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White Tower Musings

~ This blog will be an attempt to explain the significance of various works of great writing, the authors that create them, and some effort to understand correlations between great writing and contemporary events.

White Tower Musings

Tag Archives: fantasy

You Can’t Always Get What you Want, But if You Try Sometimes, You Might Find, You at Least Get Back: The Return of the King Part 2

09 Friday Nov 2018

Posted by Joshua Ryan "Jammer" Smith in Academic Books, fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Novels, Philosophy, Writing

≈ 1 Comment

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"Well I'm Back", Academic Book, Author of the Century, Billy Conolly, desire, Evil, Eyes Wide Shut Orgies are actually a pain to schedule, fantasy, Frodo, Frodo Baggins, Good vs Evil, J.R.R. Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, Lawrence of Arabia, Literature, Michael D.C. Drout, Middle Earth, Novel, Of Sorcerer’s and Men, Philosophy, Road to Middle Earth, Sam, Samwise Gamgee, Slipknot, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The Return of the King, Tom Shippey, virtue, Writing

Witch King

I had to pee up to around 10 times when I saw Return of the King in theaters, and that was during my third watching. 

Though my condition has improved as I’ve aged, my wife has gone so far as to suggest that I download an app to my phone which actually sets a timer on your phone which coordinates one’s bladder while one is watching a movie.  The basic premise is, that way, you won’t waste a lot of time during a movie going back and forth to the toilet.  RunPee isMV5BODZjNmEwNmMtZjc1Yi00YWVkLWJlMjEtYjA0ODZiOTU4Y2QzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzQ3Nzk5MTU@._V1_not only an app, it is an entire website where there is a community of fellow pissers who exchange dialogue about when is the best time to get and urinate during a film.  I have yet to really dig into the language and psychology of this community because frankly I’m terrified of the reviews of Lawrence of Arabia.  I’m terrified they’re going to say the whole film is one long piss-fest, and I like Lawrence of Arabia.

As for my nervous pissing as a teenager, it came about entirely because I didn’t want to miss anything because I knew, as I watched, that this would be the last time I would see Middle Earth on the big screen.  I was wrong largely for two reasons.  The first reason was that by getting up to pee I was actually missing part of the film, and the second reason was because Peter Jackson would begin The Hobbit trilogy just a few years later.  And while The Hobbit films were not the barbarous human rights atrocity that they’ve been made out to be, Billy Connolly plays a dwarf who rides a motherfucking boar and he only shows up in the last hour of the last fucking film for fucks sake…I’m a little bitter.  But that’s only because it’s Billy motherfucking Connolly. 

Billy Conolly Dwarf

Fuck.

The Lord of the Rings the Return of the King was a beautiful film however, and so for many years I hated myself for never actually finishing the book.  It was fun knowing how the story ended, and it was fun appearing smart as I informed people who knew nothing about the series (and who probably didn’t give a shit about it) that I knew that in fact that when the Hobbits returned to Hobbiton the Great Party Tree was destroyed andReturn of the Kingthe Hobbits actually had to fight a large gathering of ghouls and cretins who had polluted the Shire, but it was all, ultimately, just an exercise in ego.  That is when I finally finished The Return of the King at the end of last year, I finally felt as though I was not so much of a “would-be.”

Book six of the Return of the King came and went, and I was left in a rather difficult position: how am I going to write about the last book.  Book five at least had Eowyn, but for the most part the final section of the book is for Frodo and Sam, and I don’t have much to say about either.  It’s not that I fail to recognize the potential for character exploration as both men have interesting material to work with, but by the end of Return of the King both of these characters have been essentially stripped to the bareness of their souls and are nearly destroyed.

The quest for the Ring, and the physical and psychological effects it has upon Frodo have been analyzed by scholars, fans, bloggers, writers, poets, and that weird guy at CVS pharmacy with the neck-beard who’s actually got great puns the world over.  Whether it’s been interpreted as a metaphor for drug use, the ultimate corrupting power ofart-magician-lord-of-the-rings-bilbo-rivendell-town-gandalf-lord-of-the-rings-valley-hobbies-gandalf-waterfalls-mountain-unexpected-journey-unexpected-journey-rockpower, veiled symbolism of unholy temptations, or simply human weakness, ultimately everyone arrives at the same conclusion for why Frodo ultimately fails to drop the Ring of Power into the fire of the Crack of Doom in Orodruin, usually just called Mount Doom: Frodo has no choice.  Ultimately the ring corrupts otherwise good people to it’s will, and they are powerless to stop such evil.  Temptation is a force that compels and corrupts the will, and those who possess the ring are ultimately undone by this power.

What fool would I be to argue against this interpretation?  Apparently a great fool indeed, but I not only disagree with this collected sentiment, I actually find it a dangerous proposition.  Though I’m not the only one who find this argument weak.

As I have noted since the start of these essays, Michael D.C. Drout’s lecture series Of9780760785232_p0_v2_s1200x630 Sorcerer’s and Men completely altered my perception of the trilogy and the ultimate aesthetic effect that Tolkien was attempting in this fantasy series, and I’m still feeling the reverberating effects as I consider each text one by one.  What struck me most about his analysis of The Lord of the Rings was the final failure of Frodo, and as he quoted the scene directly I suppose I should as well.  Sam and Frodo have traveled over the plains of Gorgoroth, and as they made their way up the side of Mount doom they have been attacked by Gollum.  Frodo manages to escape and make his way inside of the volcano and after Sam has spared Gollum he chases after his master who he finds standing on the perch.  All is darkness until the fire lifts up and Tolkien writes the scene so that every word matters:

The light sprang up again, and there on the brink of the chasm, at the very Crack of Doom, stood Frodo, black against the glare, tense, erect, but still as if he had been turned to stone.

“Master!” Cried Sam.Frodo Crack of Doom

Then Frodo stirred and spoke with a clear voice, indeed with a voice clearer and more powerful than Sam had ever heard him use, and it rose above the throb and turmoil of Mount Doom, ringing in the roof and walls.

‘I have come,’ he said. ‘But I do not choose now to do what I came to do.  I will not do this deed.  The Ring is mine!’ And suddenly, as he set it on his finger, he vanished from Sam’s sight.  Sam gasped, but he had no chance to cry out, for at that moment many things happened.  (924).

There is always going to be somebody whispering to the reader and saying “the book was better,” and while I won’t say that this scene in the final film of the trilogy was not great, it reinforced the traditional narrative of Frodo’s failure where the book left a more nuanced point.  Every word in Frodo’s declaration speaks to the real power of the ring and the effect that it has upon those who bear it or desire it. facts-one-ring-lord-of-the-rings-780x438_rev1

If the reader pays close attention to Frodo’s language it is clear what is compelling Frodo is not solely weakness of spirit or supernatural influence, it is choice.  Frodo does “not choose” to destroy the ring, instead his choice is to keep it for himself.  And this idea of choice is everything because choice is always a matter of one’s personal conviction.  A person chooses what color clothes to dress in, what books to read or not read, what films to see, what religion or philosophy should govern their life, what political beliefs they subscribe to, what games to play or not play, and what sort of people they prefer to spend their time with.  Each of these choices reflects the character and values of that individual, and those choices are ultimately founded upon a foundation of desire.  I choose to spend most of my time reading andthe-lord-of-the-rings-original-animated-classic-remastered-deluxe-edition-20100406040315385_640w1writing, because I desire to communicate to other people in a different way than conversation, dinner parties, or Eyes Wide Shut Orgies every third Tuesdays at Sarah and Jacob’s house (BYOB).  These actions coalesce together to create who I am, but it’s always the desire that compels these choices.

The power of the One Ring then is not just to warp a person using evil magic, what’s truly horrifying is that the power of the ring  is to warp a person’s choice. 

This of course creates problems because most readers would probably prefer a reality where Frodo does not choose to keep the One Ring, because if it his choice it becomes harder for us to forgive his final failure?  If it is just supernatural power, magic, temptation, then it’s easy to forgive the man’s weakness.  But as long as the final choice to keep the One Ring for himself is his choice the reader has to make an important decision: is it fair to fault Frodo?Frodo

This is where I look to outside books, which, in my case, tends to be the entire space of my office which is not just dedicated to coffee stains, cat hair, 3D prints of busts and statues.  There’s an entire shelf dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien (which he shares, just for the record, with Ta-Nehisi Coates), and as of this writing a significant amount of space is dedicated to the writings of Tom Shippey.  Shippey is a big name in Tolkien studies, largely because he has become a sort of literary successor to Tolkien, assuming the man’s former position at Oxford University and also writing multiple books about the man’s collected work.  Shortly after my inhalation of Drout’s lecture I absorbed every book the library hadabout Tolkien and his body of work, and Shippey’s J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century served as one of the first real stimuli of the of my intellectual flood.0aae4a6c83ea2e8af7104e6d6697bd16

That’s all a fancy-pants way of saying I read a lot of Shippey’s work.

Author of the Century is an important book in looking at almost every level of Tolkien’s oeuvre, and there’s no element of the book series that Shippey doesn’t analyze.  Whether it’s the linguistic models of character names, parallel mythic structures of themes, literary references contained within the novels, or even simply studying the shorter poetic works of Tolkien, Shippey is often the sort of writer that cuts open the butterfly to see how it works without managing to damage or smudge the original beauty.

Author of the CenturyLooking at this book then I looked to see how Shippey handles this problem of Frodo’s choice:

With that he puts it on for the sixth and final time.  It is a vital question to know whether Frodo does this because he has been made to, or whether he has succumbed to inner temptation.  What he says suggests the latter, for he appears to be claiming responsibility very firmly […] Against that, there has been the increasing sense of reaching a centre of power, where all other powers are ‘subdued’.  If that is the case Frodo could no more help himself than if he had been swept away by a river, or buried in a landslide.  It is also interesting that Frodo does not say, ‘I choose not to,’ but ‘I do not choose to do.’ Maybe (and Tolkien was a professor of language) the choice of words is absolutely accurate.  Frodo does not choose; the choice is made for him. (140)

Looking at this passage Shippey seems to come to the conclusion that Frodo has no real say in the matter.  But if one looks to another one of his books, The Road to Middle Earth,Road to Middle Earth he provides a far more nuanced  perspective:

Nevertheless it seems that there the external power is abetted by some inner weakness, some potentially wicked-impulse towards the wrong side.  In the chamber of Sammath Nauer one’s judgement must also be suspended.  Frodo makes a clear and active statement in his own evil intention […] Are Frodo’s will, and his virtue, among those powers?  To say so would be Manichaean, It would deny that men are responsible for their actions, make evil into a positive force.  On the other hand to put the whole blame on Frodo would seem (to use a distinctively English ethical term) ‘unfair’; if he had been an entirely wicked person, he would never have reached Sammath Nauer in the first place.  (144)

Shippey seems to arrive at what I would call a really mature understanding of good and evil and the nature of temptation.  Like so many aspects of life, one’s actions are usually a multifaceted creature which is determined on your individual self and environment.  Who I am and what decisions I make in my own home are entirely different from the decisions I make when I’m at work.  Both spaces create my reality and the way I’m supposed to behave in that reality, and before I become ungodly academic about this its fair to say that your environment has as much determining factor on your choices as whether or not external forces play a role in your decisions.10312349_10152254071921551_6560166227750751768_n

For this I have to go to heavy metal, because just two years ago I went with a friend to see my favorite band Slipknot in concert.  They were the last band to go on and my friend Josh really wanted to get in a mosh pit.  So when Lamb of God came on, and we were both very very very VERY drunk, he handed me his forty and hopped into the hurricane which was the mass of bodies running and fighting in a large circle.  I recognize comparing a Lamb of God mosh pit to Sammath Nauer is probably ridiculous, but in fact it actually bears some resemblance, because while my friend Josh was fine to hop into the chaos that was the pit, I stood at a distance watching grown men and women escape from the carnage with bloody noses and black eyes laughing while on the stage twin guitarists stood in front of atom bombs blowing up and head-banging.  I chose not to go into the pit, largely for reasons of self preservation, but also because it was my choice.

A pit in a heavy metal concert is not a force of pure evil, (although “Force of Pure Evil” would be a great title for a Metal Album) but anyone who’s attended a concert knowsalbert-edwards-the-fed-has-allowed-an-orc-like-monster-to-incubate-hatch-and-emerge-into-the-sunlight-snarling-and-ready-to-do-battle.jpg these “rings” are spaces where rational thought disappears and one is left solely to one’s passions and impulses.

I guess what I’m trying to communicate is that Frodo’s decision is complex, and arguably the zenith of the entire trilogy, because in this moment Tolkien challenges his own conception of evil as something of absence, and allows the reader to question how we look at our own choices.  And Shippey, to his credit, provides a beautiful analysis of it.

As to the questions of how far responsibility is to be allocated to between us and our tempters, how much temptation human beings can ‘reasonably’ be expected to stand—these are obviously not to be answered by mere mortals.  Tolkien saw the problem of evil in books as in realities, and he told his story at least in part to dramatize that problem; he did not, however, claim to know the answer to it.  (145)

The problem of Frodo’s choice is that it is a problem, largely for the reader.  Up to this point Frodo has seemed to be a purely good person, or at least a good person who’stolkien_photo_h-mexperienced great struggle and has done the best he could.  The ultimate choice to keep the ring for himself however calls many character aspects into question.  Was this always his intention, and did he intend to keep the ring from the start?  Or is it simply that the power of the ring is just too tempting and he realizes what he could be and do with its power?  Is Frodo even in his right mind when he makes this decision, or is it the combination of the Ring and the fires of Mt. Doom?

I’m not sure that I have an answer that feels satisfying.  My personal take at the end of everything is that, while the Ring is ultimately exerting the influence over Frodo, the extent of that influence is allowing Frodo the space to feel he can make this terrible choice.  And at the end of everything perhaps the ultimate power of the One Ring is not that it possesses any sort of supernatural power other than to allow people their selfishness.  This is not a terrible supernatural power, but it is a frightening prospect nonetheless for the reader who knows their own mind, and the terrible impulses and sudden desires they may have and not share.MV5BOGMzOGNkMjAtYjFhNy00MWI2LWExZTUtMDNkZGE5M2FlYWE2XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzQ3Nzk5MTU@._V1_

Our wants are not always selfless, in fact almost all of them are selfish.  Our wants are our selfish desires, and the real threat of evil is the temptation to act on everyone of them.  Frodo was a good person, but ultimately no one could stand against the temptation to do and have everything they want.  Frodo’s redemption then is the journey itself, for while he is ultimately a failure, his effort to deliver the ring to Sammath Nauer and Orodruin comes from a want and desire to be a good person and save the home he loves.

Goodness then, at the end of The Return of the King, is about overcoming personal selfishness and sacrificing for the general good.  The hero cannot win this fight, because selfishness and temptation is ultimately too great an opponent, this is made clear when Gollum steals the ring from Frodo by biting off his finger and falling back into the fires of Mount Doom.  Frodo too cannot escape the destruction of the Ring.  He ultimately leaves Middle Earth with Gandalf, Bilbo, and the last of the Elves to the Grey Havens.

Though I suppose all of this is not entirely correct, for at the very end of this long journey is Sam who does not desire or want for much except a home, and good tilled earth.  And Tolkien gives the man just that:Sam_frodo

At last they rode over the downs and took the East Road, and then Merry and Pippin rode on to Buckland; and already they were singing again as they went.  But Sam turned to Bywater, and so came back up the Hill, as day was ending once more.  And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected.  And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Eleanor upon his lap.

He drew a deep breath.  “Well, I’m back,” he said.  (1008).

This ending may in fact offer the reader one more, and far more satisfactory conclusion about the journey.  Want and desire is not a solely selfish emotion, and can in fact lead to one’s salvation, as long as one’s wants are not so great to blind one to what you have.

sam-with-family

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes taken from The Return of the King were cited from the Mariner paperback edition.  All quotes taken from J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century were cited from the hardback Houghton Mifflin edition.  All quotes taken from The Road to Middle Earth were cited from the paperback Houghton Mifflin edition.

**Writer’s Note**

I realized not long after finishing this essay that there were multiple forums dedicated entirely to the question of Frodo’s failure, arguing whether in fact his final act is a failure.  As I said before, I land in the middle of this issue personally but each person is different, and dialogue is vital to the health of the humanities.  So if the reader is at all interested in seeing a few of the multitudinous perspectives which govern the Tolkien fan-base feel free to follow any of the links below:

http://www.thetolkienforum.com/index.php?threads/does-frodo-actually-fail.8873/

https://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=334

https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/2u5467/did_frodo_fail_at_the_cracks_of_doom/

https://www.planet-tolkien.com/board/13/2986/0/did-frodo-fail

***Writer’s Note***

I get that being a queer man this argument is probably pointless, but it must needs be repeated, I don’t believe that Frodo and Sam are gay.  But even if they were that doesn’t make any part of their relationship stupid, silly, grotesque, or not worth exploring, and if you’re the kind of shitty asshole who disagrees with me then go fuck yourself.  You take a long and emotionally exhausting adventure carrying the Ring of Power to Oroduin so that you can cast the ring into the fires of Samath Nauer ultimately to be undone by the will to dominate before managing to destroy the ring after all and hold each other close as the land of Morder begins to crumble in the aftermath of the collpase of the spirit of Sauron and NOT develope a bromance.  Go on.  Seriously.  I dare you.

Frodo_and_Sam_at_Mt_Doom

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I Ain’t No Man MotherF@%$ER!: Eowyn and Tolkien’s Difficult Feminism and Womyn

02 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by Joshua Ryan "Jammer" Smith in fantasy, Feminism, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Novels, Queer Theory

≈ 2 Comments

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"I am no Man!", Betty Friedan, Butch, Butch Lesbian, Dyke, Eowyn, fantasy, Female Masculinity, Feminism, Gal Gadot, gender, Gender Inversion, Good vs Evil, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jack Halberstam, Literature, Miranda Otto, Novel, Queer, Queer Theory, Return of the King, Stephen King of the Lesbians made an appearance in this essay, The Feminine Mystique, The Lord of the Rings, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Witch King of Angmar, Women in drag, Women in Tolkien, Womyn

Eyowyn vs the witch king

Don’t tell me not to live

Just sit and putter

Life’s candy and the sun’s

A ball of butter

Don’t bring around a cloud

To rain on my parade.

Don’t tell me not to fly

I’ve simply got to

—Don’t Rain on My Parade, Barbara Steisand

 

Don’t tell me how to live my life, I am a headstrong, independent, wo-man!

—The writer’s wife

With the exception of M. Knight Shamylan’s The Village, watching films with my mother is a pleasant experience.  This is due in large part to the fact that she, like myself, can become passionate while watching a film and is prone to speak up while watching a movie.  I can always tell when Mom is enjoying herself because she will often begin to rant about “[X] shouldn’t be doing that because she doesn’t realize that [Y] is a catch,” or perhaps it might go, “Boy [Z] is going to be mad when he finds out [C] is a bitch.”  These moments and statements are usually built upon by my little sister and I eventually have to pause the movie so that the symposium can continue.  Still, these moments are fantastic and remind me how much I love my family and all its oddity.

To this day however The Lord of the Rings films hold a special place in my heart, largely because they shaped my perception of reality for close to six years, but also because Mom would always cheer when Eowyn killed the Witch King of Angmar with what is to this day one6070a11c5731fa0a97da009340a22f0cof the finest executed lines in cinema history.  The reason is largely because of the line in question:

Witch King: [taking Eowyn by the throat] You fool. No man can kill me. Die now.

[Merry stabs the Witch King from behind; the Witch King shrieks and falls to his knees. Eowyn rises and pulls off her helm, her hair falls down over her shoulder]

Eowyn: I am no man.

[she thrusts her sword into the Witch King’s helm and twists; he shrieks and implodes]

Mom would usually yell out, “YES!” and punch the air as the Witch King would crumple and implode into nothing and I would always laugh.  This laughter would usually hide the fact that I was right alongside Mom on this one, Eowyn was a badass and didn’t take any shit from anybody. 

This scene also, for the record, remained the moment of pure female badassery until Gal Gadot stepped into our lives and became goddess supreme as Wonder Woman.

Gal-Gadot-Wonder-Woman-Video

Having finished The Return of the King for the first time in my life, and possibly the last time unless I need something to do during retirement besides count my money and regrets, I realized that there was no other character or element in Book 5 of the Lord of the Rings that I wanted to write about more.  The reason for this is probably apparent to any regular reader of this blog: Eowyn is obviously a pre-op transexual using Post-Modern Anti-Patriarchal Drag Performance to disestablish the cultural construction of gender of Rohan society in order to establish a working PostModern, Post-Marxist, Post-Deconstructionist Model of Masculine Femininity.Return of the King

That was a joke, even I’m not that pretentious.

However, Eowyn is a woman wearing drag in order to find some sort of agency in a culture and society that is relentlessly patriarchal and seeks to keep her confined in the home.  So, I’m afraid there is something terribly queer, and terribly feminist in her decision to dress up as a man.  Or at least it seems so.

Eowyn is a woman who is a sort of “lady of court,” a female individual who is responsible for numerous social tasks around the castle, namely making sure that food is ready, that the fires are lit, that there is ale or drink should anyone require it, and to make sure that the beds of the great halls are clean and ready for the men when they return from their fighting or outings.  It is the stuff of feminist nightmares, but again, because Tolkien was often writing from direct inspiration from works like Beowulf this responsibility and social role is not outside the source material, or source inspiration I should say.  Now as for Tolkien himself there is some issue with calling the “old Professor” a feminist by any means.  Having grown up during the early decade of the 20th century, and having fought in the first World War it’s difficult to say whether the man harbored what would be considered a more progressive view of women, or whether he bought into the ideatolkien_photo_h-mof patriarchal masculinity.  It’s almost certainly the latter case, but without having read more about the man personally I can’t say.  Whatever the case the women in The Lord of the Rings rarely assume any sort of personality, and while Lady Galadriel assumes a pressing spiritual importance to the over-all plot, Tolkien’s work tends to reinforce traditional gender types rather than etching out new territory to work with.  I’m not in the interest of defending patriarchy, and I much prefer the fun-bits that involve queering shit up.  Therefore Tolkien’s feminism, or lack of feminism really, seems to become apparent in the character of Eowyn because her motivations and actions reek of a desire for real agency.

Early in the Return of the King Aragorn is speaking with Eowyn about the attack, and her role in the larger logistical structure.  Eowyn begins to express her dictate for her role and the pair have a brief exchange:

‘Your duty is with your people,” he answered.e46df-eowynsword

‘Too Often have I heard of duty,’ she cried.  ‘But I am not of the House of Eorl, a sheildmaiden and not a dry-nurse? I have waited on faltering feet long enough.  Since they falter no longer, it seems, may I not now spend my life as I will?’

‘Few may have that honour,’ he answered. ‘But as for you, lady: did you not accept the charge to govern the people until the lord’s return? If you had not been chosen, then some marshal or captain would have been set in the same place, and he could not ride away from his charge, were he weary of it or no.’

‘Shall I always be chosen?’ she said bitterly. ‘Shall I always be left behind when the Riders depart, to mind the house while they win renown, and find food and beds when they return?’

‘A time may come soon,’ said he, ‘when none will return.  There there will be need of valour without renown, for none shall remember the deed that are done in the last defense of your homes.  Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are upraised.’

And she answered: ‘All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house.  But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Earl and not a serving woman.  I can ride and weld blade, and do not fear either pain or death.’

‘What do you fear, lady?’ He asked.eowyn_vs_the_nazgul_by_drstein-d3gcsfn

‘A cage,’ she said. ‘To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.’  (767).

There is without doubt a feminist message and conviction in this passage, but before I get to it I feel the overwhelming need to nod gently to myself and sigh, for it feels, as of this writing, that I feel more and more like I am caught in a similar position.  There is this compulsion towards the desire for something, even if I am not sure what that something actually is.  In all likelihood this sensation, the “burning desire” as Bono once so beautifully put it, is just part of getting older and feeling that life might still “owe” me something for my efforts.

But my own wandering aside, the previous quote is really the key to Eowyn’s character, while at the same time part of the larger problem.  Eowyn as a woman cannot expectunola-compagnia-dellanello-disegnata-dai-f-lli-hildebrandtanything in terms of real agency because the society of Rohan is very much medieval England.  Women are expected to be romantically and sexually focused on their husbands, while also managing the day-to-day upkeeps demands of the home. This is to say nothing of their own desires and needs.  It is a world where men go out and fight, often dying and leaving women to manage the home, the children, the farm, before dying themselves without having lived a life of their own volition.

And considering this, and because I am the kind of nerd who likes to find connections between things, reading this passage I was reminded of a book that I have not actually read to it’s completion, but it is a book I know by reputation.  Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique is a book that is considered a landmark feminist text, if not an outright cultural event in Western Society.  And before my reader begins to complain I should cite the passage:Feminine Mystique

The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women.  It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of twentieth century in the United Started.  Each suburban wife struggled with it alone.  As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—“Is this all?”  (1).

Now of course I anticipate the reaction: Rohan women are not American women.  That’s a stupid argument.  Period.

This is a fair rebuttal, though the punctuation at the end of the sentence really makes the “Period” comment rather unnecessary.  Still this is a fair consideration, and as I waseowyn11doing some initial research for this essay, and talking to friends who I consider Tolkien resources, the general summation was usually the same.  Tolkien as an author really isn’t a feminist by any stretch of the imagination.  In fact, it’s fair to say, Tolkien really doesn’t have much use for women in his books.  What women exist tend to be sidelined characters who are either part of the “Deep-Time” aesthetic, or else they tend to be marriage fodder: women who exist solely to be married to the protagonists.  Whether it’s Rosie Cotton, who wore ribbons in her hair, Lady Galadriel, who gave three of her hairs to Gimili, or Arwen, who oddly enough has no real description of hair so she could be bald for all we know, these women are not really there at all.Eowyn

Eowyn assumes a character in the story, and this passage is, to note, the most substantial voice a woman has in the plot of the novels.  Her struggle is not solely that she is threatened by Sauron, Saruman, and the endless legion of orcs that want to destroy her and Middle Earth.  Eowyn is a woman fighting both the enemy, as well as the paradigms of her own culture.  And so faced with a life of servitude she knows she cannot live, she performs an act of rebuttal and disguises herself as a man to fight in the great battle of Pelennor.

And, to the woman’s credit, she kicks ass.  It’s not enough that she fights with honor alongside the Muster of the Rohirrim.  Eowyn fights the Witch King of Angmar, the greatest of the Nazgul and the virtual leader of both Sauron’s black army, as well as the souls monsters that hunt the ring with unwavering obsession.  After the creature hasdavid moonchild demaretmore-or-less dispatched King Theoden Eowyn stands between the Witch King, his literally flying bat-dragon-monster, and threatens to kill him if he should touch Theoden, offering up the line that made both me, and my mother, fist-bump.

‘But no living man am I!  You look upon a woman.  Eowyn I am, Eomund’s daughter.  You stand between me and my lord and kin.  Begone, if you be not deathless!  For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.

The winged creature screamed at her, but the Ringwraith made no answer, and was silent, as if in sudden doubt.  (823).

Some scholars, notably Michael Drout, observe that this subversion of the Witch King’s threat of “No man can kill me” is reminiscent of the prophecy in William Shakespeare’s MacBeth when the Wyrd Sisters warn the ruined king to “Beware the man not born of woman.”  And as much as I would love to say Tolkien was attempting to go another path, it feels far more likely that Tolkien was ripping off the bard rather than future second2876485-eowyn.nazgulwave feminists.

Eowyn’s defiance however does seem to fall in line with my previous argument about Tolkien’s system of Good and Evil.  The Witch King doesn’t laugh or threaten Eowyn after her defiance.  It pauses.  The silence following this declaration reveals not just doubt on this creatures part, but a continuation of the idea that evil in the Tolkien universe is not about personal identity issues, it’s defined by a real absence of essence.  The Witch King is nothing, whereas Eowyn is a woman who has created a new persona to be who she wants to be.

There is some desire on my part to argue that this constitutes a feminist argument for the Lord of the Rings as a text, but the problem with this argument is that the text immediately negates my argument.  Eowyn fights the Witch King and defeats him, but only with the help of Meriadoc (a man) and afterwards becomes ill and must be tendedEowyn_Disguised to before she falls in love with Faramir the son of the Stewart of Gondor.  Rather than return to her home land a warrior, Eowyn falls in love with Faramir and the two wed retiring to the Ithelian where she becomes a wife and mother.  This isn’t just a negation of the dreams and ambitions she has been speaking about throughout her entire character arc, it’s almost a violent jerk back into the home she spent so much time complaining about.

And here of course I have to dig into my bag of queer tricks because, well dear reader, it’s me.

It’s difficult calling Eowyn’s action of dressing in drag a queer act because there’s nothing really sexual about it.  There is also little real gender reconstruction or re-imagination about it.  Eowyn is donning a man’s clothes, not because she wants to be a man, not because she doesn’t identify with the gender that was assigned her at birth, not because she desires to recreate the gender modes and roles of her culture and society, not because she wants to sleep with women, and absolutely not because the pant sizes areEowyn Witch Kingeasier. 

If my male reader didn’t understand that last one ask any woman anywhere and they’ll explain.

Dressing in men’s clothes isn’t a queer act in any real sense of the term.  It’s merely a means to an end, and Eowyn is not the first woman in literature to don men’s clothes for the sake of plot.  William Shakespeare regularly relied on such a trick in such works as As You Like it or Twelfth Night.  The transvestite is a character that actually is pretty recurring throughout most of the tradition of Western Literature and Tolkien’s use of it here seems to follow a pattern.  A woman is allowed to dress like a man, but only, and I mean only when there is an understanding that she will return to her place in society.  If she does not then she is a female hermaphrodite, a dangerous creature.

As Jack Halberstam notes in Female Masculinity:Stephen King of the Lesbians

The female Hermaphrodite was considered a freak of nature with an enlarged clitoris who desired to penetrate other women who might be drawn to her ambiguity.  (55).

What’s worse than a woman wearing pants?  A woman who might have a penis.  And if a woman has a penis then she’s some sort of inverted, or deviant man.  And that, dear reader, would be really, really gay.

After considering all of this I don’t believe then that Eowyn’s character arc has any real element of feminism to it.

But then again I am not a woman, and sometimes it’s best to actually consult a woman.  Being married to one allows me then another side of things, and when I asked my wife about Eowyn’s arc she said simply, “As long as it is her choice to become a wife and mother, then that is feminism.”Eowyn 11

Tolkien does make any of this easy, because as I’ve noted over and over and over again (to the point my reader has probably bailed and is now perusing an instagram account run by a very, very handsome chimpanzee named Bert) his women are not really women at all.  They’re these atmosphere pieces that exist largely to inform either the deep time or else a man’s character arc.  But Eowyn does offer the reader a real character.  She’s a real woman with desires, faults, ambitions, eccentricities and so she is able to assume some kind of real arc.  Tolkien may, by the end of the book, throw her back into the home and the hall where she’ll cook and tend to her husband and family, but if this act is her choice then who am I to argue against it?  And even if she never again achieves such a courageous act as facing down the Witch King, at least that moment exists.

Eowyn is difficult, but that’s what makes writing about her so fun.  I have no idea if I was able to really unearth any sort of queer or feminist qualities to The Lord of the Rings, but I can rest assured that my mother and I will continue to fist-bump every-time Eowyn takes off her helmet and plunges her sword into the black abyss of the Witch King’s face.

Eowyn Death

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes cited from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King were taken from the Mariner paperback edition.  All quotes cited from The Return of the King film were taken from IMDb.  All quotes cited from Female Masculinity were  taken from the paperback Duke University Press edition.

Return of the King

 

**Writer’s Note**

It should be noted that the only reason I stated that my mother is not fun to watch The Village with is sort of an inside joke.  I could tell you what happened but then it wouldn’t be an inside joke and she already hates it when I divulge personal or embarrassing information about her.  I know as a son I’m supposed to do that anyway, but my mom was actually, and still is actually, a pretty cool individual and so I would prefer not to embarrass her more than I already have.  Love you Mom.

 

***Writer’s Note***

I’m a man writing about feminism.  This isn’t a problem, but it is.  Because I do not possess a vagina, and the unending wisdom of all creation that comes with having one it’s important to question my arguments and, far more importantly, listen to the arguments of people who have vaginas when they comment or argue about characters that have vaginas.  As such, I’ve compiled a small list of articles where some writers have discussed the films and books of The Lord of the rIngs, specifically Eowyn and her presentation.  Enjoy:

https://www.feministfiction.com/blog/2013/07/25/how-the-lord-of-the-rings-broke-my-heart

http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/why-feminists-hate-lord-rings

https://jezebel.com/5495438/tolkiens-ladies-is-geek-culture-female-friendly

http://www.pfspublishing.com/bookclub/2011/03/character-analysis-tolkiens-one-good-woman-eowyn.html

https://ueafeminism.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/is-eowyn-a-feminist-hero-the-fantasy-genre-and-its-medieval-sexism/

https://musingsofmargaretblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/26/feminism-in-lord-of-the-rings/comment-page-1/

https://pagesunbound.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/eowyn-a-feminist-character/

https://www.thefandomentals.com/women-in-middle-earth/

https://femfilm16.wordpress.com/2016/02/17/i-am-no-man-one-line-does-not-a-feminist-triumph-make-peter-jackson/

 

****Writer’s Note****

Because I love you all, please enjoy this animated adaptation of Eowyn confronting what I can only figure is The Witch King of Ang-mar if he was cross breeded with Skeletor.  Enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWjt6LGhHsI

the-return-of-the-king-e28093-the-witch-king

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If You Can’t Be the One You Want, Love the One You Are: Gollum’s Undiagnosed Depression and The Two Towers Part II 

06 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by Joshua Ryan "Jammer" Smith in fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, music, Novels, Philosophy, Writing

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Anti-Hero, Cirith Gorgor, depression, Depression is an illness, Everyday is Exactly the Same, fantasy, Flawed hero, Gollum, Gollum/Smeagol, Hobbits, Identity, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Michael D.C. Drout, Morannon, music, NIN, Nine Inch Nails, Novel, Of Sorcerer’s and Men, Physical Ailments of Depression, Physical Symptoms of Depression, Rango, Sense of Self, Smeagol, Spirit of the West, Split Personality, suicide, The Lord of the Rings, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Two Towers, With Teeth

44f5952d299452d13804b8331275a017

Try to save myself, but my self keeps slipping away.

Into the Void, Trent Reznor

 

Clint Eastwood made a square out of the dust on the windshield of his golf-cart.  He framed Rango and said one of the best quotes I’ve ever heard in terms of narrative theory:

Spirit of the West: No man can walk out of his own story.

It may be a platitude, but this line still felt powerful when I was watching it, even after Clint Eastwood drove away in his golf-cart disappearing into the desert of Nevada.  The line stuck with me, and as I was listening to Michael D.C. Drout’s lecture series Of Sorcerers and Men I was reminded again of the line as the man asked an important question: Is Gollum the hero of his own story?MV5BOGMzOGNkMjAtYjFhNy00MWI2LWExZTUtMDNkZGE5M2FlYWE2XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzQ3Nzk5MTU@._V1_

Every reader I suspect has one friend, co-worker, or casual acquaintance who believes that they can do impressions.  These will usually be, in order, Borat, Bane from The Dark Knight Rises, Bill Murray from Caddy Shack, and of course Andy Serkis’s now defining portrayal of Gollum.  Imitation is the most sincerest form of flattery, but Jeff really needs to find a better hobby now that his divorce is finalized.

My usual, dismal humor aside, the character of Gollum is something that has lasted past the flair and hoopla of the Lord of the Rings film franchise, and even if there are people who no longer recognize words like Nazgul, Hobbits, Gandalf, and Aragorn, most people probably recognize the character of Gollum, in due large part to Serkis’s incredible performance, and maybe unfortunately that one episode of Big Bang Theory.  Gollum as a figure and a character is something most people can latch onto easily in the Lord of the Rings trilogy because the character is so often recognized as an addictive personality, and his passion for the ring is popularly understood as an extended metaphor for drugs.  At least that’s what mygollum_in_the_cave_by_lucastrati-d4txawzteachers and gym coaches use to tell us.  And, I’m pretty sure, the reader probably has taken this interpretive route as well.

Having finished The Two Towers however, and looking at the larger character arc of the character Gollum, I kept returning to Drout’s question, and the Spirit of the West’s advice.  No one can walk out of their own story, but is it possible for someone to break themselves down so much so that they can no longer see themselves as the hero or at least maker of their own story?

This is a difficult question and one that I struggle with because I suffer from depression.  I drive my wife, friends, and coworkers nuts with this because I am often putting myself down, I rarely receive compliments with much comfort, and if anyone attempts to praise me I’m often to say that I’m really not worth it, or else that there are better people than me.  This is usually my facade for my real feelings which often amount to the conviction that my life is worthless, I have no real importance to anyone around me, and that everyone would be better off if I was dead.Photo on 3-17-18 at 11.06 PM #3

I have no rational explanation for this conviction.  It’s all just a regular feeling I’m held by.    Birthdays tend to be the worst, and I often find excuses not to accept any sort of praise.  And I can honestly say that I’ve told myself regularly that I am worth less than dog-shit.

Taking all of this in, and reflecting on which part of the Book 4 of The Two Towers to write about there really doesn’t seem to be any conflict.  I knew I was going to write about Gollum, but rather than look upon his disorder as a form of dependence or addiction, I feel that there stands a real argument that the man is really a beautiful metaphor for depression, specifically the way people can self-denigrate to the point oblivion. 230f755addecc2e349899e12b61d6759

It’s not simply that Gollum as a character is so far gone that he’s completely abandoned his previous name and identity of Smeagol, one of the river-folk from a good family, it’s the fact that he barely retains any sort of semblance of his previous existence.  Though while reading the book I was struck by a passage, largely because Drout had pointed it out to me.  I’ll admit that I was on my way to work, listening to the lecture about Gollum and becoming more and more sympathetic to the character, but I wasn’t prepared for what came next.  Drout read the passage, and I had to drive through tears.

The passage takes place later in Book 4, as Sam and Frodo are asleep and Gollum has returned finding them in this state:

Gollum looked at them.  A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face.  The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired.  A spasm of pain seemed to twist in him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate.  Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo’s knee—but almost the touch was a caress.  For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepersgollumhave seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing.  (699).

I was crying for Gollum, something I never really thought that I would say or write.  It feels hammy or ridiculous, but at the same time I recognize it isn’t because I cry every time I read Harry Potter and read Dobby’s death, I weep every time Simba tries to wake up Mufassa after he’s fallen into the stampede, and to this day I know that I will never watch Old Yeller because…No, just no.  Fuck, no.  This sympathy for a fictional character who I often despise was an incredible sensation, and was partly what confirmed my re-interest in Tolkien and my conviction to finish his trilogy this time.

The passage was incredible for the way it helped me recognize the physicality of depression, and the tole it takes on the body.

5908a2f185d53210113731Depression is as much a physical ailment as it is an emotional burden, not enough people really seem to recognize that.  There’s the sadness, and morbid-as-fuck thoughts in which you try to rationalize why your existence is flawed, pointless, and a waste of other people’s time, but these sensations are only part of the larger show.  I’ve begun to recognize more and more that my depression tends to manifest in physical ailments such as twitching, headaches, panic attacks where it feels like I can’t breath.  And the most depressing thing about all of this crap is that I’ve begun to realize how ephemeral my body is, which is another way of saying I’ve become more and more aware of the aging process and so I’m realizing this clap-trap of a form is the only body I’m going to get.

My concern for my physical well-being is a sign that my depression has not completely taken my spirit over and so I’ve taken the time to invest in self-repair.gollum-lord-of-the-rings-31401514-395-315

The physical symptoms of depression are real and present in this small scene, but even more so is the disconnect.  Depression as an illness is not just about feeling sad and impotent coupled with a few physical ailments.  Tolkien is really great at showing how the lingering pain of depression is this real sense of waste.  Gollum/Smeagol in passage isn’t just some random cretin, he’s a real being who once had a life with passion and purpose.  Seeing Sam and Frodo in their “youth” (Frodo is supposed to be in his fifties so I place that word in quotations) Gollum is really able, and thus the reader is able as well, to see how the man has wasted his life immersing himself in the ring.  And this leads to the most pernicious aspect of depression that Tolkien is able to convey which is that, over time, people can become so comfortable in their pain that they don’t want to change their life because they don’t know anything else.Gollum5

Long before this passage Gollum leads Frodo and Sam to Morannon just outside of the Black Gates of Cirith Gorgor.  That’s all jargon for the entrance to Mordor, I’m a nerd remember.

Before the actual attempt to enter Mordor takes place Gollum confronts Frodo in a moment of desperation:

‘No, no, master!” Wailed Gollum, pawing at him, and seeming in great distress.  ‘No use that way!  No use! Don’t take the Precious to Him!  He’ll eat us all, if He gets it, eat all the world.  Keep it, nice master, and be kind to Smeagol.  Don’t let him have it.  Or ho away, go to nice places, and give it back to little Smeagol.  Yes, yes master give it back, eh?  Smeagol will keep it safe; he will do lots of good, especially to nice hobbits.”  (623-4).

I’ve recently become aware of the fact that I can be something of a vampire to my friends, because I have a tendency to be a bit of a drama queen.  Whenever my depression hits in force I’m unable to really contain it and so my friends wind up having to expend emotional energy to help me out, and this usually makes me feel even worse.  Seeing myself in Gollum is not a pleasant sensation I can assure the reader, but looking at this passage his desire for the Precious is not just selfishness, it’s a sign of his deeper weakness.  Because Gollum has spent close to 500 years just being in the pain of the Ring, he hasn’t allowed himself to develop any kind of personal significance; he has nothing but pain and the ring.  Depression mimics this kind of lifestyle because when one suffers from depression for extensive amounts of time, one becomes comfortable with thatMV5BODZjNmEwNmMtZjc1Yi00YWVkLWJlMjEtYjA0ODZiOTU4Y2QzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzQ3Nzk5MTU@._V1_pain.  I’ve said to my friends who have suggested therapy that, “I just enjoy being broken.”  And as Gollum suggests to Frodo that he taker back the ring, it’s clear Gollum wants it back not because he wants to help others, he just wants to go back to a space and place where he could be comfortable being broken.

I recognize this isn’t a terrible novel observation, because if the reader has as an eclectic taste in music as I do, they might have listened to Nine Inch Nails.  The entire collected recordings of Trent Reznor might as well be one long dedication to depression, and one of my favorite songs sprung to mind as I began this essay.  Everyday is Exactly the Same is a song I’ve played almost everyday for the last few months and I’ve realized more and more how relevant the song feels to my life.  Looking at just a few lyrics my own depression, and Gollum’s, takes on a new dimension:

I believe I can see the future

‘Cause I repeat the same routine

I think I used to have a purpose

But then again, that might have been a dream

I think I used to have a voiceTrent Reznor Young

Now I never make a sound

I just do what I’ve been told

I really don’t want them to come around, oh no

Every day is exactly the same

Every day is exactly the same

There is no love here and there is no pain

Every day is exactly the same

Human beings, and by extension I suppose Hobbits, are creatures of habit.  It’s a cliche I repeat often, but that’s only because there’s a great level of truth to it: habit dies harder than love.  Gollum’s existence is one defined by a past tragedy that, over time, disappears into the obsession of the Ring, and while many writers and fans have gravitated to the ring as an explanation for Gollum’s psychological state, I would argue that there230d12e37ce5f7ff7cea6294c4693632really can be a case made for the reality that Gollum is suffering from a real form of depression.  I’m not ignoring the supernatural power of the Ring, but the pattern of behavior suggests a deeper struggle.

Gollum is a man who who used to live in his pain, and being separated from the “comfort” of the daily pain is a great burden to bear that steadily forces him to confront the realities of the past, not to mention the psychological and physical damage he’s done to his body and mind.

Peter Jackson, to his credit, managed to convey this reality in the second of the three films as Gollum is talking to himself one night while the Hobbits are asleep.

Gollum: We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us. Sneaky little hobbitses. Wicked, tricksy, false!

Smeagol: [shaking his head] No. Not master!

Gollum: [snarling malevolently] Yes, precious, false! They will cheat you, hurt you, LIE.I Hate You 2

Smeagol: Master is my friend.

Gollum: You don’t have any friends; nobody likes you!

Smeagol: [closes his ears with his hands] I’m not listening… I’m not listening…

Gollum: You’re a liar and a thief.

Smeagol: No.x

Gollum: [sinister whisper] *Murderer*.

Smeagol: [voice breaking; hurt by Gollum’s remark] Go away!

Gollum: “Go away?”

[Gollum laughs mockingly as Smeagol begins to cry]

Smeagol: [weeping] I hate you. I *hate* you.

As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve had conversations like this with myself.  Conversations that end with me crying, holding my head, and saying the word “I hate you” over and over again.  And I hope that this means I’m not too far gone into this shit.I Hate You

But I began this essay with a real question: Is Gollum the hero of his own story?  To which Tolkien seems to provide a not so subtle answer to this question.  Near the end of Book 4 Sam and Frodo are making their way to the pass of Cirith Ungol and the realm of Shelob the giant spider and Sam begins to talk aloud about the “stories of old.”  It’s a bit of meta-reflection that was used beautifully in the Second Lord of the Rings film,9780760785232_p0_v2_s1200x630however something was left out that begs this initial question.

‘Maybe,’ said Sam, “but I wouldn’t be one to say that.  Things done and over and made into part of the great tales are different.  Why even Gollum might be good in a tale, better than he us to have by you, anyway.  And he used to like takes himself once, by his own account.  I wonder if he thinks he’s the hero of the villain?

‘Gollum!’ He called.  ‘Would you like to be the hero—now where’s he got to again?’

There was no sign of him at the mouth of their shelter nor in the shadows near.  (697).

At the opportunity to join the conversation, and perhaps give himself a moment to be full, and be the hero of his own story, Gollum is conspicuously absent, returning in just a few moments to find the Hobbits asleep and thus create the earlier quote that originally left me in tears as I drove to work.  The question is answered by that absence, and Gollum’s real tragedy is thus revealed: he is a man living a life where he isn’t the hero.image

Such a state of being may not seem terribly important in this contemporary times.
Heroes are the stuff of comic books or really bad action movies True Lies, or terrible action films like Commando.  Yet despite this the idea of a person being their own hero is an important one, because if one is a claims adjustor, or a civil servant, or a reference access at a library the idea that your life is your own and that you are living your own narrative is important.  It gives one a sense of purpose and direction, and one is able to build a life from such a narrative.Two Towers

The problem with something like depression is that it numbs one from that purpose and drive.  Life becomes about being, but more importantly about questioning the relevance of that being.  Depression is a state where one regularly questions, or really believes that life would be better off without them.  Gollum’s pain is that he has wasted his life living in that pain, and the worst part is he just wants to return to it because it’s better than facing the truth which is that he has wasted his life pursuing something that isn’t real.

There’s so much material in The Two Towers, but because Gollum has become a bit of a rock-star I wanted to dig into his character and find something that isn’t just imitations or caricatures.  And in the real character I guess I found a bit of myself, or, as tragedy may be, a lot of myself.  Tolkien deserves credit then for crafting a real vision of theNkRyCEOreality of depression.  My condition is not necessarily improving dramatically, but writing about it like this, finding connections to it in real life and fiction, and telling my story like this has helped me moving forward.  It’s helped me claim my position in my own narrative as the, if not hero, at least the man of his own making.

Gollum is a man who has walked out of his own story, and allowed his desire for comfort in pain to become his defining trait, and ultimately his undoing.  I suppose though that, in that tragedy, there’s still an opportunity for other people to find a bit of themselves, and reevaluate whether going to see a therapist every now and then is really such a bad thing.  Just make sure not to see one for seventeen years because then you’re in Woody Allen territory.

And Gollum in a Woody Allen movie is a reality I don’t think any of us are ready for just yet.

smeagol1

 

AFTERWARD

This essay was written months ago.  I have a tendency to sit on my work and so what was true during the original composition has, not changed, but altered dramatically.  In the time since I wrote this essay my friend Savannah Blair killed herself.  So what has not changed is my conviction and understanding that I laid bare in this essay.  Depression is a disease, and those that suffer from it should seek counseling and medication if need be.  Life is too short, and our connections to others is mortal and tenuous.  The friend, sister, brother, father, mother, lover, partner that is here today can be gone tomorrow as quickly as it takes to squease a trigger.

Please, for the people you love, seek help.  It’s worth it to stave off a great deal of pain and not just your own.  Miss you Sav.

13475008_10204936878301880_2828205597904128556_o

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes taken from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers were cited from the paperback Mariner edition.  All quotes from Rango were provided by IMDb.  And The Lyrics for Everyday is Exactly the same were quoted from AZLyrics.com.

Two Towers

 

**Writer’s Note**

If the reader happens to be someone who suffers from depression, or knows someone who suffers from the disease, I’ve provided a link below to a few resources for people who would like help, or at least would like to start researching the condition.  Trust me as somebody who’s been dealing with the crap for almost 30 years, being happy and healthy is way, way, WAY better than being comfortable and broken.

https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/depression/resources.htm

http://www.dbsalliance.org/site/PageServer?pagename=clinicians_resources_for_your_patients

https://nndc.org/initiatives/task-groups/college-mental-health/resources/

https://www.rtor.org/depression/

http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/find-support-groups

https://www.columbusrecoverycenter.com/depression-resource-guide/

 

***Writer’s Note***

Please remember, nothing is an original thought and just as I think I’ve contributed something unique to the culture, I find dozens or articles that more or less express the same thought.  So, please enjoy these articles about Depression and Lord of the Rings:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/maria-senise/how-the-lord-of-the-rings_b_5534013.html

https://www.thefourohfive.com/film/article/mental-health-awareness-month-why-living-with-depression-is-pretty-much-the-plot-of-the-lord-of-the-rings-146

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-331155/Gollum-diagnosed-mental-illness.html

 

 

****Writer’s Note****

Just for the record, since I wrote this essay I’ve begun to see a therapist.  A friend of mine sees her regularly, and another friend found her number for me and hounded me until I called her up and made the appointment. Self-repair is a strange sensation, but it is worth it.

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Deep Philosophy of Common Tree(Men?): The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers Part 1

06 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by Joshua Ryan "Jammer" Smith in Book Review, fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Novels

≈ 1 Comment

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#TomCanSuckIt, Allegory, An Ent is Not a Tree, Book Review, David Day, deep time, Ent-Wives, Entmoot, Ents, enviornmentalism, fantasy, industry, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Merry, Pippin, Rohan, Seriously Google Ent Wives and get ready for the saddest story, Shepards of Trees, Slipknot, The Lord of the Rings, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Two Towers, Tolkien: A Dictionary, Treebeard, Trees, Yavanna: Queen of the Earth

Treebeard_grabs_Pippin

I hate Treebeard, only because he has a better beard than I do.

There was a time in my life when I believed that I too could grow an incredible beard that might one day house families of squirrels and field mice who would tickle me as they burrowed into my beard making a safe space for themselves.  This fantasy would often accompany an honest desire to be a woodland dwelling forrest god with taut, MV5BMGMxMmRkNzctMWQzYy00MTY3LWEzMDAtMzEzMDhkZWI4MjZlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDUzOTQ5MjY@._V1_UY317_CR4,0,214,317_AL_bulging muscles and hair down to my ass.  It was a beautiful time in my life when the word metal was an adjective rather than a noun, and the soundtrack to my life was Corey Taylor screaming while Clown banged on beer kegs with an aluminum bat.  And of course these wild-man fantasies would be accompanied by loads of sex (Often with buxom wood nymphs, and sometimes with other bearded wild-men but such occasions were rare because I was still in that awkward phase when I pretended that browser histories weren’t a thing and that I wouldn’t wind up gay if I jerked off to two dudes having sex “just that one time”).

I can’t deny how much the Lord of the Rings franchise has mattered to my personal and intellectual development because I watched The Two Towers everyday after school for two weeks as soon as the VHS copies came out on sale.  I’d watch the film over and over again wishing I was in Middle Earth fighting alongside Two TowersGimli and Aragorn and Legolas.  And, I really wish this part wasn’t true, I would often watch the film once my family had gone to sleep so I could fight imaginary orcs and Uruk-hai.  There were so many signs of my loser-dome in those early years, and I’m only recently acquiring a semblance of personality.

These fantasies turned realities that were the major reason why I didn’t lose my virginity until I reached my early twenties were always, always, coupled with a sublime awe of ents.  Having grown up in a home that my parents literally built with their own two hands, and having an entire woods to explore and walk around in the ents were charged in my young pre-teenage mind with a kind of supernatural power.  I would actually tremble when the ents “went to war,” and watching an army of trees march to end the fires of industry seemed to me the most beautiful moment in the film.  I would watch the scene over and over again, and no matter how many times I watched it, the scene felt imbued with an energy and symbolism that felt potent and relevant and, I’ve used the word already but it feels right, sublime quality.

Though I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself because my reader may not have any idea what the ents actually are, at least in terms of the larger Tolkien universe.  My reader might have an idea already, “them those tree people what throw the rocks and such.”

The Wrath of the Ents, by Ted Nasmith

My regular reader’s outstanding grammar aside, that is partly an idea of what the Ents were, however there’s a little more to it.  A friend of mine gave me a Christmas present this year, which made me feel like an absolute ass because I didn’t get him anything, but opening the package I realized my friend knew me perfectly for not only was it a book, the title was Tolkien: A Dictionary by David Day.  I discovered that this book was in fact a 15743926121miniature version of A Tolkien Bestiary, and looking at this wonderful book a better idea of what Ents actually are comes into play:

Elvish histories tell how, when Varda, Queen of the Heavens, rekindled the stars and the Elves awake, the Ents also awoke in the Great Forrests of Arda.  They came from the thoughts of Yavanna, Queen of the Earth, and were her Shepards of Trees.  Shepards and guardians they proved to be, for if roused to anger they could crush stone and steel with their hands alone.  Justly they were feared, but they were also gentle and wise.  They loved the trees and all the Olvar and guarded them from evil

[…]

Though Ents at times had great gatherings, called Entmoots, for the most part they were a solitary folk living apart from one another in isolated Ent Houses in the Great Forrests.  Often these were mountain caverns plentifully supplied with spring water and surrounded by beautiful trees.  (81-3.)John_Howe_-_Ents

Now it’s very possible that the reader still has no clear understanding of what an Ent actually is, which has fine because there are Tolkien Scholars who still have no clear conception of what an Ent actually is.  I discovered halfway through the eighth Non-Lord of the Rings book about Tolkien and his work that there is an ongoing debate about the etymological origin of Ents, and therefore no-one is really sure what they are.  They might be orcs or trolls or giants or simply something that can’t be clearly defined.  It’s easy to read this description and watch the Peter Jackson films and believe they have a firm conviction of what Ents actually are, but their quality is something linguists, scholars, and fans themselves are still debating, and even reading Tolkien himself the reader is sure to come away still stumped.

They found that they were looking at a most extraordinary face.  It belonged to a large Man-like, almost Troll-like, figure, at least fourteen foot high, very sturdy, with a tall head, and hardly any neck.  Whether it was clad in stuff like green and grey bark, or whether that was its hide, was difficult to say.  At any rate the arms, at a short distance from the trunk, were not wrinkled, but covered with brown smooth skin.  The large feet had seven toes treebeard-3each.  The lower part of the long face was covered with a sweeping grey beard, bushy, almost twiggy at the toots, thin and mossy at the ends. (452).

In the same paragraph Tolkien has compared Treebeard to both a man and a troll, further creating an “other” by the seven toes on his feet.  There really is nothing like an Ent because every time one gets close to understanding what it actually is, Tolkien offers only more speculation, and to be completely honest after a while I really don’t care what Ents really are.  And neither should the reader.

The role of the Ents in Book 3 of the Lord of the Rings is not so much their supernatural existence, but rather their ultimate role in changing the events of the war of the Ring.  Merry and Pippin escape into Fangorn after being held prisoner by the Uruk-Has that killed Boromir at the end of the Fellowship of the Ring.  The Two Towers follows the pair of them as they encounter Treebeard in the woods, and through their influence the man decides to join the war, and rally the ents to him in order to defeat the evil Wizard Saruman who is wreaking havoc over the territory of Rohan with his orcs and “industry.”ti_02

It’s in this territory that most of the interpretation of Treebeard and Ents tends to veer towards the predictable.  Most people who comment or write about the Ents tend always to use them as nothing more than a metaphor for environmentalism, the only ever real political position that Tolkien offered during his lifetime.  It’s because the “Old Professor” rarely ever espoused any significant personal interpretations, and because the man had a driving passion for the woods and pastures of native England, the existence of the Ents in the novels has largely been interpreted as an attempt to create a symbolic army for the environment.  The Ents became tree-huggers rather than tree-shepards, and thus legions of term papers and blog posts were established killing any real attempt at independent scholarship or initiative.800px-Ted_Nasmith_-_The_Tree_Shepherds

It’s not that I disagree with the argument that Ents serve as an environmental argument, it’s just that I object to simply interpreting the Lord of the Rings books using the pathetic tool of allegory.  Allegories tend to be the tools of religious sycophants, or else pathetic middle school compositions that totally should have deserved the contest prize over Tom’s poem about some piss-for-shit leaf on a branch of a fucking tree in fucking Autumn.  #NeverForget#TomCanSuckIt.

Treebeard is an interesting character because he is a man (or troll, or giant, or god, or tree, or whatevs) because he is a man with no real allegiance to anything other than his own business.  At one point Merry and Pippin are discussing the war with the man and he offers his take on the world and himself:44f6fed5898c5e36c1c4c6278b11c13f

‘Hoom, hm, I have not troubled about the Great Wars,’ said Treebeard; ‘they mostly c concern Elves and Men.  That is the business of Wizards: Wizards are always troubled about the future.  I do not like worrying about the future.  I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side, if you understand me: nobody cares for the woods as I care for them, not even the Elves nowadays.  […]. And there are some things, of course, whose side I am altogether not on; I am against them altogether: these—burarum’ (he again made a deep rumble of disgust)’—these Orcs, and their Masters.

‘I used to be anxious when the shadow lay on Mirkwood, but when it removed to Mordor, I did not trouble for a while: Mordor is a long way away.  But it seems that the wind is setting East, and the withering of all woods may be drawing near.  There is naught that an old Ent can do to hold back that storm: he must weather it or crack.  (461).

treebeard-2It’s hard to say, write really, that I identify with Treebeard without feeling like an absolute hipster.  It’s easy to nod along with someone and their words, it’s quite another thing to commit to action and demonstrate conviction.  It might also be because the current political environment in the United States is not friendly to anyone outside of the two-party, two-side system.  Treebeard stands in the face of those who would have him pick one side or the other, and ultimately he does pick a side.  It would seem then that Treebeard’s ultimate decision to join the fight of the War of the Ring is a real political gesture, however my only conflict with this argument is that Treebeard is a man with his own sense of time.e7dc8b16e1260144332e08709a804379

I addressed in my essay about Gandalf, and then again when discussing Durin’s Bane that Tolkien’s effort in The Lord of the Rings is often about creating a sense of deep time.  The reader steadily, as they read, become aware that the characters that they love and care about are actually small figures in the ancient conflict between good and evil, or the light and shadow that stretches back millennia.  Treebeard then is another one of these figures that serves to juxtapose the hobbits against the enormity of time that exists in the universe.

Pippin himself observes this feeling of time when he tries to describe Treebeard

But at the moment the hobbits noted little but the eyes.  These deep eyes were no surveying them, slow and solemn, but very penetrating.  They were brown, shot with a green light.  Often afterwards Pippin tried to describe his first impression of them.882ed63e9dc1ba58c8d17f58178d8670--ent-lord-of-the-rings

‘One felt as if there was an enormous well behind them, filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface was sparkling with the present; like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or on the ripples of a very deep lake.  I don’t know, but it felt as if something that grew in the ground—asleep, you might say, or just feeling itself as something between root-tip and leaf-tip, between deep earth and sky had suddenly waked up, and was considering you with the same slow care it had given to its own affairs for endless years.  (452).

Tolkien provides most of the material for me, using words like “deep” and “endless” to characterize the Hobbit’s impression of the Ent.  And the reader at that point is able to feel the hobbits’s feelings of Treebeard’s feelings of them as they feel their own feelings about the feelings of feelings thus expressed.Many_ents

I like James Joyce a little too much I think.

I can hear my reader’s objections.  We’ve already addressed the theme of Time in The Fellowship of the Ring; what good is it to continue on with this theme when there are so many other aspects of the universe to explore?  Treebeard is important, but he’s just another beating of the same drum.

To this I don’t really have a good defense.  The reader is right, Treebeard is another expression of the Deep Time that Tolkien is crafting over the entire trilogy, and my exploration of the character is just a reminder of that sensation of deep time.  However if I can offer some sort of defense for myself it would be that even if Treebeard is an example of the “deep time” of Middle Earth he is not what the reader has observed before.  Gandalf was a wizard and a Maiar, one of the ageless spirits watching and manipulating the course of human events and wars to ensure the course of some nameless, natural order.  Durin’s Bane was a balrog, a footservent of an agent of pure evil that existed purely for the sake of war, destruction, and pain.  It’s existence revealed the ancient quality of the world, but it was also a reminder of evil.

Treebeard, simply put, is about desiring only peace.

The ents, to me and my reading of the The Two Towers, were the most fascinating and hopeful aspect of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the word hope is employed purposefully.  When I would rewatch the “Last March of the Ents” and feel the hairs on my arms and legs stand on end and the shiver run through my body, it was because the Ents were creatures without any sort of real agenda.  They were almost human beings 800px-Luca_Bonatti_-_Farewell_to_Fangorndefending their homes.  Unlike the Men, who were greedy and vain, or the orcs, who were vicious and cruel, the Ents fought only for the trees and the earth and the safety of the natural world.  This is not a particularly sexy position to take in an armed conflict, but it stands to be reminded that it is ultimately the reason most people would or should want to fight.

Treebeard is not a machiavellian despot fighting to secure of position of territory for further conquest, he is a man who has lived a long life and decides to fight because he recognizes that, even if his efforts will be for naught, the fight against the shadow is worth fighting for because it will be for the world rather than for a partisan cause.  This OptimisticInfiniteHornedtoadprovides some real sense of hope as a reader, and a real form of identification.  Watching the year 2017 unfold, and watching my country dissolve into contested and petty partisan conflict a figure like Treebeard was refreshing and hopeful because it was an example of a being who could look past it.  The time of trees is older and longer than the times of men.  Outside of my office window stand two pecan trees.  They are most assuredly older than I am, and I’m sure they’ll be there long after I am dead.  In their time they will provide food for squirrels, shelter for birds, and sleeping space for plenty of stray cats who will no longer be strays once my wife has discovered them.  It’s not a profound, or highly insightful comment on the battle84f7481f88088496274cf4e8df676634-d3l2t5v between good and evil, but trees, like Ents, are beings that offer a long series of selfless acts at their own expense.

Tolkien was a man who loved nature and the woods and beauty of the natural world.  And rather than turning that love into simple political or environmental allegory, it’s a much more satisfying interpretation to observe that Treebeard and the Ents are a real contribution to the mythos of Middle Earth because they are Shepards trying desperately to keep careful watch over their flock of trees and who, when the time comes, were willing to fight for the life and world in which they loved.

Treebeard may not charge onto the fields of Pellenor welding Anduril and slaying Orcs, but he does at least chunk a few boulders, and wear an impressive beard.

Ed302G

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes taken from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers were taken from the Mariner paperback edition.

 

**Writer’s Note**

I might as well share the scenes I used to watch over and over again until my VHS was nothing but a thin whisk of dark plastic that clicked and hissed as it tried desperately to play the “Last March of the Ents.”  I eventually replaced it all with the extended DVD sets which themselves are now nothing but thin nubs of whatever they made laserdiscs out of.  Watching this scene on YouTube I’m struck by the appalling quality of the video itself.  Despite this, watching the Ents slowly march out of Fanghorn forest I can’t deny I still feel that sublime tingle.  It’s something to the craft of these films that after close to a decade I’m able to reconnect to the teenage loser who believed in the forrest and trees.  Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTFP9QQzEL4

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A Beorn Cameo

13 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by Joshua Ryan "Jammer" Smith in Art, fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Novels, Still Life

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Art, fantasy, glasses, J.R.R. Tolkien, Joshua Jammer Smith, Novel, original photograph, still life, tea, The Lord of the Rings, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The Return of the King

Return of the King

A Beorn Cameo

30 December 2017

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Older and Fouler [Empty] Things in the Dark (Plus Demons with Whips)—The Fellowship of the Ring Part 2

18 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by Joshua Ryan "Jammer" Smith in Book Review, fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, mythology, Novels, Philosophy

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A Tolkien Bestiary, Balrog, Book Review, David Day, deep time, Durin's Bane, Evil, Evil is abscence, fantasy, Fire Demons, Gandalf, Good and Evil, J.R.R. Tolkien, light, Light vs Dark, Literature, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings, Maiar, Melkor, Morgoth, Moria, mythology, Novel, Philosophy, Sean Bean is a Fucking BadAss, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings, The Nature of Evil, Valaraukar

LOTRbalrog

Sean Bean once sewed a hole in his flesh with his bare hands after a female friend of his was harassed by some random douche in a dive bar where they were drinking.  Bean apparently didn’t like it, told the man to shut the fuck up, and a fight ensued in which he was stabbed in the chest.  After the police arrived, and the man who had started the fight was taken away, Bean asked the bartender if he had a needle and thread, and apparently he sewed up his chest wound right then and there before returning to drinking.  For obvious reasons then, I consider this story Sean Bean’s contribution to the zeitgeist 2304greater than his “One does not simply…” meme.  It’s also for this reason that I decided to go against my original impulse when approaching my review of Book II of The Lord of the Rings.

The Council of Elrond is a fascinating chapter in the entire saga of the Lord of the Rings, simply for the fact that, while it is diplomacy, the language of each party reveals a wonderful deliberation on Tolkien’s part.  Each character manages to enhance the history of the world of Middle Earth, and each character manages to reveal something about the complicated diplomacy that exists within this fantasy realm.  Tolkien also manages to further explore his idea of the ring, and the terrible influence it has upon the people of his universe.

The only problem I really had with writing about the Council of Elrond was that my heart wasn’t in it.  My heart was in the Balrog because, ever since I was a teenager sitting in the movie theater watching Gandalf fall through Khazad Dum and fighting the Balrog I’ve been obsessed with the creature and it’s role in the Tolkien Universe.  It also doesn’twallhaven-47768 exactly help that my best friend Kevin and I spent literally an entire year arguing with a friend of ours about the proper way to pronounce Balrog (he was obsessed with calling it Balronko).  Now obviously the fight scene I’m describing was in the second film The Two Towers, but even when I had watched The Fellowship of the Ring with my Dad on that rented VHS tape I had never seen anything like the Balrog in any movie.  It was a creature that seemed like it should have been in a medieval passion play rather than a feature film, but I became enthralled.Fellowship

My obsession with the Balrog was probably because I was a teenager.  Young men typically, if I can quote a friend, gravitate towards power icons when they’re younger because they tend to live a life where most of their decisions are not entirely their own.  Because they aren’t in control in their life, and because testosterone tends to leave one aggressive, it’s common for boys to gravitate to, or if you were like me, draw images such as guns, planes, swords, and of course monsters.

I anticipate an early reaction from my reader.  In the entire second half of The Fellowship of the Ring, the Balrog is the only thing you can focus on?  Why not tackle the realm of Lothlorien?  Why not analyze the behavior of Boromir?  Why not even try to tackle the early instances of Gollum and see how his character is beginning to manifest?  There’s so many deep and inspiring elements to The Fellowship, the Balrog is just a monster and its appearance is so brief.tolkien_photo_h-m

As usual my reader has great points, and also as usual I completely agree with several of them.  There is so much to The Fellowship that I could tackle in these pages.  However looking at the appearance of the Balrog in Book II, I nevertheless am still fascinated because, much like Gandalf’s brief supernatural reveal in the first book, the existence of the Balrog is a chance to see how Tolkien is building the history and mythos of Middle Earth, and always creating this feeling in the text that something more is ever-present in this universe than what the reader is allowed, or even able to see.

Before I go to the passage in the Fellowship however, it’s important to understand what a Balrog actually is because, if the reader only has the films to base their judgement on, they’re sure to be confused or else ill-informed of the actual content of the monster.  When I was checking out every book by or about Tolkien from the library, I managed to find one large tome by David Day entitled A Tolkien Bestiary.  The book is nothing but an encyclopedia about every beast, race, creature, and organism that appears in the Lord of the Rings, and taking up two pages along with a hauntingly epic illustration, Day The_balrogs_of_morgoth_by_thylacinee-d5pl60xprovides the reader with an explanation:

Balrogs, the most terrible if the Maiar spirits who became the servants of Melkor, the Dark Enemy, were those who were transformed into demons.  In the High Elven Tongue they were named the Valaraukar, but in Middle-Earth were called Balrogs, the “demons of might.”

Of all Melkor’s creatures, only Dragons were greater in power.  Huge and hulking, the Balrogs were Man-like demons with streaming manes of fire and nostrils that breathed flame.  They seemed to move within the clouds of black shadows and their limbs had the coiling powers of serpents.  The chief weapon of the Balrog was the many-thronged whip of fire, and, though as well they carried the mace, the axe and the flaming sword, it was the whip of fire that their enemies feared most.  This weapon was so terrible that the vast evil of Ungoliant, the Great Spider that even the Valar could not destroy, was driven from Melkor’s realm by the fiery lashes of the Balrog demons.81+F-D9huqL._SY500_

[…]

In each of Melkor’s risings and in each of his battles, the Balrogs were among his foremost champions, and so, when the holocaust of the War of Wrath ended Melkor’s reign for ever, it largely ended the Balrogs as a race.

It is said that some fled that last battle and buried themselves deep in the roots of the mountains, but after many thousands of years nothing more was heard of these evil beings and most people believed the demons had gone from the Earth for ever.  (26-7)15743926121

I’m tempted by the teenager in my brain, to add a “Cool Whip” reference here, but for once I’ll defer and keep to the topic on hand.

A Balrog then is more-or-less a giant demon that at one time constituted a supreme race of beings that pre-dated mankind and possessed powers and abilities that border on a Lovecraftian tentacle monster level.  This kind of power would at first not seem to have much literary relevance since most literary scholars or even common people don’t give a shit about fictional monsters.  And in fact if the Balrog were nothing but a monster in a fantasy universe there really wouldn’t be much point in taking time to write about it, but as I’ve noted Tolkien’s ability as a writer is to create a wondrous sense of place and time that has yet to be replicated or matched.  It’s his ability to write a moment into existence when people who are living in their present time become caught up in the supernatural events of an incredible past that they cannot possibly comprehend that leaves the reader khazad-dumspellbound, or else that they are witnessing something incredible.

The entrance of the Balrog is something incredible because of it’s subtlety.

[Legolas] gave a cry of dismay and fear.  Two great tools appeared; they bore great slabs of of stone, and flung them down the serve as gangways over the fire.  But it was not the trolls which had filled the Elf with terror.  The ranks of the orcs had opened, and they crowded away, as if they themselves were afraid.  Something was coming behind them.  What it was could not be seen: it was like a great shadow, in the middle of which was a dark form, of man-shape maybe, yet greater; and a power and terror seemed to be in it and to go before it.Balrogs_animated

It came to the edge of the fire and the light faded as if a cloud had bent over it.  Then with a rush it leaped across the fissure.  The flames roared up to greet it, and wreathed about it; and black smoke smirked in the air.  Its steaming man kindled, and blazed behind it.  In its right hand was a blade like a stabbing tongue of fire; in its left hand it held a whip of many thongs.

‘Ai! Ai!’ Wailed Legolas.  ‘A Balrog!  A Balrog has come!’

Gimli stared with wide eyes.  ‘Durin’s Bane!  He cried, and letting his axe fall he covered his face.tumblr_opxtci9mHA1siv1sto7_r1_400

‘A Balrog,’ muttered Gandalf.  ‘Now I understand.” He faltered and leaned heavily on his staff.  ‘What an evil fortune!  And I am already weary.’  (321).

I will admit that I find the reactions to the Balrog a little corny.  Throughout my reading of The Lord of the Rings I find myself regularly twisting a little in discomfort because Tolkien’s dialogue can, to a postmodern reader’s sensibilities, come across as a little drama-qeenesque.  Or else it feels like the bad ad-libbing of half-assed LARPing.  It’s not that it doesn’t feel real to the characters, but the language of the characters can at times feel like something that should have been left in the attic.  It feels like it’s of a different time, which is not a weakness persay, but it can get a little tiring.

Yet despite this initial reaction to the dialogue, the words of each character are important because the 250px-Thomas_Rouillard_-_Valaraukarappearance of this creature has it’s own implications for each character.  For Legolas, being an Elf, the appearance of the Balrog would something of a nightmare because the elves would surely remember through records and oral tradition what kind of a monster the Balrog would be.  Gimli being a dwarf who has just observed the desecration of his race’s hall and temple by orcs is already emotional, but the appearance of the Balrog is proof that his people’s greed brought about the reawakening of this creature.  If the dwarves had not been greedy and dug so deep into the earth his cousin Balin might still be alive along with the rest of the people of Moria.  Gandalf’s reaction is unique because it has been steadily established that Gandalf’s role in Middle Earth is something beyond most people’s comprehension and that he is being guided by some supernatural entity, order, or compulsion.

Reading over this passage again I was struck by these reactions to this monster, not just because of what it’s appearance meant for the plot, but because this reaction 3412689-vs_gandalf_balrogshowed that these characters are participating with a history and a culture.  And this reaction reveals a depth in the universe.

It’s common in fantasy for characters to encounter a creature of incredible power and to experience fear, rage, confusion, or terror.  And while there are surely some notable examples where these emotions feel real and powerful and relevant to the reader, The Lord of the Rings being the text that it is it the reactions of Gimli, Legolas, and Gandalf isn’t just an empty reaction that precede a passage in which the heroes are able to overcome.  The appearance of the Balrog is the sign of a real defeat because this is a being which is beyond them, something Gandalf remarks immediately as Aragorn and Boromir try to stand their ground.

Even after Gandfal makes his stand the reader is left with a sense of the impending power of the Balrog, and just how old its power derives.  After Gandalf makes his now iconic “You cannot pass!” Tolkien manages to convey the power of the creature and the seaming futility of Gandalf:f011b11d79fa4422fde0eacc5edf5839--digital-illustration-digital-art

The Balrog made no answer.  The fire in it seemed to die, but the darkness grew.  It stepped forward slowly on the bridge, and suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall; but still Gandalf could be seen, glimmering in the gloom; he seemed small, and altogether alone: grey and bent, like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm.  (322).

It’s not unfair to note that Tolkien tends to gravitate to trees as the predominant aesthetic of The Lord of the Rings, but in it’s own way this passage seems one of the most powerful moments in the entire trilogy not simply because Gandalf is a powerful wizard and the Balrog is a just fire monster.  There’s something lasting in this image, and it has to do with negative versus positive power.Witch King

A previous quote reveals something important, not only about the Balrog, but also about the way that Tolkien is creating his ideas about evil and good.  Darkness in The Lord of the Rings is not just a physical attribute of wickedness and wicked creatures, in fact it is their defining quality.  This actually has some relevance when one considers the actual color spectrum because black is not in fact a color; black is the absence of color.  Virtually every character in The Lord of the Rings which embodies wickedness or evil is often defined by their darkness, either physical or symbolic, and this darkness ultimately becomes an indication of absence.  If a being or character in Middle Earth is wicked it is because there is something empty xdSL9QWor absent in them, and I’ll hopefully get into this more when I get to the character Gollum, but for now it’s important to observe Gandalf standing against the Balrog because it becomes more than just a wizard fighting a fire-demon.  For Tolkien this small moment is a summation of his entire creative philosophy about the nature of good and evil.

Evil is absence incarnate and will always try to destroy the light because the light stands opposed to darkness.  Light will always try to fill up the darkness with creation, with living things that create more, and so the only thing darkness can do to survive is to destroy.  To burn and kill and erase what is alive in the light.

Tolkien provides on clear demonstration of this after the monster appears:

The dark figure streaming with fire raced towards them.  The orcs yelled and poured over the stone gangway.  Then Boromir raised his horn and blew.  Loud the challenge rang and bellowed, like the shout of many throats under the cavernous roof.  For a moment the orcs quailed and the fiery shadow halted.  855640-balrog6Then the echoes died as suddenly as a flame blown out by a dark wind, and the enemy advanced again.  (321).

This passage seems to be everything then in further demonstrating the idea that Tolkien is using the Balrog to really hone his idea of evil.  Throughout the Lord of the Rings Tolkien equates evil with an absence of self, will, power, or personal agency.  When Boromir blows his horn it is n essence a strong demonstration of the self.  Music is one of the purest means of expressing the self, and the Balrog being a creature who’s very existence is based upon destruction is actually taken aback by it.  It may not be a Sonata by Beethoven or Shostakovich, but the horn is a form of creation and therefore a form of light, and therefore a form of goodness.

The Balrog remains my favorite element of the Lord of the Rings, largely because its a big awesome fire monster that uses a whip as a primary weapon and it provided me plenty of chances in high school to draw something cool instead of paying attention in Algebra.  But my adolescence aside, the Balrog remains truly fascinating to be because it affords Tolkien to create a figure that has entered the popular consciousness, and beneath all of the fire and horns and weapons there is a real meditation about what evil actually is.1502673715-david-lynch-head-2

The true monsters in this life are not the colorful characters that are crafted in television shows and gritty thrillers; they’re real people who have a severe absence of something.  Whether it’s an absence of love, personal ambition, or even something as real as chemical imbalance, it’s these weakness of absence that eventually contribute to the evil that exists in this world.

A terrorist or a serial murderer might not have horns or a mane made of fire, but much like the Balrog, his existence is almost certainly founded on some kind of emptiness.

the_balrog_by_adorindil

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes taken from Book II of the Lord of the Rings, found within the Mariner paperback edition of  The Fellowship of the Ring.

Fellowship

**Writer’s Note**

Allright fine, I just have to.  Please forgive me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mnAC5KWvJc

 

***Writer’s Note***

While I was writing this essay I managed to find an actual video of the fight scene between Gandalf and the Balrog in The Fellowship of the Ring.  There’s been plenty of films which have come out since then which have utilized Computer Graphic Imaging however this scene, unlike many of these latter instances, still manages to have a power I haven’t completely forgotten.  It might just be nostalgia on my part, but I also think it has as much to do with the fact that Peter Jackson directed (in the original trilogy) a damn fine film, and managed to just capture Middle Earth.  Please enjoy what is still one of the most epic fantasy moments of all time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJZZNHekEQw

 

****Writer’s Note****

I’ve included below several links to websites which provide overviews of the Balrog, what they are, what are their powers, whether a Balrog would win in a fight against Smaug (I think it would personally but I’m biased), and then just some general Lord of the Rings facts and information.  Hope this helps.

http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Balrog

http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Balrogs

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/12448/why-was-gandalf-afraid-of-the-balrog-of-morgoth

https://www.tor.com/2017/05/09/smaug-vs-durins-bane-who-would-win-in-the-ultimate-dragonbalrog-showdown/

http://tolkien.cro.net/balrogs/ddueck.html

 

*****Writer’s Note*****

Stephen Colbert discussing Lord of the Rings…nuff said.

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/krcfjp/the-colbert-report-balrog

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Decent Sorts In an Ancient World: The Fellowship of the Ring Book 1

27 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by Joshua Ryan "Jammer" Smith in fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, mythology, Novels, Writing

≈ 1 Comment

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Bag End, Beowulf, Bilbo, Bilbo Baggins, fantasy, Gandalf, Gilgamesh, Hobbits, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Maiar, Michael D.C. Drout, Middle Earth, mythology, mythos, Nazgul, Novel, Of Sorcerer’s and Men, Peter Jackson, Silmarillion, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Nature of Hobbits, The Shire, Writing

Big_oops

Peregin Took may indeed have been a fool when he twisted the arrow on the dead dwarf, thus alerting the orcs of Moria to the Fellowship’s presence, but honestly sitting down to writing this essay I feel like I am the greater fool.  It’s no secret that the fan base of the Lord of the Rings are a power unto themselves, some of whom have brought about changes in society that stirred revolutions and altered the world as we know it.  FellowshipComputer programmers, hardware specialists, table-top game developers, video game designers, and even authors themselves have been inspired by the “Old Professor” and have taken this inspiration and created products and arts that have inspired the next generation of innovators.  While Tolkien himself tended to be harsh to this fan base during his lifetime, going so far as to call them the “deplorable cultus,” the generation of stoners and dreamers took a great work and made it something important to the culture and zeitgeist, and thus I return to my foolishness.

I didn’t warm up to The Lord of the Rings at first.  In fact to be perfectly honest I actually thought the whole book series were a real bore.  With the exception of The Hobbit, reading the The Lord of the Rings as a teenager seemed the equivalent of an attending insurance seminar or else sitting through an “abstinence-only” based rap battle.  This is hyperbole, but only so much.  The only reason I had actually begun reading the books, specifically my dad’s original paperback copies from the seventies which made Gandalf look like a pimp and Legolas as the protagonist in Logan’s Run, was the fact that Peter Jackson’s films had just been released and those Ring Wraiths looked bad ass.Ringwraiths-733735
The films came and went, and while I never completely abandoned Tolkien, I do admit that I moved on to Stephen King and Christopher Hitchens leaving my copies of The Lord of the Rings to the dust that always seems to gravitate to books.  It’s not that the Lord of the Rings ever disappeared, it’s just that, much like my early fascination with Playboy magazine and my LEGO blocks, I looked at them as something that I had outgrown or, and maybe this is more fair, something I had left behind.  But much like Playboy and 9780760785232_p0_v2_s1200x630LEGOs I did eventually return to it.  My regular reader may dimly remember that I began an audio-lecture series sponsored by Barnes & Noble titled Of Sorcerer’s and Men.  This series, which was masterfully delivered by the professor Michael D.C. Drout, was incredible and reminded me of everything that I originally loved about The Lord of the Rings.

I dusted off my old copies and hopped back into the series, dedicated this time to actually finish the entire works.

But as for reviewing this series I hit a block, because after all, according to the will (not legal will, just individual sense of self) of J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings was one entire book unto itself putting into such magnificent tomes as Ulysses, Moby Dick, Anna Karena, Doom Patrol, Don Quixote, Infinite Jest, and David Copperfield.  While it’s unola-compagnia-dellanello-disegnata-dai-f-lli-hildebrandtpossible to write about those book in parts, tackling an entire 1000 page novel with one review is like trying to eat The Old 96er from The Great Outdoors.  Those who try will wind up crying like John Candy before wrenching the whole thing back up.  Fortunately for me Tolkien broke his series into six “books” letting each larger book contained of two small books themselves.  The Fellowship then consists of Books 1 and 2 and it seems far healthier to tackle the series that way than attempting one large reflection.MV5BMGMxMmRkNzctMWQzYy00MTY3LWEzMDAtMzEzMDhkZWI4MjZlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDUzOTQ5MjY@._V1_UY317_CR4,0,214,317_AL_

This also provides me a wonderful opportunity to explore Book 1 as an independent work because, while the remainder of the series pushes into the mythic realm that is Middle Earth, it’s in this first volume that Tolkien is able to play with his own natural world.

Book One starts with a “Long Expected Party” allowing Tolkien to play with his previous work, The Hobbit.  Some critics and scholars have noted that while this is Tolkien building the world of Middle Earth, many have observed that the territory of The Shire, as well as the people who live comfortably within it’s borders, resemble greatly the England that Tolkien lived in and loved so well.  Just looking at the first paragraphs one gets a sense of this:

When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag-End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much 0aae4a6c83ea2e8af7104e6d6697bd16talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

Bilbo was very rich and very peculiar, and had been the wonder of the Shire for sixty years, ever since his remarkable disappearance and unexpected return.  The riches he had brought back from his travels had now become a local legend, and it was popularly believed, whatever the old folk might say, that the Hill at Bag End, was full of tunnels stuffed with treasure.  And it that was not enough for fame, there was also his prolonged vigor to marvel at.  Time wore on, but it seemed to have little effect on Mr. Baggins.  […]. There was some that shook their heads and thought this was too much of a good thing; it seemed unfair that anyone should possess (apparently) perpetual youth as well as (reputedly) inexhaustible wealth.

“It will have to be paid for,’ they said.  ‘It isn’t natural, and trouble will come of it!’  (21).

While it isn’t Frodo being chased by Nazgul to the ford that marks the entrance to Rivendel, this opening is still, to my mind, one of the best means of opening the great epic that is The Lord of the Rings.  While Listening to Drout’s lectures, what was NewDroutCoverPhotofrequently noted was how the strength of the series was not so much because the hobbits were symbolic of any religious or spiritual significance, but because they were decent common folk.

This is a point that I believe is often missed in public discussions of The Lord of the Rings, because often the person speaking is far more concerned with pushing allegory.  I’ve written before as to why I feel that’s a woefully inadequate means of interpreting these books, so I won’t delve too deep into that angle.  Looking at the Hobbits of Middle Earth, along with the four hobbits of the Fellowship (Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin), their role in the story is often to be the reader.  Hobbits, because they scorn the world of the “Big Folk” and their “queer” habits, give the reader something to identify with.  On an average day most people do not worry about raids from Orcs, the ancient evils of creatures like Balrogs, they are concerned with the meddling of wizards, and they have nothing to do with the problems of the Great Kings and their complicated diplomacy.  Many “normal” people, tend to be art-magician-lord-of-the-rings-bilbo-rivendell-town-gandalf-lord-of-the-rings-valley-hobbies-gandalf-waterfalls-mountain-unexpected-journey-unexpected-journey-rockconcerned far more with their families, whether their neighbors are a decent sort of people, whether they have enough to eat, and whether or not they are attending parties.

The Great celebration of Bilbo’s birthday is an event of “Special magnificence,” and in the same paragraph that establishes this, Tolkien notes Bilbo’s social standing as if that matters to the reader.  It matters a great deal to Hobbits and so reading this book it becomes clear that The Lord of the Rings, from beginning to end, is centered in this idea that hobbits are not only important to this great world and it’s history, they are vital to it.

Hobbits are not great warriors such as Beowulf or Gilgamesh but that’s by design.

Before the book opens Tolkien provides a prologue in which he offers some basic facts and history of Hobbits:the-lord-of-the-rings-original-animated-classic-remastered-deluxe-edition-20100406040315385_640w1

As for the Hobbits of the Shire, with whom these tales are concerned, in the days of their peace and prosperity they were a merry folk.  They dressed in bright colours, being notably fond of yellow and green; but they seldom wore shoes, since their feet had tough leathery soles and were clad in a thick curling hair, much like the hair of their heads, which was commonly brown.  Thus, the only craft little practiced among them was shoe-making; but they had long and skillful fingers and could make many other useful and comely things.  Their faces were as a rule good-natured rather than beautiful, broad, bright-eye, red-cheeked, with mouths apt to laughter, and to eating and drinking.  And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when131e5fd85348e9e2be29a25d9bc11685 they could get them).  They were hospitable and delighted in parties, and in presents, which they gave away freely and eagerly accepted.  (2).

At this point I need address my regular contester who is surely incredibly annoyed with me.  What do I care about the sensibilities of Hobbits?  It’s The Lord of the Rings, I came here for Aragorn and Gandalf and Sauron and Orcs.  Where’s the exciting stuff?  Or at least the fantastic elements that make The Lord the Rings so cool?

I understand my readers frustration because I feel the same way approaching this essay.  I would 5384849-animation+246love to sit and discuss some of the fantastic elements that make this book so impressive, and I do intend to.  The conflict is that fantastic elements by themselves don’t provide much opportunity for reflection.  One of the consistent charges against the Triology is that the books have no relevance to average people.    Part of this is the unfortunate, lingering elitism that plagues the fantasy genres which is absolute bullshit.  But the other charge, that it’s style doesn’t fit the age in which it was written feels a little more fair.  Most of the non-hobbit characters speak like they were taken from epics of
the ancient world making it impossible to identify with them.

It’s in Hobbits that the world assumes the power that it does, because when Hobbits are pitted against the antiquity and supernatural elements of Middle Earth the reader is able to find the “realness” of the place.  This is best demonstrated after the party.a206

The first takes place in Bag End, not long after Bilbo has disappeared from the party using the ring.  Gandalf has crept back to the manor house on the hill to confront Bilbo about his antics, but also to see the man off as the two have an arrangement.  Gandalf is to help Bilbo settle his affairs so that the man can go back onto the road, and while the scene progresses as if nothing is wrong, when the topic of the ring comes up Bilbo at once becomes possessive bordering on violent.  There is a confrontation, and all at once Tolkien allows his reader to see past, if I can borrow Shakepeare for a moment without sounding overly-pompous, “this mortal veil.”

‘Well if you want my ring yourself, say so!” Cried Bilbo.  ‘But you won’t get it.  I won’t give my precious away, I tell you.’  His hand strayed to the hilt of his small sword.e7dc8b16e1260144332e08709a804379

Gandalf’s eyes flashed.  ‘It will be my turn to get angry soon,’ he said.  ‘If you say that again, I shall.  Then you will see Gandalf the Grey uncloaked.’ He took a step towards the hobbit, and he seemed to grow tall and menacing; his shadow fill the room.  

Bilbo backed away to the wall, breathing hard, his hand clutching at his pocket.  They stood for a while facing one another, and the air of the room tingled.  Gandalf’s eyes remained bent on the hobbit.  Slowly his hands relaxed, and he began to tremble.

2304‘I don’t know what has come over you, Gandalf,” he said.  ‘You have never been like this before.  What is it all about?  It is mine isn’t it?  I found it, and Gollum would have killed me, if I hadn’t kept it.  I’m not a thief, whatever he said.’

‘I have never called you one,’ Gandalf answered.  ‘And I am not one either.  I am not trying to rob you, but to help you.  I wish you would trust me, as you used.’  He turned away, and the shadow passed.  He seemed to dwindle again to an old grey man, bent and untroubled.  (33-4).

Now obviously, this scene takes me back to Peter Jackson’s film, when Sir Ian McKellan began to fill the room, the world became dark, and the voice that usually inspires envy turned a teenage boy to panic.  Whatever the reader’s opinions about the film, it’s tumblr_opxtci9mHA1siv1sto7_r1_400important to recognize that Jackson did this scene right and because he did this passage stood out to me.  But looking past the film, this scene in one in a long series of moments that Gandalf offers that hint at his true “nature” or “form.”  Gandalf is, if I can move into the neck-beard nerd territory, something called a Maiar, a being who precede most of the “time” of Middle Earth, and actually proceeded the making of the world.  I won’t bore the reader with the complex mythos of Tolkien’s world (that’s for when I review the Silmarillion) but this background info provides the context of what makes Gandalf important in the first book.

Gandalf is an old being, one who is existing on a plane of reality that even old Bilbo could not appreciate because his mortality is nothing compared to Gandalf.  While this doesn’t at first appear to have much relevance to people in the “real world” there’s actually a ecb8d63148b23250693e37ffa1d08bc7real relevance for the reader.  The concept of “deep time” was one that began during the Victorian era when geologists began to argue that the world is actually older than we once thought.  Where before the world was only a few thousand years old (according to sources like The Bible), by looking at the actual layers of sediment in the earth, and discovering fossils or organisms long exitinct, human beings were able to determine that our time on this earth was only relatively recent and that we were merely one example in a long lifetime of the planet.

The reader may by now though be getting frustrated and wanting to know when I’ll make my case, or else they’re waiting for me to talk about cool stuff like Ring Wraiths.  I’m terribly sorry to disappoint my reader, but I won’t be doing that.  At least not in this essay.

The Fellowship of the Ring, as far as Book 1 is concerned, is an important read because it begins the Trilogy, but more importantly it establishes the foundation of the world.  The hobbiton-movie-set-toursworld of Hobbiton is one that the reader can certainly recognize because it’s a world that directly mirrors our own.  There’s neighborhoods of people who worry about parties and gardens and harvests.  There’s sheriffs and mail-men and pubs where people gather to
drink and gossip.  Hobbiton is the world as far as most reader’s would recognize it, and as such when “queer” folks like Gandalf appear, and bits and pieces of their true form begin to manifest, the reader is left feeling, much like Bilbo, that the world is actually deeper and far more complex than they’ve been lead to believe.d7f3a84000d935abcc56e1bdf2a064d5

I was tempted when I started this essay, to explore every facet of the strange and weird and wonderful, but the conflict with that is there’s mountains of books about The Lord of the Rings that do just that.  Looking at Book 1, what feels most important, or at least what I initially came away with is how the Hobbits of this book begin to react to the size and depth and complexity of the world.  That reaction feels important because often it’s easy to forget how complex the world actually is.

Book 1 of The Fellowship of the Ring isn’t just about getting Frodo of Rivendell, it’s Tolkien’s chance to build his mythos while also reminding his reader even the real world is old and full of people and creatures and landscapes that are an important reminder about mortality and ego.  A man may be 111 years old, and he might be a fine and respectable hobbit, but even he too will die, and his existence is not only not significant, it’s just one small part in a narrative that has been going on for centuries.

the_argonath___lord_of_the_rings_tcg_by_jcbarquet-d84gqh8

 

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes taken from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings were taken from the Mariner paperback edition.

Fellowship

**Writer’s Note**

On one side note, I have a point earlier about the Nazgul being “badass.”  This remains true, however their badassery is somewhat lessened when you try to find a sick-as-hell image of them and you get a behind the scenes picture of the lot of them holding umbrellas before shooting.  The only thing missing is a plate of tea and cookies over a discussion of how Asia’s economy is heading.  THAT, or else the whole lot of them are going to do an AMAZING rendition of Gene Kelly’s Singing in the rain.  I don’t know.  Look at those parasols.  What do YOU think?

rxslzn09b6dz

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Orange Words, Blue Subtitles

15 Monday Jan 2018

Tags

Art, Brian K. Vaughn, Comics, fantasy, Fiona Staples, glasses, graphic novel, Joshua Jammer Smith, Lemon & Ginger, Literature, Love Story, Saga, Saga Volume 1, science fiction, still life, tea, Twinning's Tea

E66B5A73-D19D-4FAC-B0F7-358A53A7A00A

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Posted by Joshua Ryan "Jammer" Smith | Filed under Art, Comics/Graphic Novels, fantasy, Literature, science fiction, Still Life

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Wind and War

24 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by Joshua Ryan "Jammer" Smith in Art, Comics/Graphic Novels, science fiction, Still Life

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Art, fantasy, glasses, graphic novel, Hayao Miazaki, Joshua Jammer Smith, Manga, Nausicaa, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, original photograph, Pickle Rick, science fiction, still life, tea, War

Nausicaa

Wind and War

23 August 2017

 

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Yellow Rings and Golden Eyes

21 Thursday Sep 2017

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Epic, fantasy, glasses, J.R.R. Tolkien, Joshua Jammer Smith, mechanical pencils, original photograph, spoon, still life, tea, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Fellowship

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Posted by Joshua Ryan "Jammer" Smith | Filed under Art, fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien, Still Life

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Wilson AA Aaron Sorkin About Betty's Boob Abram Adams A Brief History of Time A Brief History of Time: From The Big Bang to Black Holes Absalom, Absalom abscence of evidence for god's existence Abscence of god abstinence and why it's shit abuse abuse of authority Abuse of Military authority abyss Academia Academic Book Academic Libraries Academic Writing Acadmic writing A Chilean Dictator's Dark Legacy Achilles A Christmas Carol A Clash of Kings A Clockwork Orange action Action Comics Action Films Action from Principle Activism Adam & Eve Adam Kesher Adam Piore Adam Smith Addiction ADHD Adolf Hitler A Doll's House Adrian Brody Adrian Cronauer adultery Adventure Fiction advertising advertizing A Dying Tiger—moaned for Drink— Aenema Aerosmith A Farewell to Arms Africa African History Afterlife A Game of Thrones Agency Agent Dale Cooper aging agriculture A Happy Death A Historical Guide to Ralph Waldo Emerson A History of the Breast A History of the World Part 1 A House Divided AIDS Airspeed Velocity of Swallows Aislinn Emirzion Alana Alan Berube Alan Cumming Alan Dean Foster Alan Ginsberg Alan Moore Alan Turing Albatross Albert Bigelow Paine Albert Camus Alberto Giocometti Alchemy Aldis Hodge Alec Baldwin Alec Baldwin Gets Under Trump's Skin A Letter to a Royal Academy Alex + Ada Alexander Dumas Alexander Nehamas & Paul Woodruff Alexandra Socarides Alfred Habegger Alfred Hitchcock Alfred Lord Tennyson Alfred Pennyworth Alfred Tennyson Alice in Wonderland Alice Walker alien alien-human sexuality Alien: A Film Franchise Based Entirely On Rape Alienation of Affection Alien Covenant aliens Alison Bechdel Allegory Allen Ginsberg Allison Pill Allison Williams All Star Superman All the President's Men Al Madrigal Almonds in Bloom Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace Alton Sterling Alvy Singer Amanda Palmer A Matter of Life Amazon Amelia Airheart America American Civil War American Creative Landscape American Dream American Empire American Exceptionalism American Flag American Gods American Horror Story American Horror Story: Freak Show American Landscape American literary Canon American Literature American Politics American Radical American Revolution American Soldiers American Territory A Midsummer Night's Dream A Mind of It's Own: A Cultural History of the Penis Amira Casar Ammon Shea A Modest Proposal Amon Hen A Moveable Feast A Muppet Christmas Carol Amuro Amy Holt Amy Poehler An-Nasir Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub anal penetration Anal Sex Ananssi Boys An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child Anatomy Anchors Aweigh Ancient Egypt Ancient Greece Ancient History Anderson Cooper 360 Anders Winroth Andre Aciman Andre Maurois Andres Serrano And Tango Makes Three And Yet... 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