I’ve set off on the adventure once more just began Fellowship of the Ring, and not wnintag to miss a thing I began with JRR Tolkien’s Foreward. But before I begin my comment, I’d like to introduce myself as one who was first handed The Hobbit and LOTR as a boxed set as a farewell gift from my first college roommate as we ended our freshman year together. So that would put me as a first time reader in the late 1960s, about 4 years after the first American publication of the paperbacks. I can’t really say I remember being part of a hip-in-the-know academic culture that followed the fantasy and chalked Frodo Lives on stray walls as an affirmation of the victory of the little man. But it’s been on my bookshelves in one form or another since that day and I’ve passed its lore down to my children and one day will to my grandchildren. Surprisingly my being Catholic has never connected me to the messianic qualities of LOTR I prefer to think of it as a rousing good tale, one with unimaginable magic (but thank goodness Tolkien imagined it) and a love of the earth, of home and hearth and of all the small comforting things that make a home. I do see the connections to the counter culture of the 1960s that grew into the environmental movement that is pointed out by Peter Beagle in the introduction to the 1973 edition. He says, they were the years when millions of people grew aware that the industrial society had become paradoxically unlivable, incalculably immoral and ultimately deadly. But back to Tolkien’s Foreward: He says that though he wrote the major part of the trilogy during World War II, the evil movements and men of those five or so years did not affect the action or turning points of the story. I had mistakenly heard or supposed that the Nazism and Fascism of that time were reflected even symbolized in the trilogy. But Tolkien says no. In fact he says the crucial points of the tale had been well thought out even before the shadow of 1939. Tolkien goes on to say that his legendary war does not resemble the real war being waged in Europe at the time, or of its conclusion. For if it had, then the ring would never have been destroyed it would have been held and kept and used against Sauron. Saruman in turn would not have accepted his defeat or diminished status; he would have devised some great ring of his own to challenge the rulers of Middle Earth with. And in the ensuing conflict both sides would have held Hobbits in contempt and hatred and would have enslaved them. (I find this particularly disheartening as the moment at the end of the Peter Jackson movie when Aragon tells the Hobbits that you bow to no one the most moving part of the films and I say this despite all those who dislike the movies for how Jackson warped the story.) My point in commenting on World War II versus or reflected in the War of the Rings is what the Great Ring would have stood for in our real world. Would it be nuclear destruction. Would Saruman be Communism. Would the resulting conflict have been the Cold War with no real winners and too many self-justificating middle men? Please let me know what you think. And thank you for this forum it’s good to wrap both my brain and my writing skills around a topic that may be geeky as my spouse says, but nevertheless gives me great enjoyment.
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I’ve set off on the adventure once more just began Fellowship of the Ring, and not wnintag to miss a thing I began with JRR Tolkien’s Foreward. But before I begin my comment, I’d like to introduce myself as one who was first handed The Hobbit and LOTR as a boxed set as a farewell gift from my first college roommate as we ended our freshman year together. So that would put me as a first time reader in the late 1960s, about 4 years after the first American publication of the paperbacks. I can’t really say I remember being part of a hip-in-the-know academic culture that followed the fantasy and chalked Frodo Lives on stray walls as an affirmation of the victory of the little man. But it’s been on my bookshelves in one form or another since that day and I’ve passed its lore down to my children and one day will to my grandchildren. Surprisingly my being Catholic has never connected me to the messianic qualities of LOTR I prefer to think of it as a rousing good tale, one with unimaginable magic (but thank goodness Tolkien imagined it) and a love of the earth, of home and hearth and of all the small comforting things that make a home. I do see the connections to the counter culture of the 1960s that grew into the environmental movement that is pointed out by Peter Beagle in the introduction to the 1973 edition. He says, they were the years when millions of people grew aware that the industrial society had become paradoxically unlivable, incalculably immoral and ultimately deadly. But back to Tolkien’s Foreward: He says that though he wrote the major part of the trilogy during World War II, the evil movements and men of those five or so years did not affect the action or turning points of the story. I had mistakenly heard or supposed that the Nazism and Fascism of that time were reflected even symbolized in the trilogy. But Tolkien says no. In fact he says the crucial points of the tale had been well thought out even before the shadow of 1939. Tolkien goes on to say that his legendary war does not resemble the real war being waged in Europe at the time, or of its conclusion. For if it had, then the ring would never have been destroyed it would have been held and kept and used against Sauron. Saruman in turn would not have accepted his defeat or diminished status; he would have devised some great ring of his own to challenge the rulers of Middle Earth with. And in the ensuing conflict both sides would have held Hobbits in contempt and hatred and would have enslaved them. (I find this particularly disheartening as the moment at the end of the Peter Jackson movie when Aragon tells the Hobbits that you bow to no one the most moving part of the films and I say this despite all those who dislike the movies for how Jackson warped the story.) My point in commenting on World War II versus or reflected in the War of the Rings is what the Great Ring would have stood for in our real world. Would it be nuclear destruction. Would Saruman be Communism. Would the resulting conflict have been the Cold War with no real winners and too many self-justificating middle men? Please let me know what you think. And thank you for this forum it’s good to wrap both my brain and my writing skills around a topic that may be geeky as my spouse says, but nevertheless gives me great enjoyment.