Tag Archives: J.R.R. Tolkien

Authors, Fiction, Reading

Reading report: ‘The Lord of the Rings’: Diversity

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Blogging my way through The Two Towers:

Another theme in these books that strikes me is the vision of what – at the risk of political correctness – I might call “diversity.”

The Fellowship of the Ring is, self-consciously, a diverse group. It includes members of several of the more-or-less human “races” not dominated by Sauron – Men, and Elves, and Hobbits. No doubt this mirrors Tolkien’s experience with classes and Imperial ethnicities (not to mention Allies) during the Great War. The feeling (it must have seemed very strange in those times) of thinking, “Here I am, crouched in a trench with men I might have despised or even fought against in the past. But we’re all at war for a single cause now, and I find much to love and admire in them.”

No doubt it would have occurred to a thoughtful mind that one could conceivably come to feel the same way about the enemy, under different circumstances.

But it wouldn’t only have been the war. The fabled Inklings group was itself (to an extent) a disparate gathering. Not radically disparate, but to Tolkien, as a member of a religious minority, the chasm between Catholic and Protestant was always significant. I don’t recall that any of the Inklings was an atheist or agnostic, but Owen Barfield was a Theosophist (though he eventually became a communicant Anglican).

Which reminds me of the issue of “Jack” Lewis’s Anglicanism, always a sore point with Tolkien. After the famous night in 1931 when he and Hugo Dyson convinced Lewis that mythology might be a kind of inchoate prophecy from Heaven (leading to his Christian conversion), Tolkien hoped Jack would join him in his Roman faith. But Jack remained at bottom a Belfast Protestant, though he learned to appreciate certain beauties in his friend’s church.

And when I read of Gimli and Legolas, tentatively finding common ground in which an Elf might go so far as to visit caverns, in order (perhaps) to discover the beauties a Dwarf sees there, and the Dwarf condescends to travel in a forest with the Elf for the same reason, we may be peering into the heart of Tolkien’s and Lewis’s friendship.

Fiction, Reading

Reading report: The Two Towers, by J.R.R. Tolkien: The name of Erling

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Blogging my way through The Lord of the Rings.

I’m well into The Two Towers now. An anxious nation will be gratified to know that I Have Thoughts.

I noticed – for the first time, I think – the name of the ancient warrior who – we are told – founded the Kingdom of Rohan. His name was Eorl the Young.

This is where I did a little linguistic analysis, based on my fair knowledge of Norwegian and my sketchy grasp of Old Norse.

I figured Eorl must be etymologically related to the Norse word, Jarl, which means a ruler. I was pretty sure that the Norse cognate when used in personal names was “Erl.” I had looked up the meaning of Erling (for obvious reasons) and learned that the name means “young ruler.”

That makes sense, because the “ing” suffix is common in sagas to indicate “the younger,” as in “junior.” Thus the sons of Arne Arnmodsson (whom I mentioned a few days ago in my post on my novel writing) were known as the Arnmodings.

My guesses were verified by the author of this web site, assuming he knows what he’s talking about.

Therefore, when you encounter the name Eorl the Young in TLOTR, think “Erling.”

Did Tolkien have Erling Skjalgsson in mind when he named the character? I have no evidence for that. But I like to think so. Because what I like is extremely important.

Authors, Fiction, Reading, Religion

‘Reading report: The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien: The Rainbow Wizard

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I finished reading The Fellowship of the Ring over the weekend. One can’t really review a work of this eminence. I can only write appreciations. One thing I noted was a detail I’d forgotten, one that was left out of the movies, and it’s  no mystery why. It’s when Gandalf meets with Saruman at Orthanc, and learns his former master’s perfidy:

‘”For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!”

‘I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.

‘”I liked white better,” I said.

‘”White!” he sneered. “It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.”

‘”In which case it is no longer white,” said I. “And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”’

This is an amazing passage. Saruman the White, whose white color had symbolized his supreme wisdom, has broken the white color down into its constituent prismatic hues.

He’s made it into a rainbow.

We see rainbows all the time today, in churches that believe they’ve “deconstructed” traditional morality and theology.

Was Tolkien an actual prophet? Did he foretell the future of the church?

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Reading report: ‘The Fellowship of the Ring,’ by J.R.R. Tolkien: A veteran’s story

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‘Yes sir!’ said Sam. ‘Begging your pardon, sir! But I meant no wrong to you, Mr. Frodo, nor to Mr. Gandalf for that matter. He has some sense, mind you; and when you said go alone, he said no! take someone as you can trust.’

‘But it does not seem that I can trust anyone,’ said Frodo.

Sam looked at him unhappily. ‘It all depends on what you want’ put in Merry. ‘You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin – to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours – closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo. Anyway: there it is. We know most of what Gandalf has told you. We know a good deal about the Ring. We are horribly afraid – but we are coming with you; or following you like hounds.’

No major revelations from my reading of The Fellowship of the Ring tonight. Just a thought on a subject I’ve touched on before – The Lord of the Rings as veteran’s literature.

What struck me in the scene above – which takes place at Frodo’s new house in Crickhollow, before the adventure even properly begins – is how different the tone is from what we see of the hobbits in the films. Merry and Pippin are pure comic relief in the movies – up till the moments when they’re forced to grow up.

And there’s certainly an element of that in the books too. But in this scene we see them in a different light. Here they are Frodo’s comrades – his buddies in the military sense. They’re freemen and equals, under no illusions, and loyal to their officer. There’s a time for games and laughter, but when it comes to the point, we all know what we’re here for, and we’re in to the end. Whatever the cost.

If we were privileged to have access to Tolkien’s memories, I think we’d find that this scene echoes some moment (or moments) in his wartime career. He’s memorializing men he served with – most of whom would probably have never come home. Jack Lewis would have recognized it right off.

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Reading report: ‘The Fellowship of the Ring,’ by J.R.R. Tolkien: Bombadil and Goldberry

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There on the hill-brow she stood beckoning to them: her hair was flying loose, and as it caught the sun it shone and shimmered. A light like the glint of water on dewy grass flashed from under her feet as she danced.

Blogging through the Lord of the Rings, still on The Fellowship of the Ring:

What are we to make of Tom Bombadil? He’s a riddle inside an enigma inside a mathom, which is probably just what the author intended. The narrative of the epic can endure without him, as the movies demonstrated. But every reader knows he belongs, somehow, in Tolkien’s world. Every reader will think of Tom in his own way. I’ve stated my view before on this blog, but I’ll repeat it here:

Tom seems to me to be a representation of Adam, or at least of unfallen Man. Adam tended the Garden, and he named the animals; whatever he called the beasts, that was their name. Tom Bombadil controls all nature within his domains, and when he names the hobbits’ ponies, those are the names they answer to ever after. Tom says of himself:

“Eldest, that’s what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn.”

Remember how important “subcreation” was in Tolkien’s artistic/religious vision. Man in fellowship with God becomes a kind of little god – he can’t create ex nihilo as God does, but he creates in a smaller way that brings glory to his Master. In the same way, I think, unfallen Tom Bombadil glorifies his Creator by ruling the Garden that’s been set under his stewardship.

Tom Bombadil, incidentally, began as a toy, a Dutch doll owned by Tolkien’s daughter Priscilla. She lost it down a sewer, and was distraught. Her father comforted her with tales of how Tom floated along the river and had numerous adventures, overcoming all kinds of dangers through his magical powers. Eventually he even overcomes the powerful River-woman, and marries her daughter, Goldberry (herself a rather sinister figure until Tom tames her).

Which brings us to Goldberry. Goldberry has a very special place in this reader’s heart.

The year must have been 1973; I was in college, and my roommate was an even bigger Tolkien geek than I was. We agreed that I would read the Hobbit and the Trilogy to him, one chapter a night (I love to read aloud). And we did that – straight through. It took a while.

During that same period I went out on my first date, with a girl who was very Goldberry-esque. I fell hard for that girl, and have never quite gotten over her. She’s a grandmother today, and lives far away, but to me she’ll be forever young and slender and graceful.

Whenever Tolkien tells us of a woman dancing, and how her feet tinkle on the grass (as in the case of Luthien), I’m pretty sure he’s harkening back to Edith Bratt and how she danced for him in the woods the day he fell in love with her. For my own part, I always look forward to seeing Goldberry again.

Fiction, Reading

Reading Report: ‘The Fellowship of the Ring,’ by J.R.R. Tolkien

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He thought he had come to the end of his adventure, and a terrible end, but the thought hardened him. He found himself stiffening, as if for a final spring; he no longer felt limp like a helpless prey.

This quotation, concerning Frodo Baggins in the Barrow Downs, from The Fellowship of the Ring, seems to me a good epitome of what I’ve found in my current reading of the Lord of the Rings

Actually, the thought was mainly inspired (to my shame, I suppose) by watching the movies twice through recently. I’ve found them inspirational as I wrestle with my Work in Progress. It’s a remarkable thing, as I see it, that in spite of the movie industry’s well-earned notoriety for messing with original sources, the Peter Jackson movies managed – overall – to preserve the heart of the story. Even though most of the people involved must surely have been a thousand miles away from Tolkien’s beliefs.

Anyway, what struck me as I watched and read was this. It hardly needs saying that we’re in perilous times. I never thought I’d live to see a day when I worried about the breakdown of civil society and the loss of our republic, but such things don’t seem unthinkable now.

I’m not a man known for confidence and courage. I reserve heroism for my books. I know heroism when I see it, and I salute it from a safe distance. I’m pretty sure that if the day comes when I must raise my sword in defense of my rights, I’ll probably trip over the scabbard.

But it occurred to me that maybe this isn’t the end. That’s the thing about stories.

In every good story, there comes a moment when the main character thinks the tale is told – and that he’s lost. A moment when his strongest instinct is to lay his weapon down and surrender.

But that’s not really the end, in a good story. It’s only the Final Crisis. It’s the hero’s test. The climax is yet to come – and at the climax, the hero either triumphs or fails in a way that means something.

So this is my message. Not the message of a prophet, or the son of a prophet, but of a storyteller.

This isn’t the end. It’s the crisis. Hold on. Carry on doing your service, at the station where God has set you. As Sam Gamgee said:

“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.”

Fiction, Reviews, Writing

‘Beren and Luthien,’ by J. R. R. Tolkien

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Tevildo however, himself a great and skilled liar, was so deeply versed in the lies and subtleties of all the beasts and creatures that he seldom knew whether to believe what was said to him or not, and was wont to disbelieve all things save those he wished to believe true, and so was he often deceived by the most honest.

I’ve long cherished a great fondness for Tolkien’s tale of Beren and Luthien, which impressed me long ago when I read the Silmarillion. And of course, it’s referenced often in The Lord of the Rings. So before I moved on from The Hobbit to the Trilogy, I thought I’d read the (fairly) recent book devoted to that story.

It wasn’t entirely what I expected. It’s sort of a scholarly exercise. In it, the late Christopher Tolkien, the author’s son and literary executor, traces the development of the story through various stages in the collected manuscripts, where it is altered in numerous ways. There are surprises. For instance, an early version of the story has as one of its major villains a great cat called Tevildo (see quotation above), who lives in a castle and serves the evil Melkor. In later versions, Tevildo would be replaced by a great magician who would in time become the Sauron of the Trilogy.

I think we may deduce that Prof. Tolkien was not very fond of cats.

Those who find Tolkien’s work lacking in female heroes need to read Beren and Luthien. Although Beren is a doughty hero, he also seems to be headstrong to point of stupidity. And the two great crises in the story both involve Luthien rescuing him.

I was, frankly, looking for something more like a straight narrative when I bought this book. I’m not enough of a Tolkien scholar to linger happily forever over details of composition and myth-building.

On the other hand, I’d never encountered the words “inexaggerable” and “quook” (past tense of quake) before, so the reading was not without surprises.

The tale of Beren and Luthien was a central matter in Tolkien’s life’s work. If I understand the story correctly, it went back to his attempt to immortalize the day when Edith Bratt danced for him in the woods and he fell in love forever. In a sense, he built all Middle Earth as a kind of ornate setting for the jewel of that memory.

Beren and Luthien is recommended for those who can never get enough Tolkien. If you’re looking for a less strenuous approach to the story, you might just read The Silmarillion.

Oh yes, it has Alan Lee illustrations, so it’s got that going for it.

Fiction, Reviews

Reading report: ‘The Hobbit,’ by J.R.R. Tolkien

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It was a terrible battle. The most dreadful of all Bilbo’s experiences, and the one which at the time he hated most—which is to say it was the one he was the most proud of, and most fond of recalling long afterwards, although he was quite unimportant in it.

Recently I watched the Lord of the Rings movies (extended versions, of course; not the Hobbit films). And whenever I do that, it comes into my mind that I need to read the books again. Christopher Lee read them once a year, after all. I’m far behind that tally. So I pulled out The Hobbit, to begin the journey.

I’ll confess that at first I thought it kind of elementary. It is a children’s book, after all, and sometimes the author talks down to his audience.

However, it grew on my mind as I read that this book (along with the Trilogy) can be viewed from the perspective of veteran’s literature (I’m not a veteran, I hasten to note; but it’s something I can be aware of). When Tolkien tells us, again and again, that Bilbo wished himself back in his cozy hobbit hole, “not for the last time,” he’s conveying the feelings of the soldier at war. Not long ago, he was comfortable in his rooms at Oxford, eating well, cared for by servants, keeping regular hours. Now he’s slogging through mud or crouched in a flooded trench, struggling with boredom or dreading going “over the top.” Thoughts of home flood in; they are a torment and a comfort all at once.

And by the end of the book, I must confess, I had to blink back manly tears. I was moved.

The Hobbit is a great book. But you knew that.

Non-fiction, Reviews

Shippey on the Staffordshire Hoard

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Photo credit: theguardian.com

We usually specialize in Vikings on this blog, but we are not above tolerating Anglo-Saxons, especially when there’s a Tolkien connection.

Tom Shippey, successor to and biographer of J.R.R. Tolkien, has a review in the London Review and Books of a new book on the Staffordshire Hoard, a rather amazing 2009 find:

What one can say is, first, that the hoard is unique from the period. Previous discoveries have been grave burials, or single finds, not collections buried with (presumably) the intention of later recovery. Second, the general nature of the hoard is clear. It is strongly weapon-related, but without weapons. There are no coins, no brooches, no items of women’s jewellery, not even a single knife or sword blade. Some 80 per cent of the objects are fittings from weapons, mostly sword-hilt parts. An Anglo-Saxon sword typically had a wooden hilt fitted over the iron tang on the blade, but to this were added an upper and a lower guard, each secured by two hilt plates and a hilt collar, fixed by bosses, with a pommel on top. All these appear in the hoard in large numbers.

Read it all here. Thanks to Dale Nelson for sending me the link.

Authors, Fiction, Reading

The Lighting of the Beacons

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhRFaY8A9cA

I’m sure you recognize this clip from The Two Towers, in which the beacons are lit in Gondor, to call for help from Rohan.

I believe (I could be wrong) that the inspiration for this plot element in The Lord of the Rings was the following passage from Heimskringla (here in Lee Hollander’s translation) and the Saga of King Haakon the Good:

After this battle King Haakon incorporated into the laws for all the land along the seas, and as far inland as the salmon goes upstream, that all districts were divided into “ship-levies”; and these he parcelled out among the districts…. Along with this it was ordered that whenever there was a general levy, beacons were to be lit on high mountains, so that one could be seen from the other. It is said that news of the levy travelled from the southern-most beacon to the northernmost borough in seven nights.

If anyone knows of an earlier example of such a beacon signalling system, which might have inspired Tolkien, let me know.