/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2346631]

Why is Samwise the only character who goes through any sort of development in the story?
Why is there such a monochrome distinction between good and evil?
Why is the only reason people ever do anything bad in the story that "they were corrupted by evil forces"?
Why do none of the characters (aside from the aforementioned Samwise, and to an extend, Gollum) make you feel anything for them?
Why is the villain such a boring evil overlord with no real motivation?
Why are events described rather than narrated?
Why is there so much needless filler?
Why is Aragorn's subplot in Gondor so utterly irrelevant to the conclusion of the story?

Why do people still pretend the Lord of the Rings has any sort of literary value other than starting the modern fantasy genre?

[Anonymous No.2346636]

Why didnt gandalf magic the ring into space

[The Importance of Being On Time and Being !dAqyKvNZuA No.2346639]

>>2346631

[Anonymous No.2346640]

These threads are soooo last month.

[Anonymous No.2346682]

Why is water wet?

[Anonymous No.2346688]

Why can't everything be the way I want it to be (not bad)?

[Anonymous No.2346694]

>monochrome distinction between good and evil

Have you even read the books you faggot?

>Boromir and his struggle against his urge to capture the ring, not necessarily evil or good in any distinct sense
>faramir capturing Frodo et al. then contemplating what to do
>the elves fucking off then coming back to help
>the eagles being distant and uncooperative
>Bilbo's dilemma of good/evil
>too many others

By the way faggot, evil/good is only a projection by you onto the book, so it's your basic brain function that makes it such a fucking sunday school morality play

[Anonymous No.2346697]

>>2346694
Do you think Harry Potter isn't binary good/evil?

[Anonymous No.2346706]

because it's a modern myth that Tolkien wrote so he could fuck around with names

[Anonymous No.2346709]

my hobbies include chess and getting really angry about lord of the rings on the internet

[Fergus !hxTvuAIpXU No.2346712]

Because Tolkien was attempting to recreate myth.

[Anonymous No.2346722]

Tolkien was better at creating worlds than character development.
But you're exaggerating the faults a lot on some of those points.

[Anonymous No.2346732]

>>2346712
This. It's written, very successfully, in the style of an ancient legend.

[Anonymous No.2346806]

>Why is the only reason people ever do anything bad in the story that "they were corrupted by evil forces"?
lolwut? people do bad things because they were corrupted by good forces?

[Anonymous No.2346830]

>>2346806
Ambition is considered good by many people, yet it corrupts all the same.

[Anonymous No.2346848]

It mirrors mythology, specially the bible and norse gods.

The evil comes from the outside just as well as the inside, temptation and sin are personified in the form of the Ring or the Eye of Sauron. The temptation itself is depicted as evil, so the subject doesn't matter, we feel it the same way without the need of a practical motivation for this evil to rise. The myth talks about a generic evil because all readers could react to it without questioning, they would feel the evil equally.

About the characters, their struggle is shown in a physical way, the journey of the hero happends with actual battles, magic items and of course, a real journey (they have to walk!). So the Strider in Fellowship is much different than King Aragorn, even though that is only there on the outside. The inside is replaced mostly by us, as we project ourselves onto them and their actions. The swinging of their sword might be, to them, just the swinging of a sword, but in our heads, on an unconscious level, it's about our own struggles. If the characters were more complex on that inside, we would have "less room" for us to fill in and the battles would have appeared alien to us and unimportant.

cont.

[Anonymous No.2346851]

>Why is Bill The Pony the only character who goes through any sort of development in the story?

FTFY, OP.

[Anonymous No.2346854]

>>2346848 cont.

Tolkien may write or try to write like an ancient storyteller would tell a story, but in the end, he is not and some more modern references were included in the LotR saga. The development of some of the characters (as you said, Sam and Gollum specially) is actually a step further, something unexpected. Remember that Sam got into this journey for a number of reasons, but all personal ones: his friendship towards Frodo, his desire to see Elves and explore, outside of maybe just some bad luck to get into this story so deeply, when Frodo could have just left without warning him. All those things are characteristics of the reader or what I think Tolkien imagined the reader to be. So in the beggining of this story, let us befriend this character named Frodo and be loyal to the book to the end, let's see what are those wonderful things called elves that we keep hearing about and let's do justice to this coincidence of having this book in our hands. Sam is a special character in that sense, he might not narrate the story, but he is the most "human" of the characters, the one that ressembles the reader the most and he has a personality that suggest us how to read a book. That personality is changed from the inside, rather than from outside events. He is like Watson from Sherlock Holmes, but with a stronger personality

cont.

[Anonymous No.2346859]

>>2346857 cont.

We should not forget that the book is a myth, this is important. Most of the fans just like it in a shallow way, they believe in it, in a way. They might say they don't, as they know none of those things happends, but when it breaks down to discussing the books or the films, they talk as if the characters were completely real, they question their actions and they are pissed of at some things as if there were real politics taking place there. It's really just like christians talking to christians on the foundations of their own myths, it's like theology, it's nonsense. At the same time, we have readers like you, who are thinking of it in a modern way, trying to find what our contemporary literature sees as valuable in a piece that is completely sui generis for its time and that plays with other kinds of representations. See it as a myth, read it as a myth, a fairy tale, something that is not real, but knowing that it doesn't make it meaningless.

Picture is a medieval represenation of Jesus. Some people think medieval artists were not as talented as the subsequent painters of the renaissance, because they couldn't paint just like reality. But the truth is, there were specific values and rules and techniques taking place and a physically real representation of Jesus would clash with the ideal representation of him, which was what they were trying to portray with these icons.

[Anonymous No.2346857]

>>2346854 cont.

The Gollum character is a very common theme in LotR, which is the thing that has been. The elves are not as powerful as they were in the past, Sauron is not as powerful as he were, Gandalf rises as the White one because the council has been corrupted, Aragorn is just coming back. The past plays an important role, nothing is at its pinnackle, because that would leave little to our imagination. You have this amazing world and it's toned down, it's the autumn of times and we can only wonder how it was before. It's the same with all myths, you have an ancient past that is always better and ideal, a Garden of Eden type of thing. Gollum is the perfect example of that corrupted past, he is the only character that was actually defeated by the Ring, again, from the inside. You see, Isildur was killed, but Gollum protected himself from the outside. Things could not be inflicted onto him, because he knew he couldn't fight that, so he was reclusive, living in terrible conditions just so that he could conquer the Ring. And why was that for? He lost all his meaning, all his intention, it was all about the Ring. In LotR, he doesn't have the Ring and the greatest thing about the creature Gollum is that he begins to question himself on other values outside of the Ring. He has glimpses of kindness, that might or might not be an illusion, even to him. We identify ourselves with Gollum in our obsessive behavior, in our misoneism.

cont.

[Anonymous No.2346963]

ITT we judge lord of the rings for not being something it isn't. Sorry you're a terrible reader, I guess, OP.

>>2346848
>>2346854
>>2346857
>>2346859
Fucking yes, ILU anon. Especially

>Some people think medieval artists were not as talented as the subsequent painters of the renaissance, because they couldn't paint just like reality. But the truth is, there were specific values and rules and techniques taking place and a physically real representation of Jesus would clash with the ideal representation of him, which was what they were trying to portray with these icons.

It's so dumb when people say "Tolkien stylized reality in a way I am not accustomed to, therefore he's a terrible author." Tolkien's representation of reality is different, but it's still a representation of reality (through the lens of the stories which we tell about reality - reality as we represent it, or as ancient people represented it in folklore and myth). God, it's such a dumb objection and so lacking in self-awareness.

[Anonymous No.2347148]

>>2346859
>>2346857
>>2346854
>>2346848

[Anonymous No.2347162]

>>2346709

Since all I do is compliment people on funny posts, I'm just going to start giving points instead.

I will fedex a special surprise to whomever has the most points at the end of each month.

+1

[Anonymous No.2347426]

>>2346848
>>2346854
>>2346857
>>2346859

Interesting, thanks.