The shifting perspective of class reading: Is it deliberate or is it drifting?

[JJ48]

Hi JJ48,

You are quite right, that we are never told that Sauron is slain. In The Shadow of the Past, Gandalf says he was 'vanquished'. In The Council of Elrond, Elrond says that he was 'overthrown', "and Isildur cut the Ring from his hand with the hilt shard of his father's sword".

So, I think the first time reader probably assumes he is dead. Elrond is standing right there witnessing events. One would think that if Isildur chopped off Sauron's finger, and then Sauron ran off, Elrond would have mentioned it. So, I think the first-time reader would have been surprised to find that Sauron took shape again. The first-time reader might have then gone back and noticed that 'vanquished' and 'overthrown' are not quite the same as 'killed'. So, what is going on here? might be the thought from that perspective. Was he killed? Was he not killed? Wait a minute, "his spirit fled"? So, was his body killed but his spirit somehow survived? A ghost? But then, 'taking form again'? What form? How? What is Sauron anyway?

That is a pretty rich set of questions the first time reader might have. A lot more mysterious and interesting than, "Sauron, of course is an evil Maiar. So, when Elendil and Gil-Galad killed him, they slew only his bodily form, as the spirit of a Maiar cannot be so easily killed. So, his spirit fled. But it was weakened, and it took a long time before it could create a bodily form again." Tolkien wrote it mysterious, and puzzling, and somewhat ominous (what is Sauron? Not human? Not Elf? Or is he?). We lose all that artistry if we translate all this in our own minds the way I wrote it just above. Which is what we tend to do, as we know too much.

You may have read inferior and derivative fantasy novels where the author (in a misguided attempt at 'world building') writes scenes with too much info, the way I just did, and not the way JRRT does.

I think we really miss the power and the artistry of TLOTR if we don't try to restore the perspective of the first-time reader.

You're basically saying that the questions are more mysterious than the answers to those questions.

And considering we learn that Sauron is once again building up his forces in Middle-earth before we learn that the Ring was actually cut from his hand long ago, I'm not sure any first-time readers who are paying attention to the text are going to assume that Sauron was actually dead (unless they're going to assume he was some sort of undead). And again, whether a reader even finds these questions worth asking is likely going to depend much more on the reader's philosophy than on whether he's a first-time or veteran reader.

 

[Flammifer]

I am basically saying that we never get an answer to questions like, "What is Sauron?" in TLOTR. Leaving questions, and speculations and hints about many things is part of the work of art of TLOTR. Now, we don't know why JRRT never finished, and never published The Silmarillion. I guess he was not happy with it. There has been much speculation around what exactly he was not happy with. One possibility, is that he may not have been happy with destroying the mysteries and questions and speculations that create some of the effect of TLOTR? After all, JRRT was a great scholar of 'Beowulf', an epic poem which is replete with mysteries, questions, and speculations. In his famous lecture, 'Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics", his theme was 'read the story as a story;' 'read the poem as poetry', by trying to delve into all the mysteries and questions and speculations, the critics, seeking answers, are wrong.

 

[JJ48]

Didn't Tolkien actively try to get The Silmarillion published numerous times at various points, only to be rejected by publishers? I don't think there's much--if any--evidence that preserving the mystique of LotR was in any way a factor.

 

[Flammifer]

Yes, he did try to get it published. However, when he did, it was in entirely different form (and totally not completed) to what was eventually published. We have no way of knowing what it would have looked like if he ever had published it.

There is plenty of evidence that (after the completion of TLOTR) JRRT was working hard to try to cast The Silmarillion and TLOTR into the same world (for a while at least), but he was never happy with the resulting efforts. Late in his life, his publishers would have been delighted to publish anything he produced. He was the one who was not keen. I think the best evidence that preserving TLOTR mystique might have been a factor, is to be found in various comments in JRRTs lecture, 'Beowulf: The Monster and the Critics.' However, it is true that there is not a great deal of evidence about why JRRT was never happy to publish The Silmarillion. Many theories have been proposed.

 

[Kate Neville]

And of course we must remember that Tolkien, like all authors, is writing for a first-time reader. The most he could assume is a familiarity with The Hobbit, so he needed to include a justification for the original Riddle scene and, I think, let the first chapter remain in tone like The Hobbit. I read LotR immediately after The Hobbit (within a day), and I think it felt like a sequel to the end of The Hobbit, which is much more epic and, with the death of Thorn, tragic. A Long Expected Party read like a total tonal recap of The Hobbit, from light-hearted partying to serious psychic battles. (Of course, I had read the revised Hobbit so I was a bit confused by the whole apology to Gloin thing.) Point is, Tolkien could never assume any familiarity with Silmarillion material, so he needed to choose his words in such a way to carry meaning that could stand on its own. The fact that he wanted both Silmarillion and LotR to be published together implies that he thought he was not completely successful.

 

[Anthony Lawther]

Flammifer,
Another important point is that first-time readers often simply want to consume a story without much analysis. So the first occurrence of Nazgul in the text is quite likely to be met with the same amount of thought as that applied to the names of Tom Bombadil, or Barliman Butterbur. Any explanation offered later in the text is then incorporated into the reader's understanding or possibly skipped (unconsciously rejected) if the reader has already made their own conclusion.

Equally, whether Sauron was killed, left physically injured and dispirited on the ground, or some other explanation, can be skipped over by someone who is being carried along by the narrative; whether this is important to any given reader is a quite personal thing.

I find it interesting that you push the first-time reader angle, but I'd suggest that it's more of a first-time analytical reader approach; A reader may not ask many of the questions you pose.

 

[JJ48]

He also seemed quite willing to share "Silmarillion" explanations with people who wrote to him asking questions, so I can't think he was trying to hide details.

 

[Flammifer]

Flammifer,
Another important point is that first-time readers often simply want to consume a story without much analysis. So the first occurrence of Nazgul in the text is quite likely to be met with the same amount of thought as that applied to the names of Tom Bombadil, or Barliman Butterbur. Any explanation offered later in the text is then incorporated into the reader's understanding or possibly skipped (unconsciously rejected) if the reader has already made their own conclusion.

Equally, whether Sauron was killed, left physically injured and dispirited on the ground, or some other explanation, can be skipped over by someone who is being carried along by the narrative; whether this is important to any given reader is a quite personal thing.

I find it interesting that you push the first-time reader angle, but I'd suggest that it's more of a first-time analytical reader approach; A reader may not ask many of the questions you pose.

Hi Anthony,

You are certainly right that there are many varieties of 'first-time readers'. Also correct, that many first-time readers may just be propelled along by the narrative, without stopping to ponder too much about what exactly is going on. So, I guess you may be correct in thinking that I am thinking of the more analytical first-time reader.

However, I am not sure that that totally captures it. Even the first-time reader who is not very analytical, who is swept up in the plot and the narrative, still forms impressions and questions and assumptions almost unconsciously, as they go. Something has caused a very high percentage of readers of TLOTR (a higher percentage than almost any other English book) to become repeat readers. Part of that is that they do pick up questions and mysteries, and impressions as they go, which cause them to want to go back and read the whole thing again (and again and again).

Now, the analytical first-time reader may be more consciously aware of these questions and mysteries, but I think that many first-time readers are aware of them at some level.

 

[amysrevenge]

I've been thinking about this and I'm wondering if there might not be another sub-category that is worth considering here.

1. The perspective of the first-time reader. I like this perspective, as I think it contains an element of ‘recovery’ in the ‘On Fairy Stories’ sense, and JRRT might well approve. But, we have not paid much attention to it in recent episodes. An example from the last class, is the reading that Saruman (quoted by Gandalf), saying “Long ago…it (the Ring) was rolled down the River to the Sea”, lulled the Wise because they interpreted this as Saruman saying that the Valar had taken the Ring into the Deep to accompany one of the Silmaril until the the End. I do not think that this reading could have been made by a first-time reader. At this stage little is known about the Valar, and almost nothing about Saruman.

This could be divided into two parts:

1.a. The perspective of the first-time reader in 1954 who may have read some mythology or fairy stories, but hasn't had a lot of what we today would call "fantasy" to build up an impression of the tropes and standards and unspoken (today) cues.

1.b. The perspective of the first-time reader in 2020, who has not read Lord of the Rings but has ingested other fantasy/speculative fiction that has been innundated through the generations byJRRT's influence, with homages, parodies, and direct copies - deliberate turns toward and away from the master, where similar works are defined by their similarities to, and different works are defined by their differences from, the so-called "original".


This was largely provoked by the other current thread wondering what a first time reader might have thought would happen when the Ring went in the Fire. I think the 1a first time reader might have a different idea than the 1b first time reader.

 

[Flammifer]

Hi amysrevenge,

I think you are correct that the first time reader of yore might well have a different perspective than the first time reader today.

This is partly due (as you say) to the proliferation of derivative fantasy (if the reader today had read some of that), but even more so I think, to the fact that TLOTR has become part of the culture. Most first-time readers today probably 'know' that throwing the Ring in the Fire will destroy Sauron. They just have absorbed enough from general knowledge to have picked this up before they ever read the book.

That will make it less likely that they will observe that none of the participants in the Council of Elrond share this assumption, unless they are very careful and analytical first-time readers.