Dominic Monaghan as Merry (left) and John Rhys-Davies as Gimli
Grimspound ruins, Dartmoor National Park, England
Posted on 01/14/2003 6:28:04 AM PST by JameRetief
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 World War I's Battle of the Somme (Photograph by Corbis) |
 Battle scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (© 2001 New Line Productions, photograph courtesy New Line Cinema) |
 Factory in Birmingham, England (Still image from National Geographic Television) |
 English countryside (Still image from National Geographic Television) |
 Mordor, seen in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (© 2001 New Line Productions, photograph courtesy New Line Cinema) |
 The Shire, seen in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (© 2001 New Line Productions, photograph courtesy New Line Cinema) |
In 1916 Tolkien was sent to France, where he and his fellow soldiers faced the terrifying new mechanisms of modern warfare—machine guns, tanks, and poison gas—fighting in some of the bloodiest battles known to human history. Tolkien fought in the Battle of the Somme, a vicious engagement in which over a million people were either killed or wounded.
In the trenches of World War I, Tolkien began recording the horrors of war that would later surface in The Lord of the Rings. Later that year he caught trench fever, an illness carried by lice, and was sent back to England. During his convalescence, he began writing down the stories and mythology of Middle-earth, which would form the basis for The Silmarillion.
"An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience," Tolkien acknowledged, but he strongly denied that his story was an allegory for World War I or II.* Although The Lord of the Rings was written during World War II and follows the rise of a great evil threatening to envelop the world, the ring was not meant to symbolize the atomic bomb. Likewise, the characters Sauron and Saruman, although both tyrants, are imaginary characters and are not meant to represent Hitler or Stalin.
As professor Daniel Timmons notes, the beginnings, the processes, and the ends of The Lord of the Rings and World War II are wholly different.
In the foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote, "By 1918, all but one of my close friends were dead." The reader cannot help but notice that the Dead Marshes of Mordor is eerily reminiscent of World War I's Western Front and its utter devastation of life.
Industrialization and Pollution
The industrial revolution, a period of rapid change beginning in Britain around 1750 and lasting well into the 1800s, transformed the cultural and physical landscape of England.
Handmade products crafted in small-town shops gave way to urban factories and mechanized production. Textiles, shipbuilding, iron, and steel emerged as important industries, and the country's population increasingly migrated to urban areas to work in the factories. Coal fueled these industries, polluting the air with black smoke and dotting the countryside with mining spoil.
Although born well after the industrial revolution, Tolkien witnessed the lasting effects of industry on the environment, first as a child in Birmingham and later as an adult in Oxford.
Tolkien's concern for nature echoes throughout The Lord of the Rings. Evil beings of Middle-earth dominate nature and abuse it to bolster their own power. For example, Saruman, the corrupt wizard, devastates an ancient forest as he builds his army.
The Elves, in contrast, live in harmony with nature, appreciating its beauty and power, and reflecting a sense of enchantment and wonder in their artful songs.
Tolkien's Linguistic Training
J.R.R. Tolkien devoted his life to the pursuit of knowledge, especially the study of language. He was an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon for much of his professional life.
Tolkien's ability with languages inspired his studies in philology, the branch of linguistics concerned with the relationships and ancestry of languages. Tolkien worked as a philologist throughout his life, publishing articles on Anglo-Saxon texts, such as Beowulf, and co-editing an edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
The Impact of The Lord of the Rings
While recent opinion polls have ranked The Lord of the Rings as one of the most popular literary works of this century, Tolkien's publisher initially thought this "work of genius" would lose money. And when Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy initially appeared in 1954-55, they received mixed critical response.
Some commentators, such as C.S. Lewis and W.H. Auden, declared the trilogy a masterpiece. Others, such as Mark Roberts and Edmund Wilson, thought it was juvenile trash. Auden remarked that people seemed to either love Tolkien's work or hate it. Although there were opposing views, the books sold reasonably well and exceeded the publisher's initial expectations.
In the 1960s the popularity of The Lord of the Rings exploded when a pirated version became available in America and as themes of resisting political corruption and preserving the natural environment resonated with the challenges readers faced in their own lives. Moreover, a sort of cult appeared, with people wearing buttons labeled FRODO LIVES or GANDALF FOR PRESIDENT. Many clubs, specialty journals, and other fantasy books appeared.
The enduring appeal of the books is obvious today. As in the 1960s, people are reading The Lord of the Rings in cafés, in subways, and at bus stops; and millions worldwide continue to be enchanted and inspired by Tolkien's massive work.
Watch J.R.R. Tolkien's publisher, Rayner Unwin, talk about his discovery of The Hobbit and his contribution to The Lord of the Rings.
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The Daily Tolkien articles |
The Tolkien Virgin articles |
| ARTICLES 1-10 | 1) Pre-amble and The Ainulindalë |
| ARTICLES 11-20 | 2) Ainulindalë/Valaquenta |
| ARTICLES 21-30 | 3) Of Aule and Yavanna |
| 31) Model Languages: On Tolkien | 4) Of The Coming of Elves and the Captivity of Melkor |
| 32) Beyond The Movie: Author and History | 5) Of Thingol and Melian |
Your Daily Tolkien Ping! Coming from many sources, these articles cover many aspects of Tolkien and his literary works. If anyone would like for me to ping them directly when I post articles such as this let me know. Enjoy!
Why is it, do you think, that poverty in cities is often so much more squalid and unpleasant than the same thing in rural areas? I suppose in part because in cities it is so concentrated.
 Ring Ping!! |
Poverty in the country isn't very pretty, but easier to overlook if the countryside is beautiful. How many cities can be said to be "beautiful", and equal to even the sight of looking across a small valley with a stream at the bottom, and the hills covered in autumn colors? Not many, I would suggest.
Tolkien rightly lamented the encroachment of modernity getting nearer to his beloved countryside, which was mostly agricultural, with small towns thrown in. Did the earlier hunter-gatherers lament the clearing of their endless forests for the tidy farms? Probably, but that was the price of developing more "carrying capacity" that freed more people from spending all their waking hours searching for food, allowing for the surplus energy to be spent on arts, crafts, and industry.
While I love the countryside, and it's still out there, only further away, I know industrialization has been the greatest blessing for the animal I love best, the horse. Prior to the internal combustion engine, the life of most horses was "nasty, brutal, and short", to one extent or another. Horses were organic mobile power sources, and even though expensive, had to be "used", and "used up". And that was in civilian life. Outside of the parade ground, the life of the horse was harder in the military, especially in wartime.
I'm glad that those cars, nasty diesel trucks, and military vehicles have allowed us to "downgrade" the horse to the status of a pet. After being man's chief source of military and farming muscle for 5000 years, it's a well-earned rest. So sometimes that smoke-belching technology brings good with it, too.
True, often you see poor households in the country that are the very picture of squalor, trash is piled high everywhere you look, wrecked vehicles all over, the residents unbathed probably.
OTOH, you more often see equally poor households in the country where everything is tidy and picked up, the folk don't have much, but they manage to make a life that is not too terrible.
In post #9, I seem to be thinking along similar lines to you.
Didn't know you were a horseman. I grew up around them, as I grew up in a very rural area, of which they were a part. 'Course I'm allergic to the things. How do you feel about racing?
I love diesel trucks (and diesel engines in general) and drive a diesel pickup.
I love diesel trucks (and diesel engines in general) and drive a diesel pickup.
I consider diesels a necessary evil. The smell of diesel on a cold, wet morning reminds me of the Army, and the feelings of misery I have on mornings like that.
As far as horse racing goes, I don't oppose it, but I don't like it either, for a couple of reasons. For one, the big stakes racing treats horses like race cars. Very expensive, but ultimately disposable. I don't mind seeing $250K cars trashed, as long as the driver doesn't get hurt. Not the same with race horses, who are started out young, and used up fast. A long life is assured only if the horse seems like good breeding stock.
The casinos in Detroit have virtually wrecked horse racing in Michigan. That means a lot of horses get sold off for dogfood. But it also means that some horses get sold to good families for a low price, just to save their lives. That's how a friend bought a wonderful TB mare off the race track. Emeraud's previous owner decided it was better to sell her to a good home for $1000, than get $1500 for dogfood. I can see why she was a failure as a race horse, with her "what, you want ME to gallop?" attitude. But she has the most fluid canter I've ever seen in a horse, which she passes on to her kids, who all have the potential to be olympic-caliber eventers.
So I won't be too sad seeing horse racing go away, due to its high potential for abuse, along with some of the other equine events. Maybe that's because I work in the smaller local dressage schooling shows, where the horse is part of the family, and is expected to be treated as such. Suspected abuse gets a stern warning of dire consequences. Witnessed abuse gets the cops called.
Secondly, the urban poor of the industrial era had to make a giant change in their mentality regarding time: they were regimented and "on the clock" in the city. They had to work all the time, often in appalling conditions which were psychologically trying, and tedious in the extreme.
Rural poor, in contrast, did not live "on the clock", but rather, according to the seasons, and although the work was physically demanding, it was not monotonous or boring or madeningly tedious like that of the factories. And the work was episodic; when there were no crops to plant or to harvest, as happened throughout the year, one had free time. Whereas the urban factory worker had no free time, initially, except a little in the evenings, and on Sundays; his work schedule paid no attention to the changing of the seasons. He was tied to it willy nilly
Not that rural poverty was fun; check out the foreign language film (Swedish or Danish; not sure which) "Pele the Conqueror" with Max von Sydow. If you didn't own or rent your own land, and were just a paid laborer, things were pretty bad indeed.
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