
How Tolkien created Middle-earth - mhb
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/31/drawn-into-tolkiens-world-exhibition
======
arethuza
One of the most touching aspects of the background of LotR is Tolkien's basis
for Sam Gamgee:

 _" My ‘Samwise’ is indeed ... largely a reflexion of the English
soldier—grafted on the village-boys of early days, the memory of the privates
and my batmen that I knew in the 1914 War, and recognized as so far superior
to myself."_

[https://johngarth.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/sam-gamgee-and-
to...](https://johngarth.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/sam-gamgee-and-tolkiens-
batmen/)

~~~
digi_owl
Seems that English society learned quite a bit from those two wars (at a steep
price though). Sadly it seems those lessons are fading as the generations
leave.

~~~
arethuza
One small lesson being not to deploy friends from the same area in the same
unit where they are all likely to be killed at the same time:

[https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-pals-battalions-of-the-
fi...](https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-pals-battalions-of-the-first-world-
war)

~~~
chrisseaton
I'm not sure what you or the author of that IWM page mean - today the British
Army still has a county regimental system, with the specific idea that the
soldiers in a unit will have come from the same areas, have the same friends,
be part of the same families, and so on.

~~~
iRideUnicornz
I agree, the blurb describes in detail what a "Pals Battalion" is, but not why
it was actually problematic for the communities from which that battalion
originated from.

Basically, large groups of young men from the same community (hundreds to
thousands), would all join up patriotically into the same battalion. After
all, if they were going to join a war, they might as well join together with
those that they know and already have bonds with. Unfortunately, the
unintended consequences were those same entire battalions could be wiped out
in a single day (like at the Somme), and now you had a community losing nearly
all of it's young men at the exact same time, with hundreds of families in the
same area now missing a son at the exact same time. As one would expect, the
effects of this would be devastating mentally, and demographically enough so
as to destroy smaller communities that had sent the majority of their sons and
now no longer had fathers for the next generation.

~~~
chrisseaton
But my point is this is exactly how Army regiments worked before, after, and
today.

The units recruit from specific geographical areas.

~~~
smacktoward
Today they recruit much smaller numbers. Recruitment in the Great War meant
_mass_ recruitment -- Kitchener's first call for volunteers in August 1914
brought in nearly 500,000 men all by itself, and nearly 2.5 million in total
would volunteer before voluntary recruitment was finally abandoned in favor of
conscription in 1916 (see [https://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/voluntary-
recruitin...](https://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/voluntary-recruiting)).
For comparison, the entire modern-day British Army only has about 80,000
regular troops.

Moreover, a battalion was a unit of around a thousand men, so the "pals
battalions" \-- where men were encouraged to volunteer by being allowed to
serve with people they knew -- ended up being drawn from _extremely_ narrow
geographical areas. There were pals battalions of men who all worked in the
same factory, of men who'd all attended school together, of the players from
the local football club and all their fans. So when one of these battalions
got wiped out, as many did in the battles of the Somme, a very specific
community would suddenly more or less cease to exist.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Isn't the point (being missed?) that militarily a fighting group with close
ties will fight harder for I've another, they already have a deal of
camaraderie - that can be grown in months of training.

IIRC some ancient Greek states exploited romantic partnerships to increase
_esprit de corps_ in cadres of men. Part of the thinking seemingly being that
one wouldn't flee the battlefield and leave a sexual partner so easily as
otherwise.

Of course what's good for making a fighting force isn't necessarily good for
the rest of society. Or at least there's a cost to that benefit.

~~~
ivanhoe
Why do you presume that all people from the same place are automatically
friends or even like each other? When you have people with histories there's
camaraderie, but there are also rivalries, stolen girlfriends, family
disputes, revenges, all kinds of histories and skeletons in the closet that
can cause problems later on. On the other hand, starting on a clean slate
avoids this - and in my own experience at least, spending 3+ months in a
bootcamp 24/7, eating, training and sleeping with the same guys creates by
itself quite a strong bonds between people and a sense of brotherhood (united
against the officers mostly, but still the brotherhood).

------
KineticLensman
The OP is actually reporting a new Tolkien exhibition in Oxford [0] rather
than comprehensively describing Tolkien's creative processes. The exhibition
and accompanying coffee-table book are about the novels rather than the recent
films.

I've already booked my tickets - the exhibition is the most significant for
years (if not ever) and will move from the UK to New York later in the year.
And then Paris.

[0] [https://tolkien.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/](https://tolkien.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/)

~~~
pnathan
Do you perhaps know when & where the New York exhibition will be? I'm a
lifelong Tolkein reader, and would love to see it.

~~~
ghaff
The Interwebs tell me Morgan Library from January 25 to May 12 in 2019. I'll
be in NYC in November; hopefully I'll make it in the spring sometime.

------
cocacola1
Entirely tangential, but the best album I've heard is Music Inspired by The
Lord of the Rings by Bo Hansson. Instrumental progressive rock that, at least
for me, entirely evokes a fantasy-like feeling and might even be, dare I say,
superior to Howard Shores' score for the films.

Now that I think about it, Tolkien and works related to him seem to have set
the bars for a few things - worldbuilding, fantasy literature, epic films,
etc.; not to mention more than a few things that have been directly inspired
by his works.

~~~
albutr
Never heard of this before, but from what I just listened to it sounds pretty
great, very ambient.

It's kind of weird that it's so old, it was published on vinyl in 1970, and
according to wikipedia, this album hit the top 40 in the UK (idk why but I
just automatically assumed it was much more recent, and not well known). So,
it came out right around the same time that Zeppelin was putting out their
first albums, and LZ IV also had several songs referencing lotr. Makes me
wonder if rock musicians who wrote lotr-themed music was a sterotype/trend in
the 70s.

~~~
cocacola1
Glad you like it!

If I had, to I might ascribe to the fact that the 60s and 70s apparently had a
resurgence in popularity of Lord of the Rings as a new generation discovered
the works.

This for some reason reminded me of a video in which Larry Wall says that
Hobbits embody the three virtues of a programmer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G49RUPv5-NU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G49RUPv5-NU)

------
rdlecler1
Anyone else nostalgic about the Middle Earth and early D&D artwork?

~~~
ConceptJunkie
Yes. The early D&D artwork had so much more charm. The artwork they've used in
the last 20 years is often very technically good, but it's also often kind of
bland and generic. I usually prefer the simple line drawings of people like
Jeff Dee and Erol Otus than the ultra-slick stuff you see today.

You can also see the same progression in the covers of Dragon Magazine over
the years. The artwork for the first 5 years or so was often not the greatest
technically, but there was much more variety than in later years when the
magazine got slicker and fancier.

I think Tolkien's own artwork fits into this mold. It was very simple, but it
captured a feel that is often lacking in more recent artwork, and let's not
forget the immortal Hildebrandt brothers, who's style I always loved. Their
character work was always amazing, but their architecture could be really
bland. But ultimately it was a simple style that really captured the spirit of
the books and the times in which they were done.

~~~
mbunch
The art in Magic: The Gathering followed a very similar arc. Cards have
absolutely amazing art today in terms of technique, but many older cards
conveyed a sense of charm and whimsy that's gone now.

~~~
DonaldPShimoda
This is why I often end up with lots of old lands in my newer decks. I just
love the way they're drawn. My friends don't get it, but to me the art is just
so much _more_.

That said, the newer sets do still produce art with that charm from time to
time. But it's much rarer than it used to be.

------
awat
There is so much to appreciate here. The bit about starting to create an
elvish language really stands out to me in painting his passion for this
world.

~~~
auntienomen
I think the story is rather the opposite. Tolkien began work on the elvish
languages (plural, yes) first, and then started creating a mythology to fit
them. The Lord of the Rings later grew out of that mythology.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Is that based on other research you’ve done? The article says the language
predates the books but doesn’t say specifically that the stories grew out of
the language.

My sense is he did a lot of work in parallel and let the world find itself
among many mediums.

~~~
jonnycomputer
its largely correct based on a lot of what I read. i think it may have been a
more organic process of co-creation, where the language informed the
world&story building, and vice-versa. But its definitely mistaken to think
that he just created the languages to populate his world, as some kind of
afterthought.

~~~
garmaine
The fact that the elves have this one-way trip they can make over the sea to
some sort of magical neverland, a central part of the plot for elves in the
lord of the rings and in fact all of his stories, is pretty much only for the
reason that it makes an interesting playground for linguistic evolution. He
has the two main elvish languages evolve in different contexts, with one
receiving influence from the other languages of middle earth and new
generations of elves (think: the romance languages), and the other having more
conservative influences (think: ecclesiastical latin) but sometimes influenced
by middle earth elves making a one-way return trip over the sea. He explicitly
talks about major parts of middle earth history being invented for the purpose
of exploring the languages, not the other way around IIRC from the
biographies.

------
mkirklions
Does anyone know why Fellowship of the ring sucked?(btw, I really liked a few
parts, particularly Tom)

It seems so different from every other book Ive read(only hobbit-RotK).

Like did he add fluff in the forest because of publishing standards at the
time?

~~~
KineticLensman
He wasn't influenced by publishing standards to make it longer. LOTR was in
fact quite long by the standards of the day and had to be split into three
separate volumes as a result.

~~~
garmaine
Actually it was six volumes reduced to 3...

~~~
DonaldPShimoda
The "books" of LOTR are just super-chapters, really. He never intended for the
six "books" to be published separately; they just divide portions of the
story. He was very much against publishing LOTR in separate volumes, and only
did so because his publishing agent told him it would never be published
otherwise. It was too big a risk for them.

------
davidy123
When I was growing up, Tolkien's works were some of the few books sold in the
church's bookstore. As I've grown older, I've grown more critical of the
simple narratives in most literature, that make frequently abhorrent attitudes
and acts possible. In the case of Tolkien, he literally dehumanizes the
enemies. One example that stands out is the "light hearted" sequence where
Legolas and Gimli hold a contest of who can kill the most orcs. These days,
recognizing this type of storytelling, with all its justifications, is very
often part of the problem, I try to find works that help develop more nuanced
perspectives.

Edited to remove bad reference to Nanking Massacre. The point is that glorious
battle stories with simple morals are prevalent, and are a big part of
Tolkein's stature.

~~~
jack6e
> _This was likely inspired by an event preceding the Nanking Massacre_

There is about no likelihood that Tolkien heard about a despicable war crime
committed by an Axis power, involving an evil, flagrant disregard for human
life, and decided to use that as material for two of his "good" characters.
Nothing in Tolkien's works, worldview, or influences aligns with that sort of
thought. This is the author who despised German publishers inquiring about his
Aryan descent, even though, being of German heritage and a prominent scholar
of Anglo-Saxon/Norse/Germanic literature, Tolkien could have perfectly
flattered the Nazi mythology [0]. But in your opinion, while hating Hitler and
the Nazis for treating Jews as second-class citizens (in 1938, when the
persecution was not yet elevated to mass execution), he simultaneously
decided, "well, this Japanese massacre of innocent civilians sounds like a fun
bit of material, I'll use that"?

More realistically, the influence, as most of his influences, is in Anglo-
Saxon and Norse literature, where accounts and songs of battles often make
them appear almost like sport, with contests and even gamification. I suppose
that is one method of mentally bracing oneself for such a horrifying activity,
and for attempting to process the event afterwards. It is part of a common
mindset of soldiers at war, one that even the Japanese murderers were
engaging, albeit in a perverted misuse. In that view, both Tolkien and the
Japanese were drawing from a (very) distantly related source, but much
different in purpose, and certainly neither influenced by the other.

[0] [https://io9.gizmodo.com/5892697/whats-classier-than-jrr-
tolk...](https://io9.gizmodo.com/5892697/whats-classier-than-jrr-tolkien-
telling-off-nazis-absolutely-nothing)

~~~
davidy123
OK, I was wrong about the very specific influence. But it's ultimately the
same thing; flatten the idea of the enemy to make a sport of killing
reasonable, and more entertaining stories. That may be an appropriate thing to
do in the most dire circumstances, but it's still a disturbing moral choice
given that "evil" most often has to be invented.

~~~
DonaldPShimoda
The thing you're missing is that Tolkien didn't "dehumanize" the enemy,
because the enemy were literally not humans. Orcs are a deformation — a
creation intended to be evil from the beginning. They have no inherent good in
them, as a fact. I believe Tolkien wrote about this in some of his letters:
that the Orcs are really truly evil creatures, by design, and that questioning
that fact is against the purpose of their existence in the story. They're a
manifestation of the evil of Morgoth.

In contrast, bad _men_ are handled quite differently. Shortly after Frodo and
Sam meet Faramir in _The Two Towers_ they find themselves on the edges of a
battle between the Rangers and a company of Haradrim (supposedly "evil" men
from the East):

> Sam, eager to see more, went now and joined the guards. He scrambled a
> little way up into into one of the larger of the bay-trees. For a moment he
> caught a glimpse of swarthy men in red running down the slope some way off
> with green-clad warriors leaping after them, hewing them down as they fled.
> Arrows were thick in the air. Then suddenly straight over the rim of their
> sheltering bank, a man fell, crashing through the slender trees, nearly on
> top of them. He came to rest in the fern a few feet away, face downward,
> green arrow-feathers sticking from his neck below a golden collar. His
> scarlet robes were tattered, his corslet of overlapping brazen plates was
> rent and hewn, his black plaits of hair braided with gold were drenched with
> blood. His brown hand still clutched the hilt of a broken sword.

> It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like
> it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what
> the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of
> heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home;
> and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace – all in a
> flash of thought which was quickly driven from his mind.

Though this is certainly the most explicit instance of a character questioning
whether another is truly evil, the theme is present throughout the novel.

(Excerpt copied from "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit", the fourth chapter in _The
Two Towers_ , pages 660-661 in the 50th Anniversary Edition of _The Lord of
the Rings_ as published by HarperCollins in 2004.)

~~~
davidy123
The willful creatures in the story are representations of humans just as much
as talking ants in a Pixar story. Or, the story has no real relevance at all
because it's pure fantasy. You can say the stories are about the humans on one
side of war, but there are better examples of war novels with balanced
perspectives without the fantasy elements. LoTR probably mainly rose to
prominance due to the Hobbit being sold as a children's tale, the provenance
my comment starts with.

Another comment includes the phrase "orc-crowd" from one of Tolkien's letters.
Perhaps Tolkien (to comment on him personally this time) decided to vilify
certain behaviours, which is a common enough response.

~~~
DonaldPShimoda
> The willful creatures in the story are representations of humans just as
> much as talking ants in a Pixar story.

No, I disagree. Tolkien was emphatic that his stories were not allegories for
anything at all.

If you were right, then why would Tolkien also have bad humans? Why not just
make _all_ of the enemy into orcs/trolls/etc? Why have the dichotomy if not to
show that _humans_ are capable of being both bad and good, thus separating
them from truly evil creatures like orcs?

> Or, the story has no real relevance at all because it's pure fantasy.

Yes, that's correct. The story is pure fantasy; it doesn't serve to "teach"
about anything. It's literally just a story.

> LoTR probably mainly rose to prominance due to the Hobbit being sold as a
> children's tale, the provenance my comment starts with.

I think LOTR became prominent because it literally invented modern high-
fantasy and created a gigantic world the scope of which had never really been
seen before. The Hobbit touched on it, but LOTR really goes into far more
depth about many things than The Hobbit ever did.

