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Hands Down

19 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Films and Music, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History of Middle-earth

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1984, Argonath, Barad-Dur, Big Brother, Eye of Sauron, Galadriel, Saruman, Sauron, The Ten Commandments (1956), Theatrical gesture, Uruk-hai, White Hand

As always, dear readers, welcome.

Recently, we quoted the leader of the Uruk-hai, Ugluk:

“We are the fighting Uruk-hai!  We slew the great warrior.  We took the prisoners.  We are the servants of Saruman the Wise, the White Hand:  the Hand that gives us man’s-flesh to eat.”  (The Two Towers,  Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”)

That White Hand is, of course, Saruman’s

image1saruman.jpg

special badge (in our contemporary world, we might say that it was his “logo”), which we see for the first time on the shield of a dead orc:

“There were four goblin-soldiers of greater stature, swart, slant-eyed, with thick legs and large hands.  They were armed with short broad-bladed swords, not with the curved scimitars usual with Orcs; and they had bows of yew, in length and shape like the bows of Men.  Upon their shields they bore a strange device:  a small white hand in the centre of a black field… (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 1, “The Departure of Boromir”)

image2orcs.jpg

We can imagine why Sauron has that red eye

image3orc.gif

for his emblem—fiery to indicate Sauron’s turbulent nature (and perhaps relation to Satan—another fallen angel/Maia), plus unblinking, to show that, like Big Brother,

image4bbposter.jpg

he’s always watching—a fact rather broadly expressed in the Jackson films, where the eye has been turned into a searchlight—or, at best, a lighthouse beacon.  (And yes, this is a Barad-dur desk lamp.)

image5eye.jpg

But why does Saruman use a white hand?  And which direction should it face?  In the films, it seems to be applied upside down

image6orc.jpg

which, to us seems like the wrong way up—besides being more difficult to apply as face paint.  What is the meaning of the symbolic use of that hand?

This put us to thinking about hands in The Lord of the Rings in general.  We considered the Ring on and off various hands and even those who lost a finger wearing it, but these all seemed rather passive and, thinking of what Ugluk says, we imagine Saruman’s hand as active.  That being the case, the first prominent hand we could think of was that of the Barrow-wight:

“[Frodo] heard behind his head a creaking and scraping sound.  Raising himself on one arm he looked, and saw now in the pale light that they were in a kind of passage which behind them turned a corner  Round the corner a long arm was groping, walking on its fingers towards Sam, who was lying nearest, and towards the hilt of the sword that lay upon him.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 8, “Fog on the Barrow-downs”)

image7wight.jpg

This is certainly a menacing thing and reminds us of something from the 1956 film, The Ten Commandments, where to indicate the deaths of the first-born of Egypt (from the Book of Exodus, Chapter 11, in the Hebrew Bible), the film makers showed viewers this—

image8aten.jpg

a kind of spindly green hand, which can still creep us out as its function is to grasp things—in this case a sword which will be used to sacrifice the hobbits.

Our next hand—or hands–were those of Galadrielimage8galadriel.jpg

when she takes Frodo and Sam to her Mirror and tells them about the struggle with Sauron:

“She lifted up her white arms and spread out her hands towards the East in a gesture of rejection and denial.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

Long ago, we did a posting on that gesture, which comes right out of 19th-century rhetorical and theatrical practice.  As this plate illustrates, such gestures were stylized and memorized for their effect on the speaker’s platform, as well as the stage.

image9plate.jpg

We were reminded of our final hands by Galadriel’s gesture:  the Argonath,

image10argonath.jpg

described as:

“Upon great pedestals founded in the deep waters stood two great kings of stone:  still with blurred eyes and crannied brows they frowned upon the North.  The left hand of each was raised palm outwards in gesture of warning; in each right hand there was an axe…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 9, “The Great River”)

So far, we’ve seen hands which grasp, hands which reject, and hands which warn and perhaps we can imagine that all of these might be part of the message of Saruman’s white hand.  Saruman, in taking up the role of “Mini-Sauron”, has rejected the West he was sent to protect.  In his desire to build his own empire, he has allied himself with Sauron and made war on Rohan, attempting to grasp more and more territory while sacrificing his honor and purpose as one of the Maiar.  That he is not now what he seems to have been in the past should also be a warning of what he intends in the present and what, even maimed, he might be capable of in the future, as the Shire will learn when Saruman becomes Sharkey.

Is there more to this image?  We wouldn’t be surprised:  Sauron is intentionally kept off-stage, we believe to make him that much more menacing, so the real evil we see is, literally, in the hands of Saruman.

image11sar.jpg

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Thrones or Dominions (2)

07 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Economics in Middle-earth, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Maps, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

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1984, Adolf Hitler, Barad-Dur, Benito Mussolini, Big Brother, Denethor, dictatorships, Elf Kingdom, Eye of Sauron, Gondor, Maiar, map, Middle-earth, Minas Tirith, Mouth of Sauron, Nazgul, Ornthanc, Rohan, Saruman, Sauron, Steward of Gondor, The Lord of the Rings, Theoden, Tolkien, Uruk-hai

As always, dear readers, welcome.

In our last, we began to discuss what we called the governments of Middle-earth at the time of the War of the Ring, making a kind of Grand Tour using the plot movement of The Lord of the Rings to loosely shape our itinerary.  (And here we’re borrowing from a witty idea, on a site called brilliantmaps.com, where we found “If Frodo and Sam had Google Maps of Middle-earth”.)

image1memap.png

Our first stop was the Shire, where we proposed that this was a “government by the few”:  that is, an oligarchy, a certain number of old and established families controlling the state.  From there, we moved on to Bree, where there was so little information that our best guess was that it, too, was probably an oligarchy, some sort of loose-knit one among—or perhaps uniting—the four villages which made up the general area.

Next, we grouped together what we suggested were two Elf kingdoms, Rivendell and Lorien, where Elrond and Galadriel (along with the nearly-invisible Celeborn), clearly were in charge, although neither would claim the title of monarch.

At our next stop, Isengard, Saruman,

image2orthanc.jpg

who had begun as one of the five Maiar sent to oppose the annoyingly-persistent Sauron, had moved from being what Gandalf called “the chief of my order” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”), to being a kind of dictator—but one in the shadow of Sauron, just as Mussolini (1883-1945), who, from 1922, had been a model for such figures,

image3march.jpg

had fallen, by the later 1930s, into being the shadow of another, more powerful, dictator.

image4mushit.jpg

Like Elrond and Galadriel, he carries no title, but his captain, Ugluk, calls him “the Wise, the White Hand:  the Hand that gives us man’s-flesh to eat”, which probably tells us more than we want to know about his rule. (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”)

We believe that this shadow may have been created by Saruman’s growing arrogance (which Gandalf points out to Frodo in “The Shadow of the Past”) combined with his overconfidence in using a palantir he has found in Orthanc and which puts him into communication with Sauron—and Sauron’s ability to seduce.

image5palantir.jpg

Sauron himself seems like the primal dictator, but a dictator before the 20th century, when dictators began to have a growing media world to employ to make themselves omnipresent in the lives of their citizens.

image6hitradio.jpg

image7hitmovie.jpg

Instead, he’s  remote—sitting in the Barad dur, yet

image8baraddur.jpg

(and we can’t resist this image by “Rackthejipper”)

image9baradsnow.jpg

represented as being like 1984’s Big Brother, always watching.

image10bb.jpg

Or, as it is crudely represented in the Jackson films, literally a giant eye on a tower.

image11jack.jpg

When one thinks of modern dictators, however, one imagines them backed by huge bureaucracies, like the ministries in 1984:

“The Ministry of Truth–Minitrue, in Newspeak [Newspeak was the official

language of Oceania. For an account of its structure and etymology see

Appendix.]–was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It

was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring

up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston

stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in

elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

 

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

 

The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above

ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about London

there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So

completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof

of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. They

were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus

of government was divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself

with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of

Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which

maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible

for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv,

and Miniplenty. (George Orwell, 1984, Chapter 1)

 

Instead, what we can see of Sauron’s government is much more medieval, beginning with the Nazgul, who were once human kings,

image12nazgul.jpg

who would be like the barons, the chief feudal deputies  of a king in a feudal world of the sort medieval England was and upon which much of Middle-earth, as we’ve suggested in many earlier postings, was based.  The chief of these was then the commander of Sauron’s main attack on Minas Tirith.

image13naz.jpg

To which we would add “the Voice of Sauron” (reminding us, of course, that he is only the spokesperson and Sauron would be presumed to have his eye on him, as well).  If you look for images of him, you will commonly find this:

image14jack.jpg

But, like certain other depictions in the Jackson films (that eye, for example), it is a very literal interpretation for someone JRRT described as:

“The rider was robed all in black, and black was his lofty helm; yet this was no Ringwraith but a living man…it is told that he was a renegade, who came of the race of those that are named the Black Numenoreans…” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”)

Here’s an image possibility which comes a bit closer to the text, in our opinion.

image15lieutenant.jpg

From dictators, we make a final stop at two actual feudal  kings, the first, the ruler of Rohan, Theoden,

image16theoden.jpg

is clearly the descendant of earlier kings, as we are told in Appendix A, of The Lord of the Rings, “The Kings of the Mark”, where the line begins with Eorl the Young and continues for about five hundred years.

In the case of our other monarchy, Gondor, the kings who ruled for so many centuries (from SA3320 to TA 2050), have disappeared and, though the fiction is maintained that they will someday return, the actual ruler is their deputy, the Steward, and his role as lieutenant is symbolized literally by his position in the old throne room:

“At the far end, upon a dais [a kind of raised platform] of many steps was set a high throne under a canopy of marble shaped like a crowned helm; behind it was carved upon the wall and set with gems an image of a tree in flower.  But the throne was empty.  At the foot of the dais, upon the lowest step which was broad and deep, there was a stone chair, black and unadorned, and on it sat an old man gazing at his lap.”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith)image17throne.jpg

At the same time, Denethor, and all of the previous Stewards, were kings in all but name, having ruled Gondor for twenty-five generations (see Appendix A, “The Stewards” for details).

So, in sum we have:

  1. 2 possible oligarchies (the Shire, Bree)
  2. 4 kingdoms (or at least sort of, in the case of the Elves—Rivendell, Lorien, plus Rohan and Gondor)
  3. 2 dictatorships (eastern Rohan, extending from Isengard, Mordor)

And, just when we were summarizing, the thought came to us:  what about the dwarves?  We can imagine that, considering Thorin’s family, there have been the equivalent of kings among the dwarves, but that’s a posting for another day!

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Class, Order, Family… (Part 1)

17 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Language

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Tags

Baggins, Chief Joseph, class, Cockney, Common Speech, Gamgee, George Bernard Shaw, Hobbits, language, Lerner and Loewe, Liza Doolittle, Merry and Pippin, My Fair Lady, Nez Perce, polysyndeton, Pygmalion, Rustics, Saruman, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Uruk-hai, verbal class distinction, vocabulary

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

In Lerner and Loewe’s musical My Fair Lady (1956),

image1alady

based upon George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion (1913), one major character is Professor Henry Higgins, who studies English dialects.  He is given to musical rants and, in his first, he laments “Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?” with the couplet:

“An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him,

The moment he talks he makes some other

Englishman despise him.”

Somewhere—we’ve temporarily lost the quotation—Tolkien, in signing over his rights to The Lord of the Rings to someone, stipulated that Merry and Pippin weren’t to be “rustics”.

This word “rustic” entered English in the mid-15th century, being derived from the Latin rus, ruris, n., “country/farm” and its adjective, rusticus/a/um, “rural/of the countryside”, the adjective then meaning “a country person”—like these Romans

image1romanfarmers

or these, in the medieval world

image2peasant.jpg

or these, from JRRT’s childhood.

image3farmfolk

To JRRT, the linguist, what made the rustic was clearly not so much the look or even the activities which country people did so much as how they spoke. In Chapter One of the first book of The Lord of the Rings, we overhear a group of older hobbits discussing Bilbo and Frodo and Daddy Twofoot says:

“And no wonder they’re queer…if they live on the wrong side of the Brandywine River, and right agin the Old Forest.  That’s a dark bad place, if half the tales be true.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”)

Here, we see “agin” for “again”, “dark bad place”, which is more a rhythmic pattern of dialect than the words themselves (although we wonder about the placement of those adjectives together), and the use of the old subjunctive “if half the tales be true”.  And, in the next paragraph, Gaffer Gamgee then uses a dialect form of “drowned”—“drownded”.  The content of this dialogue is gossip, but the sound of it is meant to provide a quick aural sketch of rural people with perhaps the faint suggestion that such gossip is based upon few facts and much “folk wisdom”, such as the idea that, because one lives on the far side of a river, one is “queer”, leading to the conclusion that rustics are, at best, ill-informed, and, at worst, ignorant and potentially bigoted.

And so, we would presume that what JRRT wanted was that Frodo’s cousins should sound like Frodo, who speaks, in Middle-earth, what Tolkien calls “the Westron or ‘Common Speech’ of the West-lands of Middle-earth” and what is in Modern-earth called “Received Standard English”.  Here’s a brief example of that from that same chapter, when Gandalf and Frodo are discussing Bilbo and the Ring:

“If you mean , inventing all that about a ‘present’, well, I thought the true story much more likely and I couldn’t see the point of altering it at all.  It was very unlike Bilbo to do so, anyway; and I thought it rather odd.”

Vocabulary  choice plays a strong part here, with a Latinate element—“altering”—and the use of “odd”, where the Gaffer had earlier used “queer”, plus what we might think of as “higher class” words, like “likely” and “unlike” and “rather” as adjectives.

The Bagginses and their relatives, after all, are looked upon as well-to-do–“a decent respectable hobbit” the Gaffer says of Frodo’ father, Drogo, and calls Bilbo, “a very nice well-spoken gentlehobbit”.  In Middle-earth, dialect—especially here meaning that spoken by what appear to be meant to be “rustics”—can make the difference between gentlehobbits and people like the Gaffer.   As the Henry Higgins mentioned above says to Colonel Pickering, whom he regards as a social equal, of Liza Doolittle, a Cockney (inner London, lower-class girl):

“If you spoke as she does, sir,

Instead of the way you do,

Why, you might be selling flowers, too.”

image4pat

It’s not just among hobbits that we see what Henry Higgins calls a “verbal class distinction”, however.  Here’s Saruman

image5aasaruman

speaking to Gandalf:

“I did not expect you to show wisdom, even in your own behalf; but I gave you the chance of aiding me willingly, and so saving yourself much trouble and pain.  The third choice is to remain here until the end.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

We notice here the long compound sentence (long sentence made up of clauses which depend upon each other), from “I” to “pain”.  This is clearly the equivalent of “gentlehobbit” talk.

And here is one of Saruman’s orcs:

“…We are the fighting Uruk-hai!  We slew the great warrior.  We took the prisoners.  We are the servants of Saruman the Wise, the White Hand, the Hand that gives us man’s-flesh to eat  We came out of Isengard, and led you here, and we shall lead you back by the way we choose.  I am Ugluk.  I have spoken.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”)

image5aorcs

Here, we have a series of simple, declarative sentences (sentences with only one subject and verb)—three in a row– followed by a longer sentence which is built upon a simple sentence, “We are the servants of Saruman the Wise…”, followed by an example of what is called “polysyndeton”—that is, several shorter sentences joined together by a conjunction (a word like “and” or “or”).  All of this is followed by two more simple declarative sentences.

This is clearly not “rustic” speech—just compare it with that of Daddy Twofoot, above.  Instead, it reminds  us of translations of Native American speeches, like this, from the brave and wise Chief Joseph (1840-1904—Native American name in translation, “Thunder Traveling to Higher Areas”),

image5chiefjoseph

of the Nez Perce:

“Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our Chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Ta Hool Hool Shute is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are – perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my Chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”

How might we characterize this?  It’s clearly very different from the speech of the orc’s master, who tends to speak in longer, more complex sentences, indicating more sophistication in the use of language (we remember the danger of listening too long to him, as demonstrated in The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 10, “The Voice of Saruman”).   We would say that, where the “rustic” dialect—pronunciation (“agin”), odd forms (“drownded”), old verb forms (“be true”)–differentiates the Gaffer and Daddy Twofoot from Frodo (and Merry and Pippin), for the orcs—or Ugluk, at least– it is sentence structure which differentiates the Isengard equivalent of “gentlehobbit” speech from that of the “rustic” orcs.

It isn’t only sentence structure which we would suggest makes orcs sound different, however, and we’ll talk more about this—and about another “rustic”—a real one—in Part 2 of this posting, next week.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

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