Tag Archives: J.R.R. Tolkein

Exercises in Style

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Today I called my mom, then went to the gym.  When I returned, I made an appointment for my car to have an oil change.  I am now doing copious amounts of laundry.  None of this is apropos to anything I usually talk about on this blog.  Luckily school starts the week after next which should provide plenty of fodder for blogging.  The first hints of nerves have hit.  Also luckily, there is an abundance of shipyard pumpkinhead in my fridge.  Coincidence?  I think not.

A La Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

It had not escaped my attention that my living companion had neglected, for some time now, domestic duties which certainly required due and diligent attendance.  The laundry had piled up, telephone messages accumulated, and vehicles required certain regular maintenance.  She must have gotten in a mood this particular afternoon as once she began to take care of these things, she continued until they were well and truly attended to.  Of course, the usual personal habits of my living companion are not generally fodder for my notes, but in the lack of any cases this week these habits make an appearance due to a gross under-abundance of things to speak about.  I am hoping that should change in the coming weeks, what with new stimulation vis-à-vis the scholarly inclination to speak.  For the moment, she seems to be dousing any dullness in the comforting depths of foaming beauty that is beer.

A La James Joyce

Riverun past phone call past mother past gym.  Returning to the sound of a necessary

L. Moholy-Nagy's graphic organizer of Finnegan's Wake... yea... not even people who claim to understand this book understand this book

beep requiring attention in the vehicular department.  Thumping suds and clean sheet pave the way towards an afternoon of adjustment, broaching topics previously abandoned.  Pools of disinterest.  Chug Chug Chug down the way towards more open pastures.  Butterflies flutter lightly.  Rivers of beer slide slippingly, trippingly, dippingly.  There are no coincidences.

A La Kurt Vonnegut

A mundane phone call followed by the mundane motions of exercise ensued followed by the even more mundane task of laundry.  She didn’t like doing laundry, but she liked having clean sheets.  None of this is really very interesting.  To her, it was simply the facts of living as she did.  She hoped life would be more interesting in the following weeks, but for the meantime had a cold beer.  She liked beer.

A La J.R.R. Tolkein

 Danielle daughter of Jennifer daughter of Sulamith stood speaking fervently to her matriarchal ancestor, planning the upcoming excursion to the land of York.  She set down her telephone, bidding the messenger farewell as she did so.  She then proceeded to step outside her door for her semi-daily constitutional (humans are well known for such tendencies, though those from her homeland of York were perhaps best renown for it).  When the constitutional had met its end, she returned home through the summer air.  The pavement was gray as a goosehawk’s back and the leaves at their greenest.  The temperature was moderate, and the week’s weather patterns had proven reliable for such things.  As she returned to her abode, she set about the mundane tasks which demanded her attention and hardly need mentioning here.  They are the same sort which her ancestors performed, and their ancestors before them, and which perhaps would have caught the attention of a scholar or wizard only in their quirky deviations from the mundane.  With luck, the coming weeks would provide activity which would merit mentioning (of course, provided the weather held).  These activities provide a certain level of anxiety for Danielle daughter of Jennifer daughter of Sulamith, but she quelled the feeling with the liberal application of fine ales.

A La Eugene Ionesco

everyone, however, understand Rhinoceros.

What started as a normal day devolves into chaos as a rhinoceros rips through the scene.  Danielle enters chewing on several blades of grass.

BOOM!

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The fourth of July always makes me think of Gandalf.

This is probably the direct response to several things in my life:

1)    My family has never ever been anything even remotely resembling patriotic.  As such, the Fourth of July was never celebrated in any regard in my household.  It was just another day except for…

2)    The fact that my father is a pyromaniac.  The sale and use of fireworks is illegal in New York without a professional license, but the house I grew up in was very close to the Connecticut border (where the sale and use of amateur fireworks is quite legal) and in a lake community.  You do the math.

3)    It was my father who first introduced me to the wonderful world of J.R.R. Tolkien and, thereby, fantasy literature (thanks, dad!).  He read me The Hobbit as a bedtime story when I was a kid, then we worked our way through The Lord of the Rings.

4)    My dad loves wizards.

Today, my father is a professional pyrotechnician (though not a full-time one).  He may never make flying, fire-breathing dragons come out of mortar and cannon-fuse, but he

Shot of my Dad's show from last year

does put on one hell of a show.  As you can imagine, July fourth and its surrounding environs tend to be busy season for the hobbyist pyro.

So, in honor of blow-stuff-up-for-your-country-day, let’s talk about Gandalf.

Tolkein’s inclusion of fireworks as one of Gandalf’s many talents was meant to hint at the well-roundedness which made Gandalf the Gray unique amongst the other wizards within Tolkein’s universe.  Remember how Sarumon and the White Council were continually perplexed at Gandalf’s interest in Hobbits?  I always had the impression that Gandalf’s talent with fireworks was another of his dirty little secrets that the Council would have frowned upon.  Despite that, Gandalf continued to innovate with fireworks and always brought at least one new trick to his shows in the Shire.

What this all boils down to is that Gandalf was one hip wizard.  He knew, even though no one else did, that Hobbits were more resilient than perhaps any other sentient race in Middle Earth.  His knowledge of the arcane was something which he mingled with gunpowder, an advanced bit of technology in the sword-swinging Middle Earth (yes, technically China was making fireworks and gun powder since the seventh century here in the real world, but this knowledge would not migrate to Western Europe until the thirteenth century which is a good long time after Lord of the Rings was supposedly set… remember that Tolkein wrote it as a series of pre-European-history myths and thereby it would have pre-dated Arthur in the late fifth century).  This makes Gandalf not only a wizard, but also a scientist (and probably an alchemist, though we could debate the extension of that meaning until next Tuesday).

Gandalf and his fireworks (and, of course, Sir Ian McKellen)

This is an interesting move on Tolkein’s part.  Though writing from deep inside the Modernist movement, Tolkein’s work harkens back to Romanticism.  The motifs on display within Lord of the Rings (i.e. the fading of an old world, anxiety created by technology (see especially the scourging of the shire), and lengthy/idealized portraits of the natural world) are themes directly out of Wordsworth.  The Romantic rejection of modern technology as a device which leads to an ugly, impersonal world (see: “The World is too Much With us”) seems to be one which Tolkein would have upheld (at least within Rings).

And yet, here we find one of the book’s most powerful, influential, and sympathetic characters as a proprietor of this modern technology.  At this juncture, we must again recall that Gandalf did everything he could to keep the War away from the Shire.  It was because of his efforts that the Shire was able to remain so pristine and innocent through the vast majority of an otherwise middle-earth-shaking cataclysm.  The Shire, the ultimate site of the novel’s pastoral, was also the primary enjoyer of Gandalf’s technological deviancy.  So it wasn’t that Gandalf was working to keep technology entirely away from the Shire (if he was, he wouldn’t have brought fireworks), but it also wasn’t that he wanted technology to be a way of life amongst the Hobbits either.

If this isn’t a mixed message, then I’m not certain what is.

Despite the complications of this analysis, the literary function of the fireworks is very simple.  Tolkein very clearly set forth to create a visually stunning world (as made abundantly clear by Peter Jackson’s breathtaking films).  This is no small feat for a novel-writer (though perhaps was made slightly easier by the not-so-film-centric WWII era which spawned Tolkein’s most famous work).  Gandalf’s fireworks, like the white horses he creates at the Ford of Rivendell, are an aspect to this world; a writer’s flourish which adds character and depth to an already imagery-laden universe.

Happy July fourth, everyone.  Now go find yourself some wizardly technology to ogle!