Thread 24645073

was the scouring of the shire really necessary? are people too forgiving of Tolkien's writing?

>>24645073 (OP)
Hell yeah. We need to scour the West and more of jeets and mujeets and more.

>>24646760
Aragorn was an analogy for Imam Mahdi (who will save the West irl), cope and seethe

Maybe. The real problem was stupid shit like the unga bungas hiding in the mountains or tom bombadil.

>>24645073 (OP)
Yes, because it completes the character arcs of the Hobbits. It's also a great demonstration of the fact that the horrors of war can follow you everywhere and there are no invincible enclaves.

>>24646880
This, I thought it was a good way of showing how even the furthest corners of Middle Earth were touched by Sauron's evil, and gave us a glimpse at how some of its inhabitants were pushed into doing his evil bidding. It also gave us a satisfying conclusion to Saruman.

>>24645073 (OP)
In the novel yes but I can understand why the movie cut it.

>>24647064
To this point the Shire itself kind of felt like it was in another world. Something so far away so pristine and untouched by war that it was basically a, for want of a better term, fantasy. And to that end it kind of goes against a lot of the point if there's just a single safe place from war, because the wars Tolkien fought in were of the world variety. The shire can be a place of peace but it can't be invincible

>>24645073 (OP)
The Shire and Hobbit arc was about cozy England of old entering the modern world by way of WW1. The Hobbits left the Shire for the War of the Ring, Tolkien and English men left England for WW1. The fighting men of WW1 came home and had to learn to cope with a drastically changed England and the loss of many of their own generation. So I would say that it was absolutely necessary for the ultimate fate of the Shire to be addressed to finish the story. Tolkien chose a positive ending: the encroaching modernization and ensuing rape of the natural world was conceded to, but in the end, the Hobbits were able to beat back the evil industry and largely "go back" to the way things were. In retrospect, it does seem like an overly optimistic or even naive characterization, that everything will simply be okay and largely not change. Certainly not what actually happened to Britain. But a more realistic ending would have been depressing, and not very in line with Tolkien's strong aspirational Christianity.

Schnellgericht Baggins was absolute kino

>>24647142
If you want the sergeant major
I know where he is
I know where he is
I know where he is
If you want the sergeant major
I know where he is
He's drinking all the company's rum
He's drinking
He's drinking
He's drinking all the company's rum
He's drinking
He's drinking
He's drinking all the company's rum.

IF YOU WANT THE OLD BATTALION I KNOW WHERE THEY ARE
THEY'RE HANGING ON THE OLD BARBED WIRE

>>24645073 (OP)
Hackson actually did better than Tolkien in this regard, by handling their return and their understanding of how they've changed when they quietly toast at the pub.

It's like when you hit the level cap but then run back to the starting zone on a whim just to watch things explode in your presence.

>>24647207
Starting zone metas exist *due to* tolkien.

>>24647207
It's actually fun watching Merry and Pippin roflstomp all the goons Saruman's got on his payroll. They're clearly used to bossing around timid fat Hobbits and don't know what to do with the seasoned adventurers our four lads have become. Even Saruman, in the end, gets confounded by the four Hobbits, because Frodo robs him of the savor of his revenge by showing him mercy. As Gandalf says, they are all grown up now.

>>24647142
I don't think it's overly optimistic, though. Frodo is pretty clearly a broken man by the end of the Trilogy and never really lives a normal life. Magic is still basically fading from Middle-Earth; the elves and Wizards all either leave for the Undying lands or basically fade into irrelevance as the age of Men begins.

Why did Saruman ultimately devolve into ‘ayo squeeze it nigga’ at the end?

>>24646875
Tom Bombadil was cool.

>>24645073 (OP)
>hobbits have to deal with the situation themselves, instead of relying on superpowered friends and allies
Yes it was really necessary. Do you know what the Hero's Journey is?

>>24647184
Movies are not comparable to novels, and Hackson's films are generally derided by Tolkien fans.
The problem with most of Tolkien's critics nowadays is that they expect him to conform to the Hollywood playbook.

>>24646875
Heard you talk shit, like me not find out.

>>24645073 (OP)
It is time for the English to hate.

>>24647243
You know it's really funny. I saw the movies before I read the books. And novel wise Sarumons downfall is honestly pretty a lot more comical than I think I was expecting. I'm not sure I was expecting but it wasn't "The hobbits call him a fag and steal his weed."

>>24650362
It's both comical and sad. What it is is PATHETIC. Saruman's final fate is the most pathetic of any of Tolkien's characters. At least Sauron goes out with a big final smoke show. Saruman just descends into extreme pettiness and then gets murdered by his dog after kicking him one time too many.

>>24645073 (OP)
What the fuck does "necessary" mean? It's a book. The author can put whatever the fuck he wants in it, and if you don't like it, don't read it.

>>24650429
yeah, it's fitting though. For someone who reached so high to fall so low.

>>24645073 (OP)
People who hate the scouring of the shire are just moviebrained. They want 5-10 minutes of everyone being happy after the big climax and then for the credits to roll.

>>24649065
Because he was essentially stuck as a 10 thousand year old bureaucrat, unable to change position or seek promotion. And in his moment of weakness he bets on the wrong horse, marking him as both a traitor and making his thousands of diligent service null and void.
He was just sick of everything, I would have asked Frodo to pull the trigger too.

>>24651957
Saruman got TOO treachery-pilled. As Gandalf points out to him when they confront him at Isengard, "You have cheated your new master, or tried to." Saruman tried to act like he'd become loyal to Sauron but he was actively seeking the Ring for himself. He was a double-traitor, so it's not really surprising it all blew up in his face. Trying to betray two different factions at once is rarely workable.

>>24651969
Yeah, the Lord of the rings deals a lot with temptation and traitors, people who are enamored by the vision of the enemy. Maybe Tolkien is speaking about the desire to become a fascist, something he categorically rejects but sees so many people become enraptured by, even his closest allies would have spoke the same way as the enemy.

At least I think the ring is a metaphor for fascism. I'm a dumbass so I could be wrong.

>>24652091
I love people desperately trying to make the work of a man who despised allegory, allegorical.

>>24652111
I didn't say it was an allegory, Tolkien drew his experience of war from ww1, and fascism and anti-Semitism was a popular stance amongst those of the allies at the time.
If we can praise him for drawing experience of warfare and the destruction of the Shire to his experience to the English countryside then I'm allowed to assert that the temptation of the ring and the various traitors we see could have been drawn from the seduction of fascism Tolkien saw in his fellow man.

>>24652196
Politically Tolkien is complicated by modern standards. He disliked the Nazis and sympathized with Jews, but on the other hand, he was staunchly supportive of Franco and the Nationalists in Spain.

I think probably the best way to categorize him is as basically a Catholic Supremacist. There's the Church and there's everybody else. Franco wanted to do good to the Church, so he's good in Tolkien's eyes. Hitler wanted to do bad to the Church, so he's bad in Tolkien's eyes.

>>24652091
It is possible, but the ring is generally representative of something far bigger than a single ideology or object. It is more or less the physical embodiment of evil: powerful in the moment, corruptive, seductive, pleasurable but ultimately leaves you hollow; after a certain point you can no longer be said to be using it, but rather it uses you.
Many things in the early 20th century could have influenced it, including fascism, socialism, other ideologies of the time, the new weapons rolling out, etc.
What people don't seem to get about Tolkien is that yes, he infused his work with his experience, yes he hated allegory, but what he did was distill abstract essences (forms, one might say) from his influences and reconstruct a symbolic framework that carried the same essence.
The war of the rings bears a lot of resemblances to the world wars, for Tolkien's experience comes from that, but he generalizes it to be communicate universally what he took away from his experience.

>>24652245
For Saruman the temptation was industry and order.
For sauron it was domination and tyranny

It think the ring represents all of the above depending on whoever is looking at it. Many socialists espouse ideals of working together with their fellow man, but they also dispensed the most murderous policies in the world.

>>24652196
I think you’re doing some anachronistic thinking trying to fit fascism onto the ring. People have done much more work trying to make Hitler into Sauron and Mordor into Germany. But the ring especially as the seductive force being hammered onto a symbol of fascism doesn’t even pass the sniff test.

I don’t get the obsession people have with trying to assign meanings he actively denied in life while ignoring what he spoke passionately /for/ as inspiration. It’s like the kind of “fan” rewriting reality to find some homosexual representation in Frodo and Sam. Your own politics has broken your brain and you’re writing fan canon out of thin air to use for mental masturbation.

If you’re such a fan of seeing things that aren’t there just go stare at a wall until Hitler starts sucking dick or whatever it is you obsess about.

>>24652227
What a fag

>>24645073 (OP)
yeah it was gigakino. It's unabashedly about communism, the first niggas they meet at the crossing outpost lay it out in the one paragraph upon their return. The left boys and came back men, maybe the most prevalent theme in the books is leadership and how complacency apathy allows evil to creep in. They learned to be leaders and came back and cleaned that shit up quick

>>24652227
Tolkien was very RW and LOTR is about the kike and his biomass weapons invading and destroying the West. He was a nice old boomer and public figure who wrote good vs evil books for children, just because he wasn't throwing up the Roman doesn't mean he didn't do it on the page

>>24646774
As a kid I thought Aragorn was supposed to be Jesus.

>>24645073 (OP)
It's by far one of the best chapters of the trilogy

>>24649592
This is about hatred of Germany btw, and Kipling was relatively fond of his Indians, though as a Victorian he found Hinduism highly alien.

>>24652588
Aragorn, Gandalf, Frodo, Sam, actually a ton of characters have Jesus-esque elements to them in the story. There's no one single Christ figure, rather attributes of Christ get attached to various characters.

>>24652480
I can really tell when someone has based their opinion off predigested talking points off twitter and Reddit. Lots of projection, lots of absolutist assertion with no room for critical analysis.

You're curre you demonstrating the signs of a fanatic, a fanatic towards an opinion you think is on the right side of history, where Tolkien mentions he doesn't like allegory, so nobody is allowed to assign allegory or parse the unconscious allegory to his story.

Maybe I'm wrong, but there's no way in hell you're right.

>>24652889
>claims something evil is a direct allegory of fascism because its evil and fascism is also evil
>has the gall to accuse anyone else of regurgitating reddit talking points