Interesting view on Lord of the Rings

[Minionman]

I'm sure there are a lot of people who have read the books/seen the movies and thought all that stuff about "pureblood numenorians", and "perfect elves", and "the true king returning" was a pretty silly part of the books. This article takes those ideas further. What I really liked, and really picked up on thanks to the history class I'm in talking about "chriastianizing natives", and "social darwinism", was a bit from the last part about, if this were a real history, what Sauron was actually doing.

My point? Well, LOTR is obviously an account written after the Ring War ended, long ago. Right? An account created by the victors.

So how do we know that Sauron really did have red glowing eyes?

Isn't some of that over-the-top description just the sort of thing that royal families used to promote, casting exaggerated aspersions on their vanquished foes and despoiling their monuments, reinforcing their own divine right to rule?

Yes, I'm having fun with words like "really" -- relating to a made-up story. But come along with me for a minute. Next time you re-read LOTR, count the number of examples... cases where powerful beings are vastly uglier than anybody with that kind of power would allow themselves to be. Why? How does being grotesquely ugly help you govern an empire?

Then unleash your imagination to take the story a bit farther. Have fun!

Ask yourself - "How would Sauron have described the situation?"

And then -- "What might 'really' have happened?"

Now ponder something that comes through even the party-line demonization of a crushed enemy. This clearcut and undeniable fact. Sauron's army was the one that included every species and race on Middle Earth, including all the despised colors of humanity, and all the lower classes.

Hm. Did they all leave their homes and march to war thinking "Oh, goody, let's go serve an evil dark lord"?

Or might they instead have thought they were the 'good guys', with a justifiable grievance worth fighting for, rebelling against an ancient, rigid, pyramid-shaped, feudal hierarchy topped by invader-alien elves and their Numenorean colonialist human lackeys?

Picture, for a moment, Sauron the Eternal Rebel, relentlessly maligned by the victors of the Ring War -- the royalists who control the bards and scribes (and movie-makers). Sauron, champion of the common Middle-Earther! Vanquished but still revered by the innumerable poor and oppressed who sit in their squalid huts, wary of the royal secret police with their magical spy-eyes, yet continuing to whisper stories, secretly dreaming and hoping that someday he will return... bringing more rings.

Also, has anyone read this particular article before?

[ShadowHM]

Also, has anyone read this particular article before?
[right][snapback]90470[/snapback][/right]

Hi Minionman

Thanks for the link. I had not read that particular article before, and much enjoyed it.

David Brin is one of my favourite science fiction authors. The 'What If' worlds he has made range from light-hearted (The Practice Effect) to serious (Glory Season) to grim (Earth).

He makes some good points in that article, mainly along the lines of "Critical Thinking is a Good Thing™", even in the books you read for pleasure.

[Jeunemaitre]

....What I really liked, and really picked up on thanks to the history class I'm in talking about "chriastianizing natives", and "social darwinism", was a bit from the last part about, if this were a real history, what Sauron was actually doing.
[right][snapback]90470[/snapback][/right]

First, some warning: I realized this got really longwinded, so feel free to start from the "Now the bottom line section."

Second, some recollection: Haven't read the article, but did take a course in "medieval history" which turned out to be a lot more about historiology (the study of the writing of history I mean) than history. The instructor liked to take class time to illustrate how the interpretation of some piece of an annals type document from 1175 or so was preposterous. I thought about this course when I read your post, and I think you might be right: we all might do well to not believe everything we read and consider the authors' affiliation and PoV (point of view).

Now, some hyperbole: analysis of the LotR series as though they represent history is a bit like analyzing Greek or Roman or Norse or Native American or Australian Aboriginal or (your favorite old nation here) as history. They all have their epic heroes and tales (and most, oddly enough, have some story of a great flood), but we must keep in mind not only the authors' PoV but the original purpose of the stories as well.

Now some connection: This leads me to the sort of thing that seemed to be more popular a few years ago then it is now: the study of the bible as fiction. There was a course like this at my college and many folks I know had something like this, either at school or at their religious institution of choice, but I haven't heard much in this vein lately. The point of such studies is to evaluate the contents of "sacred" texts in terms of secular criteria (development of character, integrity plot, power of message, etc.). The analysis of the bible (torah, koran, book of mormon, dianetics, etc) as fiction, or history for that matter, seems ludicrous to many "fundamental" believers who feel that the bible is indeed the word of God recorded by the men to whom s/he spoke most clearly. However, equally ludicrous is the fundamental interpretation in the eyes of atheists or skeptics in general: these folks might fell it ludicrous to hold sacred a text which has been translated through three languages into no fewer than 15 different versions, which some people claim is free of contradiction, while others claim that is fraught with problems. (I'm not trying to recruit with this link, and I'm not advocating one religion or another, just providing a citation for the version line, check the dropdown in the "Quick Search" block).

Now, the bottom line: I guess the point here is if we are going to get out our tools to judge literature by interpreting it as though it was history, we may as well take purported history (at least purported to be history by the espousing religion) and judge it as literature. We therefore blur the line between intended fiction and intended history, so you may make a lot of people angry in doing so. You also would be wise to consider the additional parts of the LotR mythology, and the things that they would tell us about the world in which such history would have been written. Perhaps you're just asking around about whether you have any hobbit in you, and maybe I'm jacking this thread too much. I think anthropologists and historians have enough cultures to screw up the interpretation of without asking them to get involved in mythology or fiction.

Now is the time on Sprockets vhen ve dance!

[Occhidiangela]

La storia di Italia. The History of Italy. I think "la storia" is also the Spanish word for history. La Storia de España.

All of history is partly story. History can only reports a portion of what went on, a slice of the whole pie, and cannot ever hope to integrate all the factors that went into weaving the tale. As J points out, knowing who the author is and his agendas informs the reader of the purpose behind a given chronicle.

As to the article, methinks the author chooses, in his iconoclastic attempt at revisionism, why Tolkein wrote the story. JRR was grappling with the influence of power on behavior, and Sauron was as much a metaphor for "absolute power -- and its pursuit -- tends to corrupt absolutely" and the negation of Christian (and for that matter Islamic) teachings of submission and sacrifice, and the power of hope and chance in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

The contrast was deemed by the author as necessary, in order to throw into sharp relief moral principles of the good, who were numerically a minority, versus the mean and selfish, the greedy, which are the larger mass of easily corrupted and seduced, not to mention easily manipulated and led like rabid sheep, masses. The racial set up, if we recall that it was written before 1950, reflected the conventional wisdom of about 100 years of Darwinist applications to the social sciences, such as they were. In those days, the Spanish Race, the French Race, the German Race, were terms of common currency that tumbled off the pen of many a writer. Note also that the fundemental tensions in the medeival world were the olive skinned Moors, Turks, and Arabs versus the generally fairer skinned Franks, Brits, Germans and Danes. The elves, being founded on a Nordic prototype, were bound to have lousy tans. :rolleyes:

That Tolkein was a Brit and seemed to carry as his common cultural assumption that the White Man's Burden was a reality of history (see again the social and intellectual setting of the author, and the English University system of the Victorian and Edwardian age) probably shaped his decisions on how the superior subset of Man was required to lead the way to rightness, while the inferior subset of Man often ignored the path to rightness out of materialistic/earthly motivations.

There is of course the whole matter of Sauron being partly modeled after Satan in his desire to be Lord of the Earth.

The article strikes me as a rehash of the standard Gnostic and Satanist lines that the Devil suffers from having been the subject of a vicious PR campaign, and is really an alright guy, is a rebel with a righteous cause, and all that other Gnostic wheeze. While an interesting line of inquiry, particularly considering the Apocrypha, it comes up short in an absolute sense.

Regardless of religion, any culture will find a positive resonance in the the moral principle of sacrifice and selfelessness, service to others, as represented in the neary irreligious Numenorian societies, who are depicted as fallen from grace. Their ritual of looking into the West before meat is the last vestige of an older obedience to the Valar and their high moral ideals. The high ideals are of course imperfectly adhered to thanks to the vanity and imperfectability of man. This is set up in opposition to the selfish, materialistic, power hungry, and amoral (even immoral) cultural model taken by the Dark Lord, his servants, and the Dark Lord wannabe Saruman. That Sauron is originally an angel, or a fallen angel, has been suggested as a device that could have just as easily been Sauron as the Sorcerer Smith, and man, a line of critique David Drake pursued in his book "Tolkein's Ring." The key discriminator, in modern parlance, is that Sauron uses force and threat to move his subordinates, while Gandalf uses leadership and motivation to inspire peole to find it within themselves to achieve great feats and deeds.

No matter how you slice the PR campaign for and against Sauron, it is in method of leadership that the universal moral dichotomy comes out, and that Sauron's apologists will be frustrated by. Sounds to me like sour grapes, the article's motivation, trying to blame the media for the loss of the war and the loss or reputation suffered by "The Lord of the Rings: Sauron of Mordor."

Occhi

[jahcs]

The key discriminator, in modern parlance, is that Sauron uses force and threat to move his subordinates, while Gandalf uses leadership and motivation to inspire peole to find it within themselves to achieve great feats and deeds.
[right][snapback]90491[/snapback][/right]

You hit the nail on the head, Occhi.

Another point while skimming the article:

feudal hierarchy topped by invader-alien elves and their Numenorean colonialist human lackeys?

Weren't the elves a race withdrawing from the world? Slowly retreating to their Elven havens as the race of men took over?

[Doc]

You hit the nail on the head, Occhi.

Another point while skimming the article:
Weren't the elves a race withdrawing from the world?  Slowly retreating to their Elven havens as the race of men took over?
[right][snapback]90493[/snapback][/right]

Yes. The Elves were cowardly. Rather than accept change and the gradual swing of power from themselves to another race, they ran away rather than face the music.

Kind of a dumb question... And my memory gets a bit fuzzy here about the books... But the Dwarves doing nothing (or very little) during the War of the Ring disheartens me for some reason. I wonder if Gimli felt shame over what his people did. After all, he lived with the Elves rather than his own kind, and sailed in to the West with Legolas, rather than let his friend go off alone. Well, he was Lord of the Glittering Caves for a while and he and a group of Dwarves did rebuild the gates of Minas Tirith out of Mithril... But he spent more time with humans and elves than most of his kind. My point is, something must have weighed heavily on his mind if he chose not to live like a king with his own peoples, rejecting them to the point where he chooses exile. Or sailing in to the West. Whatever you wish to call it.

One would think that an army of stubborn resolute immoveable stumpy dwarves would have turned the tide.

[Rhydderch Hael]

...One would think that an army of stubborn resolute immoveable stumpy dwarves would have turned the tide.
[right][snapback]90497[/snapback][/right]

"Hey, you! Catch!"

I finally bought Warcraft III this Monday. :)

[Occhidiangela]

. I wonder if Gimli felt shame over what his people did.

One would think that an army of stubborn resolute immoveable stumpy dwarves would have turned the tide.
[right][snapback]90497[/snapback][/right]

In the book, explained in the Appendix, Dain II led the Dwarves of Erebor and the men of Dale, Brand son of Bard being their leader, in a fierce battle against invading Orcs and Easterlings. Brand fell before the gates of Dale, though Dain II stood over his body wielding an axe to prevent the body of his friend and comrade in arms from being despoiled by Orcs . . .

The Dwarves did OK. :)

Occhi

[Kevin]

In the book, explained in the Appendix, Dain II led the Dwarves of Erebor and the men of Dale, Brand son of Bard being their leader, in a fierce battle against invading Orcs and Easterlings.  Brand fell before the gates of Dale, though Dain II stood over his body wielding an axe to prevent the body of his friend and comrade in arms from being despoiled by Orcs . . .

The Dwarves did OK. :)

Occhi
[right][snapback]90500[/snapback][/right]

Yeah the appendices also mention the heaving fighting in Mirkwood as well. Sauron initiated battle on many fronts, but they were not highly relevant to the story of the ring and were left out of the main tale.

I do not recall what the Elves of Lothlorien were doing, I think there was an assualt launched from Moria on the golden woods that kept them pretty occupied as well.

But all the free peoples were engaged in combat for much of the time that the book covers.

[Minionman]

Seems to me that the end of the article is a wild suggestion that, if this were real, that the elves and humans and such had made up a lot of stuff abut sauron to make themselves sound better in the history. Considering how people fighting a war will tell about how superior they are to the "complete evil" they were fighting, the Sauron chenge makes sense as an idea.

I have heard about how the time period and some personality bits effected the story. It still seems useful, though, to see how the story relates to other myths and such to see what ideas went into both of them.

[Occhidiangela]

Seems to me that the end of the article is a wild suggestion that, if this were real, that the elves and humans and such had made up a lot of stuff abut sauron to make themselves sound better in the history.  Considering how people fighting a war will tell about how superior they are to the "complete evil" they were fighting, the Sauron chenge makes sense as an idea. 

I have heard about how the time period and some personality bits effected the story.  It still seems useful, though, to see how the story relates to other myths and such to see what ideas went into both of them.
[right][snapback]90537[/snapback][/right]

Revisionist history of a mythology. Wankery by any other name is still wankery, though I think it would be reasonable to the author to class this sally as "fan speculative fiction" or "fictional alternative history."

Occhi

[ShadowHM]

Revisionist history of a mythology.   Wankery by any other name is still wankery, though I think it would be reasonable to the author to class this sally as "fan speculative fiction" or "fictional alternative history."

Occhi
[right][snapback]90539[/snapback][/right]

I are confused. :blink:

What exactly is wankery? If it means 'satirical writing', I am with you. If you have some other meaning, could you be clearer? I am harbouring doubts that you read the whole essay. For starters, it is entitled:

"We Hobbits are a Merry Folk...


...an incautious and heretical re-appraisal of J.R.R. Tolkien"


Brin is states rather clearly at the outset of that essay that he both admires the LOTR, and also loves the satires of it.

I may be a bit off-kilter in liking, best of all, the unofficial companion volume to LOTR, perhaps the funniest work penned in English -- the Harvard Lampoon's 1968 parody, entitled Bored of the Rings. Even if you revere Tolkien, or take LOTR much too seriously, who can restrain guffaws at the antics of Frito, son of Dildo and his sidekick Spam... along with Gimlet, son of Groin, Eorache, daughter of Eordrum, and Arrowroot, son of Arrowshirt, son of Araplane? Many of the sixties references may seem dated, but any author should be flattered to receive such inspired satire.

In fact, toward the end of this essay, I'll offer my own small bit of ironic take-off. A different, and possibly much better, way of viewing Sauron, the evil Dark Lord.

The section that Minionman quoted at the outset of the thread falls into the "my own small bit of ironic take-off".

Immediately following it, he has the following:

Am I pulling your leg? You bet! I don't take speculations about fictional villains quite that seriously.

My real point is much more general. It's this --

Don't just receive your adventures. Toy with them. Re-mold them in your mind! Keep asking "What if...?" It's how you get practice not just being a passive consumer, or critic, but a creative storyteller in your own right.

P.S. David Brin has created some remarkable characters in his own writing. I want to go drinking with Fiben Bolger. His persona reminds me a lot of you, Occhi. :P

[jahcs]

To put 'wankery' into cruder more common verbage try 'mental masturbation.'


History may be written by the victors, but that doesn't neccesarily make the victors wrong.

[Taem]

In the book, explained in the Appendix, Dain II led the Dwarves of Erebor and the men of Dale, Brand son of Bard being their leader, in a fierce battle against invading Orcs and Easterlings.  Brand fell before the gates of Dale, though Dain II stood over his body wielding an axe to prevent the body of his friend and comrade in arms from being despoiled by Orcs . . .

The Dwarves did OK. :)

Occhi
[right][snapback]90500[/snapback][/right]

I'm very excited about an upcoming video game which takes place during the War of the Rings trilogy, yet ignores the bulk of the main story, choosing instead to focus on the wars and background stories but found in the appendices and the other published book 'The Similicran' (sp?). The game is sure to be tons of fun and promises hours of pure entertainment for those whom love the LotR as much as I do. I'll try to find out more detailed information about the game title and which company is releasing it if anyone is at all interested.

[Griselda]

La storia di Italia.  The History of Italy.  I think "la storia" is also the Spanish word for history.  La Storia de España.

Almost. Spaniards generally aren't too fond of words that begin with "s". It's "la historia", but since the h is pretty much silent it does sound a bit like "storia", I suppose.

[Occhidiangela]

Almost.  Spaniards generally aren't too fond of words that begin with "s".  It's "la historia", but since the h is pretty much silent it does sound a bit like "storia", I suppose.
[right][snapback]90581[/snapback][/right]

Thanks. Sounds the same, written differently. :D

Occhi

[Occhidiangela]

I are confused.  :blink:

What exactly is wankery? 

P.S.  David Brin has created some remarkable characters in his own writing.  I want to go drinking with Fiben Bolger.    His persona reminds me a lot of you, Occhi.    :P
[right][snapback]90559[/snapback][/right]

I guess I need to read some Brin, if you like it and my evil twin is on his pages.

I intend to send you a copy of Kaplan's "Imperial Grunts." :D

Occhi

[Vandiablo]

Regarding:

Next time you re-read LOTR, count the number of examples... cases where powerful beings are vastly uglier than anybody with that kind of power would allow themselves to be.

King: Consult the Book of Appendices!

Brother Maynard!

Maynard: Appendices, Book A, Chapter 1, Section 1.

HolyBookBearer: *ahem*

...the Valar ... called upon the One, and the world was changed. Numenor was thrown down and swallowed into the Sea. ... The last leaders of the Faithful ... escaped in nine ships... and they were ... cast upon the shores of Middle-earth. ... For this good at least they believed had come out of ruin, that Sauron also had perished.

But it was not so. Sauron was indeed caught in the wreck of Numenor, so that the bodily form in which he long had walked perished; but he fled back to Middle-earth, a spirit of hatred borne upon a dark wind. He was unable ever again to assume a form that seemed fair to men, but became black and hideous, and his power thereafter was through terror alone.

King: Ah, so that is why he is one ugly bugger! Now explain to me, now, if Sauron and Ring together are so powerful, how did Gil-galad and Elendil get the Ring from him?

Maynard: skip a bit, brother.

HolyBookBearer:

Therefore, after a time (or a few times anyway, as the joke goes) he made war upon the Exiles, before they could take root. Orodruin burst once more into flame, and was named anew in Gondor Amon Amarth, Mount Doom. But Sauron struck too soon, before his own power was rebuilt, whereas the power of Gil-galad had increased in his absence; and in the Last Alliance that was made against him Sauron was overthrown and One Ring was taken from him.

Dennis: Well, I didn't vote for 'im.

King: Shut up!

-V
currently residing at The Forsaken Inn

(edit: fixed small typo in one of the book sections)

[Occhidiangela]

Regarding:
King: Consult the Book of Appendices!

"The Real Original Lounge Lurker"

[right][snapback]90677[/snapback][/right]

*Boromir looks back into the room, wryly remarking*

"They've got a Lounge troll wearing a leisure suit . . ." ;)

Oh wait, was that three or five rings for elven kings?

Occhi

[Rhydderch Hael]

*Boromir looks back into the room, wryly remarking*

"They've got a Lounge troll wearing a leisure suit . . ."  ;)

Oh wait, was that three or five rings for elven kings?

Occhi
[right][snapback]90781[/snapback][/right]

Five is way out! ;)

Curious, though. Minas Tirith was "...three days' ride, as the Nazgul flies..." from Edoras, a measure which hardly gives us any exact distance between the two capitals. Given that the Moria Balrog obviously failed to correctly answer— just what is the airspeed of a laden Fell Beast?