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.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Tolkien was part of that? Must have been hell there.
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
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.
Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
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.
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
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.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
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.
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
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.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
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.
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
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.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
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).
Another rather amusing fact is that Orcs are also known as Goblins, and Uruk-hai as Hobgoblins.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
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. Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
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 ]
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
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.
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
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?
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
I'll try to find the link to the exact page with the most detailed information. His time in the British army was short because of a disease he caught called Trench Fever. I'll check the exact dates. His part in the battle was a small unit engagement. It's doubtfull that he saw the flame thrower in action the time frame is off there.He may have heard about its use from others after he came home. http://www.jrrtolkien.org.uk/homepage.htm I originaly found the information following links to this site so its here somewhere.P.S.He was in the Lancashire Fusilers I believe he would have been a junior officer, And a Signals Officer. He was commisioned in 1915 and sent to france in 1916 That came from a page with less detail than the one I studied earlier. Lighting strike cost me all my links a while back. I remember his outfit were forced to retreat by a more experianced german unit.
[ September 10, 2003, 12:30 PM: Message edited by: Mountain Man ]
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
Whips of fire are mentioned throughout the Bible, the Koran, even in Buddhism. It is a very old symbol of extreme torture, one of the worst they could think of back then.
If Tolkien had such a dislike against flamethrowers in specific that he felt he had to include the symbolism in his books, I imagine he would make the fire-whips more widely used and put it in the hands of orcs and such in LOTR to simulate its inhumane misuse.
And since he didn't use hands-on symbolism like that in the first place...
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
Very good point. That weapon then came from his studies of ancient religions. After having seen the flame thrower in action it seemed possible. He said little about his experiances. Few gentlemen want to talk about such things. He lost two of his last three old friends in that part of the war. The others had already been killed before he went to war. He did speak of it in interviews but mostly he downplayed his own part in the war. He did talk about men he served with and some are believed to be in his books as character studies. In other words he thought of them and how they would react while creating his characters. I've also found references to ULHAN as jager corp in austrian sevice. The german ULHAN fought most often as mounted infantry. They got there fast on horse back then out of necessity fought on foot. They were tough dangerous professional killers born for war. Some germans wore metal breast plates and steel helmets with hornlike projections to hold shaped steel bullet resistant plates. I'm not sure if they came into use at that time but I've seen pictures of the armor captured in later battles. They were mostly used by machinegunners,the most hated enemy of all.
[ September 10, 2003, 06:15 PM: Message edited by: Mountain Man ]
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
I'll add this part here to keep it separate. The whole battle is said to be part of much greater action dealing with the defence of the ancient pre Roman Fortress City of VERDUN. The British were there to take the heat off the French who were besieged and defending their stronghold against a mighty foe. The elements there remind me of helms deep. The courage of the defenders was a major story in the newspapers of the time. They spoke of 'the miracle of Verdun'. The last road left open, the BAR LE DUC became known as LA VOIE SACREE (the sacred way).
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
http://www.jrrtolkien.org.uk/tolkien_as_student.htm#war this is the page that discribes Tolkiens baptisim of fire. His men were traped in the wire and cut down by machinegun fire. They never had much of a chance and Tolkien himself was lucky to survive. The letter from one of his friends that he recieved after the fellow had been killed in another action is very touching. Some pages say he had been sent home because of shell shock but this is not so. The disease and its symtoms are discribed. The hallucinations and other symtoms may have brought on a sort of nervous breakdown. The disease its self is very interesting and may have been a result of all the unburied dead.
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
http://www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/flamethrowers.htm Well since I seem to have this thread to myself, I'll sum up what I've found out about Tolkiens experiances in the Somme, and how it may have affected his work. The Flamethrower was used in that battle, not as a man portable weapon, but as a huge two ton emplacement with a range of ninety yards(Balrogs?). Tolkien compared Sam to the enlisted men who he felt were better men than he in many ways. Battle fatigue of the type Tolkien suffered from, made much worse by the trench fever, affects the Amygdalae a almond shaped piece of nerve tissue conecting the forebrain to the primitive part of the brain commonly called the reptile brain. This has been studied by those who have researched delayed stress disorders. My theory is that by suppressing the memories of that battle, they ended up becoming part of his stories without his concious knowledge of the fact. Rod Serling and many other Sci Fi and Fantasy authours who fought in great battles show the same elements in their works. Thats all for now any questions?
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