing, Arda.

I've focussed there on the descriptions of the suffering of the Shire, but the depictions of the suffering & death of the land of Mordor is even more graphic & sickening. Why is Tolkien's hand freer when he is depicting the pain & death of the land than when he is depicting the pain & death of people?

EDIT

Another aspect of the reality of war that is worth considering is the suffering of non-combatants during wartime. The women & children have been evacuated from Minas Tirith, which again means that we are spared some of the real horror of war. This from Randle Holme III (1627-99), describing the (English - yes, we also had one.....) Civil War siege of Chester in December 1645

Eleven huge granadoes like so many tumbling demi-phaetons threaten to set the city, if not the world, on fire. This was a terrible night indeed, our houses like so many split vessels crash their supporters and burst themselves in sunder through the very violence of these descending firebrands ... Another Thunder-crack invites our eyes to the most miserable spectacle that spite could possibly present us with – two houses in the Watergate skippes joint from joint and creates an earthquake ... The grandmother, mother and three children are struck stark dead and buried in the ruins of this humble edifice, a sepulchre well worth the enemy's remembrance. But for all this they are not satisfied, women and children have not blood enough to quench their fury, and therefore about midnight they shoot seven more in hope of greater execution, one of these last lights in an old man's bedchamber, almost dead with age, and sends him some few days sooner to his grave then perhaps was given him. The next day six more break in amongst us one of which persuade an old woman to beare the old man company to heaven, because the times were evill. Our ladyes all this while, likewise merchants, keepe their sellers (ie cellars) & will not venture forth in these tymes of danger

[LadyBrooke]

(This is every thought I’ve had reading the entire thread, so some of this deals with stuff from pages back. It is also very long and possibly incoherent.)

To me the greatest horror (or victim) of war is not the dead, but those who, though living, are unable to cope or recover from what they experienced. This is what struck me the most about the ending of Lord of the Rings - Frodo is unable to find healing when he goes home. And though we can hope that he does find it over the sea, is that really a happy ending? I can’t consider it one because he (and Bilbo) are separated from their friends and families. And that to me is the greatest tragedy - one that I have seen too often in real life - those who are living but at the same time not, who are still fighting the war everyday in their minds. And Tolkien shows this with Frodo.

Dealing with the issue of lung cancer and Hobbits smoking, forgive me if I’m wrong, but was it even known at the time Tolkien was writing the books that smoking could kill people. From what I recall from my last Health class that link was only discovered in the late 60s or the 70s, while the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were written/published before that - in which case it would have been impossible for Tolkien to have dealt with that issue - in the same way it would have been impossible for say Shakespeare to have predicted that one day some idiots would try to dislike “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” because they think Oberon’s use of that flower resembles a date rape drug - yes, that is what some people I have the misfortune to have to spend time with think. Also some people have mentioned that people of Tolkien’s generation and the next would have been able to comprehend the reality of war and fill in the blanks but later generations wouldn’t. And this is one reason given for why Tolkien should have filled in the details. I have to disagree, for I believe that a writer’s utmost responsibility is to write the story they like, not a story for people generations and decades later. I haven’t seen the fact that very few people can comprehend the reality of life in Greece or Medieval Britain given as a reason to not read the Iliad or the legends of King Arthur.

The fact that Tolkien doesn’t describe agonizing deaths in LotR doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. Theoden’s death for one would have been absolutely horrific - especially if the horse wasn’t instantly dead but managed to kick him before dying. A horse lying across any part of your body can crush/shatter the bones. As somebody who has owned or taken care of 7 different horses and a miniature horse in the past year and some odd months I can safely say that a terrified horse is dangerous and will hurt you even if you are their favorite person in the world. The fact that he was able to gasp out a final speech does not mean that it wasn’t horrific. There is also the Dead Marshes which show that contrary to my generations view (and here I show how young I am, that the only war I have ever seen is the Iraqi war) that soldiers’ bodies are always brought home, they aren’t. Sometimes they are left on the battlefield due to the sheer logistics of bringing them back. Sometimes they aren’t enough people left (Didn’t Tolkien say that Thraundial only brought a third of his people back?) The idea of faces staring back at me from where they fell in battle - orcs, elves, humans all mixed together - haunted me for weeks.

Also you can find examples of horrific deaths in the other books - especially the Sil with Finrod being torn to shreds by a werewolf, Morgoth trampling Fingolfin (or was it orcs and Fingon), that guy that got killed in the Paths of the Dead etc. But they too, aren’t described in deep detail - we don’t get “and Finrod’s blood was splattered all over the walls, with his one of his arms lying in the corner, blah, blah, etc. etc.,” and that is part of what sets Tolkien apart. The fact that the horror is expressed without having to be graphic about it. He doesn’t have a responsibilty to describe the horrors of war to the public. Indeed, why should the reality of war have to be described to people in fiction? I would far prefer to have it taught in the schools, where people would have to deal with the reality of it, but so far none of my history classes have really touched on it. And I think most parents would throw a fit if school books started describing the reality of war for teenagers - Even when dealing with the Holocaust and Anne Frank most of my teachers have glossed over the eventual fate of her and the others.

Hmmm.......Trying to think of bad behavior on the part of the good guys (without actually going and getting the books, which requires going to the basement which does not have a good heating system, and it is currently in the 20s) all I can think of off the top of my head is the hunting of the Drudain (is that right?) by the Rohirrim. Certainly not good behavior.

[davem]

LadyBrooke - Thanks for a thoughtful contribution. Again, its difficult - despite being accused a few times of wanting to see graphic depictions of violence, I'm not suggesting any such thing. The point I was making is simply that we do not get a real sense of the animal horror of battle, & the question I was asking is simply this - 'Knowing the truth, that a battle is a terrible, ugly, disgusting place (medieval battlefields stank - of blood, vomit & excrement. The sreams of the wounded & dying were so terrible that they would be burned into the memories of those who experienced them even into old age - something which is still the case, even in our own 'modern' warfare). Many posters have given reasons why Tolkien avoided that aspect of battle, but my main question remains unanswered - 'Should Tolkien have avoided that aspect, & does the omission leave out something of vital importance?' And, again, why are his depictions of the suffering & death of the land so graphic (of Mordor -

"The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about. High mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows. ..."

people in the story, however badly wounded, don't 'vomit the filth of their entrails' on the earth but the earth itself does.

And something really weird just happened - googling to get that last quote I came across this essay, a review of the Jackson movies http://leesandlin.com/reviews/05_0107.htm which says many of the things I've been saying here (see, its not just me)

What's odd, though, is that Tolkien himself knew exactly how fake it was. For all you can tell from the movie, Peter Jackson might never have witnessed a violent act in his entire life, but Tolkien had been in battle: he had been a signalman on the front lines in World War I. He learned there firsthand that battle is squalid and gory and desperately confused. But when he wrote The Lord of the Rings he deliberately turned his back on the reality and put this pale Arthurian kitsch in its place.

That's not to say that the reality is missing. In fact Tolkien's experience of real warfare pervades The Lord of the Rings -- just in disguise. You can detect its presence from the quality of his prose, which tends to grow more forceful and impassioned whenever the secret subject makes itself felt.....

The Lord of the Rings is essentially a recasting of the war into an emotionally bearable form. Everything that made the war such a psychic torment is carefully contained, or eliminated from Middle Earth altogether. Nobody in the hobbit fellowship displays cowardice under fire; nobody ever accidentally kills somebody on his own side; nobody goes mad in the heat of battle. The warriors don't get bored or irritable or horny on their long journey to Mordor; not even the studly Aragorn ever sneaks away from camp at night to look for the nearest elf bordello. The few people in the book who oppose the war invariably turn out to be under the malign influence of Sauron. Even at the climax before the Black Gate of Mordor, when our heroes make a useless, suicidal charge against a fixed position (as tended to happen quite often on the western front), nobody suggests, even as a theoretical possibility, that their noble commanders might be fools.

It's an adolescent view of war, which is one reason the book tends to take adolescent readers by storm. You can see it reflected in every frame of the movie's battle scenes, which are teenage daydreams to the highest power, spiffy and dry-cleaned and sparklingly pretty, the best video games ever. The on-screen body count may be higher than Saving Private Ryan and Dawn of the Dead combined, but when the camera swoops and dives and soars over the swarming chaos of the virtual battlefield, somehow it never catches a glimpse of anybody writhing gracelessly in agony or sloppily bleeding to death. No wonder the movie copped only a PG-13 rating for its "epic battle scenes." "Epic" evidently means "wholly unreal." It's not true violence; it's barely even movie violence. It's just a million orcs blowing up real good, the way orcs are supposed to.

This fantasy may have been emotionally necessary for Tolkien. But it's dangerous for the rest of us to buy into. The danger isn't that we're bound to be disillusioned -- it's that we might not be. If the perennial success of the book and the celestial box office of the movies prove anything, it's that too many people still daydream of war in exactly the same way Tolkien did (in some cases because they learned it from him). Tolkien advocated a war of annihilation against the orcs, and that's harmless, because there are no such things as orcs. But then a real war breaks out, and orcs mysteriously start appearing on the other side. During World War II, Nazi propagandists called black American soldiers monkeys; American propagandists called Japanese soldiers monkeys. At Helm's Deep, Gimli and Legolas hold a contest to see how many orcs they can kill. Ask yourself whether anybody might be playing that game right now in Iraq.

The Lord of the Rings ends with the enemy not just defeated but annihilated: Sauron and all his works go up in a puff of smoke and are never seen in Middle Earth again. Even for a daydream, this is pretty infantile. But given the terms of Tolkien's war, is there any other way it could have gone?

David Jones was psychically broken by World War I, and, unlike Frodo, he didn't get to sail for elf heaven to be healed. He dedicated In Parenthesis to the soldiers he fought beside, "to the memory of those with me in the covert and in the open from the blackwall the broadway the cut the flats the level the environs" -- but he also dedicated it to "the enemy front-fighters who shared our pains against whom we found ourselves by misadventure." Frodo writes his memoirs at the end of The Lord of the Rings, but there's no such dedication to the orcs.

OK, now I don't go all the way with the writer - Tolkien was writing an 'epic romance' not reportage. I think he fails to appreciate Tolkien's art, & insults his work unnecessarily... but I don't think he's completely wrong. A very real, vital aspect of war is absent from Tolkien's war epic, & I certainly think its valid to ask why that's so, & what that means.

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

Originally Posted by davem

OK, now I don't go all the way with the writer - Tolkien was writing an 'epic romance' not reportage. I think he fails to appreciate Tolkien's art, & insults his work unnecessarily... but I don't think he's completely wrong. A very real, vital aspect of war is absent from Tolkien's war epic, & I certainly think its valid to ask why that's so, & what that means.

Hmm, didn't you just say that Tolkien was writing an epic romance, not a war epic? That, perhaps, is why something about war is "missing" from Tolkien's work, I think: he's not really writing about war. He's writing about a changing world, about the growing pains of a world shifting from one in which "magic" is real to one in which it is only a memory, and a fading memory at that. The world of Men will not be without its own achievements, but the Art he so often associates with the Elves will not be of such a high degree; if I recall correctly, Faramir acknowledges this in his talks with Frodo, saying that the Men of Gondor have become more like the lesser Men of Rohan, and have lost much of their knowledge and skills that once made them the greatest of Men. I do think that the ravages of war upon the land made a great impression on Tolkien, and this comes across clearly in his writing. His experience with the human suffering it entailed may have been too personal for him to communicate effectively (or in a manner which would have felt appropriate to him). We do see some of it in the suffering of Frodo, and the changes wrought on the other Hobbits of the company, and as someone recovering from PSTD, I find it quite sufficient. Others will not, obviously. To each their own.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Ibrîniðilpathânezel

Hmm, didn't you just say that Tolkien was writing an epic romance, not a war epic? That, perhaps, is why something about war is "missing" from Tolkien's work, I think: he's not really writing about war. He's writing about a changing world, about the growing pains of a world shifting from one in which "magic" is real to one in which it is only a memory, and a fading memory at that. T.

No - he is writing about war. He's just not writing about it realistically. People die on the field, but they don't really die. Like in those old westerns, when shot they grab their chests & fall over stone dead, quickly & cleanly. They end up dead - & the tragedy of that is plain for all to read; the loss felt by those who survive them is undoubted - they just don't DIE an ugly, animal death to get there, & anyone who has read any mistory of war knows that that's how people did die in battle.

Tolkien wrote about a war, about battles, about killing. He wrote a novel about death in which no-one really dies - they just get dead.

[Morthoron]

davem,
The reviewer is, of course, correct on some points; however, he loses his moral high ground by being utterly ignorant of the original story, and even of PJ Jackson's intent for the movies.

The Lord of the Rings is essentially a recasting of the war into an emotionally bearable form. Everything that made the war such a psychic torment is carefully contained, or eliminated from Middle Earth altogether. Nobody in the hobbit fellowship displays cowardice under fire; nobody ever accidentally kills somebody on his own side; nobody goes mad in the heat of battle. The warriors don't get bored or irritable or horny on their long journey to Mordor; not even the studly Aragorn ever sneaks away from camp at night to look for the nearest elf bordello. The few people in the book who oppose the war invariably turn out to be under the malign influence of Sauron. Even at the climax before the Black Gate of Mordor, when our heroes make a useless, suicidal charge against a fixed position (as tended to happen quite often on the western front), nobody suggests, even as a theoretical possibility, that their noble commanders might be fools.

Does Aragorn being horny for someone other than Arwen make the movie better? Does getting the clap from a bar wench in Edoras somehow enrich the story, and what other more important item needed to be edited out to make way for yet another secondary storyline in a tale already overflowing with separate storylines? Do you think Tolkien got into someone's pants in France, ignoring the fact that Edith was waiting for him back home? Would he ignore his Catholicism for a cheap night out?

Nobody in the Fellowship displays cowardice? I would suggest the Fellowship was chosen precisely because they could overcome fear. They all display doubts and fears at times, but they move ahead in spite of them, just as millions of other soldiers have over the centuries. Cowardice in a disciplined army is an anomaly, not the rule, and those that flee are branded for life.

As someone already pointed out, Aragorn's army at the Black Gate defends two hills, not as Jackson portrayed the charge in the movie; however, what does it matter that they defended hills or attacked head on? It was a suicide mission, a tactical means of buying time for the real mission to succeed. They knew they were outnumbered, and they knew they had no chance of winning. I would suggest the only fool in this instance is the reviewer, who just doesn't get it.

It's an adolescent view of war, which is one reason the book tends to take adolescent readers by storm. You can see it reflected in every frame of the movie's battle scenes, which are teenage daydreams to the highest power, spiffy and dry-cleaned and sparklingly pretty, the best video games ever. The on-screen body count may be higher than Saving Private Ryan and Dawn of the Dead combined, but when the camera swoops and dives and soars over the swarming chaos of the virtual battlefield, somehow it never catches a glimpse of anybody writhing gracelessly in agony or sloppily bleeding to death. No wonder the movie copped only a PG-13 rating for its "epic battle scenes." "Epic" evidently means "wholly unreal." It's not true violence; it's barely even movie violence. It's just a million orcs blowing up real good, the way orcs are supposed to.

Again, would the movie had been better if it received an R rating? How about going all the way and just making it X rated, with Saturnalian Rohirrim copulating wildly with their horses and dwarves bumping stubbies, while orcs eat the brains of children as they quiver with still beating hearts? Does that somehow make the movie (or the book, for that matter) better? The reviewer in his blithe inanity wishes to restrict the viewing of the movie to adults, and not just ordinary adults, but those who relish burst craniums and spewing disembowlments (and whore houses on a weekend furlough). The enduring legacy of Lord of the Rings is that it can be read by children and adults, and enjoyed by a wide spectrum of readers. Why pick on just Lord of the Rings? How about the utter lack of graphic violence in Star Wars? Or the Narnia Chronicles? Or the Wizard of Oz, for that matter? I want to see the crushed body of the Wicked Witch of the East pulled in fleshy shreds from under Dorothy's house!

Originally Posted by davem

people in the story, however badly wounded, don't 'vomit the filth of their entrails' on the earth but the earth itself does.

OK, now I don't go all the way with the writer - Tolkien was writing an 'epic romance' not reportage. I think he fails to appreciate Tolkien's art, & insults his work unnecessarily... but I don't think he's completely wrong. A very real, vital aspect of war is absent from Tolkien's war epic, & I certainly think its valid to ask why that's so, & what that means.

Bottom line, if it contained the type of graphic realism you are asserting is necessary, I most likely would not have been allowed to read it in grade school because it would not have been allowed in the library, and a fundemental part of my literary experience would have been witheld. My daughter would not be allowed to read it, nor could she watch the movie with me, and an endearing part of the bond we share would be utterly lost.

I'll take the fantasy over the disembowelments.

[Gwathagor]

Originally Posted by LadyBrooke

To me the greatest horror (or victim) of war is not the dead, but those who, though living, are unable to cope or recover from what they experienced. This is what struck me the most about the ending of Lord of the Rings - Frodo is unable to find healing when he goes home. And though we can hope that he does find it over the sea, is that really a happy ending? I can’t consider it one because he (and Bilbo) are separated from their friends and families. And that to me is the greatest tragedy - one that I have seen too often in real life - those who are living but at the same time not, who are still fighting the war everyday in their minds. And Tolkien shows this with Frodo.

I think that it can be considered a happy ending; Frodo made a conscious sacrifice and was content with it. And sacrifice is beautiful.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Gwathagor

I think that it can be considered a happy ending; Frodo made a conscious sacrifice and was content with it. And sacrifice is beautiful.

Unless you're the sacrifice - in which case it probably hurts. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder .

Let's look at a specific example - one main charater's reaction to an event & how that even is presented to us readers. In the battle of Bywater 19 Hobbits are killed. They are (we assume) killed by Ruffians, not by 'Friendly Fire' in the chaos (though a reading of real wartime events - say from the English Civil Wars - reveals a lot of incidents of gross stupidity, not simply from the commanders, but from idiot soldiers discharging firearms at their own side, or from prisoners held on powder wagons being given lights for their pipes & blowing themselves & surrounding soldiers to pieces... however, I digress). 'kay, so, these Hobbits are killed....how? By Ruffians with knives, whips & clubs. How do we think they actually died? Blow to the head which brings instant death? Stab through the heart which leads to painless oblivion? No - maybe one or two of them if they were very lucky, but anyone who has read up on medieval combat will know that most of those deaths would have been drawn out affairs of possibly a few hours, with lots of blood, screaming & unpleasant odours. They would, in the main, have been Hobbiton Hobbits who Sam would have known all his life... but for him the felled trees 'were the greatest loss'. This isn't simply a refusal on Tolkien's part to give us the graphic detail of how people really die in battle - its a flat refusal to acknowledge that its actually bad. If Sam is truly more devastated by the loss of the trees than the loss of the Hobbits then there's something up with Sam. The idea that the Shire could drift back to normal afterwards & only Frodo carry a burden of pain & suffering says a lot about the other Hobbits capacity for not giving a damn about the loss of their friends.

So much death happens, but it has so little longs term effect on people - the survivors hold a funeral, sing a song about the fallen, & then plant some trees. And it seems to me that we don't actually question this - Tolkien's depiction of battle is romanticised - & that is my point: there are not only two alternatives - either you do what Tolkien did, & present death in battle with a romantic, elegiac glow or you go in for a pornographic depiction of blood, snot & vomit which would sicken the majority of readers & make the book unreadable. There is a third alternative - to acknowldge the horror of actual death by not simply stating 'X dozens, hundreds or thousands lay dead' or 'X was cut down by axes '& walked never again in the flowering meads of his homeland under the evening stars' - which is a way of not writing about how X died. As I said earlier - most of the casualties in LotR don't really die, they just get dead. Alive one second, dead the next with the unpleasant transition avoided.
LotR is about death, but its not about dying - which is odd in a war novel.

But, again, as I keep getting accused of wanting slo-mo close-ups of graphic violence in the book.... why does Tolkien shy away from the depiction of dying in a book about death, is that honest, & are we, as readers, deprived of something if that aspect is left out? We've been discussing on another thread the effect of medieval weaponry - the damage that an axe will inflict over that of a sword - & we've talked about how an axe, or battle hammer doesn't have to penetrate to kill, 'cos it will still break bones & burst internal organs beneath armour with the force of impact. How many people died on the Pelennor with that kind of injury? (What did they do with the corpses btw - another thing Tolkien avoids dealing with - the casualties (apart from the main characters), having made the quick, clean, painless transition from living to dead, conveniently disappear from the text without the need for the gathering up of body parts & burial of bits.

Tolkien is omitting facts here - facts he had learned from personal experience.

(Anyway, really have to run....)

[Gwathagor]

Originally Posted by davem

Unless you're the sacrifice - in which case it probably hurts. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Of course it hurts, but that does not detract from (and maybe adds to) the beauty of willing sacrifice - which, I should add, is objective and has nothing to with the beholder.