Tolkien and Everyday Life.

bropous · 10-19-2002, 03:04 PM

Okay, it borders on sophistry, but I had a thought spurred by another thread.

Can ANY of us actually get our minds around the sheer amount of thought and introspective argument Tolkien must have generated in his development of the Lord of the Rings, let alone the entire universe of Middle-Earth? Consider the arguments we have had on the Moot: Do Balrogs gots wings, what happened to the Entwives, were there two Glorfindels, what actually occurs when a ship slips out of the Grey Havens at the end of the Third Age headed for the Undying Lands, etc. Just imagine how HIS mind must have been completely consumed with these issues as well.

We have to know that the wonder we have all shared in exploring Middle-Earth must pale in comparison to the incredible wonder Tolkien himself must have had at how his world developed inside his head over the years, how the languages he created began to flesh out and become new rivers of communication for his creations of the mind, and how the characters he created from thin air became living, breathing creatures to all who have the patience and determination to read his books and attempt to understand even a fraction of the world he created for us all.

It's a rare gift that someone can paint such a full picture of an unseen world through use of words, but the fact that he also was able to do this not totally immersed in a vacuum but while living everyday life shows a much greater depth of thinking in this man than most folks we will ever meet.

He taught classes, graded papers, fought in a hell none of us could fully imagine either, married and had children, met friends down at the pub, worried over bills and balancing the house accounts, dealt with backed-up sewage in the basement, bought and sold lodgings, tended a garden, and a million other more ordinary and droll activities which could have scuttled his writing a work which took such devotion and longstanding dedication and focus.

I guess the big point is that even though he lived an ordinary life, he was able to create an extraordinary work of beauty.

To me, the lessons of Tolkien aren't only found in his writings, but in his life. What a GOOD man.

10-19-2002, 03:04 PM	#1
bropous EIDRIORCQWSDAKLMED DCWWTIWOATTOPWFIO Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Littleton, CO Posts: 1,176	Tolkien and Everyday Life. Okay, it borders on sophistry, but I had a thought spurred by another thread. Can ANY of us actually get our minds around the sheer amount of thought and introspective argument Tolkien must have generated in his development of the Lord of the Rings, let alone the entire universe of Middle-Earth? Consider the arguments we have had on the Moot: Do Balrogs gots wings, what happened to the Entwives, were there two Glorfindels, what actually occurs when a ship slips out of the Grey Havens at the end of the Third Age headed for the Undying Lands, etc. Just imagine how HIS mind must have been completely consumed with these issues as well. We have to know that the wonder we have all shared in exploring Middle-Earth must pale in comparison to the incredible wonder Tolkien himself must have had at how his world developed inside his head over the years, how the languages he created began to flesh out and become new rivers of communication for his creations of the mind, and how the characters he created from thin air became living, breathing creatures to all who have the patience and determination to read his books and attempt to understand even a fraction of the world he created for us all. It's a rare gift that someone can paint such a full picture of an unseen world through use of words, but the fact that he also was able to do this not totally immersed in a vacuum but while living everyday life shows a much greater depth of thinking in this man than most folks we will ever meet. He taught classes, graded papers, fought in a hell none of us could fully imagine either, married and had children, met friends down at the pub, worried over bills and balancing the house accounts, dealt with backed-up sewage in the basement, bought and sold lodgings, tended a garden, and a million other more ordinary and droll activities which could have scuttled his writing a work which took such devotion and longstanding dedication and focus. I guess the big point is that even though he lived an ordinary life, he was able to create an extraordinary work of beauty. To me, the lessons of Tolkien aren't only found in his writings, but in his life. What a GOOD man. __________________ "...[The Lord of the Rings] is to exemplify most clearly a recurrent theme: the place in 'world politics' of the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will, and deeds of virtue of the apparently small, ungreat, fogotten in the places of the Wise and Great (good as well as evil). A moral of the whole (after the primary symbolism of the Ring, as the will to mere power, seeking to make itself objective by physical force and mechanism, and so also inevitably by lies) is the obvious one that without the high and noble the simple and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless." Letters of JRR Tolkien, page 160. Last edited by bropous : 10-19-2002 at 03:05 PM.

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