Death Wears Duckie Pajamas - bulletsponge accountabilibuddy thread!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Internet VFW > Death Wears Duckie Pajamas - bulletsponge accountabilibuddy thread!

Hannibal Rex: Feb 13, 2010

bulletsponge13 posted:

I never like Tolkien, so never read his poo poo. Failed 6th grade honor English because 'i refuse to read this terrible crap.' Like 9 pages of the emotional situation of grass on the field of battle only to pull a Stephen King- 'there was a battle. Afterwards, they feasted.' I should give him another chance.

Tolkien was a WW1 vet and pretty much his entire circle of pre-war friends died in it. He probably only survived because he caught trench fever and ended up in the hospital rather than continue fighting at the Somme.

A lot of his writing is also about him processing his war experience and trying to find some universal meaning by comparing it to ancient warrior culture and preserved writings and poems about war. If you read it from that perspective, I'm sure you'll find something worthwhile and relateable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Homecoming_of_Beorhtnoth_Beorhthelm%27s_Son

quote:

In Beowulf we have only a legend of "excess" in a chief. The case of Beorhtnoth is still more pointed even as a story; but it is also drawn from real life by a contemporary author. Here we have Hygelac be�having like young Beowulf: making a "sporting fight" on level terms; but at other people's expense. In his situation he was not a subordinate, but the authority to be obeyed on the spot; and he was responsible for all the men under him, not to throw away their lives except with one object, the defence of the realm from an implacable foe. He says himself that it is his pur�pose to defend the realm of �thelred, the people, and the land (52-3). It was heroic for him and his men to fight, to annihilation if necessary, in the attempt to destroy or hold off the invaders. It was wholly un�fitting that he should treat a desperate battle with this sole real object as a sporting match, to the ruin of his purpose and duty.

Why did Beorhtnoth do this? Owing to a defect of character, no doubt; but a character, we may surmise not only formed by nature, but moulded also by "aristocratic tradition", enshrined in tales and verse of poets, now lost save for echoes. Beorhtnoth was chivalrous rather than strictly heroic. Honour was in itself a motive, and he sought it at the risk of placing his heor�werod, all the men most dear to him, in a truly heroic situation, which they could redeem only by death. Magnificent perhaps, but certainly wrong. Too foolish to be heroic. And the folly Beorhtnoth at any rate could not wholly redeem by death.

This was recognized by the poet of The Battle Maldon, though the lines in which his opinion are ex�pressed are little regarded, or played down. The translation of them given above is (I believe) accurate, in representing the force and implication of his words, though most will be more familiar with Ker's: "then the earl of his overboldness granted ground too much to the hateful people"(3). They are lines in fact of severe criticism, though not incompatible with loyalty, and even love. Songs of praise at Beorhtnoth's funeral may well have been made of him, not unlike the lament of the twelve princes for Beowulf; but they too may have ended on the ominous note struck by the last word of the greater poem: lofgeornost "most desirous of glory".

Hannibal Rex fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Jun 11, 2022

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Hannibal Rex: Feb 13, 2010

bulletsponge13 posted:

I ask because I feel guilty. I want to be more routine, that was part of the original intent of the thread...but I also had what turned out to be some unrealistic expectations of some of the emotional difficulties I've encountered in digging out some of this nonsense. Or that I have no idea how to write- like the process, I mean. Not structurally, but like methodology? I guess? I'm explaining it poorly.
I feel guilty that I drop like 15 pages and then gently caress off for months.

Mate, don't worry about your pace, this isn't your day job. I only drop in every couple of months to see what you've written, and usually I don't even comment because I don’t feel I have something meaningful to add. I appreciate it all the same.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2023 11:26

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