Tolkien Fans: Comments and Questions

[HordHolm]

Did you mean to make it sound like hypocrisy?

Enjoying some of the benefits of contemporary modernity while pointing out that there are also some uniquely negative aspects to it (which weren't there in the old days) isn't hypocrisy.

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, so, if that wasn't how you meant to come off, I would believe that, but it is how it came off.

And if it was your intended implication, then well - I don't agree.

I do think it hypocritical. There's nothing wrong with seeing negative aspects of the present, but imagining some better past without modern medicine, education, social mobility, relative gender equality, etc, all through rosy spectacles, and whilst enjoying those very same benefits? Colour me sceptical...

 

[Bamagan]

So, what did happen to the Entwives?

I wish I knew! I'd like to believe they went off into the eastern lands, but I kind of suspect they used to live in the Brown Lands that Frodo and Sam passed through part of. If that's the case, Sauron probably wiped them out or used them to make his Olog-hai or some other monsters.

 

[Britva415]

I do think it hypocritical. There's nothing wrong with seeing negative aspects of the present, but imagining some better past without modern medicine, education, social mobility, relative gender equality, etc, all through rosy spectacles, and whilst enjoying those very same benefits? Colour me sceptical...

I think you're projecting an attitude they don't really have. It really doesn't seem to me like they're saying "modern medicine, education, social mobility, relative gender equality, etc are bad m'kay" when they say there are contemporary things which are worse than they used to be or didn't even exist back then.

idk, maybe I'm just uninformed. Find an example and prove me wrong?

 

[HordHolm]

I think you're projecting an attitude they don't really have. It really doesn't seem to me like they're saying "modern medicine, education, social mobility, relative gender equality, etc are bad m'kay" when they say there are contemporary things which are worse than they used to be or didn't even exist back then.

idk, maybe I'm just uninformed. Find an example and prove me wrong?

I can't really quote you an example, in that in my OP I was referencing people I personally know. I can only give you my assurance that I have come across more than one person, personally, who has expressed a desire to live in the past rather than the present, whilst at the same time scanning their socials...

My issue with Tolkien in this respect isn't, obviously, based on any conversation I had with the man (who died when I was three), but I do find his idealised view of the past, as expressed by his creation of the Shire, to be deliberately providing an image of a time when everyone was happy and nobody got sick and the workers cheerfully doffed their caps to their betters as they contentedly went about their business (whilst avoiding the grinding poverty and fear of famine inherent in rural life) whilst their superiors got on with the actual proper business of culture and stuff, which obviously proved their superiority. It almost feels like a Jane Austen cosplay (note that all her proto-feminist heroines have servants whose names and stories we rarely, if ever hear) or a replay of a Victorian fantasy with cheery working class folk who were happy that the bosses did the thinking, and wanted to be treated as lesser. Which doesn't, of course, match the reality.

But, perhaps it doesn't help that I'm a historian...

 

[Voboy]

It almost feels like a Jane Austen cosplay (note that all her proto-feminist heroines have servants whose names and stories we rarely, if ever hear) or a replay of a Victorian fantasy with cheery working class folk who were happy that the bosses did the thinking, and wanted to be treated as lesser. Which doesn't, of course, match the reality.

Well, yes.

The Lord of the Rings is fictional, you see.

 

[HordHolm]

Well, yes.

The Lord of the Rings is fictional, you see.

*sigh* and does that invalidate any analysis of the author and his motivations?

That really is a trite statement, and I regard it as just a way to shut down any deeper dive into the work.

 

[TheLobster]

Shire’s tranquility and bucolic life is bought with the sweat and toil of the Rangers, who protect it without the hobbits even knowing. Tolkien points that out repeatedly, through various characters, so it could very well be said that he actually lampshades and subverts the stereotype of serene rural life rather than glorifying it.

 

[onehitwanda]

Gandalf also refers to Barliman Butterbur in Bree living "A day's ride from foes who would freeze his blood"

 

[HordHolm]

Shire’s tranquility and bucolic life is bought with the sweat and toil of the Rangers, who protect it without the hobbits even knowing. Tolkien points that out repeatedly, through various characters, so it could very well be said that he actually lampshades and subverts the stereotype of serene rural life rather than glorifying it.

This is true.

However, within the Shire itself, Tolkien (IMO) creates an idealised Victorian cosplay of rural England. Its tranquility and bucolic life is never challenged from within. There is no tension: just an acceptance that the squire is in his manor house and the labourers cheerily go about their work with a whistle and a song, content to be lesser than the masters. That's my issue. Yes, it's lampshading, definitely, but I also find it desperately one-dimensional, and I can't look past the political undertones.

Sorry to get all 'class analysis' about this, but I it's one of the reasons why I really dislike LOTR (there are others). I know this is a Tolkien fan thread, and I would like to point out that I like much of his other work - The Hobbit is great as are many of the short stories, but LOTR leaves me more than cold (I straight up hate it). I also think this position of Tolkien's negatively affects my suspension of disbelief, and from a place of character development I think it's weak.

In LOTR we have one 'working class' character - Sam. And Tolkien writes him very much as the rural servant of a member of the officer class that he is. All the way through LOTR Frodo is Mr Frodo to Sam. Because Frodo is the junior officer and Sam is his batman (a WW1 British army dynamic, and of course Tolkien fought in WW1). This is believable given their relative social positions. But then Tolkien wanders off into some weird place where Sam, in the epilogue, does precisely what his character wouldn't do - i.e. go back to being a gardener, working for the squire, fading into the background as a 'peasant', and instead he becomes the political leader of the Shire. Totally unbelievable given the submissive role he has played all the way through the epic journey through the Battle of the Somme... sorry, I meant the journey through Mordor, during which he would unquestioningly through himself in front of a German bullet to protect his officer, sorry, again, protect Mr Frodo from Shelob et al.

Now, I make these points not because I want to put down anyone else for enjoying LOTR (couldn't be further from the truth), but to highlight where I think Tolkien writes an acceptable fantasy that then becomes problematic under closer scrutiny. His Shire is a cosplay of rural England, and it comes from a desperately conservative, middle-class place, and is deeply informed by an, in my view, hypocritical position of 'the past was better'. And yes, the past might have been better, if you were the squire, not the peasant - or at least, the squire's position was less likely to be challenged in a way it was being when Tolkien was growing up. Tolkien transferred that onto a dislike of the industrial revolution, and the social change it brought, somehow sweeping away a purer time, a time when nobody questioned society - a tranquil, bucolic society (in his imagination).

TL : DR - I'm afraid I think Tolkien does glorify an idealised rural English past, and he in no way subverts it. He is a conservative, and it shows.

 

[Bramblethorn]

My issue with Tolkien in this respect isn't, obviously, based on any conversation I had with the man (who died when I was three), but I do find his idealised view of the past, as expressed by his creation of the Shire, to be deliberately providing an image of a time when everyone was happy and nobody got sick and the workers cheerfully doffed their caps to their betters as they contentedly went about their business (whilst avoiding the grinding poverty and fear of famine inherent in rural life)

The piece I linked discusses this at length, with a fair bit of nuance. It does also point out that while the kind of patronage system seen in the Shire was an unequal way of living, it did at least provide farmers with a degree of stability, and the societal upheaval that came after wasn't necessarily better for them. A nearby master whose fortunes depend on your own might not be what we aspire to, but it's better than somebody who'll trade your food away and let you starve if there's a buck to be made.

 

[HordHolm]

The piece I linked discusses this at length, with a fair bit of nuance. It does also point out that while the kind of patronage system seen in the Shire was an unequal way of living, it did at least provide farmers with a degree of stability, and the societal upheaval that came after wasn't necessarily better for them. A nearby master whose fortunes depend on your own might not be what we aspire to, but it's better than somebody who'll trade your food away and let you starve if there's a buck to be made.

Without wanting to get too political (and I have very little time before I go to work), Tolkien would adopt that position, wouldn't he? Given where he came from in the social structure.

Nothing is perfect, I agree, but the stability you note came from a position of inferiority, socially, and that position was being directly challenged during the time Tolkien grew to manhood and after. And I'm pretty sure, given the way he portrays the Shire, that he felt profoundly uncomfortable with the old ways being challenged: 'Dammit... if only those peasants knew their place, they'd be happy then...'

But that wouldn't be a problem, in the terms of LOTR itself, if it didn't lead him to such a one-dimensional place in his writing. There's plenty of nuance in his other works, but in LOTR it is lacking in many, many ways.

 

[TheLobster]

Clearly, Sam should have seized the means of production the Ring and use it to bring his imagined communist beautiful garden utopia like he was obviously meant to do.

 

[SimonDoom]

I can't really quote you an example, in that in my OP I was referencing people I personally know. I can only give you my assurance that I have come across more than one person, personally, who has expressed a desire to live in the past rather than the present, whilst at the same time scanning their socials...

My issue with Tolkien in this respect isn't, obviously, based on any conversation I had with the man (who died when I was three), but I do find his idealised view of the past, as expressed by his creation of the Shire, to be deliberately providing an image of a time when everyone was happy and nobody got sick and the workers cheerfully doffed their caps to their betters as they contentedly went about their business (whilst avoiding the grinding poverty and fear of famine inherent in rural life) whilst their superiors got on with the actual proper business of culture and stuff, which obviously proved their superiority. It almost feels like a Jane Austen cosplay (note that all her proto-feminist heroines have servants whose names and stories we rarely, if ever hear) or a replay of a Victorian fantasy with cheery working class folk who were happy that the bosses did the thinking, and wanted to be treated as lesser. Which doesn't, of course, match the reality.

But, perhaps it doesn't help that I'm a historian...

I generally agree with what you're saying, but the word "hypocritical" seems a bit harsh to me. Hypocrisy requires a certain level of mens rea concerning one's inconsistency. I'm not sure Tolkien had that. I haven't read his private letters and writings enough to have any clue about that, so I cannot say for sure. There are elements of his world view that are idealized, romantic, and unrealistic. Perhaps misguided. In that respect, he has a lot of company. Many people look back to the past with fond, mist-clouded eyes.

 

[Bamagan]

I generally agree with what you're saying, but the word "hypocritical" seems a bit harsh to me. Hypocrisy requires a certain level of mens rea concerning one's inconsistency. I'm not sure Tolkien had that. I haven't read his private letters and writings enough to have any clue about that, so I cannot say for sure. There are elements of his world view that are idealized, romantic, and unrealistic. Perhaps misguided. In that respect, he has a lot of company. Many people look back to the past with fond, mist-clouded eyes.

Many others look at 'the future' with similar mist, thinking that with just a little more technology we'll enter a beautiful tech-topia of some kind. I suppose it's an inevitable result of everyone always living with the fact that the present has a lot of things wrong with it, some of which are new so the past seems better in some ways, and some of which seem like they're correctable if we can overcome some technical hurdle (the much-vaunted general AI comes to mind).
Since this thread is already straying kind of far from Tolkien's stories, I'll go ahead and splash some Yoda on it.

All his life has he looked away...to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing.”

 

[Britva415]

but the word "hypocritical" seems a bit harsh to me

Yeah, and I also still think that calling it hypocritical is based in projection of things people aren't saying, expressing or thinking. "A desire to live in the past" doesn't automatically mean one thinks there is nothing positive or advantageous about the present, nor that one has to actualize the past as much as they can while inevitably stuck in the present and while eschewing all the trappings of contemporary modernity.

To think that is very black-and-white thinking, and to project it into other people is mInD rEaDiNg.

 

[Voboy]

*sigh* and does that invalidate any analysis of the author and his motivations?

That really is a trite statement, and I regard it as just a way to shut down any deeper dive into the work.

I'm not sure you grasp what I was implying.

Tolkien understood quite well that he was writing fiction. He was describing an idealized reality in which, most likely, he wished he could live. He was aware he was leaving bits out, but they were not bits relevant to his narrative.

Your consternation puts me in mind of GRR Martin's well-known and somewhat apocryphal critique that Tolkien ignored Aragorn's tax policy. Well, yes, he did, among a GREAT deal else: he never tells us all sorts of things. He ignores quite a bit of reality: how did Frodo and Sam pass themselves off as Orcs among a host of Orcs? How did Butterbur get the barley to make his beer? How did the Lords of the West victual their troops while marching to the Morannon? How did Elves take a dump? Legolas, Gloin, and Gimli traveled to Imladris from nearly the same place at nearly the same time: how did they fail to meet on the road? When Boromir asked for directions for Rivendell, he claims "many had heard" of it... who are these "many" people he found in otherwise depopulated Eriador, and how did they know about Imladris?

Tolkien leaves enough plot holes to make a passable Alpine Lace cheese. And yet? Speculating about any of this is, well, not very useful. At a certain point, he's a storyteller. He's telling a story. Extraneous stuff has scant place there. So while it's fine to mention the plot holes and even guess how to fill them, I hardly think it's worthwhile to have heated online debates about them.

JMO.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Without wanting to get too political (and I have very little time before I go to work), Tolkien would adopt that position, wouldn't he? Given where he came from in the social structure.

It seems a bit disingenuous to dismiss this with "well Tolkien would say that, wouldn't he?" in response to me referencing a piece which makes it clear that it's not just Tolkien saying this. For instance:

The title of this post is taken from the 1976 book The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia, by James C. Scott, which I read in undergrad. The book analyzes a series of peasant insurrections in Indochina and Burma in the 1930s, and argues that their root causes was the disruption of traditional sociopolitical and cultural norms, the so-called “moral economy” by colonialism and market capitalism. Of key importance was his contention that the casus belli was not only, or even primarily, increased exploitation in a purely material sense, but the disruption to traditional patronage networks that had sustained them for generations. Peasant households should not be seen as small businesses, trying to maximize their annual profits, but as people trying to survive. A single failed harvest could mean death, and in this situation, the patronage networks were a vital social safety net. A peasant in this system gave most of his income to his landlord, without fail, but he could trust that in case of disaster, he would have some recourse.

More modern market economics brought opportunity–but also risk. As landowners became integrated into the globalized economy, backed up the military might of colonial regimes, they had less and less reason to uphold the traditional bargains with their tenants and smallholders. Plantation-style cultivation of cash crops for market could produce riches, but also catastrophe in the case of drought, famine, or economic downturn–all of which occurred in Vietnam in the 1930s. Traditional elites in Indochina had often been lenient regarding peasants, because they had to be, unable to strictly enforce taxation or rent in times of scarcity, and dependent for social and political support on their clients. That was not the case for French authorities in Saigon and Hanoi. On the very first page, Scott describes “the position of the rural population” as “that of a man standing permanently up to his neck in water, so that even a ripple might drown him.” (Moral Economy, pg. vii). The perhaps counterintuitive conclusion is that peasants are often quite conservative. They’ll fight to support the social order, if they think it’s in their interests, and are often quite wary of change. The arrival of deracinated capitalism could be quite advantageous, in the long run, but in the short run could destroy communities that had found a rough balance of survival.

If you want to argue with the sources and historical examples given there, go right ahead, but it doesn't make for productive discussion to characterise all that as just Tolkien's say-so.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Your consternation puts me in mind of GRR Martin's well-known and somewhat apocryphal critique that Tolkien ignored Aragorn's tax policy.

Also addressed in that "Moral Economy of the Shire" essay!

Individual taxation requires a large administrative apparatus to collect, and large numbers of full-time bureaucrats, which is why it was so rare in Medieval Europe. (This is the irony of George R.R. Martin’s famous complaint of “what was Aragorn’s tax policy?” He probably didn’t have one, and depended on feudal vassals to administer his holdings.)

I find the criticism a bit rich coming from GRRM, because one of my bigger issues with GoT is Martin's reluctance to work through the implications of his world-building choices. A land that periodically experiences decades-long winters should not end up with a generic medieval European social model.

 

[TheArsonist]

I do think it hypocritical. There's nothing wrong with seeing negative aspects of the present, but imagining some better past without modern medicine, education, social mobility, relative gender equality, etc, all through rosy spectacles, and whilst enjoying those very same benefits? Colour me sceptical...

This argument seems to me to have a whiff of "Yet you participate in society. Curious!"

It is also perfectly logically and morally consistent to say that "yes, all those things you mention are bad, but the tradeoff of modernity is not worth it because of the immense destruction it brings." Given that he lived through two world wars and a huge urban expansion (with a lot of fairly grim housing developments) at the expense of countryside, it shouldn't be too hard to understand that position, even if you disagree.