XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: no.spam@no.spam   
      
   Further to my last, I'm finding interesting parallels with   
   other Churchill speeches such as this one from May 19, 1940:   
      
   C: Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness   
   for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle   
   than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar.   
   [1 Maccabees 3:58–59]   
      
   G: For, my lords, it may well prove that we ourselves shall   
   perish utterly in a black battle far from the living lands;   
   so that even if Barad-dur be thrown down, we shall not live   
   to see a new age. But this, I deem, is our duty. And better so   
   than to perish nonetheless – as we surely shall, if we sit here –   
   and know as we die that no new age shall be.'   
      
   Surely Tolkien was affected by these stirring speeches of 1940   
   when Britain was in its greatest danger. By his own account,   
   the RotK was written subsequently; that is, late in (or after)   
   the war:   
      
   : It was almost a year later when I went on and so came to Lothlorien   
   : and the Great River late in 1941. In the next year I wrote the first :   
   drafts of the matter that now stands as Book Three, and   
   : the beginnings of chapters I and III of Book Five; and there   
   : as the beacons flared in Anórien and Théoden came to Harrowdale   
   : I stopped.   
   :   
   : Foresight had failed and there was no time for thought.   
   : It was during 1944 that, leaving the loose ends and perplexities   
   : of a war which it was my task to conduct, or at least to report,   
   : I forced myself to tackle the journey of Frodo to Mordor.   
   : These chapters, eventually to become Book Four, were   
   : written and sent out as a serial to my son, Christopher,   
   : then in South Africa with the RAF. Nonetheless it took another   
   : five years before the tale was brought to its present end   
      
   Even though the author makes a point of denying a resemblance   
   between the War of the Ring and WW2...   
      
   : The crucial chapter, "The Shadow of the Past', is one of   
   : the oldest parts of the tale. It was written long before   
   : the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable   
   : disaster, and from that point the story would have developed   
   : along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been   
   : averted. Its sources are things long before in mind, or in some   
   : cases already written, and little or nothing in it was modified   
   : by the war that began in 1939 or its sequels.   
   :   
   :   
   : The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process   
   : or its conclusion.   
      
   ...I believe it _had_ to have influenced his writing somehow.   
   Both LotR and WW2 are widely considered (especially by the winners)   
   to be moral crusades; that is, struggles between Good (us) and Evil   
   (them).   
      
   And JRRT was right there on the ground in the same deadly peril   
   as the rest of the British. He had faced the Germans already,   
   on the Somme, and now their planes were overhead once again.   
   (If they had invaded I hate to think what they would have done   
   to him if captured.)   
      
   ps. If there are other comparisons between LotR and Churchill's   
   wartime speeches I couldn't find any. However I suppose there's   
   plenty of commentary on WW2 in relation to Tolkien. If anyone   
   knows any good site(s) on this topic I would be interested.   
      
   TIA, SQ   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)