2011 Reading #41: The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
41. The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien. There are a lot of things I could talk about here--about Pippin at the Gates of Moria mirroring Bilbo at the Battle of Five Armies, about how much better book Eowyn is than film Eowyn (my crush on Miranda Otto notwithstanding), about the fact that when I saw the films I was like "Wait, did this Paths of the Dead thing actually happen in the book?" (Teenaged me reading comprehension FAIL.) But what I actually want to talk about is "The Scouring of the Shire," because while I completely understand the thinking behind leaving it out of the adaptation, it's the reason why, for all that the films are gorgeous and well-made and enjoyable, they ultimately fail. There are multiple arguments for this: some of them have to do with the broken character arcs of Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, and also Saruman and Wormtongue; some of them have to do with the problem of the film's ending(s), which are drawn out and comprehensive and yet somehow not entirely satisfying. But the primary argument, at least for me, is that by bringing the hobbits back to a Shire that is untouched and unchanged, the films participate in this lie about war that (at least in this country) we've been telling since Vietnam ended; that war doesn't affect us here. War is something that happens somewhere else, and sometimes the men and women who go off to war come back hurt or changed or not at all, but home is never soiled by that, home is always The Good Place. Tolkien didn't believe that, clearly, and neither should we, no matter how camouflaged or hidden the scars of war on our national psyche may be. "The Scouring of the Shire" is about the Shire's loss of innocence, a quality which is actually of little or no value to those who possess it. In PJ's LotR, the Shire is left in a state of arrested development, and we're asked to see this as a good thing. I don't want to overstate, because I think that the films serve as very good companion pieces to the books, but this is one of many reasons why they cannot substitute for the real thing.
There is one more thing I want to mention, an unexpected side effect of re-reading Tolkien after all this time. I've talked elsewhere about how, from age ten up until the time I went off to college, nearly all of what I read was epic fantasy and its peripheral sub-genres; I eventually lost patience with it, and have rarely if ever read it since. And I think that reading LotR again has enabled me to make my peace with epic fantasy. I'm thinking about checking out this obscure series by some guy named Martin, or perhaps some Brandon Sanderson. I don't know if this is going to work out, because I'm harder to please as a reader than I was when I gave up on the genre. But it would be nice to find a series that scratches a similar itch to the one that Tolkien does, if it's out there for me.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
41. The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien. There are a lot of things I could talk about here--about Pippin at the Gates of Moria mirroring Bilbo at the Battle of Five Armies, about how much better book Eowyn is than film Eowyn (my crush on Miranda Otto notwithstanding), about the fact that when I saw the films I was like "Wait, did this Paths of the Dead thing actually happen in the book?" (Teenaged me reading comprehension FAIL.) But what I actually want to talk about is "The Scouring of the Shire," because while I completely understand the thinking behind leaving it out of the adaptation, it's the reason why, for all that the films are gorgeous and well-made and enjoyable, they ultimately fail. There are multiple arguments for this: some of them have to do with the broken character arcs of Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, and also Saruman and Wormtongue; some of them have to do with the problem of the film's ending(s), which are drawn out and comprehensive and yet somehow not entirely satisfying. But the primary argument, at least for me, is that by bringing the hobbits back to a Shire that is untouched and unchanged, the films participate in this lie about war that (at least in this country) we've been telling since Vietnam ended; that war doesn't affect us here. War is something that happens somewhere else, and sometimes the men and women who go off to war come back hurt or changed or not at all, but home is never soiled by that, home is always The Good Place. Tolkien didn't believe that, clearly, and neither should we, no matter how camouflaged or hidden the scars of war on our national psyche may be. "The Scouring of the Shire" is about the Shire's loss of innocence, a quality which is actually of little or no value to those who possess it. In PJ's LotR, the Shire is left in a state of arrested development, and we're asked to see this as a good thing. I don't want to overstate, because I think that the films serve as very good companion pieces to the books, but this is one of many reasons why they cannot substitute for the real thing.
There is one more thing I want to mention, an unexpected side effect of re-reading Tolkien after all this time. I've talked elsewhere about how, from age ten up until the time I went off to college, nearly all of what I read was epic fantasy and its peripheral sub-genres; I eventually lost patience with it, and have rarely if ever read it since. And I think that reading LotR again has enabled me to make my peace with epic fantasy. I'm thinking about checking out this obscure series by some guy named Martin, or perhaps some Brandon Sanderson. I don't know if this is going to work out, because I'm harder to please as a reader than I was when I gave up on the genre. But it would be nice to find a series that scratches a similar itch to the one that Tolkien does, if it's out there for me.