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Tolkiens experiances in WW1 as an officer.How much does it show in LOTR. There are a lot of details of that part of the war that may have affected the way he wrote.Any one else here notice this? Theres a lot of information available on this battle on the BBC history site. Very interesting interactive stuff. If there are any Tolkien fans that are interested I can point the way to some good information. I liked the old dude he had a lot of class.Ps I guess this is the right place since no ones looking for any controversy here. just to share information.
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Terrible things happened there. He probably had nightmares for the rest of his life because of the things he saw. I think it shows in his work. Also the events leading up to the battle remind me of Helms Deep. Being trained to kill with the bayonet gave him a lot of insight about how ancient warriors felt. They call it the spirit of the bayonet.
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I believe it also shows in his hated of technology, his diplaying of Sauruman(sp) as technology over nature. He saw the technology as destroying mankind. Have nothing to back this up other than what I can remember from things I have read.
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Mountain Man
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posted
I believe there are mentions of metal war machines in the Simarillion. And a Balrog bleeding black blood into a river that reads like an oil slick. Tanks were used at the Somme. Seeing good brave men killed by machines may have had something to do with it.
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The only thing I know for a fact that he incorporated into LOTR based on his experiences in WWI was the cursed, trapped souls of the Dead Marshes in Mordor. To him, they are a reminder of the faceless, nameless corpses rotting in the mud at the trenchwars.
Frodo's experiences in the Dead Marshes was much more scary in the movie than in the book. In the book the fallen there were intangible.
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Mountain Man
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The Orcs being born from the slime remind me of corpses turned up by shellfire and men covered with mud crawling out of the trenches to fight.Theres a lot about the orc that ties in.
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The corny mudbath-scene is a liberty of the filmmakers, it has nothing to do with Tolkien or his war-experiences. In the book the Uruk-Hai are born by orc females, though watching that procedure would've burned out our retinas, no doubt.
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Mountain Man
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Actualy the genesis of the orcs used in the movie comes from the simarilliom.(or at least I think that was the book) Tolkien gave that and several other explanations for how they came about. It was a demonstration of how stories from different records don't always jibe. The other stories are from different time periods and don't always match up. Thats how it is with the study of history. No one book has all the answers.P.S. A lot of this is just from memory so any one whos read the other middle earth related books jump in and tell us what you can remember.
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IIRC, normal Orcs were originally Elves captured by Melkor. Uruk-Hai are simply a more powerful breed of Orcs, first originating in Mordor about 500 years before the main LotR story.
The movie confuses the Uruk-Hai with the half-orcs and 'goblin-men', which were created by Saruman (both presumably mixes of Orc and Men).
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Mountain Man confuses orcs with Uruk-Hai and creation with procreation.
The big orcs in the "Fellowship"-movie were just born, not created for the first time. My guess is that they were produced like in the book, by mating orcs and wild men, then the babies were put in those giant Petri dishes for accelerated maturation. We'll never know.
As Harry said, the Uruks weren't created until late in the Third Age by Sauron, so they weren't around in the Silmarillion.
But the mudbath-scene has no representation in any Tolkien literature, as far as I know.
It also has nothing to do with the World Wars, unless Mountain Man wants to involve Doctor Mengele and human experiments, in which case I'll be really mad.
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Mountain Man
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Excuse me for not being able to tell you exactly what I remember. There was some mention in one of the stories of beings born from the slime of the dungeons. Does any one recognise that? It was A Tolkien story Though they really all ran together for me after awhile so I don't remember which one.I've forgotten a lot since it's been many years since I read them.BTW I didn't realy mean orcs earlier I just forgot how to spell Uruk Hai
[ September 09, 2003, 01:23 PM: Message edited by: Mountain Man ]
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Mountain Man
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I just remembered that the beings that were born from the slime of the dungeon were the tortured remains of the evil ones prisioners. Thats as close as I can get on that for now since I don't have the books any more. That does fit in with the movie Uruk Hai but they may have been called something else. There were German elite units called the Ulhan, there could be a connection there to the war. Also the Balogs whip of fire could have been flamethrowers. They were used in WW1 but whether or not Tolkien ever saw one is hard to say.
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quote: There were German elite units called the Ulhan, there could be a connection there to the war
Well, they were cavalry so I doubt it and there isn't really that much resemblance between Uhlan and Uruk-hai, although I see where you're coming from.
quote: Also the Balogs whip of fire could have been flamethrowers. They were used in WW1 but whether or not Tolkien ever saw one is hard to say.
Interesting idea; I think that flamethrowers were only introduced in 1918 (though I'm not certain). It's possible they were used for the first time in the Kaiserschlacht; is there a biographical page about Tolkein with details of his service on?
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