bauliya
i think all quiet on the western front and the lord of the rings are in direct conversation with each other, as in theyre the retelling of the same war with one saying here’s what happened, we all died, and it did not matter at all and another going hush little boy, of course we won, of course your friends came back
bauliya
someone should remake lord of the rings as a grandfather telling a fantasy story to his grand child with flashbacks to world war one showing the dead boys and men the characters were based on. grandpa why didn’t they just fly. because they didn’t. they didn’t.
daydreamingandprocrastination
I will never get over how Tolkien & Lewis took the horrors of war and spun them into fantasy.
Shivering in the trenches dreaming of cozy hobbit holes, shaking as bombs pockmark a forest and imagining each shallow mud-filled crater contains a new world—that maybe there are still as many beautiful things in the universe as there are bombs—that maybe the world is bigger than this moment and this ugliness and one day this will be a peaceful forest again full of small ponds.
I mean look at these photos of the shell craters in Sanctuary Woods, near Ypres Belgium and tell me it’s not the Wood Between The Worlds:
akkkkaall1ttyynnn
grandpa why didn’t they just fly. because they didn’t. they didn’t.
You get your wings only after its all over
sniperct
I’d argue that in the lord of the rings they didn’t come back either. At least not the same as they were when they left. I think, for Tolkien, he may have been searching for some reason to justify the horrors he saw. To find something that mattered in it.
Frodo is very much haunted by his journey, by the things he faced and the weight he carried to the point of disability, to the point that he had to leave the world as it was to go to the world more perfect just to heal from his PTSD and his wounds. Tolkien lost so many friends, saw so many men broken. How many did he witness choose to go to that next world by their own hand?
And so many other characters, even the big heroes and mighty wizards were not unaffected. We see it in Eowyn come face to face with the harsh realities of war. That there is no glory here, no honor, only horror and blood and death. We see it in Boromir, adrift in the river, broken shield broken horn broken body never to return to his family or his city. We see it in the lament of the elves for a world that once was and will never come again. We see it in the dead marshes, that no man’s land of bloated corpses. We see it in the silmarillion, in broken heros and shattered lands.
I’ve said it before, but LOTR is anti-war. A common refrain in battle after battle after battle in his work is the toll it took, the blood that soaked the earth, the people who never come home. Unnumbered tears, shed for all those who have been lost.
But we also see the peace, the little joys, the reasons for hope, that there is light at the end of that long dark tunnel. Eowyn chooses to heal, not only others but herself. Faramir chooses to heal as well. And Sam, steady Sam, always a memory of what was left behind and what could await them at the end of the shadow.
What proves Aragorn the king is not his deeds in war, his strategy and tactics and prowess in combat; its his hands of healing. His ability to heal the wounds of others and see them through.
The heroes won, the world was saved, but the cost, oh the cost was so high. It would be nice, maybe if the war had actually been worth the price, and even then, the price was too high.
twinflameskippingtown
I never knew this abt lotr and now I gotta read everything he ever wrote.