Comment by astrange | Hacker News Reader

Comment by astrange | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think it's a stretch. I think the idea that LoTR is highly idealized/idyllic is an interpretation made up by people who didn't notice how carefully it's written and thought he left it out!

Similarly, a lot of later grimdarker fantasy stories try to be "Tolkein but with realistic tax systems and warfare", so something like ASoIaF tries to talk about those things more, but then messes up the actual details so it's inconsistent. But if you follow the analyses on https://acoup.blog/author/aimedtact/, the battles in LoTR are very carefully thought out and realistic (based on Tolkein's personal experience) and Gondor's feudalist system is also pretty realistic (based on his academic expertise). He just talked about the details less.

I would even say they're grimmer than "grimdark" stories, half of the Gondor battle is about the enemy using psychological warfare tactics and the story ends with Frodo having to leave with the elves because he has PTSD.

(I further claim that the reason LoTR doesn't have many women isn't because he forgot about them, it's because they're doing household labor and Frodo doesn't encounter them due to being something between a celibate priest and gay.)

I think there has been an understandable pushback against the trope that Tolkien's world building was too loose and idealised, but we shouldn't take things too far in the other direction and imagine him as fastidiously realist.

Yes, Tolkien was a medieval historian, but he wasn't only that, and LoTR is not a work of historical fiction. Tolkien was also a storyteller, and in his famous denunciation of allegory he makes it clear that he prioritises the story above all other concerns. He was also a lover of myth and legend, which are inherently unrealistic forms. And, perhaps most importantly, he was a Christian, and his entire legendarium is an elaborate reworking of Christian theology.

Indeed, there is something Edenic about the Shire. The Hobbits are portrayed as innocents, literally child-like in stature, and protected from evil by the efforts of the Rangers and Gandalf. And this guarding of their innocence is presented as a fundamentally good thing.

To believe that the Shire was in fact a society built on economic exploitation, and that Tolkien meticulously figured all this out (but failed to mention it), undermines the morality of the tale. And the fact is, nothing truly like the Shire ever existed, so attempting to contrive a real-world explanation for its qualities is impossible. Yes, it was obviously influenced by Tolkien's understanding of and attitudes towards the English class system and rural life, but I would insist that it is basically a speculative creation, intended to portray what an idyllic version of what that society could look like, with exactly how it actually works left deliberately vague and dependent on some contrivances such as the Ranger guard.

> ... and protected from evil by the efforts of the Rangers and Gandalf. And this guarding of their innocence is presented as a fundamentally good thing.

It's easy for me to read Gandalf's motives as almost the opposite, of realizing that their innocence is a danger to themselves and including them in the fellowship not only due to the ring, but for their own growth. So it wasn't accidental that Generals Brandybuck and Took were trained by their adventure sufficiently to lead the scouring the Shire on their return, and that Sam learned to repair the ecological disaster. Gandalf was indeed protecting children from their innocence but by helping them grow out of it, knowing more of the hobbits' capacity than they did themselves.

I think it's a bit like PG Wodehouse. The world of Bertie Wooster or Clarence Threepwood, 9th Earl of Emsworth is certainly an idyll; at the same time no one would pretend it is a classless idyll.

Tolkien would not refer to that class structure as "economic exploitation" - that is part of his politics. That does not mean he did not understand that society very well, and seek to portray it in an idealized form.

I think the you need to take that position either.

I think it is likely that Tolkien intended social strata, but simply doesn't veiw it through our modern black and white moral extremism. It's not "economic exploration" its just life, and a good one at that.

To believe that the Shire was in fact a society built on economic exploitation, and that Tolkien meticulously figured all this out (but failed to mention it), undermines the morality of the tale. And the fact is, nothing truly like the Shire ever existed, so attempting to contrive a real-world explanation for its qualities is impossible.

The English countryside of old is exactly the model for the Shire. Its idyllic, comfortable lifestyle contrasted with the dirty, busy, industry of London and the disgusting, disease-ridden horror of the trenches in WW1 (in which Tolkien personally fought).

The mythology of LoTR Tolkien drew from his knowledge as a scholar but the setting was deeply rooted in personal experience. There are plenty of people living today who enjoy an idyllic, rural lifestyle in full ignorance of the industry, politics, and wars of the wider world.

> I don't think it's a stretch. I think the idea that LoTR is highly idealized/idyllic is an interpretation made up by people who didn't notice how carefully it's written and thought he left it out!

I'm confused by this though. I read through a bit of the article and although I could readily buy its conclusions as "plausible" I don't see anything at all that contradicts the idea of the Shire as an idyllic anarchic/collectivist society.

IMO, not only does "The Shire is a successful anarchic society where resources are plentiful and everybody is afforded a lot of leisure" read have the benefit of requiring fewer leaps of logic from the reader, it thematically makes more sense as a counterbalance to what is happening elsewhere across Middle Earth. This is the last holdout in a world being corrupted by lust for power and greed, after all, so maybe it truly is exceptional?

Yes. But. The Shire’s prosperity was established in text to have been supported (in secret) by the efforts of the Rangers. Recall that Bilbo ran into evil, “cannibal” trolls barely outside of the borders of the Shire. This kind of threat would simply never appear in, say, Hobbiton.

The Shire itself is set in the ruins of a collapsed kingdom destroyed long ago by the Witch King. The last vestiges of the old order, the Rangers, patrol the land to try to push back the monsters. They collect no taxes. They pass no laws. The people of the Shire are largely unaware of them at all.

This is a clear statement of Tolkien’s politics, that an idyllic society like the Shire is the result of the hard work of good people shielded from the evils of the world. The role of the King then is to protect the people from these threats while otherwise not involving himself in the day-to-day lives of the citizens.

> I don't see anything at all that contradicts the idea of the Shire as an idyllic anarchic/collectivist society.

The Shire is both an "anarchic" society (what government exists is extremely weak and has little impact) and a class society with a definite social hierarchy, which does play a strong role in organizing people's lives. The social hierarchy is not a government, but that doesn't mean it's weak and that people just do whatever they feel like without regard to it.

> resources are plentiful and everybody is afforded a lot of leisure

It's not at all clear that this is true of the Shire. Wealthy bachelors like Bilbo and Frodo, or heirs of wealthy families like Merry and Pippin, seem to have a lot of leisure, yes, but what about Sam? He clearly has plenty of work to do, as did his father before him. So do the other hobbits of their own class that they interact with. The hobbits that gather at the Green Dragon of an evening do so after a day's work; they don't idle there all day.

> This is the last holdout in a world being corrupted by lust for power and greed

While "corrupted by lust for power and greed" is certainly true of Saruman and the ruffians he gets to infiltrate the Shire, it's not at all clear that it's true of, say, Gondor. Even Denethor in Gondor, while he comes to a bad end, does not do so out of "lust for power and greed". He does so out of his despair, based on what Sauron shows him through the palantir, that he is doomed to fail in his life's task of preserving Gondor. But Gondor as a whole does not despair, nor does it go to the other extreme and use the Ring against Sauron--which, as Tolkien himself pointed out (and had several characters point out in the course of the story), is what would have happened if "lust for power and greed" had been the primary motivator.

>I don't see anything at all that contradicts the idea of the Shire as an idyllic anarchic/collectivist society.

Sam is Frodo's servant. Anarchic societies don't have masters and servants. Then the natural question you should ask is why? Frodo is not a noble and Sam is not a slave, so the only reasonable explanation for why Sam is the servant is because Frodo's family is wealthy and Sam is in their employ.

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