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HIJK posted:I always thought that too. There are lots of hobbits like Sam who have dark skin. I like to take those passages and point them out to people who try to tell me that Tolkien hated brown people. Every person I've shown it to got really mad. Evidently there's a difference between that and "swarthy", though.
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Dec 18, 2014 21:31
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Yeah, I know it's more than likely just a class thing but it also sounds like the Harfoots are naturally darker regardless of occupation (and Fallohides naturally paler).
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Dec 18, 2014 21:31
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HIJK posted:I always thought that too. There are lots of hobbits like Sam who have dark skin. I like to take those passages and point them out to people who try to tell me that Tolkien hated brown people. Every person I've shown it to got really mad. That's a great observation and not something I'd put together. Tolkien had his issues -- there is some inherent sexism and racism in the novels -- but he was generally both aware of and consciously working on them (he deliberately inserted Eowyn into the story so there'd be a stronger female role; he wrestled with the apparently innate evil of orcs all his life). Like a lot of us, he wasn't perfect but he was genuinely trying to be better.
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Dec 18, 2014 21:31
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Based on my reading, I think there's good evidence that Orcs are so murder-happy because they have literal Lords of Evil in their head; the lines from Return of the King describing the fall of Sauron as lifting his will from his Orcs and captains. I have no doubt that the Balrog in Moria held his goblins under sway, and that Saruman held some power over the Uruk-Hai. I also think this accounts for inter-Orc conflict: Usually it's Orcs of different allegiences, like the fight after Frodo gets captured is between Morgul-orcs and Orcs of Barad-Dur. Maybe on some level the Witch-King of Angmar hates Sauron? Or, perhaps, his death drove his Orcs crazier than normal. So my theory is that Morgoth, in his desire for control, made Orcs very susceptible to mental domination, even at large distances. After Sauron's defeat, perhaps, the Orcs of Mordor could make and keep treaties of other races, even if they would never be friendly.
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Dec 18, 2014 22:03
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The 3rd movie if anything reminded me : of how badass and extremely powerful ie. old Galadriel really is. Out of all of them she is the only one with a clear memory of the Undying lands, assuming that Gandalf's and Saruman's incarnations on Middle earth made their memories fuzzy.
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Dec 18, 2014 22:37
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100YrsofAttitude posted:The 3rd movie if anything reminded me : of how badass and extremely powerful ie. old Galadriel really is. Out of all of them she is the only one with a clear memory of the Undying lands, assuming that Gandalf's and Saruman's incarnations on Middle earth made their memories fuzzy. Gandalf, Saruman and Radagast also have orders to not be too overt in their intervention, which even Saruman has to take a long time to get round to breaking. Galadriel has none of that. She wasn't sent back to Middle-earth, she walked over icebergs. It totally makes sense that Frodo would offer her the Ring; it isn't her witchcraft or anything, she is just logically the person most likely to know what to do with it.
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Dec 18, 2014 22:54
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Nessus posted:Well to address this in a spoilerladen way, You're right it's just I often forget that.
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Dec 18, 2014 23:17
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100YrsofAttitude posted:You're right it's just I often forget that.
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Dec 18, 2014 23:22
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I'd read her story. I love what little we get of her character: In her youth, brash and ambitious, then later desiring to rule in her own right, then finally one of the White Council.
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Dec 18, 2014 23:35
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And despite all that she's no Feanor, that is she's not a rotten jerk. She'd make a great character study.
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Dec 19, 2014 00:14
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I've always found people who call Tolkien racist pretty funny.
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Dec 19, 2014 00:25
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100YrsofAttitude posted:And despite all that she's no Feanor, that is she's not a rotten jerk. She'd make a great character study. I like her slam on Feanor that takes a couple of eons to complete: He begs her three times for a strand of her hair and she refuses him. Turns around and gives three strands of her hair to a dwarf.
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Dec 19, 2014 00:47
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100YrsofAttitude posted:And despite all that she's no Feanor, that is she's not a rotten jerk. She'd make a great character study. She still exemplifies the fundamental flaw of Elves in the Third Age: due to their immortality, the Elves simply cannot handle a changing world. Instead they retreat to their sanctums (Lorien, Rivendell, Thranduil's halls, the Grey Havens) and try to pretend the world is the same as their glory days, and sing sad songs about how it's not. It's the use all three Elven Rings were put to - Elrond and Galadriel particularly. Cirdan was wise enough to recognize that his could be used for a higher purpose, but the other two are used to create hidden sanctuaries where even the flow of time passes strangely, because the Elves just can't deal with the world as it has become. I suspect Galadriel's temptation wasn't to rule Middle-Earth with the power of the One Ring. It was to return it by force to the way it was in the First Age.
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Dec 19, 2014 00:58
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Vaall posted:I've always found people who call Tolkien racist pretty funny. I think the problem is that a lot of people (those making that line of argument and those defending against it) make the leap from "Tolkien had racist attitudes" to "Tolkien was a bad person" to "people who like Tolkien are bad people". All of which is absurd. You can like a work while acknowledging its bad parts. My favorite book is Dune, and Frank Herbert had some downright hosed up attitudes on sexuality, and homosexuality in particular. Tolkien had prejudices, and while they don't define him or his work, they're still a part of it worth considering.
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Dec 19, 2014 02:11
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Lord Hydronium posted:I mean, it's not exactly wrong. It's somewhat reductive to take the rather complicated mix of racial attitudes in Tolkien's writings and sum it up as just "dude was racist", but he definitely had racist attitudes that are expressed in his works. Just look at how often "swarthy" is used as an indicator of a character being evil or untrustworthy, for example. The fact that he also wrote that passage about Sam sympathizing with the dead Southron, or the famous letter where he told the Nazis to gently caress off, while commendable, don't mean the racist stuff doesn't exist too. It all just makes Tolkien, well...human. He had bad attitudes and good ones. Pain in the rear end. I'm not saying it isn't there, but so are other things.
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Dec 19, 2014 02:29
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Nessus posted:What I find sort of annoying is when people take that sort of Cracked-article reductionist theory and are like "so how come you like these books about ignorant racists undermining the efforts of the dark-skinned people to build a new society without a king, hmmm?" I had people practically walking up to me and saying "So hey... new Hobbit movie's got... a girl character in it, eh? Eh?" and look at me as if expecting a nerd tirade. These are the sort of peope that flip when you show them the dark skinned hobbit passages. "That doesn't prove anything!" Well gee, ya think? I mean, Tolkien had racism in his works but if you want to go after a writer for being a real racist douchecanoe, Lovecraft is right there. But it's all tied into the "nerds are evil and backwards" meme so what can you do really.
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Dec 19, 2014 02:38
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e: nvm
chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Sep 16, 2016 |
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Dec 19, 2014 04:52
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End Of Worlds posted:Seriously, I've never understood this need to argue that works which are problematic (like LotR or Lovecraft) are not actually problematic. Yes, they are. It doesn't make you bad for liking them. The drive to defend them and insist that the half-orc swarthy men from the east with their lolling red tongues and grotesque dark skin - that, however, is pretty questionable. To give an example, and with another aspect of the orcs, I gather Tolkien based a lot of his details on the behavior of the orcs (as opposed to the goblins in Goblintown and so forth) on his experience in the trenches in WWI. Are there any other places people can spot the influence of his trench experience? Saruman appeared to have some kind of gunpowder bomb (in practice if not actuality), although it didn't seem to be as decisive as one might have expected. What is a little interesting is that despite this experience, there doesn't seem to be any situation that is directly analogous to that mode of fighting - and of course he was avoiding allegory, but you would think he would have worked that in. This might be more of a factor of the setting, because all the middle-earth fighters and armies are basically medieval, with infantry and cavalry and perhaps a Nazgul or a king to terrify/hearten the former.
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Dec 19, 2014 05:04
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End Of Worlds posted:
Is it really valid to compare Tolkien with Lovecraft? Tolkien had racist elements but there are also very clear elements that refute a simple racist reading. Lovecraft on the other hand was about as explicitly racist as you can get, right down to writing whole story sequences on the horror of miscegenation. I think people get defensive about Tolkien because the argument is usually couched in grossly oversimplified terms -- i.e., "Orcs are black people, Dwarves are Jews, and Tolkien was a horrible racist" -- and Tolkien's text is complex enough to be proof against such simplistic readings. Tolkien was definitely a product of his time, yes, but there's also evidence in the text that he was at least trying to rise above his inherent biases. For every "swarthy" Southron there's the counterpoint of Sam's reverie; for every elided woman (Arwen, Inhabiter of the Appendix) there's Eowyn out front swinging swords and complaining; for every classist denigration there's the counterpoint that Sam is the ultimate hero of the story. Now of course there's still the sophisticated argument to be made -- Eowyn is still defined utterly by her gender; the orcs are still inherently evil; we never see a positive non-theoretical Southron; Sam's ultimate heroism is still bound by the constraints of his social class. The classist, racist, and misogynist elements remain despite Tolkien's attempts to transcend them. But Tolkien's works show that struggle, in a way that, say, Lovecraft, just doesn't. Talking about race (or, for that matter, gender or social class) in Tolkien is an inherently complex topic if you're going to do it justice. Talking about race in Lovecraft is fairly straightforward.
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Dec 19, 2014 05:13
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Nessus posted:I don't deny these things one jot or tittle. It is sometimes tiresome when it is the only conversation folks have, which has kind of typically been my experience, and it's like: There's a lot more in these books than that. You dig? Yeah that's totally valid; there' worlds more to talk about Tolkien than the social issues. My experience has actually been far more of the opposite in that I've seen a lot more of this: Vaall posted:I've always found people who call Tolkien racist pretty funny. The people yelling about the issues in LotR, as far as I've seen, have been largely doing so in reaction to exactly this kind of weird revisionist poo poo. As an aside, it's interesting to me that the racism gets discussed a lot more than the classism, which is way more pervasive and even foundational to the characters and narrative. chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Dec 19, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2014 05:17
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End Of Worlds posted:The people yelling about the issues in LotR, as far as I've seen, have been largely doing so in reaction to exactly this kind of weird revisionist poo poo. I think that's partly because American readers don't pick up on all the various English class signifiers and partly because classism is still very much an accepted part of the modern world in the way (explicit) racism isn't. edit: we had a good conversation on class in this thread a few years ago: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3532243&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post412743018 Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Dec 19, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2014 05:20
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End Of Worlds posted:Yeah that's totally valid; there' worlds more to talk about Tolkien than the social issues. My experience has actually been far more of the opposite in that I've seen a lot more of this: When I first read the books (age 10) I could pick up that Sam was not of the same background as Pippin, Merry and Frodo but he seemed more like Frodo's house manager who got recruited by Gandalf (and good thing, too) rather than being fraught with the concepts of servitude.
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Dec 19, 2014 05:21
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Is it really valid to compare Tolkien with Lovecraft? Tolkien had racist elements but there are also very clear elements that refute a simple racist reading. Lovecraft on the other hand was about as explicitly racist as you can get, right down to writing whole story sequences on the horror of miscegenation. Not in content, not at all. I'm lumping them together because it's, again in my experience, usually the same people arguing that the swarthy men aren't racist and that On the Creation of Niggers is just a goofy joke or whatever. Vastly different content, but the same bizarre and deliberate blindness. Hieronymous Alloy posted:I think people get defensive about Tolkien because the argument is usually couched in grossly oversimplified terms -- i.e., "Orcs are black people, Dwarves are Jews, and Tolkien was a horrible racist" -- and Tolkien's text is complex enough to be proof against such simplistic readings. Tolkien was definitely a product of his time, yes, but there's also evidence in the text that he was at least trying to rise above his inherent biases. For every "swarthy" Southron there's the counterpoint of Sam's reverie; for every elided woman (Arwen, Inhabiter of the Appendix) there's Eowyn out front swinging swords and complaining; for every classist denigration there's the counterpoint that Sam is the ultimate hero of the story. Yeah that's a super reductionist reading (but c'mon the Dwarves are totally Jews) and not one I endorse, and I agree that there's clear evidence that he was trying to rise above his biases. I don't think there are a lot of ways around the stuff like the Inherently Genetially Superior Noble White Men of the West vs. Monstrous and Illogical Hordes of the East, though. And I don't think that Sam refutes the classism argument - dude is the only character who isn't either nobility or landed gentry, sure, but he becomes landed gentry though his diligent and loyal service to his master. That's... not better. Nor do I think the character of Eowyn refutes sexism - she was just an imported shieldmaiden from the Sagas, and ends her character arc by finding a good man and affirming traditional gender roles: quote:I will be a shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren. chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Dec 19, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2014 05:25
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I agree that the Dwarves are totally drawn heavily from the Jews, but they're very philo-semitic for the period, where I think even the more progressive sorts tended to sneer at Jews a little. I know there's that letter where Tolkien politely tells the Nazi German book people who are asking how aryan he was to go gently caress themselves.
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Dec 19, 2014 05:29
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End Of Worlds posted:(but c'mon the Dwarves are totally Jews) He even based the Dwarven language on Hebrew =( quote:. I don't think there are a lot of ways around the stuff like the Inherently Genetially Superior Noble White Men of the West vs. Monstrous and Illogical Hordes of the East, which is a driving force of the entire narrative. And I don't think for a second that Sam refutes the classism argument - dude is the only character who isn't either nobility or landed gentry, sure, but he becomes landed gentry though his diligent and loyal service to his master. That's... not better. Yeah, I think the ultimate discussion with Tolkien is over the extent to which he managed to overcome those inherent biases. On the one hand, give the man points for trying; on the other, as you say, Eowyn ends up married off, Sam joins the landed gentry, and Aragorn is still magically special because of the purity of his bloodline. Personally, end of the day, I think that's a conversation reasonable people can differ on -- of course Eowyn's a shieldmaiden, the Rohirrim are idealized anglo-saxons; of course Sam joins the gentry, it would be completely out of character for him to do anything else. I guess my ultimate take is that Tolkien's struggle with race, class, and gender are a big part of what make the LotR "great literature" and why I think it was absolutely the right verdict when it got voted "Book of the Century". Almost despite itself, it captures the struggles and social issues of its time to an amazing degree -- it's the horror and shame and glory of the twentieth century, all right there.
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Dec 19, 2014 05:37
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:He even based the Dwarven language on Hebrew =( Lmao for real? That owns. Hieronymous Alloy posted:I guess my ultimate take is that Tolkien's struggle with race, class, and gender are a big part of what make the LotR "great literature" and why I think it was absolutely the right verdict when it got voted "Book of the Century". Almost despite itself, it captures the struggles and social issues of its time to an amazing degree -- it's the horror and shame and glory of the twentieth century, all right there. I totally agree with this. I love the Lord of the Rings, and additionally I'm really not sure that there's any way to synthesize Norse mythology and Anglo-Saxon culture in an early-20th century environment without ending up with some major areas of questionable content. I just get super irritated when I see people defensively insist that there's no racism in LotR, none at all! Past a certain point it's silly to hold these books up to a 21st century morality, not to mention anachronistic, but it's still a thing to talk about - which doesn't mean condemning them. chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Dec 19, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2014 05:38
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End Of Worlds posted:Lmao for real? That owns. Ayup. quote:Tolkien noted some similarities between Dwarves and Jews: both were "at once natives and aliens in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue…".[1] Tolkien also commented of the Dwarves that "their words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic."[2] Tolkien based Dwarvish language on the Semitic languages. Like these, Khuzdul has triconsonantal roots: kh-z-d, b-n-d, z-g-l. Also other similarities to Hebrew in phonology and morphology have been observed.[3][4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khuzdul
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Dec 19, 2014 05:42
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Tolkien being Tolkien, I always read that as that he was just fascinated with how Semitic languages work and wanted to have an excuse to make one up.
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Dec 19, 2014 05:48
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End Of Worlds posted:I totally agree with this. I love the Lord of the Rings, and additionally I'm really not sure that there's any way to synthesize Norse mythology and Anglo-Saxon culture in an early-20th century environment without ending up with some major areas of questionable content. I just get super irritated when I see people defensively insist that there's no racism in LotR, none at all! Past a certain point it's silly to hold these books up to a 21st century morality, not to mention anachronistic, but it's still a thing to talk about. e: to be clear I'm contrasting "racism the cultural construction" vs. "racism the overt or not-very-covert expression of racial prejudice." Nessus fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Dec 19, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2014 05:48
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Nessus posted:I think, as is often the case, the issue is the multiple meanings that "racism" has. Tolkien clearly was not setting out to write The Lord of the Racial Purities and probably had better reason than most Englishmen to loathe Hitler and co. However, there are definitely the questionable materials you discuss and the fact that Tolkien was struggling with them rather than simply shrugging his shoulders indicates he was aware there were in fact issues involved. Yeah true. I think a lot of what I'm calling racism is more an unconscious manifestation of a British colonial worldview - one that Tolkien challenged, for sure, but the dude was born when Victoria was still on the throne. It's very different from the particularly American brand of racial prejudice that you find in Lovecraft's 'abhrorrent Negress' poo poo. Star Platinum posted:The worst parts are easily the Old Forest before they meet Tom, and the Barrow-downs before Frodo wakes up in the tomb. Basically the parts where Tolkien spends several pages just describing how hopelessly lost they are. All the Shire fluff is great. I felt this way until I'd visited some barrows and, man - those things are unsettling.
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Dec 19, 2014 05:55
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One thing I always liked about Tolkien is how much he loved his wife. The story of beren and Luthien is a huge love letter to his wife, with her saving him multiple times. It gets to me, it does.
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Dec 19, 2014 09:25
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End Of Worlds posted:The fact that the subservient laborer who calls Frodo his Master might be brown does not actually advance the cause of Tolkien Not Being A Racist, dude This is an American misinterpretation. Tolkein was British (English) and in Britain servants were (almost exclusively) white. The earlier point about peasants and labourers being darker due to exposure to sun and that tans were class signifiers is completely correct and readers of Tolkein's generation would have understood that (although by the time LOTR was published that had begun to change). That said, Sam's family looking slightly different from the Bagginses is a marker of class distinction through years genetic separation caused by classes not intermarrying. I think understanding Tolkein is matter of realising that there are racial difference between races (species?) and class differences within races. So I think there is a racial underpinning but class differentiation also and the Sam/Frodo difference is class-based. It is hard to argue against Middle Earth's races not determining inherent character traits. You get diversity but that is seen as aberration from a norm (Frodo and Bilbo being adventurous when hobbits are mainly timid and homeloving, etc), be it genetically or environmentally determined. It is kind of fascinating to watch people who absolutely love LOTR trying to explain away the world view of Tolkein, which was in part racially-coloured, when it is definitely there. These fans are experiencing cognitive dissonance: I really love LOTR; what is plainly visible in the books and films is not actually there because I could never love any work of fiction that was racially/politically questionable. Personally, I think it is possible to love something and experience the emotional truth and narrative compulsion of it without agreeing with the religious/intellectual/political/scientific premise. But that doesn't mean I would falsely represent that story/work of art.
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Dec 19, 2014 12:29
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Isn't the whole Gimli and Legolas relationship about not hating people because of their race and the history they share? How do people miss that? That why I laugh at the people who believe tolkien to be racist. Race isn't about skin colour. They are of two different races, elf and dwarf, that have a lot of bad blood between them but come to be lifelong friends. Exploring the caves and forests of the world together at the end of The Lord of The Rings. I'm pretty sure the hobbit skin colour being 'dark' was about being tanned. They are people who spend all of the time they have alive outside, enjoying the sunlight and farming. Sam was more likely to be 'dark skinned' because he was the son of a drat gardener whilst frodo was the adopted nephew of a rich uncle who spent most of his life either indoors or reading under trees. It's definitely possible to love something you don't agree with politically/religiously/etc as I love tolkiens work more than any and I am 100% against religion. All of these are interesting points to discuss, at least. Catsplosion fucked around with this message at 13:25 on Dec 19, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2014 13:17
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Catsplosion posted:Isn't the whole Gimli and Legolas relationship about not hating people because of their race and the history they share? How do people miss that? And did you miss that part about it being a celebrated friendship because it was a rare example of individuals from races with mutual animosity overcoming their natures and civilisations to combine on a common enterprise? It is perfectly possible to suggest individuals should overcome such division while at the same time maintaining explicitly and often that such divisions are real and do exist and do determine the course of history.
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Dec 19, 2014 13:33
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I think one reason some of the issues in LotR are there despite Tolkein being aware that they were issues and in there is because to a degree they were just another thing to toss on the pile of "things I'll get around to changing at some point."
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Dec 19, 2014 14:25
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:And did you miss that part about it being a celebrated friendship because it was a rare example of individuals from races with mutual animosity overcoming their natures and civilisations to combine on a common enterprise? It is perfectly possible to suggest individuals should overcome such division while at the same time maintaining explicitly and often that such divisions are real and do exist and do determine the course of history. Right, and the Legolas/Gimli relationship and the Frodo/Sam one both have overtones of things like the relationship between Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim, her Indian valet. Nobody at the time would have considered Indians the "equals" of white English people in any meaningful sense, but Victoria regarded him as her closest and most valued personal companion until she died. "One of the good ones," I'll bet a number of people said.
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Dec 19, 2014 14:45
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I think you also get into the good=forces of light and they wear white hats, and evil=forces of darkness and wear black hats thing which is a very old and yet still persistent way of dividing protagonists and antagonists (at least for white dominated cultures) that may very well be rooted in racism (or also going back to the darkness of night being dangerous and scary) but in some ways is so ingrained that people don't think about it. The elves are fair and pure and full of light and the greatest works ever created were the Silmarils which are shining jewels of light, while various incarnations of the enemy (Morgoth, Sauron) dwell in the darkness and dungeons and want to destroy the light. It's a very easy jump to describing everything evil in your story as dark and "black" without intentionally meaning "dark skinned races are bad and evil and light skinned races are good and this applies directly to the real world as well". Which is really just me saying yes it's a complex matter that involves influences from methods of storytelling as well as cultural biases of the time (racism, classism) as well as the fact that Tolkien's world was written as a kind of mythology for a predominantly white group of people so of course the main characters are going to be white and all of that...I don't think we'd expect myths and legends of darker skinned groups of people to be a multi cultural affair either. Being aware of the faults and reasons (good or bad) why a work is the way it is is a good thing to explore but probably shouldn't stop at a surface level "he was racist" if someone wants to discuss it. And hey there's no reason to feel bad about liking Tolkien and people who say "yeah but he's racist and that means you're bad for liking it" are dumb  Data Graham posted:Right, and the Legolas/Gimli relationship and the Frodo/Sam one both have overtones of things like the relationship between Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim, her Indian valet. Nobody at the time would have considered Indians the "equals" of white English people in any meaningful sense, but Victoria regarded him as her closest and most valued personal companion until she died. "One of the good ones," I'll bet a number of people said. I'm not sure I agree with the comparison there. Elves and dwarves may not like each other but one was certainly not a servant or subordinate, and that power dynamic vastly changes the comparison. If the elves are saying "oh Gimli is one of the good ones" then it's just as likely the dwarves are saying "oh Legolas is one of the good ones". The missing dynamic of master and servant makes that comparison fall down quite a bit in my opinion. As for Sam and Frodo, you do have the master and servant dynamic but it's muddied a bit as the hobbits are the same race and I don't particularly get any feeling that there's a class or group of hobbits that are treated as inferior (besides hobbits in Hobbiton thinking the Bucklanders are weird and all of them thinking the ones in Bree are crazy, which just reads as "those people in that other town I don't ever visit sure are outsiders and weirdos"). It certainly does feel weird to have Sam calling Frodo "master" and acting like his sole purpose in life is to serve Frodo but it seems to be more a relationship between the two of them rather than there being a subclass of hobbits that are kept as servants because of their skin color. I think there's stuff there to explore but I'm not quite on board with comparing it to that situation. Levitate fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Dec 19, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2014 14:46
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:This is an American misinterpretation. Tolkein was British (English) and in Britain servants were (almost exclusively) white. The earlier point about peasants and labourers being darker due to exposure to sun and that tans were class signifiers is completely correct and readers of Tolkein's generation would have understood that (although by the time LOTR was published that had begun to change). That said, Sam's family looking slightly different from the Bagginses is a marker of class distinction through years genetic separation caused by classes not intermarrying. I think understanding Tolkein is matter of realising that there are racial difference between races (species?) and class differences within races. So I think there is a racial underpinning but class differentiation also and the Sam/Frodo difference is class-based. Yeah, that's the thing and why I think the "Sam was Ethnic" theory above has a little weight; I'm not sure we can just dismiss it as American misinterpretation. Class and race aren't entirely separate notions in Tolkien's world -- the upper-class hobbits all seem to be Fallohide, with correspondingly fair hair, etc. And that view of inherited social class, "blood," was part of Tolkien's worldview and (let's face it) part of his contemporary English worldview for that matter (probably stretching all the way back to the divide between the Normans and Saxons, if not before).
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Dec 19, 2014 14:59
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, that's the thing and why I think the "Sam was Ethnic" theory above has a little weight; I'm not sure we can just dismiss it as American misinterpretation. Class and race aren't entirely separate notions in Tolkien's world -- the upper-class hobbits all seem to be Fallohide, with correspondingly fair hair, etc. And that view of inherited social class, "blood," was part of Tolkien's worldview and (let's face it) part of his contemporary English worldview for that matter (probably stretching all the way back to the divide between the Normans and Saxons, if not before). That is a good point. While I didn't get the impression that there was a straight up servant class of hobbits, you're right that there is some class/race separation there. I don't' particularly want to come off like I'm just dismissing those ideas
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Dec 19, 2014 15:07
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Nessus posted:To give an example, and with another aspect of the orcs, I gather Tolkien based a lot of his details on the behavior of the orcs (as opposed to the goblins in Goblintown and so forth) on his experience in the trenches in WWI. Are there any other places people can spot the influence of his trench experience? Saruman appeared to have some kind of gunpowder bomb (in practice if not actuality), although it didn't seem to be as decisive as one might have expected. There's a whole book about this sort of thing, which you should absolutely read if you're interested. In short, there are two big things he took. The first ties neatly into the discussion of class: it's the relationship between Frodo and Sam, which is a straight-up only-slightly-idealised description of a relationship between an Army officer and his batman, a soldier from the ranks who acted as a personal servant. Officers' accounts of the war are stuffed full of descriptions of some salt-of-the-earth chap who served him selflessly and always kept his uniform properly cleaned and polished, he knew his place, and they formed Bonds of Service Together, and etc. Quite a few batmen would leave the Army with his officer, and then join the officer's household staff as a valet. The batmen that Tolkien met left a considerable impression on him, so it's not surprising that Frodo, the country squire gone to war, has one. (It's also very interesting in this context that the entire story starts with Frodo becoming Mr Baggins of Bag End, and finishes with Sam becoming Mr Gamgee of Bag End.) The second is the landscapes around the front lines and out in No Man's Land. The Desolation of the Morannon is what it's like when it's dry; the Dead Marshes are what it's like when it's wet. It's that simple. Particularly the bits about following a particular sequence of steps so as not to sink into the mud and never be seen again, and when Sam nearly falls in the water and sees a corpse floating just under the surface. That's exactly what happens to bodies that end up in a flooded shell-hole.     Is it any wonder that he chose to cast these scenes as the deliberate handiwork of an ancient and implacable evil? I think the nature of Sauron himself is also extremely telling; a disembodied force of malice who lurks somewhere behind unassailable defences and who can't be defeated by winning an important battle, or by assaulting his fortifications. Instead, the day is won by cleverness, good fortune, and a long chain of pity and mercy, even when it seems most reasonable to show none. Nessus posted:Notice also how whenever they're rolling around in Gondor the locals all assume that Merry and Pippin must be lords in their country - and while Tolkien credits this to their speech not having the polite forms, it is also literally the case. Pippin is a Took and seems to be on close terms with the head Took, and I think Merry was in a similar position with the Brandybuck people. Had they never left the Shire they would have been pretty high on the totem pole, and their actions stack up pretty well to everyone else's; the two of them arguably defeated Saruman, and Merry (along with Eowyn of course) killed the witch-king. I looked at the family trees; Merry's the heir to Brandybuck Hall and Pippin is a younger son of the head Took. They're both exactly the kind of people who were leapfrogging down to the recruiting-office with George in 1914 and filled the casualty lists in 1915. They don't know what they're getting themselves into, but they're sure it's going to be a grand adventure, full of larks and Elves and derring-do. (You could also draw an even more direct link between Pippin not having come of age and the officer cadets who were accepted for training at 17 and sent to the front on their 18th birthday, where their life expectancy was about six weeks.)
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Dec 19, 2014 15:07
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