this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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The longer I live, the more real LOTR seems.
Pining for the well-defined good and evil; the inherent goodness even in some misguided heroes, the honor, bonding, and integrity of the protagonists, despite trial and tragedy. Our characters all striving for a better world despite any personal cost. Something missing these days.
It’s easy to wish for that. But also easy to forget that it was terrible war, both the fantasy one and the one Tolkien himself participated in, that brought about such a grand story. It is real, to an extent.
It doesn't seem easy to forget for me - I mean, if someone's brain just decides to ignore what "smell of death" means, or what "hewn dead bodies" look like, or the moments where besiegers of Minas Tirith use Osgiliath defenders' heads as projectiles, or how small the events there are compared to the way idiots think of wars, and still how hard for their participants, - then maybe.
And about honor and integrity - people put in a hard place behave this way more often than it would seem. Being in such a situation is a filter itself.
It's not all that unrealistic, there are good and evil in real life too. Sometimes with a contrast bigger than usual even for Tolkien.
It was real for them (as in Tolkien’s experience, which was translated into the fictional story).
Not us.
We read the stories and forget how horrible war can be, and unless we have actually experienced those horrors, our understanding is only intellectual.
I agree.
But that would be everything written, and also when put in situations very moderately reminiscing such, I had associations with LOTR from my childhood where I didn't have any such experience. Tolkien says literally many thoughts people have when encountering horrors.
That’s what makes a good writer and story.
I cannot argue one way or the other if you’re going to simply take the faintest references and call everything the same.
Aragon led Gollum on a forced march without food or drink; Gandalf threatened him with torture. Even the most "good" of the good guys have moral failings in LotR.
Yes, they did. But they weren’t world-ending failings. They didn’t to enrich themselves. They didn’t seek advantage. And objectively they should’ve either killed Gollum or jailed him rather than this back-and-forth frenemy/enemy he became. Gollum certainly tried to do plenty of damage himself, but today we’d have to view him as having a mental illness so that’s different faming than just the story written in the last century.
But, this is fiction, and how the story and characters were written.