Fantasy

[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.