1. This is a great article. I agree with your opinion on what Tolkien might think about modern fantasy. I think he’d be displeased with much of it, and delighted by some of it–as we all are, and as we always have been. Modern writing tends to be of a higher caliber, but he mentions art with heart. That has always been difficult to find. Writing with heart that also has quality. I just started re-reading Le Guin’s The Other Wind, and feel that some of her work (that book included) intersect what resonates deeply with my heart, and with what is just plain fantastically well-done creative work. It speaks to me, and helps me recover the truths I’ve known too long, and that moves me!

  2. notleia says:

    If you think about it, LOTR is pretty much a dystopia. Middle Earth has declined from glorious eras of both Elves and Men. The landscape is dotted with the ruins of cities that were once great but have moldered away. Gondor is ruled by this one guy who went cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs after staring into the abyss a bit too long. Plenty of creeping dread to go around.

    • It’s not a true dystopia in the least. It’s a way of showing how the old world blended into our own. A transition period merging the myth of the Silmarillion with modern Europe. Though it’s true there’s a lot of dread, there’s also a lot of simple pleasures and joys and beauty. It’s the fact that those are under attack that helps the reader (and characters) “Recover” the simple joys, like when the Hobbits return to the Shire (after shooing Saruman) and appreciate it for what it is.

  3. He probably would think there’s some gems and some things that are ‘too dark’ or ‘heartless’ or something. But maybe we’d be surprised by what he’d like and dislike. In some ways, stories were darker back then. In certain time periods, there probably wasn’t even much distinction between stories told to adults and stories told to children. In ancient cultures, the darker aspects of life were probably so close that they simply couldn’t be hidden from children.

    Many classics are pretty dark. Tragedy and cautionary tales were a thing. There would probably be many stories that he would like after people pointed out how those dark tales were tragedies or cautionary. In fact, wasn’t Children of Hurin pretty dark and tragic?

    Maybe Tolkein would find no value in modern dark, tragic stories. If so, that’s sad. Just because something is violent and dark doesn’t mean there’s no hope or valuable lessons to be obtained from it. Fate Zero’s a great example. I don’t QUITE agree with the conclusions this video comes to, but it does point out some important aspects these two chars play in this story:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2CJME_VOyM&pbjreload=10

    Unfortunately it uses the English dubbed clips, so the voice acting doesn’t quite do the show justice. And the analysis kinda idealizes Alexander (Rider) too much, and I did take some slightly different things from the show than the Youtuber did. But, the vid does portray some of the show’s overall value. Sadly, not everyone will notice that value because they get bored with the show too early or get so upset at the dark parts that they refuse to pay attention to the good parts. Even Kiritsugu and Arthur’s (Saber’s) arcs are actually a lot brighter than the video paints them. Even if their stories ended tragically, they had a chance to LEARN from what they went through.

    So…I dunno. People seem to dismiss a lot of dark stories without understanding them or giving them their due. Even stories without a lot of brightness, comic relief, or chars like Waver and Alexander have merit. Breaking Bad had a lot of great insights into human nature and served as a cautionary tale about what can happen when people pick the wrong ambitions and pursue them too hard, for example.

    But that comes down to a very important thing with stories. One of the primary purposes they serve is learning and teaching. Sometimes that can be done with bright fluffy stories and sometimes it needs to be done with dark tales that warn us so we don’t have to go through as much as the characters did. Or, if we do go through the same heartache the chars do, the chars’ experiences can help us make sense of our own.

What do you think?