As a devout Catholic, who insisted on saying his responses in Latin, he would not have approved of the depiction of religion either and its cynical use as a tool to manipulate people.
Spoilers Lord of the Rings TV series
- Thread starter Cyrus
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He did comment on Dune. I'll see if I can find that later on.
Here's one article that mentions it, albeit tangentially:
Why Did Tolkien Not Like Frank Herbert’s Dune? (cbr.com)
See the link in the quote for a fuller extract.
Why Did Tolkien Not Like Frank Herbert’s Dune? (cbr.com)
See the link in the quote for a fuller extract.
Somewhere I've seen the suggestion that the Jesus-like traits are distributed over several characters including Frodo and Aragorn. This may have been in a pretty good program about the supposed Catholic underpinnings in Tolkien's text which aired on a local cable station.
"The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work." - JRR Tolkien
The Catholic origins of The Lord of the Rings and other truths about J.R.R. (denvercatholic.org)
The Catholic origins of The Lord of the Rings and other truths about J.R.R. (denvercatholic.org)
That's not how allegory works. It's quite the opposite actually.
There was an earlier draft of the fall of Gondolin, in which Tolkien had the Orcs lay siege in what can only be described as mechanised tanks / armoured vehicles - which he then dropped for the reason of being to close to a direct WWI allegory.
[saddestmoon goes off to the interwebs in search of a link…]
[saddestmoon goes off to the interwebs in search of a link…]
If only most people of today had that level of sensibility about things they didn't like, particularly those on a professional level when talking about a peer's work.
Hm, I'm trying to remember if I remember that from the published edition. It's possible it's in there and I missed it because I skimmed certain portions of the text where Christopher got overly preachy or too lost in the weeds about something.
Unfortunately I can't check my copy since it's in another state.
Decent read. It's always amazing to me though how people can find allegory even where the writer intends none, save for unconscious allusion rather than direct symbolism. But, more importantly, I love how it highlights how deep Tolkien's faith was and it's impact upon his work. Ignoring the spiritual themes is missing out on a lot.
Tolkien would also probably have objected to the occasional swearing and lewdness in Dune.
He really liked good language and at some point he actually stated that the Orcs who get to talk in the LotR would realistically have had speech that was much more vulgar, but he didn't want to write it.
That would be the first version of the Fall of Gondolin, and quite possibly the very first story set in the fictional universe that would later become Middle Earth, written in an army barracks during World War I, so it's easy to see while so much of World War I would have bled over into that earliest version of the story.
It has...several ideas and names that would be difficult to fit into the later versions of Middle Earth. The "steel beasts" that carried Orcs inside, the dragons "forged from living fire", there's an Elf lord called "Rog" (a word which would describe demons in later versions, and even here is part of the name of Balrogs. which appear en masse in this version and are often vanquished with relative ease, aside form their leaders), the Valar are still "the gods" and the story also compares the Fall of Gondolin to the destructions or sackings of the human cities "Bablon" "Ninwi" "Trui" and "Ruhm, that is greatest among men",w hich are the Elvish names of Babylon, Nineveh,Troy and Rome, because that was still a version of the legends that was supposed to lead all the way to the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain.
I also think the Noldor (one of the three tribes of the Eldar) were still called "Gnomes" at that point.
Though even as it is so incompatible with later Middle Earth lore is such an interesting view into that very early stage of the world and into what might have been if Tolkien hadn't discarded so many of these early ideas.
I just don't really see a World War I allegory in the Lord of the Rings. Is it because "evil" comes from the east? That's from the Edda.
Yes, there is discussion of the evils of industrialisation, but I don't think there's any World War I allegory in the Lord of the Rings.
I think people just want to shove it in there because Tolkien experienced WWI and linking the Lord of the Rings to it makes for easy articles and/or college essays.
He really liked good language and at some point he actually stated that the Orcs who get to talk in the LotR would realistically have had speech that was much more vulgar, but he didn't want to write it.
That would be the first version of the Fall of Gondolin, and quite possibly the very first story set in the fictional universe that would later become Middle Earth, written in an army barracks during World War I, so it's easy to see while so much of World War I would have bled over into that earliest version of the story.
It has...several ideas and names that would be difficult to fit into the later versions of Middle Earth. The "steel beasts" that carried Orcs inside, the dragons "forged from living fire", there's an Elf lord called "Rog" (a word which would describe demons in later versions, and even here is part of the name of Balrogs. which appear en masse in this version and are often vanquished with relative ease, aside form their leaders), the Valar are still "the gods" and the story also compares the Fall of Gondolin to the destructions or sackings of the human cities "Bablon" "Ninwi" "Trui" and "Ruhm, that is greatest among men",w hich are the Elvish names of Babylon, Nineveh,Troy and Rome, because that was still a version of the legends that was supposed to lead all the way to the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain.
I also think the Noldor (one of the three tribes of the Eldar) were still called "Gnomes" at that point.
Though even as it is so incompatible with later Middle Earth lore is such an interesting view into that very early stage of the world and into what might have been if Tolkien hadn't discarded so many of these early ideas.
I just don't really see a World War I allegory in the Lord of the Rings. Is it because "evil" comes from the east? That's from the Edda.
Yes, there is discussion of the evils of industrialisation, but I don't think there's any World War I allegory in the Lord of the Rings.
I think people just want to shove it in there because Tolkien experienced WWI and linking the Lord of the Rings to it makes for easy articles and/or college essays.
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Agreed. Reading the articles it's easy to see that slip in from what Tolkien thought or said to supposition based on what he had said. I think they make very nice articles and easy to read but not always easy to sift what Tolkien thought from what people read in to it.
Which goes in part to the difficulty of adaptation. How do you "stay true to the spirit of the work" and then ignore things that may feel out of alignment with current productions or culture?
If Tolkien's views fall out of alignment with someone's then why does it matter how the adaptation happens?
There was a story I read forever and a half ago, I think it was from Unfinished Tales? The story involves someone landing in Valinor, and the dock and city are empty and quiet, until he reaches a great hall and he finds a festival in progress.
If any of you fellow nerds here recognize it, and can point me in the right direction I'd greatly appreciate it.
If any of you fellow nerds here recognize it, and can point me in the right direction I'd greatly appreciate it.
That's Earendil landing in Tirion from the Silmarillion, the city is empty because the Elves have gone to Valimar for a Feast, and he's lead there by some wardens who had been left there to guard the city.
It's one of the central events in the mythology, because (without spoiling too much) it led to the end of the First Age.
"Some were all of iron so cunningly linked that they might flow like slow rivers of metal or coil themselves around and above all obstacles before them, and these were filled in their innermost depths with the grimmest of the Orcs with scimitars and spears; others of bronze and copper were given hearts and spirits of blazing fire, and they blasted all that stood before them with the terror of their snorting or trampled whatso escaped the ardour of their breath; yet others were creatures of pure flame that writhed like ropes of molten metal, and they brought to ruin any fabric they came nigh, and iron and stone melted before them and became as water, and upon them rode the Balrogs in hundreds; and these were the most dire of all those monsters which Melko devised against Gondolin."
Orcs were Melkor/Morgoth's corrupted versions of east elves (avari). I wonder if Tolkien, with his German ancestry but fighting against seemingly evilly motivated Germans in the hellish conditions of a war that seemed interminable, fantasised that they were orcs and that he was an elf or half-elven.
I thought it might be an earlier version of Earendil, but I don't recall that particular scene in the Silmarillion from my last read. I'm not even sure it was Earendil in that version.
Oh it definitely happens with Earendil in the published Silmarillion.
There is an earlier version in the Book of Lost Tales where "Earendel" arrives in Kor too late, because the Elves already left to help the Noldor, against the will of the gods, and in that version he just wanders around the empty city.
I'm glad Tolkien changed that, because him coming too late made Earendil's story pointless.
The other thing I can think of could be one of those "dream" poems from the Adventures of Tom Bombadil? I know there's one where the narrator goes to an Aman-like place, but I can't remember what happens there.
Tolkien was very clear that the Orcs were not supposed to be Germans, or Soviets, or any other comparison people asked about in letters.
He admitted that before going to war he might have had ideas like that, but quickly became disillusioned with the horrors of war and the conduct of certain soldiers on both sides and, if I'm not mistaken, he said something about that there were "Orcish" people on both sides.
Originally the Orcs were creations of Melkor (as were the Dwarves!) but later Tolkien decided that evil should be unable to create true life, only corrupt it, and so the version with the corrupted Elves came about.
Also around the time he wrote the Lord of the Rings Tolkien drifted away from the idea of the Orcs being corrupted Elves and favoured the idea of them being humans who fell under extreme corruption (it can already be noticed in the LotR itself, where Ghan-buri-Ghan's people (who otherwise are among the Free people) are said to have an "Orc-like" laughter.
The problem he faced here (and why Christopher Tolkien didn't include that into the Silmarillion) is that he never came up with a good explanation for the earlier Orcs that were present before humans awoke in Hildorien.
He found several explanations:
1) They were animals bred into the shape of humanoids and taught to imitate speech like parrots.
2) They were automatons imbued with some of Morgoth's essence into a semblance of life and sapience
3)They were corrupted Maiar taking physical bodies, and possibly their offspring
4)There were no Orcs prior to the awakening of the first humans, instead in those days the Elves used "Yrch" to describe every kind of creature or phenomenon that scared them and later scribes got confused.
5) All of the above.
But he never settled on an explanation for the pre-human Orcs, so Christopher Tolkien just went with the "they're corrupted Elves" version
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