Tolkien Notes

Quarter after ten. WordPress informed me of my third anniversary with them. I don’t remember my very first post, but it wouldn’t be great because I was still drinking. In the present, the Tolkien I’m reading is having an impact similar to that of D H Lawrence when I was a big fan of him. Both are anti industrial and even Luddite in their beliefs and attitudes. I agree that a return to what is most natural would be desirable. Break the machines and work with our hands; live off the land as much as possible. But nothing can stop technology and progress, for better or worse. Who am I to say? I’m just a dissident, but even I depend on modern medicine for my sanity. Without the Vraylar I’d be in deep dodo. It’s getting cold in here again; time for the space heater. The rain starts and stops at intervals. I’ll be glad to finish reading LOTR once and for all. Then I’ll be ready to discuss it intelligently. My impression of it right now is that it is a tremendous wish fulfillment, a dream of a better way of living. The naturalist good guys against the evil technocrats with their soulless machines and monsters: and the good side wins, though just barely. Perhaps the Power of the One Ring is simple industry, science and technology. It must be destroyed before it destroys us. The fantasy takes us back to greener times, more romantic and magical and consonant with feeling. Tolkien wants to turn back clock and calendar to his Middle Earth that never existed, but ought to have. Tolkien wishes for regression to a state more primitive, but also more humane and less coldly scientific. It is a worthy dream, if an impossible one.

Advertisement