Tag: tolkien

gayharoldfinch:

vulgarweed:

sophiamcdougall:

poorquentyn:

It puzzles me when people cite LOTR as the standard of “simple” or “predictable” or “black and white” fantasy. Because in my copy, the hero fails. Frodo chooses the Ring, and it’s only Gollum’s own desperation for it that inadvertently saves the day. The fate of the world, this whole blood-soaked war, all the millennia-old machinations of elves and gods, comes down to two addicts squabbling over their Precious, and that is precisely and powerfully Tolkien’s point. 

And then the hero goes home, and finds home a smoking desolation, his neighbors turned on one another, that secondary villain no one finished off having destroyed Frodo’s last oasis not even out of evil so much as spite, and then that villain dies pointlessly, and then his killer dies pointlessly. The hero is left not with a cathartic homecoming, the story come full circle in another party; he is left to pick up the pieces of what was and what shall never be again. 

And it’s not enough. The hero cannot heal, and so departs for the fabled western shores in what remains a blunt and bracing metaphor for death (especially given his aged companions). When Sam tells his family, “Well, I’m back” at the very end, it is an earned triumph, but the very fact that someone making it back qualifies as a triumph tells you what kind of story this is: one that is too honest to allow its characters to claim a clean victory over entropy, let alone evil. 

“I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I’m naked in the dark. There’s nothing–no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I can see him with my waking eyes.”

So where’s this silly shallow hippie fever-dream I’ve heard so much about? It sounds like a much lesser story than the one that actually exists.

+1

You know how Frodo leaves Sam with the legacy of the quest – the job of bearing witness to what happened – and the duty to finish and protect his writings?

Tolkien lost all but one of his friends in WW1. He was founder member of a literary club at school – the TCBS. There was a larger group and a core of four. They all stayed friends, they kept writing and sharing their work with each other. And they were almost all killed. One of them, Geoffrey Smith, wrote this to Tolkien in 1916.

My chief consolation is that if I am scuppered tonight – I am off on duty in a few minutes – there will still be left a member of the great T.C.B.S. to voice what I dreamed and what we all agreed upon.  […] May God bless you my dear John Ronald and may you say things I have tried to say long after I am not there to say them if such be my lot.


And that was his last letter. There’s something eerie about the way he seems to have pegged Tolkien as an eventual survivor. 

Sam’s survival (and his emergence as the true hero of the book) are beautiful because they’re suffused with loss, because they’re not the grand conquering heroic narrative that on some level was “supposed” to happen.

Tolkien possibly only survived because he got trench fever – a particularly nasty disease carried by lice – and got sent home because he was desperately ill. Considering how the rest of his unit fared, it probably saved his life. Unpleasant and unglamorous, but if not for that, we wouldn’t have LOTR. I’m sure survivor’s guilt was a factor – as was a sickening sense of dread when “The War to End All Wars” didn’t, and his son went off to WWII.

TLOTR has some of the type of valorization of war that you find in the Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon literature that JRRT loved and studied and taught because he loved that style and it’s deeply fitting for cultures like the Rohirrim, but it’s also full of the slog of war, the waste and tragedy, and the irrevocable damage that even victorious survivors carry for the rest of their lives. Frodo’s symbolic “death” is also resonant for survivors of what was called “shell-shock” then and PTSD now.

I mean, it’s not Game of Thrones. It’s not gritty in the same way. But the protagonist of LOTR was minor gentry from a backwater nobody’d heard of, and the REAL hero who saved the world by saving him was his gardener. All the great kings and queens and lords and ladies in the story are background characters compared to the story of the little people. Literally little people, but symbolically too.

“I mean, it’s not Game of Thrones. It’s not gritty in the same way”

well thank fuck for that

absynthe–minded:

also, on the topic of things that Tolkien does that make me cry:

Celebrimbor, when he heard that Sauron was coming into Eregion, didn’t flee. He didn’t grab all the Important Shit and run. He barred the doors of the Mírdain, drew his sword, and stood right in front of them awaiting the assault. Ready to die, probably convinced he was going to die, because he knew what happened the last time someone in his family did this.

Blood runs deep. I’m sure Finwë, wherever he was, felt nothing but pride.

icedpyro:

You guys all know about the bad dude of Lord of the Rings, Sauron right?

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Well he used to have a boss called Melkor (later on called Morgoth)

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For those that don’t know, this is the guy that made all of Sauron’s doings with the rings look like kindergarten bullying. Sauron was a basically a demigod (called a Maia), Melkor, however, was full on god status (called a Vala). He was constantly wreaking havoc across against all of creation and the 14 other Valar (Melkor was the 15th).

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(Check out this gallery for more info on the Valar)

This dude had all sorts of scariness under his command. You remember the Balrog that killed Gandalf? (temporarily) 

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He had an army of these. A MOTHERFUCKING ARMY OF BALROGS. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW SCARY THAT WOULD BE?!Well here is an idea.

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That is not even the end of it. HE ALSO HAD AN ARMY OF DRAGONS. AN ARMY. Many of which would put Smaug to shame, including this monstrosity, Ancalagon the Black

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Yes, he is palming a FUCKING VOLCANO. Melkor also had an ally that make your worst nightmares its little bitch.

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That is Ungoliant. CHECK OUT HOW GRATUITOUSLY GIGANTIC SHE IS. She was never truly under his command for various reasons that include her strength and the fact she was a huge bitch. 

So what do you do against a guy who has all that power? You would die instantly, but not Fingolfin. Fingolfin was an elf king of Noldor. He was just an elf, he wasn’t even on Sauron or Gandalf’s level (demigods called Maia) and he challenged Melkor to single combat.

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HE WANTED TO FIGHT HIM. And he was such a bad ass that he didn’t die instantly. And not only did he hold his own, HE SEVERELY FUCKED UP MELKOR’S FACE AND GAVE HIM A PERMANENT LIMP (Get the fuck out of here Achilles and Hector, this fight is the best duel of all time, OF ALL TIME) He eventually lost the fight, (he WAS fighting a god) but not before giving Melkor anguish for the rest of his life. So next time you say that all elves are prissy little bitches, you need to shut the fuck up and reevaluate your life.

avelera:

nitocrisss:

ok so i was mulling over this tired argument of “thorin doesn’t bring anything to the relationship” (which is probably coming from the fact that bilbo is indeed the only self-sufficient and non-problematic member of the company, that he proves to be much more capable than expected in dealing with other people’s problems and doesn’t seem to have any problems himself, but seeing as thorin employed him it was kinda obvious that he would offer services and not expect help in return, what with being promised the 14th share of the treasure (which he also didn’t need but still))

and i got thinking about how bilbo actually ran off to take part in the quest that would most likely end up with him being incinerated (here on a side note we could say that HIS was the original suicide mission), which can only indicate how miserable he had actually been in his old world and how happy being needed and having someone to fuss over made him;

and also about the fact that he ran so quickly not because he enjoyed dwalin eating his biscuits or balin accepting his apologies, kili wiping his feet on his furniture or fili dumping a pile of swords in his hands, ori holding on to his tomatoes or bombur ridding him of cheese (although maybe the plate-throwing camaraderie had

charmed

him somewhat)

he changed his mind after hearing thorin and the others sing, feeling his longing, catching a spark of his flame, seeing very uncomfortable dreams. in the broadest sense, cheesy though as it might sound, thorin made bilbo feel alive and wanting for the first time in years, and then i thought “manic pixie dream dwarf” and i haven’t been able to stop laughing ever since

Thorin as a manic pixie dream dwarf just made my friggin’ day

mishacolins:

But there was in Thranduil’s heart a still deeper shadow. He had seen the horror of Mordor and could not forget it. If ever he looked south its memory dimmed the light of the Sun, and though he knew that it was now broken and deserted and under the vigilance of the Kings of Men, fear spoke in his heart that it was not conquered for ever; it would arise again.