Hi! Just caught up after months of diligent and highly enjoyable listening, very excited to be on par finally. There seems to be a tradition in the seminar that caught-up participants are tolerated one post looking back on some issue they might want to raise, so here goes.
While following the seminar has prompted me to many new understandings of the text, perhaps the most profound so far was speculating on the psychology of the enemy (Witch King and Sauron) afteir their defeat at the Ford of Bruinen and the passing of the Ring into the control of the Wise. I read LoTR the first time as a teenager, in anticipation of the release of the PJ film. I had seen the book on my father’s bookshelf growing up and (having read The Hobbit) when news came of the films’ imminent arrival, I just knew I wanted to read the novel before seeing the film. While that gave me a basic relationship to the novel independent of the film, every re-read has subsequently been influenced by the PJ films. And I think I had forgotten just how momentous the victory at the Ford is in the novel. As a reader post PJ we are so “schooled” in to thinking that (i) “there is only one lord of the ring, only one who can bend it to his will” and (ii) it’s OBVIOUS that taking the ring is bad, and only IDIOTS like Boromir think that it can be used against Sauron. We are told in the Council and in the films that in seeking to destroy the Ring we are putting the enemy “out of his reckoning”. But the film does a very “good” job of putting wielding the Ring against Sauron our of our reckoning as readers/viewers. I had until this seminar not fully realised the consequences to Sauron of the possibility, inevitability even, that someone else, someone powerful, will now seek to wield the Ring.
While from the point of view of our protagonists the Quest and the War seem almost hopeless and against all odds (or as the professor put it, a series of eucatastrophies need to take place in order for the good guys to finish on top), the point of view of Sauron is desperate.
His chief foes have his ring, they know it is The One, they are winning battles, and having all kinds of weird “luck”. This changes the whole dynamic of the reading from “plucky gang of rag tag hobbits and others do Hail Mary play for the destruction of the enemy, who, if frankly he’d only been a little smarter and set serious guards at certain important places in his realm would have been totally fine” to “really quite clever group of extremely self-disciplined hobbits and others use their asymmetrical information advantage to the absolute maximum to cause a far superior enemy to act in fear and desperation for a full year, manage to subvert every expectation of their adversary and pull off extraordinary covert oprleration based, in great part, on psychological warfare.”
The movies make this latter reading quite impossible and Tolkien never fully spells it out in the novel. I fear it may have required a more subtle ability than I possessed as a 14-year old hoovering through the greatest adventure story I’d ever read. Thank you Prof for this insightful reading and I look forward to rereading the novel, with this basic post-Ford dynamic of Sauron’s fear in mind throughout.
p.s I have been able to catch up mainly thanks to my being on parental leave for my 10 month old daughter and have been “Exploring the Lord of The Rings” while she’s been exploring our living room. Another baby who will go to sleep to the sound of your voice for years to come.
While following the seminar has prompted me to many new understandings of the text, perhaps the most profound so far was speculating on the psychology of the enemy (Witch King and Sauron) afteir their defeat at the Ford of Bruinen and the passing of the Ring into the control of the Wise. I read LoTR the first time as a teenager, in anticipation of the release of the PJ film. I had seen the book on my father’s bookshelf growing up and (having read The Hobbit) when news came of the films’ imminent arrival, I just knew I wanted to read the novel before seeing the film. While that gave me a basic relationship to the novel independent of the film, every re-read has subsequently been influenced by the PJ films. And I think I had forgotten just how momentous the victory at the Ford is in the novel. As a reader post PJ we are so “schooled” in to thinking that (i) “there is only one lord of the ring, only one who can bend it to his will” and (ii) it’s OBVIOUS that taking the ring is bad, and only IDIOTS like Boromir think that it can be used against Sauron. We are told in the Council and in the films that in seeking to destroy the Ring we are putting the enemy “out of his reckoning”. But the film does a very “good” job of putting wielding the Ring against Sauron our of our reckoning as readers/viewers. I had until this seminar not fully realised the consequences to Sauron of the possibility, inevitability even, that someone else, someone powerful, will now seek to wield the Ring.
While from the point of view of our protagonists the Quest and the War seem almost hopeless and against all odds (or as the professor put it, a series of eucatastrophies need to take place in order for the good guys to finish on top), the point of view of Sauron is desperate.
His chief foes have his ring, they know it is The One, they are winning battles, and having all kinds of weird “luck”. This changes the whole dynamic of the reading from “plucky gang of rag tag hobbits and others do Hail Mary play for the destruction of the enemy, who, if frankly he’d only been a little smarter and set serious guards at certain important places in his realm would have been totally fine” to “really quite clever group of extremely self-disciplined hobbits and others use their asymmetrical information advantage to the absolute maximum to cause a far superior enemy to act in fear and desperation for a full year, manage to subvert every expectation of their adversary and pull off extraordinary covert oprleration based, in great part, on psychological warfare.”
The movies make this latter reading quite impossible and Tolkien never fully spells it out in the novel. I fear it may have required a more subtle ability than I possessed as a 14-year old hoovering through the greatest adventure story I’d ever read. Thank you Prof for this insightful reading and I look forward to rereading the novel, with this basic post-Ford dynamic of Sauron’s fear in mind throughout.
p.s I have been able to catch up mainly thanks to my being on parental leave for my 10 month old daughter and have been “Exploring the Lord of The Rings” while she’s been exploring our living room. Another baby who will go to sleep to the sound of your voice for years to come.
