JKR, JRRT, & JC

[A. Vulgarweed]

I believe, if I have my story straight, that C.S. Lewis was once an
atheist, but his close friend (and mutually-beta-reading writerly buddy)
J.R.R. Tolkien was a major influence in Lewis's becoming a Christian. But
Tolkien famously despised allegory (even if he couldn't completely avoid it
- who can?): he wrote that applicability was the proper thing to strive
for, not allegory - because allegory is all about the writer imposing his
will on the reader, applicability is about the reader taking what s/he
needs from the writer. Tolkien had an extremely sophisticated and nuanced
ongoing moral debate with himself on what he called "sub-creation" -
spelled out fairly explicitly in his essay "On Fairy-Stories"; it's also
very, um, applicable to his fiction.

I would say that both Tolkien and JKR are extremely _applicable_ to our
modern world, and that they both indirectly espouse values that it's hard
to imagine most Christians (or people of most other faiths for that matter)
disagreeing with. But I've found in a certain particularly American mindset
a tendency to want to read _all_ literature, especially children's
literature, as allegory: that it should always have a "moral", that it
should "teach" values. Frankly, I find the moral lessons MORE
straightforward and obvious in Rowling than in Tolkien, at least up til
very recently. But readers vary, obviously.....and of course, there's that
running theme about so many people who object to the HP books not actually
having read them.

Holly:
 Their grandmother made them go see LOTR.  My
>husband and I felt that at 3 (at the time) the daughter was too
>young to see it because it's scary at times and too much for a
>child.


THREE? I don't know who I feel worse for, the child or the other people in
the theater.
(Was frightened to death by super-cheesy animated versions at age 7. Loved
it, but still.)

Amy Z:
>You can certainly see a Christian allegory in LOTR, as in most tales
>of redemptive sacrifice.  But it isn't at all simple.  Especially
>difficult is the fact that that slimesucker Gollum seems to be the
>sacrificial lamb, while Frodo the Good goes over to the demonic at
>the crucial moment.

I'm amazed more people haven't brought this moment up. Fear of spoilers for
the movie-goers? Because that is THE defining moment of LOTR for me, the
point at which all illusion of comforting allegory is out the window and
the reader is slapped in the face with the potential for corruption that we
ALL have, and hard! It's crushing, and for those expecting a
straightforward fantasy-epic denouement, it is deeply shocking. For all the
Orc-slaughter that's been cheered so much throughout, the world is saved
ONLY because, waayyyyy back in the story, Frodo had been persuaded (against
his impulses) to show mercy to a despicable/pathetic treacherous little
creature who almost got them killed for it. That is the moment of Tolkien's
treacherous genius as well.

Amy Z :
>But what I most wonder about the HP-hating Tolkien lovers is whether
>they have ever read the Ainulindale (the creation story in The
>Silmarillion--the part you skip to get to the good stuff about the
>Silmaril).  JKR's world is ours, created however you imagine ours was
>created, and you can even believe it was created 10,000 years ago if
>you choose.  Tolkien, on the other hand, had the hubris to posit a
>very different cosmology in which the timeline of our world
>completely fails to match up with either the geological or the
>creationist version.  And then there are all those gods.  No matter
>how much you may try to make the Creator equivalent to the Christian
>God, you have some rather un-Christian loose ends.  And wizards are
>angelic beings?  JRRT seems to be risking his immortal soul with that
>idea.

I have often wondered about this too. He's distilling a lot of different
creation myths into one, and I suppose it's not too surprising he comes up
with a pagan-flavored result. Although I suppose the Valar are more
properly archangels or demigods rather than gods proper, they certainly do
have a demiurge function and he does comment later on that Men have trouble
telling the difference.

(BTW - I love the Silmarillion, and the Ainulindale is my favorite part.
Just so we have all our cards on the table here. :) )

Tolkien claimed not to like Milton, but the story of Melkor/Morgoth does
nothing to convince me of that.

Here's a difference: Tolkien actually has a Satan analogue in his universe
(or more: Sauron and Saruman are fallen angels too, though neither as
powerful as Morgoth). JKR doesn't. Voldemort is a human being who gave up
his humanity for power and immortality -- not on the same cosmic scale at
all. (In Tolkien's world he'd be, _at best_ something like a Nazgul.) For
all the magic in JKR's world, there's very little that's actually
*supernatural*: magic is treated as just another force of nature, that
obeys its own laws like gravity. We see ghosts, but no gods or angels or
demons - just a whole other _ecological system_ the Muggles don't know
about. Why do those with an eye to avoiding on basis of faith see this as
_more_ threatening, rather than less? Is it creeping secular-humanism? That
would seem to directly contradict avoiding them on basis of magic,
something secular humanists notoriously don't believe in.

K:
>Perhaps it's in part because while based in some ways on our world Middle
>Earth is clearly not our Earth whereas JKR's world is ours.

I think this has been addressed before but yes, Tolkien definitely meant
his stories to be a fictional mythology of _our_ world. Look at the maps of
M-E: it's clearly Europe with many thousands of years of continental drift
and coastal shift factored in. (He once told a fan--in a letter, I think--
that Mordor would be mostly where the Mediterranean is now; he thought Mt.
Doom might be Mt. Etna.) One of the Elven names for sunken Numenor was
Atalante: dead tip-off (And NO, Valinor is NOT America. Straight road,
people, straight road! :D )

It's many, many thousands of years removed, however, which means that it is
only in some sense "our" world.

AV