In Defence of that which we love...

[smaug_the_magnificent]

Hey... I'm relatively new here so I'm uncertain as to what the policy is at Entmoot vis-a-vis posting articles or literary essays relating to Tolkien's work.. Apologies if this is not allowed..
Anyway, I found this piece a few months ago & have kept it safe - it's a highly enjoyable read, not too didactic or verbose, it's a frank & honest account as to why The Lord of the Rings has enjoyed such enduring popularity..
It also opens up some interesting discussion threads for us to extrapolate further

*note* apologies if you've already read this.. AND btw, the "themes" list at the end of this article is my contribution.. That is to say, I didn't like what the person who wrote this came up with, so instead I added my own!


In defence of Middle-Earth
By TheophileEscargot, Section Features Topic Fantasy
Posted on Sun Mar 10th, 2002 at 13:48:39 CDT


The stubborn appeal of the Lord of the Rings books

Clunking prose. Cliched, archetypal, characters. A story so slow moving as to be practically stationary. A reactionary, some even say prejudice subtext. Rarely has there been such a critical consensus as that the Lord of the Rings is a dreadfully bad work. Yet it stubbornly remains popular for decade after decade, passing a test that is extremely difficult for any book that is neither in the literary canon, nor on any respectable school syllabus.
This article is on why the Lord of the Rings is successful, and in my opinion, a kind of masterpiece.

On plot and pacing

The problem that a lot of Tolkien-detractors seem to have is that they see the book of consisting mostly of descriptions of the tedium and suffering endured by its characters.
Certainly no professional writer, setting out to write a fantasy bestseller, would decide to focus on the sufferings of the characters to that extent. So why did Tolkien?
I think it's important to remember that in his youth J.R.R. Tolkien fought in the trenches of the First World War. Although he steadfastly denied that the Lord of the Rings was an allegory of any kind, I don't think this is inconsistent with the idea that the war and battle scenes in the book were heavily influenced by his own experiences of war. It is well known that in real life the lot of a soldier in wartime is of long periods of boredom, hardship and tension; punctuated by brief bursts of excitement and fear. Despite it being a fantasy, the Lord of the Rings reflects this reality exactly. Most of the first volume consists of the characters climbing or marching through hostile terrain, perpetually on guard against attack by the enemy. As often as not battles consist of shooting arrows at shapes in the dark, never knowing the results, often not knowing what the target even was. Relief comes only in the form of a rare hot meal and bed for the night
Thus, in spite of being an outrageous fantasy, the Lord of the Rings is deeply grounded in the reality of life as a soldier. I believe that this combination of realism and fantasy is one of the reasons for the strange appeal of the Lord of the Rings. Its realism makes it possible for the reader to lose himself in the story, in a way that could not happen if the characters suffered more briefly.
The same realism is seen in the way the characters frequently do not know what is going on around them. In the books, along with Frodo we do not know why Gandalf failed to meet them until Gandalf himself explains it. Descriptions of distant events is described in the words of whoever delivers the news: Tolkien steadfastly refuses to shift the point of view too far from the characters; or even to provide the magical telephone-substitutes that many authors like to use to simplify their characters lives.
These aspects of the Lord of the Rings would be considered to be fatal flaws by the standards of a commercial author, a competent writer's workshop, or a professional critic. The timing and pace of the books is all wrong by these standards: the story is too slow moving; the exposition occurs regardless of what the reader should know; the action is too infrequent, and when it occurs chapters are tightly bundled together, instead of metronomically spaced throughout the book. Somehow, for the countless fans of the Lord of the Rings, these flaws have become virtues. They make the book different: strange, unpredictable, and paradoxically real.
This naturally leads to the question: were these apparent flaws accidental or deliberate?