Tag: opinion

Previously, I had written about the position that Tolkien’s fantasy works had found themselves elevated to within the fantasy genre, and how the weight of his influence has a warping effect on people’s perception of the genre, starting to see everything through the Tolkien lens. In short, Tolkien has become more of an idol to be blindly worshiped, rather than being treated as a skilled writer on his own unique merits.

However, whenever an idol is erected, there are those who feel the urge for desecration. For many, trying to tear Tolkien down is how they can “prove” that they have discovered some secret to fantasy unknown to the masses, or to show that they have surpassed him.

I must make it clear – I do not think that Tolkien is exempt from critique of his work, or even that he is the undisputed “best” fantasy author. Nor am I suggested there is a “right” or “wrong” method to fantasy. I am more amused that in the consistently cycling rush to tear down Tolkien, I see the same flawed and, frankly, disingenuous arguments being brought up again and again. I would like to touch on some of my favourites of these absurd repetitions, and often refutation. In short, while I feel Tolkien is more than open to critique, I am frustrated when that critique is so often reduced to parroting of old arguments that either miss the point, or are absolutely flawed to start.

I don’t intend to call out any singular author or essayist here – when you recognize these arguments you’ll see them pop up all over the place, and its unclear how often this is a repeat of another point of view, or an original concept. They are universal canards. However, I must give special mention to author Michael Moorcock, who, if not the first, really got the ball rolling with his famous “Epic Pooh” essay, which is worth a read to get a better context for exactly what I’m talking about.

Too keep this concise, I’ll focus simply on The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s most expansive work, and the focus of most critique. One of the most common complaints I hear is that The Lord of the Rings is too simplistic in its morality, in presenting everything as “good against evil.” Supposedly it is lacking in necessary “shades of grey.” Partially I think this is just a symptom of changing times. Good against evil is one of the oldest narratives humanity has come up with. Tolkien was heavily influenced by his Christian faith and experiences in WWI, which coloured his approach to the work. As time moved on, general audiences began to feel that they had heard every sort of variation on this theme and began craving something of nuance. This is especially true once many of the “good guys” of WWII began to partake in some very “bad guy” sorts of operations across the world in service of counteracting the “worse guy” of Communism. The obvious ‘evil overlord’, widely popularized with Sauron, began to become something of a punchline, when real evil seemed so pervasive and yet slippery.

I don’t think it’s exactly fair then to criticize Tolkien for something that was based on his own personal feelings and morality examining his specific moment in time. More so, I feel this critique is a gross oversimplification of how questions good and evil are handled within the books. The “evil” characters and entities are not given as much development simply because they are not the focus. The Lord of the Rings is less about a dualistic “good vs. evil” as it is a study of goodness under the pressure of evil. The evil provides challenges and temptations, but what is the engaging part of the work is how the “good” characters handle this. I will go further and say that simply calling the characters within the books “good” is also an oversimplification. The characters often fail and must be redeemed, or have others take on their burdens. Many cannot handle the burdens of responsibility or the temptation to fight evil with evil. These are the most important struggles for the characters within the book, not those against the physical forces of Mordor.

Often those who decry the “simplicity” of Lord of the Rings also conclude that it is an “unrealistic” work, too divorced from the realities of life in a setting of its kind. The most famous example of this is the by now memetic “What was Aragorn’s tax policy” raised by George RR Martin. The first problem with this of course is – realistic in relation to what? There has arisen an unfortunate belief in a “generic” fantasy. This has variable descriptions to it, but generally seems to be believed to be “medieval Europe.” For starters, most people have very little understanding of what medieval life actually entailed. Secondly, there is no indication that Tolkien was trying to pin Middle Earth to any specific year in earth’s history in regard to technology or society. Indeed, a strength of Tolkien is the uniqueness to his world. How in the world can you set up comparisons to reality, when there is no singular point of reality to be compared to? And why would you want to?

The obvious rebuttal to the question as to why Tolkien did not go into the minutiae of kingship or other aspects was that it simply was not his goal. However, there is another factor at play that many overlook. The book that is The Lord of the Rings is supposed to be an adaptation of the fictional Red Book of Westmarch (a play on the real-life manuscript the Red Book of Hergest), written by the hobbits after the events of the series. The series therefore has a very clear viewpoint (the hobbit characters), and focuses on events from their point of view, specifically what left the greatest impact on them from their perspective. The books are not intended to operate as an objective history. Actually, this adds to the realism of the series being a hobbit history, as Tolkien is more closely mimicking the styles of older historians, who were more concerned with narration and storytelling than presenting an impartial report.

I could go on into even more misconceptions, but I think you get the idea. (I also don’t want to dive into the more wild and vitriolic political theories brought up, which are generally personal to the one making them). There is the incorrect assumption, that I discussed in my last piece, that Tolkien is in some way a “basic” form of fantasy – from that incorrect assumption comes further conclusions that therefore his work has an inherent simplicity to it or lacks in nuance. I think that the idea that there can be a “generic” sort of fantasy is a troubling one at that, and more indicative of the commercialization of the genre in the present day, than anything to do with Tolkien.

In summation, I feel that placing Tolkien as the “lynchpin” of all fantasy does a disservice both to his legacy and to the legacy of other fantasy writers. The Lord of the Rings is by no means a perfect work – but what is? There is nothing else like it, and it has earned its reputation. At the same time, much can be said for other great fantasy works. It seems unfortunate that anyone who wants to say anything about fantasy has to either praise Tolkien as their one and only progenitor or try to take misaimed shots at him to prove their street cred as a radical force in the genre.

I simply don’t believe that any one work deserves to be the singular loadbearing stone in this particular house – it’s one that has many rooms, each with their own purposes and styles limited only by imagination. We should not expect one room to be like any other, but enjoy our time spent in all of them as unique experiences.

The impact of JRR Tolkien on the fantasy genre is a massive one to be sure. For many, he would be one of the only fantasy authors they can name, which is very impressive given the age of his works. I’m not here to give any sort of analysis or review – there’s very little I could say that hasn’t already be said on the matter of The Lord of the Rings.

I do find myself in the rather odd position of finding The Lord of the Rings to be simply good books and a great achievement in fantasy. Not my favourite works of fantasy, nor, I would say, the best I have read – but that does not make their accomplishments any lessened. Indeed, while many will praise Tolkien as the be all and end all of fantasy, there is also a continual trend stretching back many decades, where Tolkien is held up as a useful target for those trying to make their mark in fantasy. True, there is little that gets my eyes rolling faster than the phrase “The Greatest Fantasy Since Tolkien!”, but at the same time, I much of the criticism leveled at Tolkien throughout the years comes across as alarmingly disingenuous to me. In a way this does make sense – to gain attention via vandalism you have to perform your vandalism on something visible.

In short, my point is that Tolkien is an author whose legacy is surrounded by a good deal of nonsense of all kinds. This is a natural consequence of being such a benchmark within a genre. What is impressive is how this nonsense arises from both those seeking to bolster Tolkien’s legacy and those seeking to undermine it.

There are those who consider Tolkien to be the Omega of Fantasy – which, fair enough, that is a matter of personal taste, and I am not so crass as to start attacking that in this forum. What does cause me to gripe is the idea that Tolkien is the Alpha of fantasy as well. In this view, fantasy “really” begins with Tolkien, who then influenced countless inferior knockoffs as well as Dungeons and Dragons, which provided the main thread of fantasy development until the modern day when thankfully we began to receive some variation.

This view either pretends that fantasy before Tolkien did not exist or assumes that it was somehow of lesser importance – essentially relegating things from the Pulp era and beyond to historical footnotes, before Tolkien came and made fantasy “serious”. I’m not going to get into a debate over whether Tolkien was objectively or subjectively “better” than absolutely everything that came before him. But this outline of the history of fantasy is, I believe, a gross oversimplification. Tolkien’s genius lay in taking existing mythological elements and weaving them into an entirely new framework. His work was less of a foundation stone, and more of a, at the time, unique shifting of fantasy to a more European context. It seems strange, when many consider fantasy synonymous with “Medieval Europe” in their minds, but previously, much weird fiction could be argued to have looked more to the exotic within history, being attracted to Greek, Roman or even Arabic sources.

For example, the locations in Conan the Barbarian’s “Hyperborea” hold more with Ancient Mediterranean culture than Medieval Europe, and Conan ranged far and wide beyond his homeland into ever more exotic cultures. Tolkien was unique in bringing fantasy to a more European setting without relying on the purely historical or the fairy-tale. He also focused much more on aspects of cosmology and what we now call “world building”, at least in a more structured way than what had come before.

But how much did Tolkien affect the “mainstream” of fantasy after this? Many point to the reoccurrence of the same fantasy races in Tolkien. However, that I would attribute more to Dungeons and Dragons. True, Dungeons and Dragons may have aped Tolkien in this regard, but for the most part, the context of these races is nearly entirely changed. The Elves, Dwarves, Orcs and Hobbits of Tolkien all had very specific roles to play within his narrative which are not generally found outside of his work, or only copied at the most surface level. Beyond that, fantasy of the Dungeons and Dragons era is marked more by bizarre and imaginative monsters that have little to do with Tolkien’s work. Indeed, the creators of Dungeons and Dragons in mentioning their inspirations put Tolkien as only one among many. Though Tolkien was a landmark island in the river of fantasy, the water had started flowing long before him, and would continue on long past.

Indeed, I feel that trying to paint Tolkien as simply a fantasy “template” does a great disservice to his work as making it seem more prototypical and “basic” than it actually is. His linguistic work has rarely been matched (M.A.R. Barker is the only name who comes to mind as a challenger on that scale), nor has his dedication to winding together fictional histories and mythology. At the same time, it is also a disserve to later writers to automatically reduce their varied inspirations and styles to simply another measurement against Tolkien. The fantasy genre has a much deeper history than that which, I feel, deserves acknowledgment.