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Hello everyone! I didn’t post very much but this was truly one of my favorite threads on SA. If the worst happens to the site, can I get a recommendation of a site or another forum where I can get my Tolkien discussion fix? Reddit maybe? I’ve been so insular with SA for so many years I’m really not sure where to go for decent discussion anymore.
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Jun 24, 2020 16:13
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blackshreds posted:Hello everyone! I didn’t post very much but this was truly one of my favorite threads on SA. If the worst happens to the site, can I get a recommendation of a site or another forum where I can get my Tolkien discussion fix? Reddit maybe? I’ve been so insular with SA for so many years I’m really not sure where to go for decent discussion anymore. Book Barn discord: https://discord.gg/jgBDB25
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Jun 24, 2020 16:23
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blackshreds posted:Hello everyone! I didn’t post very much but this was truly one of my favorite threads on SA. If the worst happens to the site, can I get a recommendation of a site or another forum where I can get my Tolkien discussion fix? Reddit maybe? I’ve been so insular with SA for so many years I’m really not sure where to go for decent discussion anymore. Hope that mods create Something Less Awful?
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Jun 25, 2020 00:54
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Ynglaur posted:Hope that mods create Something Less Awful? Something Better
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Jun 25, 2020 01:16
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Something Better sounds a little ambitious, but you do you
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Jun 25, 2020 01:25
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blackshreds posted:Hello everyone! I didn’t post very much but this was truly one of my favorite threads on SA. If the worst happens to the site, can I get a recommendation of a site or another forum where I can get my Tolkien discussion fix? Reddit maybe? I’ve been so insular with SA for so many years I’m really not sure where to go for decent discussion anymore. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Just putting up a reminder link for the Book Barn discord:
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Jun 25, 2020 01:47
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Son of Sam-I-Am posted:sounds a little ambitious, but you do you Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?
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Jun 25, 2020 01:52
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It was a purely Hobbiton joke to refer to it as Lowtax's End
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Jun 25, 2020 03:03
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Trin Tragula posted:It was a purely Hobbiton joke to refer to it as Lowtax's End "Ow, my back," he said.
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Jun 25, 2020 05:36
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Ynglaur posted:Hope that mods create Something Less Awful?
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Jun 25, 2020 07:11
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The older I get and the more I read LOTR, the more upset I get about Sam. He really reflects a certain idea of bourgeois people that the Lower Orders are happy with their lot in life and don't have greater or complex feelings. He's able to take on the Ring and still come home to the Shire and raise a family and plant all those trees and write the Book because he never had complex feelings to begin with. It's a perspective Tolkien takes. Like someone of a higher class might try to play an instrument and fail and then spend their whole life wondering what could have been, but someone of a lower class might try to play an instrument and fail and then just get on with doing laundry or fixing things or whatever. Because they don't exist on the same level. Except they do! It's all just human beings! Or Hobbits.
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Jun 27, 2020 02:53
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I definitely get that interpretation, but I always read Sam as the real hero of the story, the one most like Tolkien himself wanted to be (his actual self is more Bilbo). I'm not sure I could read the passage where Sam argues with despair at the foot of Mount Doom as him not having an internal life or any depth. That bit makes me dusty every time. I always read it as that Sam can take the ring and not be corrupted, or come home and not be changed, because he is just so fundamentally good. He is the most hobbity hobbit of all. Frodo and Bilbo also have this quality, which is why they were corrupted so slowly, and gandalf specifically says this, but Sam is the most pure-hearted of all.
Imagined fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Jun 27, 2020 |
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Jun 27, 2020 03:12
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:The older I get and the more I read LOTR, the more upset I get about Sam. He really reflects a certain idea of bourgeois people that the Lower Orders are happy with their lot in life and don't have greater or complex feelings. He's able to take on the Ring and still come home to the Shire and raise a family and plant all those trees and write the Book because he never had complex feelings to begin with. It's a perspective Tolkien takes. Like someone of a higher class might try to play an instrument and fail and then spend their whole life wondering what could have been, but someone of a lower class might try to play an instrument and fail and then just get on with doing laundry or fixing things or whatever. Because they don't exist on the same level. Except they do! It's all just human beings! Or Hobbits. Dude, Sam became like mayor of Hobbiton and poo poo, read the appendices.
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Jun 27, 2020 03:27
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Don't mistake humility with simplicity. Sam was able to find happiness even in trying circumstances, and demonstrated more wisdom than those in higher social standing. His lack of ambition for power or wealth or leadership is not a weakness.
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Jun 27, 2020 03:43
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I just don't think Tolkien writes him as having the same depth as the more "aristocratic" hobbits and even if Tolkien might have wanted to be Sam and wrote him as amazing in that light there's a clear tradition of upper class people wishing they could live the simpler less examined and supposedly less stressful life they imagined the lower classes live.
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Jun 27, 2020 05:30
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I like the interpretation that Sam is the real hero and the actual protagonist, I always have, and the evidence is how much actual growth and change Sam goes through compared to all the other characters, and how unambiguously happy Sam's end is. I just am not sure the text reflects that reading.
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Jun 27, 2020 05:33
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Sam seems to be portrayed as less intellectual than Frodo but this is, if anything, presented as a good. I think that when Sam shakes off the vision of Samwise the Strong, this is not meant to be "Sam accepts that he is a lower order entity than the bourgeoise!" it represents "Samwise has the gut sense to realize he's not actually God." Like it's humility, but that humility is a virtue. Like how one of the low-key things that makes Aragorn a good guy is that his original plan was, pretty much, to go take Frodo to the Cracks of Doom even if this meant he died in Mordor.
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Jun 27, 2020 05:43
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:The older I get and the more I read LOTR, the more upset I get about Sam. He really reflects a certain idea of bourgeois people that the Lower Orders are happy with their lot in life and don't have greater or complex feelings. He's able to take on the Ring and still come home to the Shire and raise a family and plant all those trees and write the Book because he never had complex feelings to begin with. It's a perspective Tolkien takes. Like someone of a higher class might try to play an instrument and fail and then spend their whole life wondering what could have been, but someone of a lower class might try to play an instrument and fail and then just get on with doing laundry or fixing things or whatever. Because they don't exist on the same level. Except they do! It's all just human beings! Or Hobbits. sam's a normie. he'd listen to maroon 5 and stuff and when he got married rosie decorated his hobbit hole with livelaughlove items. these people exist
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Jun 27, 2020 07:31
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I like the interpretation that Sam is the real hero and the actual protagonist, I always have, and the evidence is how much actual growth and change Sam goes through compared to all the other characters, and how unambiguously happy Sam's end is. I just am not sure the text reflects that reading. i mean frodo goes to valinor, while the other hobbits had to go back to the shire and hang out with fatty bolger
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Jun 27, 2020 07:38
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Sam has complex feelings and articulates them quite often in the book. I'm tired so specifics elude me right now but just because he doesn't have a very sophisticated vocabulary doesn't mean he's not thinking deeply. Like when he describes the elves as 'happy and sad, and old and young'. That kind of thing.
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Jun 27, 2020 07:48
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:even if Tolkien might have wanted to be Sam and wrote him as amazing in that light there's a clear tradition of upper class people wishing they could live the simpler less examined and supposedly less stressful life they imagined the lower classes live. This is how I read it. I don't know if there's a proper term for it but Sam is an example of the classism equivalent of racism's "noble savage" archetype. Yes, on the surface level it's a positive depiction, but it's a stereotype that reinforces the unjust status quo.
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Jun 27, 2020 07:54
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Did Tolkien ever discuss apartheid?
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Jun 27, 2020 09:16
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Shibawanko posted:i mean frodo goes to valinor, while the other hobbits had to go back to the shire and hang out with fatty bolger Oh no he missed out listening to elves sing about those 2 glowing trees that died that one time for eternity
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Jun 27, 2020 09:29
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Shibawanko posted:i mean frodo goes to valinor, while the other hobbits had to go back to the shire and hang out with fatty bolger Sam goes to Valinor too, just many decades later.
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Jun 27, 2020 09:35
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Safety Biscuits posted:Did Tolkien ever discuss apartheid?
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Jun 27, 2020 09:47
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Cheers. He would have been about 56 by the time the Nationalists were elected; just wondering because I saw something on Twitter mentioning it, but a quick google didn't turn up anything relevant.
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Jun 27, 2020 09:49
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It's possible he didn't have a high opinion of some people but he seemed to be genuinely filled with anti-racist animus, not least because even at the time he could tell that Hitler was basically taking a giant poo poo on his entire field of study.
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Jun 27, 2020 10:02
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Tolkien also criticizes the “treatment of color” in South Africa (and elsewhere, likely suggesting the US) in a reply to a letter from Christopher Tolkien sent while he was stationed during World War 2. I don’t think Tolkien should get a pass on racism, though. He was obviously not free of racial prejudice. He had fairly progressive views on race for his time, but those views are still extremely problematic.
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Jun 27, 2020 10:18
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The notion that Sam is "a somple peasant who knows his place" is a gross misreadimg of the text. Virtually every Bad Thing that happens in Middle Earth os a result og Morgoth/Sauron/Most Elves/Numenor gettimg arrogant and deciding that they were the masters of creation. Every good thing is a result of somebody acceptong that they are not King poo poo of Turd Hill and going back to a comfortable and fulfilling life. Sam is not simple, he just values comfort, good food, and the satisfaction of a job well done, and has no desire to dominate and control others.
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Jun 27, 2020 11:56
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Our introduction to Sam is him having an intellectual debate with Ted Sandyman . He was also an indispensable party of the conspiracy.
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Jun 27, 2020 12:20
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Summoning Sassanid. Regale us with how Sam is, in fact, the true villain of the story!
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Jun 27, 2020 12:37
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I think Tolkien is explicit at some point about Sam being the real hero of the books. And I think he clearly has more introspection and a richer inner world than Pippin, the highest ranking hobbit aristocrat in the fellowship. But Sam is still absolutely a reflection of Tolkien's profoundly conservative social ideology. No, he's not stupid, or even ignorant by the end of the story, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that Tolkien assigns him his guileless humility precisely because of his social class. Sam's character is a statement that the existence of a class system is fundamentally just and a part of the divinely appointed natural order.
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Jun 27, 2020 12:40
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Also remember that Sam was learning “his letters” from Bilbo and getting an education in lore and poetry and so on, all of which was well beyond what someone of “his station” was expected to be satisfied with. Probably one of the reasons Sandyman wasn’t fond of him.
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Jun 27, 2020 12:46
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Yeah, I think we've discussed it before, that Tolkien had some very old-fashioned views on the necessity and purpose of nobility. That there are some peoples born to be magnificent and inspiring leaders who give the commoners something to believe in, and some peoples who are born to be simple, kindly, worldly folk who view the nobles with appropriate awe, but keep them from getting too self-important. It is, at best, a very naive few of how aristocracy works, and it's not hard to see how short a hop it is from that to just plain old 'some peoples are born superior to others' racism.
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Jun 27, 2020 12:46
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You could do something with the class structure of England as reflected in the hobbits generally, I think, although it would not really be to the great favor of the upper classes (Pippin, Merry). Bilbo and Frodo seem vaguely middle class, with Bilbo having a nice house but getting most of what makes him rich through his career (burglary and dwarf antics). Sam of course is working class.
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Jun 27, 2020 12:49
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Nessus posted:Bilbo and Frodo seem vaguely middle class, with Bilbo having a nice house but getting most of what makes him rich through his career (burglary and dwarf antics). girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 12:54 on Jun 27, 2020 |
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Jun 27, 2020 12:52
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PMush Perfect posted:Given what we see of his interactions with his neighbors, I think it'd be more accurate to call Bilbo new money. It'd be extremely easy to see most of his conflicts with his neighbors upon returning to the Shire as being less because of his family and more because of his sudden wealth. Pippin and Merry are nobility, Frodo and Bilbo are gentry.
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Jun 27, 2020 13:26
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Bilbo is not nouveau riche, he was already rich as gently caress before he went on his field trip. He's never worked a day in his life and his family has been there (and rich as gently caress) more or less forever.Hobbit Chapter 1 posted:This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins. The Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him.
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Jun 27, 2020 13:34
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Pippen was also by far the youngest hobbit. In our terms he was like, fifteen when he went on the adventure.
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Jun 27, 2020 13:47
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Hadn't read the books in ages, and my impression was that Pippin was a major idiot, but in the books he's quite smart and quick thinking. He was just curious about the object that was thrown out of Orthanc, and when he went to look at it he was cursed by the Palantir, and had to steal it from Gandalf. And later Gandalf even admits that Pippin probably saved them because of it.
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Jun 27, 2020 13:56
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