Renown and Responsibility: Tolkien and the Heroic Ideal

This week in Thinklings we thought about the question ‘Did Aragorn “die at the Somme”?’ in a response to an article about the heroic ideal by Steven Brett Carter.[1]

 In his article, Carter argues:

Through  the  character  of  Faramir,  as  well  as  the  implementation  of other,  more  subtle  elements,  Tolkien  shows  the  impossibility  of  the  ancient heroic  model  in  twentieth-century  warfare.  Faramir  embodies a  redefined  form of  the  heroic  model  that  is  more  representative  of  the  modern  warrior  by accepting  war  as  a  necessary  part  of  western  civilization,  but preferring  peace. Instead of longing for combat and the possibility of gaining honor and glory like his  brother  and  others,  Faramir  does  his  duty  to  his  state  without  becoming absorbed  by  these  ancient  ideals.  Though  characters  such  as  Aragorn  and Boromir  are  not  necessarily  as  glory-driven  as  their  classical  counterparts, Aragorn’s  eagerness  to  reclaim  the  throne  of  Gondor  and  Boromir’s  desire  to take the fight to the enemy set their heroic figures apart from the distinctly more reserved Faramir.[2]

We thought about World War One and how attitudes towards honour and battle have changed since Anglo-Saxon times. We discussed how ancient heroes were ‘inadequate representations of the hardships faced by the modern solider’.[3] We tended to agree with Carter that Faramir did seem to be a way for Tolkien to represent the modern soldier, especially in the way he put the safety of his men, or the success of an attack, above the opportunity for glory.

Carter also argues that the colours worn by Faramir’s rangers ‘align them with more modern military forces’, being similar to khaki.[4] Some members were less certain of this idea, suggesting that Tolkien might not have been necessarily drawing a direct parallel between Faramir’s soldiers and WW1 soldiers through clothing. We discussed how camouflage is used elsewhere in the novels, such as in the cloaks provided by Galadriel to the fellowship. Some members did agree though that camouflage would certainly make Faramir appear more interested in stealth than in hand-to-hand combat.

One of the main aspects of Carter’s article that we questioned was whether you could say that Aragorn ‘died at the Somme’. We questioned whether Tolkien’s interest in modern attitudes to warfare made him reject the old attitudes of honour and glory in battle. We wondered whether Tolkien was accommodating both types of warfare in his novels. As in Tolkien’s ‘homecoming’, we get two sides to the debate.  When discussing this, we also considered the following suggestion by Roger Sale:

[The hobbits’ journey] forces one to ask why the heroism of Frodo and Sam should strike such resonant chords in Tolkien while that of the others, gravely and firmly though Tolkien believes in it, should remain so unable to stir his genius...Frodo Baggins, the real hero in this book where all must be heroic, is Tolkien’s affirmation of possibility in a world where all old and other heroic types are by themselves inadequate. [...] It turns out that Tolkien is no more interested in the old heroism than we are.[5]

We questioned whether it was a fair comment to say that the old heroism did not ‘stir [Tolkien’s] genius’. Some members seemed to be of the opinion that Sale was mistaken in saying that Tolkien was ‘no more interested in the old heroism than we are’. Tolkien is interested in the old heroism; he may seem to be the old, disenchanted retainer Tidwald of ‘Homecoming’, but this does not necessarily mean that he depicts glory in battle wholly negatively. The Ride of the Rohirrim, with its depiction of the ‘joy of battle’, still allows readers to revel in the ancient ideals. This takes us back to what we discussed in the first week: The Lord of the Rings is a ‘chameleon’ that can be interpreted in many different ways, thus ‘If you want an epic; it is an epic, with battles galore, banners flying and swords flashing’.[6]

 

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[1], Steven Brett Carter, ‘Faramir and the Heroic Ideal of the Twentieth Century; or, How Aragorn died at the Somme’, Mythlore, 30 (2012), 89-103.

[2] Ibid., p. 101.

[3] Ibid., p. 101.

[4] Ibid., p. 93.

[5] Roger Sale, ‘Tolkien and Frodo Baggins’, in Tolkien and the Critics: Essays on J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, ed. Neil D. Isaacs & Rose A. Zimbardo (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976), pp. 247-288 (p. 288).

[6] Verlyn Flieger, 'A Postmodern Medievalist?', in Tolkien's Modern Middle Ages, ed. by Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 17-28 (pp.17-18).

Autonomy and Control: Tolkien's Novels and the Freedom of the Reader

To what extent do The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit invite audience participation?

 

This was one of the questions we addressed in our first Thinklings meeting of 2014. In a recent article Nils Ivar Agøy argues that ‘The Lord of the Rings is a book to make ones own’,[1] whilst Verlyn Flieger has called the novel ‘something of a chameleon’, a novel that will ‘take on whatever literary hue best blends with its readers assumptions’.[2] We discussed to what extent we believed these notions to be true and what the implications were for how we read Tolkien, as individuals, in the furture. The following quote from Agøy’s article, which we considered in some detail, received a mixed response:

 

 

The Lord of the Rings...invites participation, in many subtle ways. Then, too, we simply have to contribute something of our own if we are to visualize what happens in it. Tolkien’s descriptions are rarely very detailed. People, buildings and objects are usually described more or less as the scenery or weather is described, quite vaguely, that is; as seen from a distance...The  book  encourages,  almost  forces  the reader to make her own, more detailed pictures of people and settings—which many do so thoroughly as to become quite annoyed when they discover, in illustrations or films, for instance, that others see things differently.[3]

 

The group was very much interested in the idea that The Lord of the Rings could be in some way ‘personalised’ and generally agreed that it did require readers to participate in the creation of the story. Some members, however, did question the extent to which Tolkien’s writing is ‘rarely very detailed’. After all, there are many examples of Tolkien entering into in depth descriptions of places and characters. The wasteland-esque description of Mordor is one example and Treebeard another (although this character has been visually depicted in various ways in artwork). There were clearly some aspects of Middle Earth and its inhabitants that Tolkien did not want to relinquish authorial control over.

 

Tolkien’s reluctance to give his readers imaginative freedom in all areas of his created world led us on to consider Roland Barthes’ ‘Death of the Author’ theory, which suggests that ‘to give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text’.[4] We compared this theory with the following quote from Tolkien’s ‘On Fairy Stories’:

 

However good in themselves, illustrations do little good to fairy-stories. The radical distinction between all art (including drama) that offers a visible presentation and true literature is that it imposes one visible form. Literature works from mind  to mind  and  is  thus  more  progenitive. It is at once more universal and more poignantly particular. If it speaks of bread or wine or stone or tree, it appeals to the whole of these things, to their ideas; yet each hearer will give to them a peculiar personal embodiment  in his imagination.[5]

 

Most members were unaware that Tolkien held such an opinion of art and drama. Was Tolkien, like Bartes, against the imposing nature of an author on a text? Did he want to give some of the sub-creation process over to his readers? We considered the work of Benjamin Saxton which considers the extent to which Tolkien allowed his characters agency and to which he, himself, relinquished authorial control. Says Saxton, ‘Tolkien spoke explicitly against the notion of an author controlling a text’.[6] This part of his article particularly interested us:

 

As  his  Letters  demonstrate  most  forcibly,  Tolkien  often defended  his  writing  against [...] perceived  misreadings  of  his  work.  For example,  in  response  to  Morton  Zimmermann’s  screenplay  of  The  Lord  of  the Rings, Tolkien complained that he frequently found his work treated ‘carelessly in general, in places recklessly...’  (Letters  270).  On  the  one  hand  Tolkien’s  displeasure  is understandable  especially  for  any  of  us  who  feels  that  his  creative  work  has been  misinterpreted  or  overlooked. But  how  do  these  comments  square  with Tolkien’s  insistence  on  the  ‘freedom  of  the  reader’  instead  of  ‘the  purposed domination of the author?’[7]

 

The group contemplated whether or not Tolkien was being hypocritical, whether he was actually reluctant to give up ‘control’ of his work. Did Tolkien want the best of both worlds? Some members considered this might be the case, and wondered how Tolkien would have reacted to the cartoon depiction of Thranduil as an ugly toad-like creature in a loin cloth. Yet one member took this example of artistic interpretation to argue that Tolkien was right to criticise interpretations of his work if they were, as he said, ‘reckless’. Perhaps he would simply have had to suffer the depiction of Thranduil thus, if he does not describe elves in much detail in his work? After all, people have many ideas of what elves look like based on various examples they have come across in childhood stories and fairytales. Flieger seems right to say the novel is a ‘chameleon’ based on the readers’ assumptions – was the cartoon version of Thranduil ‘reckless’ or inaccurate or simply a product of what the director thought he knew of elves from other cultural sources?

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[1]Nils Ivar Agøy, ‘Vague or Vivid?: Descriptions in The Lord of the Rings’, Tolkien Studies, 10 (2013), 49-67 (p. 49).

[2] Verlyn Flieger, 'A Postmodern Medievalist?', in Tolkien's Modern Middle Ages, ed. by Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 17-28 (pp.17-18).

[3] Agøy, p. 49.

[4] Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author,’ in Image, Music, Text (New York: Hill, 1977), pp 142-148 (p. 147).

[5] J. R. R. Tolkien, ‘On Fairy Stories’, in The Monsters and the Critics (__), p. 60.

[6] Benjamin Saxton, ‘J. R. R. Tolkien, Sub-creation, and Theories of Authorship’, Mythlore, 31 (2013), 47-59 (pp. 56-7).

[7] Saxton, p. 57.

 

 

Apples and Ideas: The Roots of Thinklings

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." - George Bernard Shaw

As this is the first post of the Thinklings blog, it seems only right to say a little about the Tolkien Ideas Group and the purpose behind the blog itself.

Thinklings (or TIG) was set up by myself in 2012 with the aim of bringing together students of Royal Holloway who had an interest in Tolkien’s work.

‘Inklings’, you are no doubt aware, was the name of an informal literary discussion group of which Tolkien was a key member. This name was the inspiration for RHUL ‘Thinklings’ and gave birth to an informal discussion group where ideas about Tolkien’s work could be shared and explored. In the beginning, Thinklings was called an 'ideas' group as opposed to a 'reading' group simply because TIG was deemed a better acronym than TRG; but, now I think on it, I am pleased with this decision as I have come to understand and appreciate the very nature and implication of ideas themselves.

The exchange of ideas is always progressive. As Victor Hugo once said, Ideas can no more flow backward than can a river.And all ideas are valuable. It’s ok if your idea does not sound all that great to you: A half-baked idea is okay as long as it's in the oven (author unknown). I could imagine a hobbit coming up with this humorous, homely quote - although an everyday hobbit would probably frown upon such talk of 'ideas' and 'progression'. Hobbits, after all, prefer to talk about Shire gossip, especially if it involves their neighbours. Perhaps Tolkien had a similar thought in mind to Tobias S. Gibson when he invented the nature of hobbits: Great people talk about ideas. Small people talk about other people. For hobbits, of course, 'small' would take on a double meaning, denoting both stature and small-mindedness![1]

One of my favourite quotes, and one which I think I will use to motivate myself in future, is: A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one (Mary Kay Ash). The main aim of Thinklings is to generate and harvest enthusiasm for Tolkien’s work through the exchange ideas. By exchanging ideas, we multiply them, as George Bernard Shaw suggests with his apple-idea comparison. Whether you consider yourself to be a wise wizard, a learned elf, or a humble hobbit when it comes to Tolkien lore, your opinion always matters.

By sharing our discussions with you via weekly posts on this blog, I hope ideas about Tolkien’s work will continue to be exchanged and multiplied.

- C. Dale

 

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[1] Since writing this entry I have discovered a lovely quote from an interview with Tolkien that explains why he chose to make the hobbits small in size: 'Hobbits are just rustic English people, made small in size because it reflects (in general) the small reach of their imagination - not the small reach of their courage or latent power.' (Broadcast Jan 1971 on BBC Radio 4's 'Now Read On ...'). I'm glad I found this; 'small-mindedness' felt like an inadeqaute way to describe the nature of hobbits!