lotr inspiration

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sauron
some of the things that inspired tolkien can be written in here

such as ww1 inspired him....he and cs. lewis were soldiers in it aparently it. and they didnt understand what the war was for, there was no evil, this led tolkien to wanting to create his own form of solid evil, for which there was a reason for fighting....sauron



macbeth also inspired him

macbeth is tld he cannot be defeated unless the wood itself marches against him, later in the play a character shouts "it seemed to me that the wood was moving" this excited tolkien and he was greatly upset when it turned out to be people in branches, so he thought rght, well....thats going in there too

Kitoky
Most of Tolkien's writings were based on WWII which was the cause of all the battle scenes. All I know is that CS Lewis' booming voice inspired Tolkien to create Treebeard.

sauron
yeah, but ww1 was the original inspiration plus HIYA long time no see big grin

Aurora
It chills me to think that the dead marshes were inspired by event that he lived through.

sauron
yeah seeing his friends dead i mean it must be horrible to watch them die

saruman i believe was based on hitler....the power of the voice you see, i dont care how much you all hate him hitler had a mesmerizing voice

Discos
ah this is a good topic to discuss, I never knew he was in the war and the dead marsh truth is a bit disturbing

Has anyone got a picture of Tolkien?

Kitoky
http://www.valledelleombre.it/images/tolkien.gif

Yeah Saruman's voice was based on Hitler because how Hitler became the big dictator was through his voice, and Saruman needed that same kind of powered voice, and Christopher Lee played that to full extend.

Chapel
ive read one a few of the many Tolkien biographies out there.

many things from his life obviously influenced his writing, he was born in Africa but grew up in England (English countryside of the very early late 19th and early 20th century definitely influenced the Shire) expedition to the Alps shaped the Misty Mountains, he smoked a pipe, his witnessing the expansion of the city into the countryside he loved and experiences during WW1 shaped his view of what evil is, but also his belief that things dont start out evil.
the first part of Middle earth that he created was probably the elvish language (he created many languages in his life time) many years before he even imagine another world or even of elves.
the literature he loved also come through in the book, Rohan is definitely based on the Anglo Saxon culture of old epic poems like Beowolf.
etc etc
short JRR Tolkien biog

Exa
Shelob was inspired by some spider in his childhood in Africa stick out tongue he suffered arachnophoby, I think

Aurora
Really? I didn't know that. Well anyone who wasn't afraid of spiders probally thought twice about them after reading and/or seeing Shelob!

sauron
he loved mythology, and he noticed england had very very little mythology...

beowolf was DEFINATELY a inspitation.....the hall in that story is even called meduseld

Suzuka
His faith...it was C.S. Lewis who said it was Tolkien who lead him to Christ...and it's pretty obvious in LOTR and Tolkien's other work that he was a Christian...that's why I like the books so much smile

oh, anyone ever read Tolkien Miscellany ?? it's a couple of his works and some he translated, very cool to check out

Sifer
It isn't BASED upon anything. Remember, Tolkien re-wrote many parts, MANY times as he felt parts where too similar to largely known icons, stories, fables etc.

He detested allegory. As he said in a video interview. I will try and find it somewhere as I watched it in Tenerife whilst on holiday on BBC smile (See we're everywhere big grin)

Chapel
hes sayes That the Lord of the Rings is non allegorical in the preface of the books but calls it applicable.

No one character, event or thing (many people have said that Sauron in the east = comunism or Saruman = Hitler or the one ring = Nuclear Power etc) is suposed to represent anything from the real world.
It was also never meant to be some forgotten history of the real world, it was writen to be a English mythology.

But writers are influenced by thier lives and Tolkien very much so.

sauron
yeah but there was alot of inspiration in there

Chapel
I agree 100%

sauron
but the dead marshes being based on his own experience sad makes you think how lucky you are to live in a world of peace, i mean sure we have laden, and we had hussein, the two towers attacks were as everyone knows a disgusting and horrific unprovoced attack on the usa, but with the utmost respect to those who were in some way involved with that day..its not as bad as the threat hitler posed, or the number of deaths were minute to that of ww1

now i chose my words very carefully there, no disrespect meant to ANYONE, so if you think something is offensive PLEASE alert me so i can change it, as i do not want to be thought of as glorifying that despicable bastard, of a man

Aurora
no harm done sauron (in my eyes)

I think that Tolkiens experience's in WW1 def. changed his views on life and very much inspired him in LOTR. I know that he really didn't want parallels drawn between our world today and his M.E of yesterday but it is unavoidable, really. I mean the world is in such chaos and dispair that we can feel what the characters are feeling in a way. The war and loss is all around us as it was in M.E.

Smodden
even though he didn't like alagories, dosn't mean he wasn't influenced by his faith.

fini
hmmmmmmmm yet another thread borne out of the appendices of FOTR and TTT
hehe

Exa
I think the most important inspiration for him was still language.

Middle-earth isn't just another fantasy world (ignoring the fact that it was one of the first and that Tolkien is actually the founder of "Fantasy"wink and also not a well-worked adventure story but a linguistical work. It's mostly based on words, words becoming names, names becoming subjects of stories and stories becoming history.
So Finnish and Welsh were perhaps two of the most important inspirations for LoTR, making Tolkien invent own perfect-sounding languages with delicious grammar - and languages of course need someone to speak them.

muse5
Tolkien hated allegory, can't forget that, ww1 was probably a big inspiration, but he also said that the more human a story gets, the easier it is to attatch allegory to, i don't think ww2 had great inspiration, also him and cs lewis couldn't find the type of books they wanted to read, so they wrote thier own

sauron
yeah i know, but saruman and hitler are similar....the power of voice, even the scene from orthanc ("my lord there is no such army *saruman walks onto balcony"wink was quite a mirror image of what hitler did,

Aurora
I think that PJ wanted to make that connection. The connection in the films is almost identical to pics of Hitler.

sauron
well you have all seen the saruman scene of him on the balcony, does this seem familiar

Exa
That does look scaringly familiar... sad

But I don't think that Tolkien used real persons for his stories... rather the feeling what it's like being in a war, seeing friends dying (just imagine Tolkien wouldve died eek! mad )

SilverFighter
Last August there was book release call "Tales Before Tolkien: The roots of modern Fantasy" and is a compilation of 19th century stories of fantasy that according to the author Douglas A. Anderson it might had inspired Tolkien literature. Now World events during his lifetime maybe a reason why he created Saruman and Sauron. As for the inspiration of Hobbits I think it has something to do with Bloemfontein.

sauron
no he had a plan

you know in a war they say theres a bullet with your name on it* well tolkein had carved his name into a bullet, so he had the bullet with his name on it, therefore he wont be shot stick out tongue







*meaning that if there was a bullet just for you your going to die anyway, so do it heroicly, going over the top (somme), if theres not a bullet with your name on it, your not going to die in the war so go over the top, youll be safe.....all bull i know, but it was to get up soldiers morale

fini
yeah tolkien lived in a far worse of world than we ever did. Seeing both world wars and their impacts must have been tramatic and ultimately inspirational. And we think that the little , nobody terrorists are things to be afraid off????????

We should remember the horror those years tolkien and those other geniuses lived in and shouldn't complain about ours( life in terror my ass, too many people are wusses these days).
okok me going political again and i have been warned so i will stop.

sauron
*applauds fini*

exactly, todays world is just people taking their religion to the extreme

but i dont see how killing yourself and others is good for your religion

cheney
i definitely agree about the hitlerv - sauron connection. if you have ever heard hitler speak(and i do understand that what he stood for was wrong and unjust and in no way do i stand for what he believed in) but yeah if u have ever heard one of his speeches or seen a televised speed his is an awesome public speaker and has the ability i believe like saruman to basically bend a mind with words

sauron
hitler still holds a strong grip on society today aswell thats what power he had, there are still nazi parties about....just not the great extent they were in that day and age, i believe the reason for this IS his voice, we watched a tape of him in school and after it for the whole day i could just hear his voice repeating in my head.....i believe that THAT was to a lesser extent what the nazi party felt.....also what bilbo gollum and frodo felt of the ring

cheney
yeah unfortunately for many hitler had mastered the power of speech. on another point though i definitely agree about the language thing saying that was what helped create LOTR and middle earth and so on. i also believe it is what makes LOTR so special and unique for example as opposed to just mentioning a door gaurd at the hall of rohan tolkien mentions Hama captain of the guard and he also mentions how he dies later creating thousands of tiny stories inside 1 story. thats what makes it so popular so interesting and that is why thousands are still able to speak endlessly about it as we are right now.

cheney
sorry got abit carried away there and a bit off subject but nevertheless i stick by my post

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