How different do you think LotR would be, if Tolkien were writing it today?

Let's pretend there isn't a huge boom in the Fantasy Literature genre, which Tolkien most assuredly had a huge hand in birthing. Just what characters, locations, races or themes do you think would be dramatically altered if The Professor was writing for a 21st Century readership? Or would there be no difference? DETAILS! We want details.

Females everywhere!

Actually doing stuff! (besides having to shepherd other females and children to a cave for goodness sakes.

How about young wizards or wizards in training? Wizard children, wizard women, wizard dogs?

How 'bout wizards who use science (but call it magic) to make machines that time travel, (oh wait a minute, Jules Verne did that).

Oh, I agree with the "Females everywhere," TheaMak. Although I do think Eowyn is a groundbreaking female character, I always wished Arwen had more to do in LotR. I wonder about the Wizards, though. The Maia came from 'outside' Middle Earth, and chose the bodies of older men on purpose. So, I'm thinking they might not be too quick to reveal themselves as children. But yes, I'd hope there would be women wizards. How about Elsbeth the Purple! ;o) Hecate the Blue! Hee hee. This is fun.

Other than making women something other than yearning and valiant or waiting patiently or unobtainable, I would hope that Tolkien wouldn’t change much at all. He did base the work on older Nordic myths, and those haven’t changed. Further, he said he hated allegory “in all its forms,” and I would like to assume he was telling the truth. I always hated seeing people make comparisons between Lord of the Rings and World War II.

Eowyn was my fave, and what a wonderful strong female role model to boot! But you are also forgetting Galadriel, the strongest female character in the book may have been the strongest individual character in the entire story.

Back to the question at hand, I don't rightly know if a 21st Century World could inspire Tolkien the way his 20th Century World did. He was watching the coutryside get razed and marvelling at the general loss of innocence. Well, there's no innocence to be lost nowadays, that's for sure!

I'm sure it would've been different in some subtle ways, but hopefully not too different... I agree that there would be more female characters, with more prominent roles... a female Legolas springs to mind.

I also think that Tolkien himself would've been quite a different person, I'm sure he still would've used his fascination with myths and language to form the lord of the rings, but I think that real world war probably profoundly change our JRR as a person, I'm not comparing the story to WWII or anything... just that his thought processes must've been shaped by it in some way, on a subconcious level at the very least.

When do you reckon he'd have been born, clamairy? I'm just thinking that even had he been born up through the late 50's he might have turned out to be the same person, and have written essentially the same books.

He just strikes me as someone old before his time, kind of fussy and prissy, stuffy. Maybe it's just The Letters which make me think that. It's a non-caffeine day so far, so I can't recall if I know anything about his younger years -- although that public school life does seem to have turned out fuddy-duddys in the past. ;-)

Well, I know this is physically impossible, but let's say he was born on his actual birth date, and was one of those lucky humans who gets to keep his wits and creative abilities into his old age. (There are some!) Having lived through everything he did, but writing now, do you think he would change anything? I don't think he would change much at all, except for, hopefully, a few more fleshed out female characters.

Now, if we were to say he was born in the 1950s, then I think he would be writing a whole different kind of book.

Well, reading his biography, and the letters, the image you have is someone who did live a very sheltered life He taught his claas. He loved his wife (dearly) and had a few chums he would see at a pub or his rooms in Oxford Then, he'd go home, be with his family, and after they went to bed, he worked on his stories.

No Internet - for much of his life - no TV. Being at home alone was LONELY And this is what he did with his time

I actually think with all the Internet access, there are great solo works that aren't getting done, because of the joy of society the internet gives us at HOME.

I believe you are very right. I happen to know a young writer who fritters away some of her precious time online. :o)

Very interesting topic. I cant say I know much about the Prof, but it would be interesting to see what would have happened. Say for instance maybe with time constraints such as too much internet, LOTR would have been only one book like The Hobbit. How much would have been left out? I agree with the more prominant females though, I dont think he could have avoided that one.

Three changes:

First, as already mentioned, there would be more females (perhaps even a female dwarf).

Second, the word "Men" (notice capital 'M') would be changed to "humans" throughout the text.

Third, he would probably be a little more race-sensitive within the race of Men (er, humans). Southrons and Easterlings wouldn't in any way resemble Africans and Arabs, respectively.

> (perhaps even a female dwarf).

Errrm, maybe I've read too much about dwarven females from other authors....

But don't dwarf womenfolk have beards and carry big axes?

Why would he change 'men' to 'humans'? Being a medievalist Tolkien would know that originally 'man' covered both genders, it was only later in the development of language that 'man' became gender specific.

I'm not sure how different LotR would be. I seem to recall that Tolkien wanted to create an English mythology since there really wasn't one thanks to the Norman invasion. If that is indeed the case, I don't know that things would be much different. I do think there would be more women; in those old mythologies, it seems that women play dominant roles.

I definitely agree with thebookpile - I think the descriptions of the Southrons and Easterlings would be a little more generic.

jargoneer > I'm not totally convinced. When the phrase "men" are used to cover both genders, this mostly and traditionally means that women are excluded from humanity (as are slaves and other people with no monetary means). In parts of modern society this is acknowledged, and in some modern cultures too.
Now, Tolkien was a traditionalist and although he was known to love and respect his wife that doesn't mean he granted the "weaker" sex full and equal opportunities. Lots of men love their wives, but only as long as they stays in the kitchen, so to say. Anyway, this suggests that he indeed would have written it in the same way if hypothetically he had written LoTR today. But that doesn't make his female characters less alienated from womanhood of today. When a teen, Vidstige and Gandalf was my heroes - they where characters of action, able to handle their own fates. Of the women Arwen are almost invisible, Galadriel too much on an icy piedestal, and Eowyn implicitly made a mockery of women aspiring to manly deeds when she became/retracted to her "true" female self in the end, renouncing the sword and marrying Faramir.

Disclaimer: As I live in Sweden, this could be a matter of not quite understanding/knowing the english language and it's history well enough.

/Well, now I feel like that pretentious bore who NEVER let people have a good time... ;-) I rise a Newcastle's and hope you'll forgive me!/

No No No! Your posts are anything but boring, busifer. :o)

*raises glass back at you*

*CLINK*

:o)

HERE HERE.....Actually Busifer, I liked your point of view!

*raises glass to the toast as well*

Me too, Busifer. I never finished The Return of the King, and the movie doesn't mention it, so I didn't know until now about Eowyn renouncing the sword. And she was the one woman that actually went out there and actually fought for what she thought was right. All the other women were in the sidelines. Drat! She was the one redeeming woman figure for me.

I found this site that tells you how to read the Middle Earth stories in chronological order. Has anyone else tried it? It works with 4 books: LotR, Unfinished Tales, Silmarilion, The Hobbit.

I've read LotR many, many times, so I thought this would be a new approach. It has been interesting.

*raises glass in toast also*

hobbitprincess - does that site say to read LOTR before The Hobbit??

It's actually a complicated system. Basically, you jump back and forth between The Silmarilion and Unfinished Tales for awhile, then get into The Hobbit, then LotR, with an occasional reference back to the first two. Here's the site:

http://www.chronology.org/tolkien/

you can customize your reading based upon the editions of the books you have. The site explains it all.

Oh, that's soo cool hobbitprincess.

I always wanted to try that because by the time I get to rereading Simarilion (or the sections in lotr that refer to peices of Simirillion and Unfinished Tales) it's just not fresh enough and I forget which pieces I had wondered about while reading the other (if that makes any sense). But it was always too much of a pain to have every book around and scan through to find the different references.

I need to try that next time I reread :)

AlannaSmithee sez:hobbitprincess - does that site say to read LOTR before The Hobbit?

LOL Alanna, that was my first reaction, too, but then I realized she was just mentioning the books, not the order in which to read them!

I'm not sure if our JRR's works would change drasticly if he were writing for today's readers. I do agree that perhaps there would be more female characters, doing more than making side appearances.

There is a wonderful autobiroghpy about JRR called "Mystic Myth Makeer" that my friend found in her high school libary and borrowed it for my birtheday so that I could read it. Sadly I don't remember the ISBN or author. I only have the title because I found a random page of my old biology note book with that on it and a note saying " The story of Tolkien's Life" below it.

I agree there would have been stronger female characters, and much more racial sensitivity.

However I think there were four critical elements at the heart of LoTR

a) Tolkien's deep, deep knowledge of pre-Norman English history and cultural life, both Celtic and Saxon.

b) His even deeper love of the British countryside, and his understanding of it.

c) Tolkien's witness to two world wars, including personally witnessing the horror of the Western Front in WWI.

d) Tolkien's quiet personal Catholic faith (different from CS Lewis's more evangelical kind of Christianity)

I dont think Tolkien would be himself without all of these things.

a,b and d would have been unchanged

The tricky one is 'b', and I think much would depend on when exactly he would have experienced the controversy over Vietnam and the general upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s.

If he had completed after 1989-1991, I dont think it would have been substantially different.

What I really wonder is how Vietnam would have changed his point of view, especially if he wrote between Vietnam and the end of the Cold War.

World War I was bloody awful, and Tolkien lost most of his friends. There was huge social upheaval aafter the war, but there was victory at the end, and no one maintained that the Allies were wrong to have fought it.

I think between 1965-1985 there might have been a great deal more moral and civilisational doubt in the mix.

If he wrote it after 9-11 it might have been even more stark in tone. Interesting challenges with the Easterlings.