Thiepval Ridge and Minas Tirith
2015; Mythopoeic Society; Volume: 33; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0146-9339
Autores Tópico(s)Themes in Literature Analysis
ResumoIn Lord of the Rings, Tolkien describes the Dark Lord's forces at work as they lay siege to Minas Tirith, capital city of Gondor: Busy as ants hurrying orcs were digging, digging lines of deep trenches in a huge ring, just out of bowshot from the walls; and as the trenches were made each was filled with fire, though how it was kindled or fed, by or devilry, none could see. [...] [G]reat engines [...] began to throw missiles marvellously high, so that they passed right above the battlement and fell thudding within the first circle of the City; and many of them by some burst into flame as they came toppling down. [...] Soon there was great peril of fire behind the wall [...]. (V.4.822) Riders of Rohan approach at night: Merry peered from behind Dernhelm's back. Far away, maybe ten miles or more, there was a great burning, but between it and the Riders lines of fire blazed in a vast crescent, at the nearest point less than a league distant. (V.5.837) of the reasons why so many readers respond to Lord of the Rings is the vividness of Tolkien's descriptions, and his accounts of battle are no exception. Like many of his contemporaries, J.R.R. Tolkien was a combat veteran, having served in the Battle of the Somme from June 1916 until being sent back to England with trench fever in October of the same year. C.S. Lewis, also a combat veteran, remarked on the realism of Tolkien's military descriptions: [Tolkien's] war has the very quality of the war my generation knew. It is all here: the endless, unintelligible movement, the sinister quiet of the front when 'everything is now ready,' the flying civilians, the lively, vivid friendships, the background of something like despair and the merry foreground, and such heaven-sent windfalls as a cache of choice tobacco 'salvaged' from a ruin (39-40). To this one might add the description of recovery in the hospital/Houses of Healing, a subject usually passed over in fantasy literature. Tolkien himself was not fond of critics who search an author's life for his sources. One of my strongest opinions is that investigation of an author's biography [...] is an entirely vain and false approach to his works (Letters 414). He downplayed associations with the Somme: The Lord of the Rings was actually begun, as a separate thing, about 1937 [...]. Personally I do not think that either war (and of course not the atomic bomb) had any influence upon either the plot or the manner of its unfolding. Perhaps in landscape. Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon own something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in House of the Wolfings or Roots of the Mountains. (Letters 303) Tom Shippey has suggested that Tolkien may have been reluctant to divulge details of his life because of the then-current fad for applying Freudian psychoanalysis to authors (8-9). Or perhaps he just did not want people prying into his personal life. Or it could be that the War brought back unpleasant memories. As for the description of the siege of Minas Tirith, incendiaries have been used in warfare since ancient times. All of the technology (save for the Nazgul's winged mounts) would have been available to the ancient Greeks, as Tolkien would have known from his Classical studies. (The secret art causing the missiles to burst into flame need be no more arcane than a lighted fuse, which would leave a fiery trail as it flew through the air.) However, the description of the siege of Minas Tirith is vivid, and a writer, even one so gifted as J.R.R. Tolkien, does not create in a vacuum. An author's experiences, whether read in books or felt in person, influence his writing. So it seems reasonable to assume that some of his war experiences may have found their way into Lord of the Rings. John Garth, in Tolkien and the Great War, has tracked Tolkien's movements while in the army on an almost day-by-day basis. …
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