lotr inspiration

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

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.

yeah, but ww1 was the original inspiration plus HIYA long time no see 😄

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

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

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?

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.

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

Shelob was inspired by some spider in his childhood in Africa 😛 he suffered arachnophoby, I think

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!

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

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 🙂

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

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 🙂 (See we're everywhere 😄)

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.

yeah but there was alot of inspiration in there

Originally posted by sauron
yeah but there was alot of inspiration in there

I agree 100%

but the dead marshes being based on his own experience 🙁 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

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.

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

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