Wednesday, 11 February 2015

The Battle of Five Armies: Counting the Jewels

A humorous contribution from the group’s very own Tolkien encyclopaedia, Anna Milon, this week. Take it away, Anna!

Seven objects/props/creatures in BotFA that made me squeal with joy and three that absolutely annoyed me.

Good things:

1. Bilbo's acorn

A beautifully acted emotional scene is made complete with this simple symbol embodying everything to do with hobbits, but also harkening back to Thorin’s given name ‘Oakenshield’. Anticipate large numbers of fans in forests near you collecting these wonderful nuts.

2. The gold bell

Dramatic and yes, cast in pure gold, this bell makes an appearance at the start of the film, lying dejectedly on its side by the entrance to Erebor. Later the dwarven company uses it to breach the barricade, their desperate charge to help Dain accompanied by the mournful knell. It is a good foreshadowing device, although I wonder how they managed to lift it from the floor in so short a time.

3. Light of Earendil

I would not object to owning a vial of water that makes me go green and command demi-gods. 

4. Alfred's corset

Suits him.

5. The were-worms

For the sake of the poor creatures, whom nobody remembers to have been in the canon. Bilbo mentions them in ‘An Unexpected Party’.

6. Bilbo's handkerchief

Seeing them at the very end of the journey just hurt, but it was a wonderful cathartic roundup of the adventure.

7. The elk

The top place in this list must go to Thranduil’s steed, whom some fans dubbed Echo. The creature takes a rightful place next to Sebastian the Hedgehog, Boris the War-boar, Beorn the Under-portrayed Bear and the Eagles. Beautiful and clearly battle-scarred, Echo falls victim to violence, steadfastly protecting her master. And she is a deer! Deer are awesome, steeped in mythological and literary connections to fey magic, innocence, transcendence and duality of pagan deities! Let’s hope we see more of her in the extended edition.

Bad things:

1. Thranduil's cape

Made of something akin to brocade, topped with plate-armour shoulder guards with feather-like scales coming out of them, this is not something you can fight in, be you an elven king or not, especially considering Thranduil’s physics-defying move, when he falls from his Elk.

2. Pure starlight

Is it me or are ‘the white gems of Lasgalen’ a tasteless piece of bling straight out of Moulin Rouge?

3. The horizontal tower

No construction has structural integrity to maintain that kind of position. None!


Monday, 26 January 2015

Ten Things We Did Like About Battle of the Five Armies

Following last week’s blog entry, here is our list of ten things we did like about BotFA.

1. The battle
Whilst we didn’t like the way the battle ended, we did like the structure of it as a whole. It was an exciting battle with plenty of cool moments (including the moment the elves leapt over the dwarf defence wall). And, as always, the CGI was exemplary.

2. Legolas running out of arrows
We were somewhat undecided on this one (would Legolas really not know he had used up all his arrows?) but generally thought it was a nice, fun addition to the film.

3. Thranduil
Perhaps one of the best things about the film. The mention of the aloof, elegant, dangerous elf is usually met with enthusiasm among the group (and jokes about elvish parties). Lee Pace’s Thranduil is brilliantly conceived and fun to watch; a great take on Tolkien’s Elven King.

4. Fili’s death
Without meaning to sound morbid, we all loved Fili’s death. The suddenness with which it happens and the brutality of it were quite moving. There was no long drawn out goodbye; it was instant and shocking. Fans are not used to seeing key heroic characters go in this way, so it was quite startling to see our young dwarf thud to the ground, lifeless, before a shocked Kili.

5. Bilbo
Bilbo seemed to fade into the background somewhat in The Desolation of Smaug, so it was nice to see him come into his own again in BotFA. It’s hard to imagine anyone else as Bilbo now.Two moments stood out, both courtesy of the equally magnificent Ian McKellen: one, when Bilbo boldly tells Gandalf that he does not require his permission to act; and two, when Bilbo sits silently beside a smoking Gandalf in the aftermath of the battle. The latter scene is a good (but sadly solitary) example of when the screen-writers chop in mediocre dialogue for a poignant, wordless scene.

6. The Opening Scene
Yes, we did have the opening scene in the things-we-didn’t-like-list, but not everyone agreed with the argument put forward. It was pointed out that Smaug’s attack did provide an exciting opening, throwing us straight into the action. The case was also made for the compelling interaction between Bard and his son in this scene; Bard’s solitary act in the book becomes father and son teamwork in the film and we liked this deviation.   

7. The Last Goodbye
Billy Boyd’s song is brilliant, a perfect song for the credits, with the poignant last line ‘I bid you all a very fond farewell’.

8. The soundtrack
Howard Shore’s soundtracks for all the LotR and Hobbit films have been outstanding. We particularly like the Laketown and Thorin themes and the way they introduce us to new cultures beyond LotR. The incidental music was also mentioned, including the horn played at Thorin’s funeral which tied in so beautifully with his theme music.

9. Thorin’s dragon sickness
Whilst we were not so sure about the idea of making the dragon sickness a literal sickness, we did like the hallucinogenic moment when it took Thorin over in the great hall of Erebor, bringing him to the brink of madness. Very cool visual effects, well-acted and a dramatic portrayal of inner turmoil.

10. Christopher Lee
We were glad to see Lee return for the final film and looking less frail than he did in An Unexpected Journey. We particularly liked the ‘leave Sauron to me’ line, its delivery, and the way it links events from The Hobbit to LotR.


  

Friday, 16 January 2015

10 things we didn’t like about Battle of the Five Armies

The Thinklings group loved the final Hobbit film and all agreed it was great entertainment, but there were some aspects of it that got our goat. So, following our discussion yesterday of BotFA, here is a list of the things we didn’t like about the film (to be followed shortly by 10 things we did like, because it is important to stay positive in life, right?)

1. Loose ends
Whilst efforts were made to tie together the events of The Hobbit with those of The Lord of the Rings (including a hurried exchange between Thranduil and Legolas about seeking out Aragorn - not sure about this either, as it happens), less efforts were made to tie up loose ends after the battle. What happened to Dain, his battle-pig and his remaining army, for example? In RotK we got to see the conclusion of the Battle of Pelinnor, with the Army of the Dead sweeping in to destroy the remaining enemy hoards. We got to see the aftermath, too, with Pippin walking among the dead to find Merry. It seemed to us that the Battle of the Five Armies just kind of fizzled out, ending not with a bang but a whimper.

2. Alfrid’s misogyny
Alfrid makes some startling misogynist remarks/gestures in the movie. Unfortunately, our collective memory cannot remember them all, but we do know that Alfrid chucking a huge pile of logs at an old lady is among them. The writers have taken a sledge-hammer to the issue of gender in the Hobbit trilogy and Alfrid’s loathing of women is unwelcome and jarring. And then the cringey moment the women rise up to fight and Alfrid is seen running away in a dress with fake breasts made of treasure. Funny, but like I said: sledge-hammer.  

3. Alfrid’s seeing the elven army
Yes, Alfrid makes our list twice. The group likes Alfrid and his relationship with the Master of Laketown; he is amusing, disgusting and well-potrayed by the actor Ryan Gage. But we’re seeing him now as a lesser version of LotR’s Wormtongue. Like Wormtongue, Alfrid is repellent, conniving, and clearly struggles with the opposite sex, but he's just not as conceptually sophisticated. The contrast between Wormtongue and Alfrid is best illustrated by their encounters with vast armies; Alfrid’s waking up to find a huge Elven host was a silly, less impressive version of the extraordinary moment Wormtongue steps out onto an Isengard balcony to view the ten-thousand strong Urak-hai army gathered below. The scene in BotFA was meant to be amusing, and it was; but the writers here have, we think, chosen amusement over grandeur, spectacle and poignancy.

4. Tauriel weeping over Kili
*Shudder*. This was one of our least favourite moments in the film. How long has Tauriel known Kili? Wouldn’t it have been far more moving to have one of the dwarven company mourn Kili's loss than an elf he has known mere days? The Tauriel-Kili relationship has been sweet, but rather awkward and unpersuasive throughout. The dialogue between Tauriel and Thranduil was not good quality either; a simple, sustained look of grief and understanding would have been better than the old 'is this what love feels like? Then why does it hurt so much?' 

5. The were-worms
Where did they go? What did they do? An exciting but brief cameo that begged further development. These are, after all, creatures we have not been acquainted with before and trolls are so last year (I'm kind of joking – trolls are cool).

6. Opening with Smaug
This is a tricky one. It must have been hard for the film-makers to decide where to end DoS and begin BotFA and Peter Jackson has explained his reasons clearly in interviews – why not, he says, end on a cliff-hanger and open with a grand action sequence? But we feel that DoS would have been better served if it had ended with Smaug’s death. PJ could have dropped the mad dwarf-dragon chase around Erebor and focused on the killing of Smaug; it would have made a more satisfying end. Instead, Smaug is finished off so quickly in BotFA it is almost comical. It felt something like: well, that’s the end of that, now let’s get on with the rest of the show. DoS could have ended with what is ultimately the reason for BotFA: Thorin crowing over the gold that is now his, all his.  

7. The journey to Gundabad
This, we felt, was pointless. We agree Michael C. Drout when he says that in the film ‘physically, Middle-earth seems to be not a continent, but a theme park, the size of Disney World, or maybe, if we're generous, Rhode Island. Legolas and Tauriel make a (completely useless) journey to Mt Gundabad, about 300 miles from Erebor, in what seems like, maybe, a half hour of traveling.’[1] We also felt Legolas’s story about his mother’s death and its delivery was somewhat weak. Which leads us to…  

8. Legolas
He’s just not the same. We know Orlando Bloom has aged ten years and that can’t be helped, but…Well, we can’t quite put our finger on it, but something is wrong. He looks almost CGI, his eyes too bright and staring. And he appears stockier, less elegant, when stood next to Daddy Elf, Thranduil. We’d also like him to show more obeisance to said Daddy, even if said Daddy is a bit of an arse – Thranduil is very powerful and commands obedience, if not respect. Legolas’s fight scenes are great, but one of them in particular is going way to far, which leads us to…

9. Legolas climbing up the crumbling stairs
Come on. We bought the stair-surfing, horse-mounting, the oliphaunt-riding, and we just about bought the barrel-hopping, but climbing from one falling to rock to another and another? It defies physics and is just silly.

10. Killing the elk
Killing the elk (I’ve been told it’s a she and has a name – Sheila? Daisy? Can’t remember) is like J. K. Rowling killing Dobby: not very nice. Ok, we don’t mind that much, and the whole scene was actually really great, but poor Thranduil. Could we not have at least seen him mourn the poor beast’s death?



Tuesday, 11 November 2014

Orcs and the Other: Tolkien's Biopolitics

This week we responded to a highly interesting article by Niels Werber entitled ‘Geo- and Biopolitics of Middle-earth: A German Reading of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings’.[1] We began by reflecting on the following passage from the article:

Through reading Tolkien's novels, seeing the movies, or playing computer games like "The Battle for Middle-earth" (EA Games, 2004), one is introduced into a certain bio- and geopolitical knowledge: first of all, races are different not only in terms of skin color or height, but in moral worth, refinement, wisdom, and political integrity. The races are either hereditarily good and wise like Elves or genetically evil and dumb like Orcs, and therefore they make "natural-born" enemies. The absolute and insurmountable hate between Elves and Orcs is not outlined as a consequence of political decision-making, but as a result of their opposing DNA sequences.[2]

The group instantly noted that the generalisation of Elves as ‘hereditarily good and wise’ needs more consideration. Whilst it is true that the orcs are depicted as ‘genetically evil and dumb’, the Elves can be good or malevolent, as in the examples of FĂ«anor and Thranduil. We agreed, tentatively, with the general premise that hatred between Elves and Orcs comes from ‘opposing DNA sequences’, although some members of the group had reservations.

Werber’s suggestion that the ‘analogies between the battle for Middle-earth and the Nazi campaign of racial warfare are striking’ was also met with some uncertainty. One member stated it was ‘pushing it a bit’ to draw this comparison. Tolkien, after all, said he was not a fan of allegory in the preface to the second edition of LotR.  

We pondered the depiction of the orcs as inhuman and the notion, put forward by the German scholar Schmitt, and considered by Werber, that ‘the “inhuman” enemy deserves neither pity nor lawful treatment, but instant death’.[3] We agreed that attitude seems to prevail in The Lord of the Rings, but considered Gollum as an example of an inhuman character that invites pity. We were reminded of the oft-quoted conversation between Frodo and Gandalf:

"What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!"
"Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity."

The conversation, rarely quoted in its entirety, goes on, with Frodo comparing Gollum to an Orc:

‘I am sorry,’ said Frodo. ‘But I am frightened; and I do not feel any pity for Gollum.’
‘You have not seen him,’ Gandalf broke in.
‘No, and I don’t want to,’ said Frodo. ‘I can’t understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death.’
‘Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.’ (LotR, 3 vol edn, p. 58, my italics)

The conversation clearly speaks to the issues discussed by Werber and seems to be a comment on the dangers of making ‘us and them’ distinctions. In Frodo’s eyes, because Gollum is an enemy, he ‘deserves death’. It should be noted that Frodo makes these remarks because he is ‘frightened’, Tolkien perhaps suggesting that fear is a contributing factor to an ‘us and them’ attitude.

We concluded by thinking about Peter Jackson’s depiction of the Orcs in the movie trilogy. We considered Werber’s argument that ‘not a single scene is shot from the perspective of an Orc. They lack a point of view. We do not see the dreadful attacks of Rohan cavalry or Elf-snipers from the standpoint of the "other."’ We agreed with Werber, although some members of the group noted that there were some scenes depicting the orc point-of-view, such as Gothmog’s during the attack on Osgiliath and Minas Tirith. The point Werber makes, however, is that Orcs are not depicted in a way that invites pity for them. Jackson does nothing new to address the ‘us and them’ issue in Tolkien’s fiction with regard to the Orcs. The Orcs are ‘just an enemy’ and need to be destroyed.

Werber’s thought-provoking article contains some complex ideas and we agreed that it would take more time and further research to draw definitive conclusions about the nature of the Enemy and the Other in Tolkien’s fiction.



[1] Niels Werber, ‘Geo- and Biopolitics of Middle-earth: A German Reading of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings’, New Literary History, 36 (2005), 227-246
[2] Werber, p. 228.
[3] Werber, p. 232.

Thursday, 30 October 2014

Undead and Uncanny: The Gothic in Tolkien's Fiction

This week we turned our attention to the gothic in Tolkien’s fiction. This session was not inspired by the closeness of Halloween but by a chapter by Sue Zlosnik in Reading the Lord of the Rings, entitled ‘Gothic Echoes’.[1] In this article, Zlosnik argues that more attention needs to be paid to the influence of the Gothic on The Lord of the Rings. The novel, she says, is ‘best read like a Gothic novel’.[2] She writes:

What I remembered as archetypal evil forces, I found represented through the discourses of late Victorian Gothic fiction. This perception has been enabled by the emergence of a wealth of scholarship in Gothic studies over the last 25 years. The work of Gothic scholars has established critical paradigms that enable us to read The Lord of the Rings as a text that, although set in a mythical past, is preoccupied with the fears of a twentieth century still haunted by a legacy of late nineteenth-century anxieties.[3]

We started our response by brainstorming the various aspects of Gothic that can be found in Tolkien’s fiction. We came up with some key ideas, including the use of ruins, Gothic or uncanny creatures and the undead. We talked about the fact that Tolkien mentions vampires in his fiction and has a character called Thuringwethil who Tolkien Gateway describes as ‘a Vampire servant of Sauron during the First Age’ and ‘Sauron's messenger’. We looked at the following excerpt from the Lay of Leithian:

…The wolves whimpering and yammering fled
like dusky shadows. Out there creep   2810
pale forms and ragged as from sleep, 
crawling, and shielding blinded eyes:
the captives in fear and in surprise
from dolour long in clinging night
beyond all hope set free to light.    2815
A vampire shape with pinions vast
screeching leaped from the ground, and passed, 
its dark blood dripping on the trees;
and Huan neath him lifeless sees
a wolvish corpse – for Thu had flown   2820
to Taur-na-Fuin, a new throne 
and darker stronghold there to build…

It was remarked that this passage evokes something of Wilfred Owen’s ‘Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned’ and his Dulce et Decorum est as much as the Gothic:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
[…]
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Are lines 2810-15 influenced by the horrors of the trenches that Tolkien himself experienced or an evocation of the Gothic?[4] Reading this passage, we also noted how it is difficult to get a sense of Tolkien’s vision of vampires in his work – what do they look like? Are they human? Bat-like? Or both? The poem gives very little away, although we observed that Thuringwethil, with her ‘pinions vast’ is meant to be interpreted as having a bat form.

We then started to think about how the concept of the vampire might appear in Tolkien’s fiction in other ways. We thought about the ring as an evil force that can control another’s will and were taken with Zlosnik’s discussion of vampiric infection:

There are vampiric resonances in The Lord of the Rings. The insidious evil that the Ring represents infects the artefacts that serve it and, by extension, those whose bodies come into contact with them. The knife that pierces Frodo in an early struggle takes from him his strength in a way that is different from the trauma of a normal wound. It also infects him with a nameless poison that enhances the temptation of the Ring; like the bite of the vampire, it infects him with desire.[5]

In The Lord of the Rings, victims of evil can be controlled by the will of dark forces and can also be transformed into the immortal, the undead. For example, the nine Kings of Men who were given rings of power become the undead Ringwraiths and bound to Sauron’s will.  We compared, too, the death of the Witchking with the death of Dracula – both of whom are malevolent, undead characters. ‘Almost in the drawing of a breath,’ Stoker writes, ‘the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight…’ (Stoker, p. 377). The Witchking similarly vanishes from sight; his clothes are left ‘empty’ and ‘shapeless’ and it is said that ‘a cry went up into the shuddering air, and faded to a shrill wailing, passing with the wind, a voice bodiless and thin that died, and was swallowed up, and was never heard again that age of this world.’ Tolkien’s description, we agreed, is certainly evocative of the Gothic.

Finally, we turned our thoughts to the Uncanny. We considered the following two terms and how they might feature in The Lord of the Rings:

Heimlich: belonging to the house; friendly; familiar; I, b: tame (as in animals); I, c: intimate, comfortable; i.e: secure, dometic(ated), hospitable.
Unheimlich: unhomey, unfamiliar, untame, uncomfortable = eerie, weird, etc.

The Lord of the Rings, we reflected, is fully of references to both what is homely and unhomely, familiar and unfamiliar. We found that the gothic was not so much to be found in the contrasts of homely and unhomely, however, but rather in the familiar and unfamiliar. In the portrayal of Gollum as neither Hobbit nor animal we found echoes of the uncanny. There are similarities to be drawn between Gollum and Dracula. In her article, Zlosnik draws our attention two passages, one describing Dracula’s descent down the castle walls and one describing Gollum climbing down a rock:

Down the face of the precipice, sheer and almost smooth it seemed in the pale moonlight, a small black shape was moving with its thin limbs splayed out. Maybe its soft clinging hands and toes were finding crevices and holds that no Hobbit could ever have seen or used, but it looked as if it was just creeping down on sticky pads, like some large prowling thing of insect-kind. And it was coming down head first, as if it was smelling its way. Now and again it lifted its head slowly, turning it right back on its skinny neck, and the hobbits caught a glimpse of two small pale gleaming lights, its eyes that blinked at the moon for a moment and then were quickly lidded again. (LotR, TTT, p. 268) 

...my feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over that dreadful abyss, face down, with his cloak spreading out about him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow...I saw the fingers and toes grasp the stones, worm clear of mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall. (Stoker, p. 34) 

We agreed that these depictions were remarkably similar. It was pointed out that the similarities could simply be coincidence, but there are a number of things about the descriptions that suggest otherwise, including the way they both move – the emphasis on uncanny, downwards movement – and the description of both characters as unhuman-like creatures – Gollum is described as looking like something of insect-kind, Dracula a moving like a lizard. Other similarities outside of these passages include their general appearance – both have sharp teeth and pale complexions. Tolkien writes of Gollum, ‘His tongue lolled out between his sharp yellow teeth, licking his colourless lips’, whilst Stoker describes Dracula as having ‘peculiarly sharp white teeth’ which ‘protruded over the lips’ and as have ‘extraordinary pallor’. It is worth noting that Dracula’s lips have ‘remarkable ruddiness’ and actually suggest he has ‘astonishing vitality’.

We concluded that Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is not overtly Gothic, but that the Gothic permeates the text; it is, to quote one Thinklings member, ‘woven deeply into the novel’s DNA’.




[1] Sue Zlosnik, ‘Gothic Echoes’, in Reading the Lord of the Rings: New Writings on Tolkien’s Classic, ed. by Robert Eaglestone (London: Continuum, 2005), pp.47-58
[2] Zlosnik, p. 50.
[3] Zlosnik, p. 47.
[4] A question for further discussion.
[5] Zlosnik, p. 56.

Monday, 28 April 2014

Random Rant: Dwarves vs. Smaug in Erebor

About two weeks ago, I was able to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug on DVD, and for the most part I was content. However, after two hours I decided I may as well throw my copy of The Hobbit out the nearest window.

For the last half hour, I watched dumbstruck as the dwarves scampered round Erebor trying to kill Smaug with all manner of industrial mining stuff. It’s a complete departure from the dwarves in the book who push Bilbo into Erebor and wish him luck with finding the Arkenstone. For me, Jackson has forgotten one of the reasons I love The Hobbit – the good guys are complicated. They’re not there to take back Erebor, they’re there to get their gold back. It’s this that gives them depth because they’re going to the Lonely Mountain is out of greed rather than some noble quest.

However, Jackson does give us this awesome last scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3-vfsZdrK0



- Michael C


Wednesday, 23 April 2014

Maps and Memories: Navigating Landscapes and Ruins in Tolkien's Fiction

This week in Thinklings we talked about landscape and ruins in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. We began by considering how Tolkien uses landscape in his fiction and how it features throughout the novels. We discussed the following assertion made by Steve Walker:


Tolkien’s topographical anatomy is the more natural for its responsiveness to the systole and diastole of narrative; the relative prominence of anatomy in the landscape directly reflects the relevance of setting to the immediate situation. Thus, when the ruggedness of the landscape becomes a prominent threat to the progress of Frodo and Sam towards Mordor, setting previously peripheral asserts itself, dominating the narrative through a vividly hostile animistic profile.[1]

After decoding the author's body metaphor, we agreed that anatomy in the landscape was indeed something that occurs often in Tolkien's fiction. One member suggested that the landscape seems to get more vivid and more prominent as Frodo and Sam enter Mordor. We looked at the way the following passage makes use of personification to suggest that the landscape is trying to hinder the hobbits' progress:


‘Before them, darkling against a pallid sky, the great mountains reared their threatening heads…they swung out long arms northward; and between these arms there was a deep defile. This was Cirith Gorgor, the Haunted Pass, the entrance to the land of the enemy. High cliffs lowered up on either side, and thrust forward from its mouth were two sheer hills, black-boned and bare…’[2]

We then thought about how Tolkien personifies the landscape in general. We had a rather lively debate about the stone giants in The Hobbit and whether or not these are meant to be literal or metaphorical. Most members of the group tended to believe that Tolkien was trying to personify the landscape and that the 2012 film interpretation was inaccurate and merely there to provide more action.

This debate brought us eventually to Shippey's notion of Tolkien's 'cartographical plot'[3] and Tolkien’s assertion that he ‘wisely started with a map, and made the story fit…’ For Tolkien, the geography of Middle-Earth came before the plot; we considered to what extent this is an unusual approach to story-telling and compared the cartographic plot of LotR to the plot of The Hobbit. Members generally agreed that The Hobbit’s story may have been driven more by plot and less by geography. We also considered the following notion from Shippey:


…for their first hundred-odd pages the Hobbits seem to be wandering through a very closely localised landscape…and that landscape and the beings attached to it are in a way the heroes. They force themselves into the story. But while they slow its pace, appear strictly redundant, almost eliminate the plot centred on the Ring, they also do the same job as the maps and the names: they suggest very strongly a world which is more than imagined…one which has been ‘worn down’, like ours, by time and by the process of lands and languages and people all growing up together over millennia.[4]

This led us from landscapes to ruins and the way in which ruins might serve to suggest a world ‘worn down’ or ‘do the same job as maps or names’. We began by thinking about ruins we had visited ourselves and how they made us feel. We thought about how they might make us feel reflective, might recall a memory, as well as how the present intersects with the past in these ancient places. We discussed a member's visit to the Rollright Stones (see picture) and how Tolkien’s visit to this place influenced his depiction of the Barrow Downs and their ‘hills…crowned with green mounds and…standing stones pointing upwards like jagged teeth out of green gums’.




From thinking about our own experiences we were able to interpret the Old English poem The Ruin and the narrator’s feelings as he considers a Roman ruin. We thought about the following summary of the poem’s narrative by Lawrence Beaston:


Howsoever ephemeral are the objects of material culture in the long stretches of geological time, the speaker sees that those works are much more durable than the people who constructed and used them. The poem’s central truth, then, concerns not the mutability of the world but the fleeting nature of human life. The poem’s point is that the things that people make out of the substances of this world have the capacity to outlast their makers. Not only could human artifacts last beyond the span of a single life. They could, the speaker realizes, survive any given socio-political order. And perhaps nothing represents the difference in the durability of physical artifacts and their makers more aptly than an uninhabited city. [5]

We thought about the role of ruins in The Lord of the Rings, contemplating each ruin we come across. Ruins stir memories, like the stones atop Amon Sul, which generate discussion of the past and invite Aragorn to sing a song about a piece of Middle-Earth history. In light of this, Deborah Sabo’s reflection on the nature of ruins seemed especially relevant:


The particular role of a ruin or archaeological place in a cultural landscape will depend upon how that place is remembered, the degree of attachment, and especially the way in which stories drawn from the deep past, or perhaps more recently invented and woven around that place, serve the needs of the present.[6]

We thought about how the ruins in The Lord of the Rings might serve the ‘needs of the present’ and the way in which different places are remembered. ‘The material leavings of more ancient inhabitants’ and the memories they stir, says Sabo, ‘contextualize the story's present events, simultaneously for the reader and for the characters’.[7] One of the best examples of LotR’s depiction of ruins comes from Legolas’ ‘Lament of the Stones’ – a lament that seems an apt conclusion to this blog entry:


'The Elves of this land were of a race strange to us of the Silvan folk, and the trees and the grass do not now remember them; only I hear the stones lament them: deep they delved us, fair they wrought us, high they builded us; but they are gone. They are gone. They sought the Havens long ago.'[8]


- Corinne



[1] Steve Walker, The Power of Tolkien's Prose: Middle-Earth's Magical Style (London: Macmillan, 2009), p. 44.
[2] J. R. R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (London, Harper Collins, 2012), p. 622
[3] Tom Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth, (London: Harper Collins, 2005), p. 118.
[4] Shippey, p. 124.
[5] Lawrence Beaston, ‘The Ruin and the Brevity of Human Life’, Neophilologus, 95 (2011), 477–489.
[6] Deborah Sabo, ‘Archaeology and the Sense of History in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth’ Mythlore, 26 (2007), 91-112 (p. 91).
[7] Sabo, p. 93.
[8] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (London: Harper Collins, 2012), pp. 283-4.