Tolkien Teaches Us to Take Courage

J.R.R. Tolkien was not a professional author nor, for much of his life, even a much-published one. He had a certain success with The Hobbit in 1937, when he was 45 -- enough for his publisher, Stanley Unwin, to ask for a sequel. But though Tolkien dutifully began to write one almost immediately, it was 17 years before the first volume of The Lord of the Rings was published, by which time Tolkien had almost reached retirement.

For much of his life he was haunted by the fear of never finishing anything -- the theme of one of his few short stories, Leaf by Niggle. In The Notion Club Papers, not published until 20 years after his death, he imagines his own work as a manuscript discovered on a dusty shelf sometime far in the future, incomprehensible and anonymous.

Tolkien's fears have been proved false, but they were not unfounded. His work is now known to hundreds of millions of readers and viewers, but the non-professional nature of his writing still shows through.

An experienced professional author, writing to make a living and with a good sense of potential markets, would not have produced a 1,000-page romance with only vestigial love interests. Nor would he have added 100 pages of appendices about dates and scripts and languages. And he would have known not to stop the action dead with a 15,000-word account of a confused committee meeting, which is "The Council of Elrond."

Peter Jackson's first film had to take stern action to deal with that problem, and his second one has to deal equally sternly with Tolkien's decision -- how Jackson must have torn his hair! -- not to bother with the Ents' attack on Isengard, the stronghold of the corrupt wizard Saruman, but to have the junior hobbits Merry and Pippin report it in flashback.

At the end of one chapter, they are gazing down from the Ent Treebeard's shoulders on Saruman's valley, and then they disappear from the action until, 70 pages later, they turn up picnicking in the ruins. It was a dead certainty that Jackson could not allow his version of the story to go like that. It breaks a basic rule: "Show, don't tell."

But basic rules are made to be broken, at least by authors who are not writing for the market but for themselves. And if there is one thing that publishing history shows, it is that the market does not know what it wants -- except novelty, which is by nature unpredictable. Again and again, great writers of fantasy have been loners, starting off without agents and against sensible advice. Tolkien was not a professional author. He was a driven one, and one ought to ask what drove him because, whatever it was, it draws other people too.

Things like missing out the sack of Isengard perhaps provide a clue. Tolkien dropped a big action scene, yes. What he got in exchange, and what he clearly wanted to get, was a major surprise, as one plot strand --Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, now mixed up with the Riders of Rohan -- quite unexpectedly runs across the results of another -- Merry and Pippin and Saruman and the Ents -- although the day has already been saved for the first group by the marching wood at Helm's Deep in Rohan. None of the characters, as Tolkien wrote the story, really understands the whole of what is going on.

Not even Gandalf. In fact, the only thing they do know is that their fate will not, in the end, be determined by visible events but by a mostly invisible one: the stealthy crawl of three insignificant-looking characters into the lion's mouth of Mordor. The great ones and the heroes are continually trying to see what is happening elsewhere, through the palantirs and the Mirror of Galadriel and the Eye of Sauron. The attempt is repeatedly disastrous. Denethor commits suicide because of what he sees in his palantir, but he has read it wrong. As Gandalf says, "Even the wise cannot see all ends," and the really wise remember that.

The moral is, to quote Gandalf again -- and Jackson picked out just these words to repeat in the first movie, varying the pronouns cunningly -- "That [the future] is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

Tolkien surely did not mean these words just for Frodo. They were a major part of his own conviction and a part of his own cure for the defeatism, the appeasement, the lack of will and the weary calculation of odds that he saw dogging the Western democracies as he was writing The Lord of the Rings and still after he had finished it. Tolkien's achievement, it may be, was to reintroduce a heroic world view, drawn from the ancient texts he taught as a professor, to a world gone ironic.

And this world view was put across not only by the obviously heroic figures such as Aragorn and Faramir and King Theoden, but by the hobbits -- and, most of all, by the very structure of the story. In this story, all the characters find themselves, literally as well as figuratively, bewildered: their bearings lost, not sure what's for the best, but slogging on regardless. The most important ones, moreover, the hobbits Frodo and Sam, think they're on their own. All the time, their friends are risking everything to distract the Eye of Sauron from them, but they don't know that. They go on anyway.

The film version, adapted to the limited attention span of the modern viewer, can't handle all of this, but it handles a surprising amount. Tolkien himself, commenting on the first of several attempted film scripts back in 1957, remarked that he had no objection to people cutting things out, but he disliked compression, trying to jam everything into three hours. It loses the uncertainty, the false trails and the fog of war that link The Lord of the Rings and the battle of the Somme, where Tolkien fought with the Lancashire Fusiliers.

Peter Jackson has inevitably built up the action scenes and straightened the tangled threads, but the message survives the change of medium. Courage is what you need after you've lost hope: Things may not be as bad as they seem. Tolkien learned that nearly 90 years ago, but it isn't obsolete yet.

I found this linked over at TORN and thought everyone would like to see it.

Enjoy, rip apart, whatever......

All the time, their friends are risking everything to distract the Eye of Sauron from them, but they don't know that. They go on anyway.

This was one of the most moving aspects of the story for me. And in the books, Sam ended up being my favorite character (after Gollum and for different reasons) because he is in my mind the real hero of the quest. I remember being so moved by his purity of soul and his extraordinary courage. I have a feeling Astin will be up to the task.

ksen, that is a really nice article, it does a good job of articulating what is so great about LOTR.

I am pretty sure that Tom Shippey is the professor who now occupies Tolkien's old job at Oxford. He is a huge admirer of Tolkien and has written a couple books on him, including one titled "J.R.R. Tolkien, Author of the Century."

I have a feeling Astin will be up to the task.

I think you're right.

Sam was my favorite too, except for the part where he yells at Smeagol just as he is about to win out over Gollum, thus giving Gollum the victory.

From the moment, Gollum appeared in The Hobbit, and especially his romp through The Two Towers, I thought he was the best written, most fascinating character in literature (with the exception of Sydney Carton from A Tale of Two Cities).

If you want to know if Dickens is a genius... look at Carton. If you want to know if Tolkien was a genius... then look at Smeagol. Truly, great writing.

Yes, but do you really think Smeagol would've managed to dominate Gollum at the very end when he would see the ring about to be thrown into the fire? I personally don't think so and Sam was able to see through it all, through the ups and downs of the Smeagol-Gollum struggle for domination. He knew that in the end Gollum would always be stronger than Smeagol. He knew that Smeagol was doomed. At least, that's the way I understood it.

The genius of Tolkien is that his characters remain true to the nature and circumstances...

Sam did not have the foresight to realize that Gollum would overtake Smeagol at Mt. Doom. I don't think he understood that true nature of the battle within Smeagol. I think he saw the manifestation of it... hence, the Slinker/Stinker names. But, to Sam, it wasn't a matter of Smeagol/Gollum redemption (possible or not). He didn't trust Gollum from the first and nothing Gollum/Smeagol ever said and did or didn't do made Sam change his mind.

If you want to know if Tolkien was a genius... then look at Smeagol.

Truly great character development with Gollum-Smeagol. It makes you think that Tolkien had a special fondness for him. He makes you cry and laugh, hate him and love him but always root for him. A real gem!

I think Tolkien really like Gollum also. I write plays (not very good ones), but every character starts out neutral. But, characters grow on you as you flesh them out. Suddenly, before you know it... you like one character above them all and you pour all your creative juices into them.

Scarlett O'Hara was not the original main character of Gone With the Wind. Melanie was. But, as Margaret Mitchell wrote, she found herself intriqued then overcome by Scarlett.

Dickens had a special fondness for Sydney Carton as well.

Did you read the letter where JRRT said that if "Smeagol" had won out over Gollum, that Smeagol would then have had to become the main protagonist in LOTR? Not sure if he's right about that, but maybe it does follow that if Smeagol had won such a struggle, focus would have inevitably shifted to him.

I think my favorite Smeagol scene in the movie is in the forbidden pool.

I don't think he understood that true nature of the battle within Smeagol. I think he saw the manifestation of it

No, he didn't understand it consciously but I think he was able to understand it intuitively. He ignored Smeagol because the real enemy was Gollum, the strongest one, and he was dealing with Gollum, not Smeagol, all the time. Maybe because Smeagol hated Sam, as they were both competing for Frodo's affection. So Gollum would take over whenever he had to deal with Sam.

Well... I can see that and understand you point. For me, I'm not willing to give Sam that much insight... whether conscious or unconsciously because it distorts the character of Sam for me.

But I totally understand your point.

I can't wait to find out how Peter Jackson will define Sam in ROTK: your straightforward down to earth Sam or my pure of heart but intuitive Sam. I understand most people see Sam your way and certainly nothing in the book goes against this interpretation. But I do like my Sam a lot.

I'll have to reread TTT and ROTK (again!) to find out precisely why I see Sam the way I do. But he wouldn't be my favorite hero in LOTR if I didn't see him that way: the straightforward down to earth Sam is endearing, but not as admirable as my Sam. ;o)

Totally understandable...

Sydney Carton wouldn't be enduring if he wasn't so tragic (not calling Sam tragic or anything)... it's the way I perceive him that makes him noble and tragic... and because I see his nobility even in the wreckage of his life, that he is my favorite character.

Some would read his character and call him a loser and cynically dismiss him out of hand. I would protest heartily and say... No! (Isn't it interesting that Dickens never lets us know what was the cause of Carton's ruin... we just see him in the aftermath)

I think PJ will show Sam as intuitive... I don't mind that, I just don't see him like that.

Sydney Carton wouldn't be enduring if he wasn't so tragic

Should read Sydney Carton wouldn't be endearing if he wasn't so tragic...

My favorite "Smeagol" moment is the cooking of the conies, followed by the forbidden pool.

But the most powerful moments are in front of the Black Gates when Smeagol begs and pleads for Frodo not to take the ring back to "him". And when Gollum comforts Smeagol in the cave. Wow!

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