My own comments on this topic: Many moons ago I got into a . . . discussion with someone about The Lord of the Rings. In particular one of the things I dislike about the books, particularly after reading the Silmarillian, was that is was basically all downhill. The time of the lamps was a “greater” age than the time of the trees that followed it. Then the “first age” was a time of war and bloodshed, but it was also an age of greatness. Even the tragedies were great in their own way. Then the Second Age and the great civilizations of the elves, the ones that hadn’t been eradicated by the end of the First, are in decline, still great but in decline, but there are the Numenoreans, men with a greatness of their own, not as much as the elves at their height but still great. Then comes the fall of Numenor and the Third Age. The elves continue their decline and the humans manage to claw back a bit but never reach he level they had in Numenor. And then we have the War of the Ring. That “war”, the most massive undertaking the forces of Men can manage (the Elves play almost no part in it staying mostly on the sidelines) wouldn’t even be a battle in the First Age, and it’s against a much weakened Sauron at that (that much of his power is bound up in the Ring and, thus, unavailable to him is the prime motivation of the quest). And yet despite Sauron’s weakened state, the allies against him cannot field sufficient force to defeat him in the field. This underscores how far they had declined since earlier in the Third Age, the armies of elves and men did defeat him and that when he had the Ring and thus full use of his power. And then, at the end, the last of the greats among the elves are leaving and the decline of the Elves is essentially complete. The last “pure” of the old Blood of Numenor passes on in the appendices. And the Fourth Age is but a pale shadow of the Third. This is all very mythic of course. It goes back to the whole “Paradise Lost” idea, to the Greek “ages” (Gold then Silver then Iron, each age “worse” than the last) and others. It’s also contrary to what I see in the “real world”. The person with whom I was arguing disputed that the present actually was better than the past. I cited as an example that all the wealth of Rome could not have bought Caesar a single Tylenol and that even the poor today live far better than even the wealthy of the Roman Empire. The response was that the person with which I was arguing would be perfectly content living in Roman times compared with today just “I’d have to get used to having slaves do for me what machines do today.” Say what? 1) If you don’t think that having machines, rather than slaves doing menial tasks is, in and of itself a vast improvement, then we cannot be friends. That’s just . . . evil. 2) What made her (it was a woman) think she’d be the slave owner and not the slave? And, incidentally, this isn’t really a criticism of Tolkien. It is very mythic and, as such, succeeds brilliantly. It’s just not something I normally enjoy reading. Yet even so, I find myself drawn, from time to time, back to The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion*, which just underscores how very effective it is. *I do have to be careful, especially with the latter work. I have a tendency toward depression anyway and the tragic nature of Middle Earth can tend to exacerbate that tendency.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 02:18:55 +0000
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