Tolkien's Emotional Universe

[Voronwë the Faithful]

We have had an awful lot of highly intellectual discussion about Tolkien's work here at the Hall of Fire, about the philosophical themes underlying the work particularly the Silmarillion and related texts. Not that I complaining; I love that kind of conversation. But there really is another side to Tolkien's work. I think most of us can say that his writings really touch our hearts on a very fundamental level. So my question for all you, my friends, is this:

How does Tolkien's writings, and particularly The Lord of the Rings make you feel?

[Ca Minx]

For me the Book was the relationship between Frodo and Sam. That bond they had, it was so much more than Master and servant, so much more than best friends... brothers; it's difficult for me to put in words. I still loose my breath and tears fill my eyes when I think about it.

Sam fighting Shelob ~ I will have to look up the exact words because they were so perfect. Something about fighting for ones mate. Such loyalty and selflessness ... such love.

[Primula Baggins]

Some of what moves me in Tolkien:

• Characters who do right, whatever the personal cost.
  
  Frodo's determination to complete a task he knows is impossible.
  
  The high value placed on pity and mercy.
  
  The otherworldliness of Gandalf the White: un-human compassion, entirely without self or sentiment.
  
  The vividly drawn beauty of Middle-earth.
  
  Elrond and Arwen's final farewell, powerfully moving even though it isn't even directly described.
  
  Merry's good-bye to Thëoden.
  
  Sam in Cirith Ungol.
  
  "I can't carry It, but I can carry you."

I'll be back!

[yovargas]

Before the movies came out, I said that no matter what goes wrong with the movies, if he can get "...here at the End of All Things" right, I could forgive him anything. Every time I see that scene I'm bordering on tears. I guess that means he got it right.

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

This is a wonderful topic, Voronwë, and I can think of no one I'd rather discuss this with than my fellow Halofiriens.

I love Tolkien's works, and to me they are and will always be the most profound works of fiction that I could possibly imagine. I would have liked to have met Ronald Tolkien, and gotten to know what sort of person he was. I gather that he had a number of idiosyncracies, as do we all to one degree or another, but, in addition to being a man of incredible creativity, he must have been someone who thought and felt very deeply about a number of things. I feel a kinship with him in this regard.

The first item that Prim listed--

Characters who do right, whatever the personal cost.

--particularly strikes home with me. I am a very principled person, perhaps more principled than is good for me at times, but that is who I am and, for good or bad, that will never change.

There are a number of capitivating moments in Tolkien's works, supremely beautiful and emotion-filled, and to me the single most shining example of this is Éowyn's encounter with the Lord of the Nazgûl depicted in The Return of the King, "The Battle of Pelennnor Fields".

The scene depicts a heartbroken 24-year old woman in the middle of a battlefield strewn with bodies of the dead. She is doubtlessly weary to the point of exhaustion from travel, battle, and despair. Why is she there? She has gone to war in defiance of her uncle the king in search of a glorious death because she feels that she has nothing to live for. The man she loves, or thinks she loves, has spurned her.

King Théoden, Éowyn's uncle who has been as a father to her since her own died when she was a small child, now lies dead at her feet. She is faced with a foe far beyond herself (and virtually everyone else). Yet, she will lay down her own life before she allows Théoden's corpse to be defiled.

'Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!'

she cries. She is answered with a threat of nightmarish proportions. I don't believe that Tolkien uses the term 'fey' here as he did on at least a few occasions in The Silmarillion, but I believe that describes Éowyn's state of mind at this time.

Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. 'But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund's daughter...I will smite you if you touch him.'

...But the helm of secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears were on her cheek. A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy's eyes...

After a brief moment of hesitation, the Nazgûl and his hideous winged-steed go on the offensive.

Still she did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings, slender but as a steel-blade, fair yet terrible.

Éowyn, a sword personified, slays the beast.

Out of the wreck rose the Black Rider, tall and threatening, towering over her. With a cry of hatred that stung the very ears like venom he let fall his mace.

Éowyn's shield is splintered and her arm broken.

Meriadoc Brandbuck, Hobbit of the Shire, out of compassion for this grief-stricken young woman and his love for King Théoden, overcomes his own fear to come to the aid of his friend.

Using the enchanted blade that Tom Bombadil had recovered from the barrow, a dagger made for the wars against Angmar (the Lord of the Nazgûl was also the Witchking of Angmar), Merry strikes the Nazgûl in the back of the knee, sending the Witchking's second blow, which surely would have slain Éowyn, astray.

'Éowyn! Éowyn!' cried Merry. Then tottering, struggling up, with her last strength she drove her sword between the crown and mantle, as the great shoulders bowed before her...and a cry went up into the shuddering air, and faded to a shrill wailing, passing with the wind, a voice bodiless and thin that died, and was swallowed up, and was never heard again in that age of this world.

[vison]

Prim's post pretty well covers things.

But for me the most important charm was always the language. I love words. JRRT loved words and he used lots of them that most readers will never see anywhere else. (That reader isn't me, BTW. I read so many strange things that I only found one "real" English word in LOTR that was new to me.) Some people get goosebumps of delight or melancholy from listening to music and JRRT did that to me with his narrative. It was and is an emotional reaction.

Not the poetry though. No sireee bob.

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

Another particularly stirring scene is "The Bridge of Khazâd-dûm". The ending gives me shivers!

They looked back. Dark yawned the archway of the Gates under the mountain-shadow. Faint and far beneath the earth rolled the slow drum-beats: doom. A thin black smoke trailed out. Nothing else was to be seen; the dale all around was empty. Doom. Grief at last wholly overcame them, and they wept long: some standing and silent, some cast upon the ground. Doom, doom. The drum-beats faded.

I totally agree with Mme. Mink regarding Tolkien's use of language. It is like sweet music to my ears.

P.S. I LOVE the poetry!

[Primula Baggins]

Tolkien's changes of narrative voice drive many people crazy, but I adore them. I am so glad he didn't try to write about hobbits in the same "register" he used to write about Théoden's charge. The language of the book is entirely appropriate for each.

And I deeply love the "archaic" style, which strengthens the feeling that these are legends of another age, as well as adding a somber power to events. I would never, ever attempt to write that way myself—I don't know how—but Tolkien did. (E. R. Eddison, too.)

The only negative aspect, for me, is that so many lesser (some much lesser) modern fantasy writers try to achieve the same thing. Tolkien was immersed in older languages and literature and for him the style must have come naturally. For almost all modern writers it's something assumed, pastiche, and it shows. Heavens!

[anthriel]

Old Tom! Good to see you!

The Lord of the Rings affected me profoundly. I think probably the one concept that I chewed on emotionally for the longest time (and it still affects me, if I'm honest, here), is that Frodo tried so hard to do everything right, he sacrificed so much, he persevered where few others could have, and yet he was so broken and changed by the experience that he could not go home.

I wanted him to be able to go home.

Still makes me cry.

[vison]

It's odd, I never really felt that way about Frodo. I guess I knew all along that Frodo wasn't going to be able to "go home again". He was never "at home" in the first place.

What was there for Frodo in the Shire? What had there ever been for him? It was clear to me from first meeting him that he was not "happy". He was different, an outsider, all his life.

Frodo was marked forever by the deaths of his parents, I think. Brought up by an eccentric bachelor cousin, Frodo would always have been a bit odd, set apart from the happy, carefree, thoughtless Hobbits surrounding him. (Didn't he always have an Elvish air? And I wish I could get back the picture I once had of Frodo in my mind's eye, Elijah Wood's face pops up now, which is, I admit, not necessarily a bad thing, but I did love my own old Frodo, too.)

It was something I disliked a tad, to be honest, the depiction of the Hobbits as rural simpletons: it smacks of the (no doubt unconscious) snobbery JRRT occasionally displayed. Frodo's heroism is, after all, not quite "Hobbitlike", it is "higher", more Elvish, perhaps. And Frodo, like Merry and Pippin, is not "common". Sam is common. Which is why, in my mind, JRRT created a truly real person (human, if you like) in Sam: Sam was not gentil, nor connected to wealth, nor educated. But by the end of the story Sam was the equal of Kings and Elven Lords.


I'm not by any means saying that Sam was "the true hero" of the story. Not at all. But Frodo was never as "real" to me as dear Samwise, Frodo was obviously born (created) for the lonely quest and for greatness everlasting. I know almost nothing about the creation of LOTR, whether Frodo was once meant to be alone throughout the Quest, or whether Sam was always there, the necessary man servant/batman/companion of the gentleman Frodo, or even the "comic relief" in his ignorance and simplicity.

(I'm sorry, I'm getting away from "the Emotional Universe" here, but you know me, how I ramble.)

Frodo had endured dreadful pain for most of his life, after all. But Sam was born "whole" and lived unmarked until his courage and loyalty were put to the test. We all know Sam rose to the moment!

If nothing else is great about LOTR, Sam's growth, from Hobbit-servant with dirty fingernails to companion of Frodo The Nine-Fingered, is.

[yovargas]

On b77, there's a thread called "Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?" and for me the only possible answer is Sam. To this day, I think I often find myself attracted in RL to guys with "Sam-ish" qualities - those with a natural sense of goodness and kindness, an easy ability to find beauty and joy in life's simple things, with perhaps a bit more heart than sense.

The Frodo/Sam/Gollum trio, their dynamic, that is the story to me, it contains everything that matters to me about LOTR, and Sam is the core of that for me, perhaps as the embodiment of Some Good in the World that's Worth Fighting For.





(That, and I do see Sam's character as "in love" with Frodo in the book, which makes it about the most damn romantic story I've ever read.)

[Primula Baggins]

I love Sam.

I love that Sam was necessary to the Quest, and the fact that his common humanity grounds Frodo's heroism and "Elvish qualities" in reality. So often it is Sam bringing matters back to the practical that makes us understand how impossible the Quest was. If Frodo had gone alone, the whole thing would have felt like a "magical" journey, too easy—"of course he can do this, he's the hero of the Quest."

Instead we have Sam, desperately thirsty, giving the last of his water to Frodo. We have the weariness, the darkness, the horrible orc armor, the carefully meted out food; we are moved when Sam realizes, bravely, that there won't be any return journey. Sam is the foundation of what I love about Frodo, because if Sam hadn't been there to see it for me, I might have missed much of it.

[narya]

The Lord of the Rings is a solace for me, when I'm down, because it is the story of people caught up in a hopeless quest, but soldiered on anyway because that's the way they were, and that's the way I hope to be when things are (apparently) too tough to overcome.

When I was young, I would only read the Fellowship, because it was the happiest and most hopeful of the three. I did not understand the later books. More recently, when in the midst of grief and depression, I read the sections in Cirith Ungol and Mordor over and over because those were the moments when all hope was stripped away, but the hobbits carried on anyway. Their choice to go on "until caught or killed" was an act of hope, though they could not see it at the time. And it gave me a grounding that wasn't quite hope, but the determination to stick around until hope returned.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Great responses, everyone! Keep them coming.

I promise that eventually I'll say something about how Tolkien's writing make ME feel.

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

I treasure the little throwaway lines such as Merry looking away when Pippin has been caught endangering Frodo and Sam by looking in the palantír. Or Aragorn sitting with his head bowed to his knees just before they set out. Or Faramir giving Éowyn his mother's cloak to keep out the cold.

[WampusCat]

Here is how "Lord of the Rings" makes me feel:

Like seeing warm light pour from the windows of home after a long journey.

Like waking with a beautiful, never-heard melody running through my head.

Like greeting a friend who knows me better than I know myself.

Like looking in a mirror and seeing infinity.

As you can see, I can't describe it, not really. But ever since I first opened "The Hobbit" when I was 9, I felt that I had walked into a world that wasn't just in a book but that was inside of me -- a world that was more real in a way than the one I walked in every day.

A world that gives me hope.

[Primula Baggins]

Perfect.

[axordil]

I don't have an emotional response to LOTR that I can define easily. But I come back to it, as one returns to that box under the bed with one's high school yearbooks in it, or the old photo album with family members who are no longer with us. So much of my adult life is to one extent or another wound about it, directly or indirectly...the friends I chose, the things I studied, the company I kept. And it's why I'm here, because had there been no books, there would have been no films, and no websites, and no moots.

What a sad world that would have been.

What emotional response can I have to my own bones and sinews? LOTR is no less a part of me than they are.

[Athrabeth]

Oh my gosh, ax.

That's it.

For me, no other tale is layered with such memory, no other story is bound to such personal experience. Each time I come back to it, it is changed, but whether that is the tale revealing something new to me or me bringing something new to the tale, it's difficult to say; after all, that's just the way Tolkien believed enchantment should work.

So do I.

[solicitr]

A very great part of the 'magic' is the sense that there is far, far more beyond the canvas, that the Tree is just the foreground. Like T himself, I find the suggestion of untold stories to be moving. Perhaps Hobbits are the ideal intermediaries precisely because they are very small people in a huge world. for example:

Eastward the Barrow-downs rose, ridge behind ridge into the morning, and vanished out of eyesight into a guess: it was no more than a guess of blue and a remote white glimmer blending with the hem of the sky, but it spoke to them, out of memory and old tales, of the high and distant mountains.

"Out of memory and old tales"- is this not essential Tolkien? Far too often I've seen critics- even friendly ones - bash JRRT's descriptive writing because it violates the Rules passed down by creative writing teachers. But great artists break The Rules; and for Tolkien bringing Middle-earth and its air to life is as important as doing so with any other character.

Or this:

They heard of the Great Barrows, and the green mounds, and the stone-rings upon the hills and in the hollows among the hills. Sheep were bleating in flocks. Green walls and white walls rose. There were fortresses on the heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords. There was victory and defeat; and towers fell, fortresses were burned, and flames went up into the sky. Gold was piled on the biers of dead kings and queens; and mounds covered them, and the stone doors were shut; and the grass grew over all. Sheep walked for a while biting the grass, but soon the hills were empty again.