"...Tolkien for a Jaded Age" ?

[Holbytla]

And don't hate to disagree. That is how we learn and develop.

[vison]

You can take yourself out of the country, but you can't take the country out of you. Tolkien was who he was and when he was. And he was reflective of when he was.
Aragorn is the prototypical 50's hero.
Sauron is the 50's prototypical 50's villain.

Written for an age where the hero did not have to have an affair with his neighbor to appeal to an audience.

Well, we are doomed to disagree. Aragorn's type of hero is much older than the 1950s. Much, much, much older. Likewise, Sauron. Who really WAS a meaningless construct. The devil always annoyed the crap out of me.

[Lalaith]

You can take yourself out of the country, but you can't take the country out of you. Tolkien was who he was and when he was. And he was reflective of when he was.
Aragorn is the prototypical 50's hero.
Sauron is the 50's prototypical 50's villain.

Written for an age where the hero did not have to have an affair with his neighbor to appeal to an audience.

And if that's so, then why does Tolkien's work still resonate so strongly with us? And newer generations?


(That's a thought I'll have to ponder before I can elaborate.)

[narya]

I just saw an episode of "Leave it to Beaver", a quintessential cardboard cut out of the 50s middle class white collar Protestant Anglo America. It was easy to imagine, back then, that the whole world was that simple to figure out. Assuming you were demographically the same, of course. Martin's plots are not compex and messy because we finally live in a complex age, but because we finally mix with others enough to admit that except for the cocooned middle class, it has always been a messy age.

[Primula Baggins]

I would argue that there are still plenty of heroes of that type, Holby. Maybe not in the most highly admired fiction, but in the kind lots of people read.

I would also argue that it's possible for a "modern" hero to be even more heroic than Aragorn—because the temptations and weaknesses that are not shown us in Aragorn can exist in a "modern" hero and be overcome. A hero who isn't flawless, yet still manages to do what he's called to do, can be, for my money, even more admirable than one who never suffers the least inclination to be anything other than heroic.

Flaws don't have to equal failure. Sometimes they constitute an additional obstacle that's even more admirable for being overcome.

Speaking as an imperfect human, too, I admit I'm more likely to be inspired by someone who has the same kinds of imperfections as me and yet overcomes them, than by someone who is so absolutely good and virtuous that what I find almost impossible is easy for him. That's admirable in its own way; but it's outside the universe I know.

[axordil]

There is a romance--with noble heroes, distant heroines, powerful magic (good and bad), a king reclaiming his crown, et al--embedded within the story of Frodo and Sam. But LOTR is Frodo and Sam's story, much closer to the earth, much closer to the trenches. JRRT was torn between the high medieval romance he loved and the gritty psychological tale I think he needed to write when he brought the two strains of story together, and the tension between them *drives*critics*insane*.

[kzer_za]

Written for an age where the hero did not have to have an affair with his neighbor to appeal to an audience.

But this sort of thing (flawed heroes, etc.) had been around for ages. It's not something that just became popular after the 50s. American dime-store detective novels in the early-mid twentieth century are full of violence and loose women. Crime and Punishment has a murderer as the main character. Anna Karenina's title character cheats on her husband. The Three Musketeers has the heroes sleeping around and getting in pointless duels as if it were nothing. And those are all nineteenth-century books!

One thing we have to remember in LotR is that we are looking through the world through Hobbit eyes. They are the only ones besides the Fox whose inward thoughts we get to read. I would argue the four hobbits are all round, well-developed characters. Many of the Men are seen somewhat from a distance, with a bit of the sense of wide-eyed wonder a Hobbit encountering the world for the first time might have. That is why many of them are somewhat archetypal - we simply do not get as "close" to them as we do to the hobbits.

And I think a careful read will show that the men seem the most like real people when they're with the Hobbits (this is the main reason book III is my least favorite of the six, because we spend much of our time away from them). To me, Aragorn seems the most human when he's with the Hobbits, while in the parts where he isn't he comes across as more distant and wooden.

[kzer_za]

And I see that axordil and I both posted the same basic idea on the narrative structure of LotR at the same time.

Another thing - I think the statement that "LotR reflects Tolkien's belief that the high noble class or low class is the way you are and you shouldn't move beyond your station in life" (I'm paraphrasing) shows a somewhat shallow reading. Yes, the Frodo-Sam relationship is a master-servant one, and I'll admit there are a couple of parts there I'm not entirely comfortable with. But then Sam ends up becoming Mayor of the Shire, and then his daughter is part of Queen Arwen's court! And Merry and Pippin become big war heroes. That's social mobility, and the people who attack Tolkien on the basis of class seem to overlook this.

[axordil]

To me, Aragorn seems the most human when he's with the Hobbits, while the parts where he he isn't he comes across as more distant and wooden.

This is a good observation, and one that speaks to the gap between what JRRT wanted to write and what he wrote best...a gap I've observed in many writers, alas.

I loved all the romance stuff when I was a teenager reading LOTR for the first time; the hobbit stuff seemed dull by comparison. I was starved for romance then...not so much now.

As Bored of the Rings put it regarding Aragorn, "If he says 'Lo' one more time I'm going to croak him myself."

[kzer_za]

Well I do wonder how much this was intentional. Tolkien liked to write about which fictional sources he used for his stories, so it would make sense that some parts are from the Hobbits' memory of the characters and some are just from more straightforward historical records.

On my most recent re-read it particularly stood out with Théoden - at first he came across as pretty one-dimensional, but then when he meets Merry and they develop a relationship he becomes more interesting.

[narya]

And Merry and Pippin become big war heroes. That's social mobility, and the people who attack Tolkien on the basis of class seem to overlook this.

Merry and Pippin were already sons of nobility.

[axordil]

And Merry and Pippin become big war heroes. That's social mobility, and the people who attack Tolkien on the basis of class seem to overlook this.

Merry and Pippin were already sons of nobility.

The Master and the Thain had large land holdings and much influence, but "nobility" means "feudalism" and the Shire was prefeudal, economically and politically. They were sons of important families, but there's a limit to what that meant in the Shire.

[vison]

A nice distinction, axordil, and quite correct!

I never saw Aragorn as "wooden", really. He was "remote", but I always figured if you were marooned on a desert isle with Aragorn he'd know how to catch fish and make a fire and stomp on poisonous snakes and NEVER creep into your tent at night.

Darn it.

[narya]

...

[Primula Baggins]

I had the same thought, narya, that Merry and Pippin weren't really changing classes so much as achieving personal renown.

And even Sam becoming Mayor—mayors of rural places in England weren't considered aristocrats. Respectable people, certainly, but not "gentry."

[axordil]

This touches on the question, how did the Baggins of Bag End, followed by the Gamgee-Cottons of Bag End, support themselves? They sowed not, neither did they reap...one pretty much has to assume they were landowners with tenant farmers along the classic British agricultural model. Not, certainly, on the scale of the Tooks or Brandybucks, but enough to enable a pre-Smaug Bilbo to live very comfortably, and to support Sam and Rosie's expansive family. And then there's the Fairbairns...

We're wandering off into Osgiliath-by-Bywater.

[kzer_za]

I'll concede the point on Merry and Pippin. But while hobbits don't have "gentry" in the traditional sense, it seems like going from gardener to mayor is about as socially mobile as you can get in the Shire (and Sam's family does well for itself after that too).

[axordil]

One could make a case that Merry and Pippin, by integrating the affairs of the Shire into those of the Reunited Kingdom, became the first Hobbit nobility. While they did not hold their lands de jure from Elessar, and the Shire was treated as an enclave within the lands of the King, they were no longer merely large landowners, but landowners recognized as having a special status by the Crown.

[kzer_za]

So Tom Shippey "reviewed" Dance with Dragons (Martin's latest book) in the WSJ. But it's really more a description and overview of the series than a full review. Shippey doesn't say much about his own opinion on the books, besides that he sees the appeal of them and that in Martin's world "the most useful quality is cruelty."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 18268.html

[vison]

One could make a case that Merry and Pippin, by integrating the affairs of the Shire into those of the Reunited Kingdom, became the first Hobbit nobility. While they did not hold their lands de jure from Elessar, and the Shire was treated as an enclave within the lands of the King, they were no longer merely large landowners, but landowners recognized as having a special status by the Crown.

I wondered once if the entire shire was a Duchy or County, held by some long-extinct family. Either a Hobbit family or otherwise.