I'm giving Lord of The Rings (The book, not the movie) another shot. Frankly, I've always found it a bit dull and plodding, but frankly with all the stress I'm dealing with right now perhaps that's in order.
Reading it these days is different from reading it 30 or 60 years ago; I have a computer and internet access and I can immediately just look up whatever the hell the Elves are talking about when they thank some mythic figure; I don't recall how much of this was in the Hobbit, and of course if you read really far back you certainly didn't have the Silmarillion.
One thing I'm noticing this time, because of the preocupations of the time in which I'm reading it, is the immediate focus on Bilbo's pity for Gollum, and for that matter the pity felt by the elves and Gandalf for him as well.
Somewhere buried deep beneath it is one of the central tensions of modern Christian theology, which is that God provided us with wills of our own, and the capacity to act, in some small way, against him, and then immediately became infuriated and filled with rage when we used such things.
I'm not well familiar with the textual history of the Silmarillion, but if you read it it's hard to explain how Illuvitar and Morgoth are different; Morgoth seems merely to want Illuvitar's position.
One wonders why Illuvitar gave the Ainur the capacity to create disharmonious music in the first place.
I feel like there is something in this impulse that perhaps might be somewhat embedded in British culture, but I kind of felt it as a kid and never much liked it, which equates disharmony with wickedness. I think there's a lot of this in Chronicles of Narnia as well.
Actually, as a child I often thought the description of heaven in the Book of Revelation sounded profoundly unpleasant. Constant chanting, constant light, all aimed at satisfying the ego of a being which, quite frankly, should not need such things, no time to be alone and think your own thoughts, it just sounds unpleasant.
I guess Tolkien was a bit divided on the nature of Orcs and Trolls in his private writings? He would sort of have to be, because there is this kind of fundamental tension between the Christian belief in a universal pity and forgiveness, and the Christian belief that disharmony with God is inherently a form of wickedness.
I guess really what I kind of chafe at, and I think this is a constant tension in Lord of The Rings even in the first few chapters, is the sense that one should listen to and admire one's betters, and that to disagree with them, or resent them, or rebel against them is a sign of wickedness rather than, frankly, a fairly natural set of impulses (Particularly in the Children at whom these books are aimed!)
That's not the moral of the book, mind you. It's just one sort of overarching theme which is in some way in tension with an equally overarching theme of universal Christian compassion.
gummygunk
stormborns
pixelskylines
turnnoffyourmind
