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Old 06-27-2009, 06:59 PM   #1
Hakon
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Also with Arthur and Aragorn you have the guiding figure. For Arthur it was Merlin and for Aragorn it was Elrond early on.

Also Numenor is similar to Atlantis. Both were like the ideal societies and both got sunk into the ocean. Both had a sort of divine ruler, for Atlantis it was Poseidon and for Numenor it was Elros.

The Battle of Helm's Deep is also comparable to Troy only in this case the roles are sort of reversed. The good is defending in this case rather than attacking.
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Old 06-27-2009, 07:05 PM   #2
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by hakon
The Battle of Helm's Deep is also comparable to Troy only in this case the roles are sort of reversed. The good is defending in this case rather than attacking.QUOTE]

Granted, from the point of view of Homer and his audience the "good"
are attacking, but I think that (other then doofus Paris) the Trojans
may be seen by most readers as the good guys. At minimum, talk
about overreaction by the Greeks! I mean, for one babe!
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Old 06-27-2009, 07:35 PM   #3
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That is true. But Helen was the most beautiful woman ever according Homer and the lust of men is very powerful. The one thing that has always bothered me about Paris is that his real name was Alexander and that is my name. Sorry that I am off topic. Anyway Goldberry is sort of portrayed as the most beautiful woman in Middle Earth, I am sure a war could have been started over her.

Also it is perspective like you said with which side is good.
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Old 06-27-2009, 08:10 PM   #4
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Turin may well be a hero in the formula of a classic Greek tragedy, however, the parallels favor Kullervo rather than Achilles as far as the story goes.

There are many Tolkien characters who are near perfect examples of heroes from Greek tragedies -- in addition to Turin, Boromir for instance. They exhibit the four principal characteristics of a tragic hero: 1. the character is of noble birth, 2. He has a tragic flaw (hamartia), 3. He has a reversal (a catastrophe), and 4. he undergoes a catharthis, or recognition, a realization of his own flaw that caused his reversal. And, as is usual in Greek tragedy, his recognition comes too late to prevent his succumbing to the reversal.

But again, Turin's story is essentially derived from the Kalevala, and the self-destructive, often berserk character Kullervo, right down to being born in bondage, unknowingly seducing his sister and dying on a sword that willingly takes his life (and says so).
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Old 06-28-2009, 03:52 AM   #5
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Another tragic hero of Greek mythology who may be compared to Túrin is Oedipus. I vividly recall seeing a performance of both stories as drama by the Greek Tolkien Society in Birmingham, highlighting the parallels between the two* as victims of an overwhelming fate, unable to escape even when flying from it. Both unknowingly married a member of their family incestuously, a situation which resulted in their respective deaths at their own hands.

This has been noted by others previously; for a start, check out Michael Martinez' comments.


*...who were played by the same actor, thus emphasizing the parallels even more.
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Old 06-28-2009, 01:18 PM   #6
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The Battle of Helm's Deep is also comparable to Troy only in this case the roles are sort of reversed. The good is defending in this case rather than attacking.
Hm? I never saw the Trojans as evil. It was Achilles, after all, who desecrated Hector's body, and Odysseus who resorted to underhandedness.

Also, the survivors of Troy, led by Aeneas, went on to found Rome.
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Old 06-28-2009, 01:22 PM   #7
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The Romans were not exactly saints. I just always viewed the Greeks as good and the Trojans as evil. It was Paris that made me see them as evil and the Greeks as good.
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Old 06-28-2009, 02:38 PM   #8
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And in a way Paris was between a rock, a rock, and a
hard place- what with the three vain goddesses starting
the whole thing. It is interesting that the theme of fated
destiny in the Trojan War (essentially effecting the actions of
both humans and gods) is only (I believe) directly used by
Tolkien with the Children of Hurin, which makes it somewhat
discordant to the general ethos of Middle-earth.

Elsewhere in the tales he seems, to me, to effectively
combine free will and Iluvatar seeing that his plan
for Middle-earth and its peoples, by allowing evil to have
the possibility to "win" for a time but eventually redress
a given situation (for example, Morgoth having a nice winning
streak in Beleriand). And I think somewhere Gandalf muses
that he will not have totally failed if anything fair lives in
Middle-earth (or something to that effect).
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Old 06-28-2009, 02:44 PM   #9
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The Romans were not exactly saints. I just always viewed the Greeks as good and the Trojans as evil. It was Paris that made me see them as evil and the Greeks as good.
Rome was no more or less a villain than Athens, Sparta, Mycene, or Thebes.

Paris may have started the whole mess between the Greeks and Trojans, but if you read closely I think you'll actually find more admirable traits among the Trojans.

-Agamemnon was a thoroughly deplorable man, who killed his own daughter, Iphigenia, to appease the goddess, Artemis. You see, Artemis was angry about some slight and was preventing the Greeks from sailing from Aulis. Agamemnon just had to get this ball rolling and he wasn't going to let anything silly like his daughter's life get in the way of conquering Troy, by thunder. So, a quick knife to his daughter's chest, Artemis was satisfied, and the Greeks set sail.

-Achilles had a grand mal hissy fit over Agamemnon keeping the woman, Briseis, after Achilles had won her as a war prize. So, like any good commander with victory in mind, Achilles withdrew his men and sulked- for a year, if I remember correctly.

-I've already mentioned how victory over Hector wasn't enough for Achilles. When you kill the (ahem) "special friend" of an invulnerable, manic depressive Greek warrior, even if it's mistaken identity, you can apparently expect to have your corpse desecrated as further revenge.

-Odysseus was actually the one who defeated Troy, and he had to use skullduggery instead of good old-fashioned brawn and elan.

"Good guys"? I think not.
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Old 06-28-2009, 03:14 PM   #10
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I still view them as the good guys. Sorry. Yes they did bad things, but the way the Iliad is written is so that you view them as the good guys in the war. It is just something that is always going to stick with me. I cannot view the Trojan's as good. They had a terrible royal family with the one exception of Hector. Although with the Trojan War both the Greeks and Trojans have good and bad people on their side. I would have to say that many of the leaders on both sides are the worst.

If I remember correctly Troy's symbol was a horse. That is another parallel between Helm's Deep/Rohan and Troy.
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Old 06-28-2009, 03:36 PM   #11
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I don't see the Iliad as the story of a conflict between good and evil. Both sides are portrayed as human, with human virtues, flaws and shortcomings distributed more or less evenly.
And let's not forget that the conflict was ultimately caused and fed by the Gods, who participated in the war on both sides.
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Old 06-28-2009, 03:42 PM   #12
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That is true. It is just that as humans we tend to call one side good and one side evil no matter what.
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Old 06-28-2009, 04:07 PM   #13
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I still view them as the good guys. Sorry. Yes they did bad things, but the way the Iliad is written is so that you view them as the good guys in the war. It is just something that is always going to stick with me. I cannot view the Trojan's as good. They had a terrible royal family with the one exception of Hector.
Priam was evil? Andromache? Cassandra? Polydorus? I don't know if we've read the same Iliad.

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If I remember correctly Troy's symbol was a horse. That is another parallel between Helm's Deep/Rohan and Troy.
I'm not sure what that had to do with who was or wasn't on the side of evil in the Iliad, but that could well be entirely coincidental.
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Old 06-28-2009, 04:45 PM   #14
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Priam was evil? Andromache? Cassandra? Polydorus? I don't know if we've read the same Iliad.
Actually, in the Medieval worldview, Hector was acclaimed one of the Nine Worthies -- one of three from Pagan lands (also Alexander and Julius Caesar) -- who were accounted as paragons of chivalry. In no sense were Trojans 'evil'; on the contrary, the Greek fleet was decimated after their horrible sack of Troy, and many heroes were drowned. Also, for their affronts against the gods, Odysseus was forced to wander 10 years before finally being allowed to return home, and Agamemmnon was murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra.
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Old 06-28-2009, 05:24 PM   #15
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By the way, have any of you read Kassandra by Christa Wolf (in case it's been translated into your respective languages)? She paints the Greeks as the bad guys in darkest colours - for example, she invariably refers to Achilles as 'Achilles the Beast'; one-sided, of course, but an interesting attempt to re-tell history/mythology from the perspective of the losers.

But all this is taking us miles away from Tolkien. Interestingly, the conflict between good and evil, which is so prominent in Tolkien's Legendarium, seems to be conspicuously absent in classical mythology - as it is in most of the mythological or heroic literature which inspired or may have inspired our Professor (Kalevala, Nibelungenlied/ Volsunga Saga, Icelandic Sagas in general, Mabinogion, Tain Bo Cuailnge, Fenian cycle, you name it). The only possible exceptions that come to my mind at the moment are Beowulf (which is the work of a Christian author) and the conflict between the Gods and Giants in the Norse Edda (which I tend to see as authentically pagan with a thin Christian veneer). But there's no figure of archetypal evil like Morgoth or Sauron anywhere in the old myths - except for ancient Jewish mythology (otherwise known as the Bible).
Possible conclusions from this observation:
1. The conflict between good and evil is a specifically Christian (or Judeo-Christian-Islamic) theme, which Homer and most of the other pagan authors didn't find interesting (though they cared about such issues as chaos and order - as in e.g. Zeus vs the Titans, but with no moral values attached);
2. The conflict between good and evil as the crucial point of the story may also be viewed as a specifically modern element which Tolkien introduced into mythological literature inspired by his experience of 20th century history.
Truth, as I see it, is a mixture of both.
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