Was he a overrated hack or was he legit a litterary genius?

Was he a overrated hack or was he legit a litterary genius?

neither, wrote a biblical allegory that wasn't suitable for children or adults, creating manbaby literature in the process, which doesn't make him a hack per se

>muh nature

Nobody on this board is qualified to say shit about him.

He was a linguistic genius.

>that part where the ents kill the fleeing uruk from Helm's Deep
Fuck you Tolkien, that shit was so stupid

He was a brilliant philologist, an enthusiastic folklorist, and a decent world-builder. But his books aren't written well, and his characters are often bland and flat.

Read it like mythology, and it's amazing.

That was just his 'fuck you' to Shakespeare, and his cop-out with Macbeth.

tolkien was racist

when his ents caught orcs they killed them, when they caught humans who served saruman they let them go after interrogation. it's pretty much how americans treated chinese comparing to the whites back in 19th century, for something which would make a chinese be hanged a white guy could go away almost unscathed

>wrote a biblical allegory
Disregarded.

>Tolkien
>writing anything allegorical

Hello there Tumblr

>implying it's not satan vs jesus
ya ok I know he's a very bad writer but that's ultimately what it's about

Sauron is the servant of the true Dark Lord, so not anything like 'Satan' (a title bestowed on any angel being a dick). Gandalf is an angel in mortal form, so not anything like God creating an avatar for himself.

And the books aren't about them really, it's about the wheels of fate being turned by the least important people.

I don't see how sauron and gandalf being proxies makes a difference
you have to keep in mind that tolkien was a catholic and lived in times with politics that could be rendered as good vs evil
i.e. "the wheels of fate being turned by the least important people" is common catholics saving souls through good works in the face of industrial annihilation a la verdun

He did hate allegory but I think he couldn't escape it.

Literary genius, disliked by many because they fail to understand that he did not set out to write a 20th century novel; he was literally creating a legendary past for the British Isles, written as an actual legend (Silmarillion), children's fairy tale (Hobbit) and medieval tale (Lord of the Rings).

People say his characterisation is flat but Gollum is arguably the most memorable character of 20th century fiction.

Patrician opinion:

>Tolkien was a literary and linguistic genius (see his work on all things Anglo-Saxon, for example), deny that and you're a retard; but he was a fairly average writer on the whole

It's so obvious you haven't read the books

Orcs are literally not people, they're the mangled remains of elves after they were captured, twisted and possibly forced into cannibalism by the god of evil. They're incapable of emotions besides anger, spite and hatred, much like Morgoth himself. They're also shorter, weaker and less skilled in any craft not related to killing than any of the "real" races given souls by Eru Ilúvatar

Orcs are noted to be easy to track because they always go out of their way to trample and kill any living things they find. Ents hate orcs because they set things on fire and cut down trees for no reason. When there's not a greater power like Sauron's or originally Morgoth's subduing their will they devolve into mindless animals. That's why their army at Mordor immediately scatters when the ring is destroyed, and most of them end killing themselves in their panic

>Mordor was scattering like dust in the wind. As when death smites the swollen brooding thing that inhabits their crawling hill and holds them all in sway, ants will wander witless and purposeless and then feebly die, so the creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved, ran hither and thither mindless; and some slew themselves, or cast themselves in pits, or fled wailing back to hide in holes and dark lightless places far from hope.

You are probably angry about this because you have the picture of Orcs being misunderstood green barbarians, which was not the case in Tolkien's work. That comes from World of Warcraft

>Orcs are literally not people, they're the mangled remains of elves after they were captured, twisted and possibly forced into cannibalism by the god of evil.

so they are rape victims

>They're incapable of emotions besides anger, spite and hatred

it's almost what was told about blacks and indians back then and what's told by some about muslims nowadays

>They're also shorter, weaker and less skilled in any craft not related to killing than any of the "real" races given souls by Eru Ilúvatar

that's clearly the reason to genocide them

>so they are rape victims
The problem is that they can't helped. There's some people who think that a redeemed orc would turn back into an elf but there's no example of that actually happening. It's to the point that things with some sort of divine power physically hurt them to hold or see, like Gollum after having been corrupted by the ring for several centuries. It's also implied that Saruman's Uruk-hai are orc-human hybrids, and given that they're described as goblins or apes at varying times that probably wasn't done willingly

>it's almost what was told about blacks and indians back then and what's told by some about muslims nowadays
There's actual black people in Middle-Earth and while they're villains it's mentioned that, like the Easterlings, it's because Sauron already subjugated their lands and fed them lies about Gondor, with some magic thrown in the mix. They think they're essentially fighting monsters. Aragorn makes peace with them shortly after. The only race of Men that is depicted as being superior in some way to the others are the Dunédain, who are supposed to evoke images of the Atlanteans, not any real race.

>that's clearly the reason to genocide them
Nobody goes tracking down orc settlements to kill them, it's just that when orcs show up that tends to mean there's a new Dark Lord bossing them around and probably an army of them incoming

The only thing I can really say about him is that he was my dad, and I loved him.

>Morgoth got elves to serve him in the first age
>Sauron got dwarves to aid him in the third
>no one ever draws attention to this

Hilariously enough there are orcs that are "good", at least if that blurb about the elves being the only race not split into either host but united is true.

Oh, apparently the Haradrim are white on the movies. That's pretty dumb but not Tolkien's fault, blame Jackson.

I think Tolkien actually stopped writing about Middle-Earth for a while because the thing about orcs being 100% evil was inconsistent with both some parts of the legendarium and his catholic upbringing

Aww

Nobody on this board is qualified to say shit about anyone who's published

>The only race of Men that is depicted as being superior in some way to the others are the Dunédain

oh, racism among the races of man is a different thing. it's said many times through his works that the nations which were friends with elves were stronger, longer living, more pretty etc; accidentally all those races were white and often blond...

>Nobody goes tracking down orc settlements to kill them
dwarves did when they came to moria

sauron got elves to aid him too when he made the rings

Sauron did it through secrecy and they didn't know they were helping him.
The elves (and likely dwarves too) that the orcs dragged back to Angband and beheld the eyes of Morgoth knowingly became his spies and servants out of terror until his defeat.
Kind of like Maeglin now that I think of it. Him and the mole-folk of Gondolin.

>decent

The Dunédain aren't "better" just for being friends of Elves, they're "better" because their ancestors were the Men that took the most active role during the War of Wrath - as in, the conflict where the Devil-equivalent was finally kicked out of the world by an union of literally all the races in Middle-Earth, animals included. The conflict also completely wrecked the land they lived on, so as compensation they were rewarded with long lives, unusually strong souls and a island for them to live. This was all as long as they didn't try sailing to the Undying Lands, which they eventually did and resulted in Eru sinking Númenor.

It's true that men that hang out a lot with Elves tend to get healthier, stronger and such, but that's because living in Elven conditions strenghtens their spirits, not because Elves have some sort of magic aura. Men of the First Age are far more like Elves than later ones.

Oh, and even Elves are not perfect, it's just that by the Third Age they've grown far too old to give a damn about most everything, know that the world is no longer for them and that their power will keep waning until they go back to the Undying Lands, so they prefer to spend their days singing and other elf shit. Like, here's a scene where Legolas admits that Men will outlast all the other races

>‘That is a fair lord and a great captain of men,’ said Legolas.‘If Gondor has such men still in these days of fading, great must have been its glory in the days of its rising.’
>‘And doubtless the good stone-work is the older and was wrought in the first building,’ said Gimli. ‘It is ever so with the things that Men begin: there is a frost in Spring, or a blight in Summer, and they fail of their promise.’
>‘Yet seldom do they fail of their seed,’ said Legolas. ‘And that will lie in the dust and rot to spring up again in times and places unlooked-for. The deeds of Men will outlast us, Gimli.’
>‘And yet come to naught in the end but might-have-beens, I guess,’ said the Dwarf.
>‘To that the Elves know not the answer,’ said Legolas

A lot of the Silmarillion is "Elves Fucking Up: The Book", and in general Elves are spiritually inferior to Men simply because their fate is set on stone and their souls are eternally bound to the world

The Silmarillion is hilarious if read as a black comedy.
Even when they won they still lost.
Except for Turin. Nigga had two chances for elf-pussy and squandered them so he's just a lil shit

It's like you know absolutely nothing about Norse Mythology.

I know it's hard to imagine but there are many different mythologies besides the Desert Trilogy.

is that derrida?

Does anyone know the context for this .gif

>it's about the wheels of fate being turned by the least important people.

Like a peasant from Nazareth?

The OP picture is a colorized version of a picture of Tolkien

He was obviously a very intelligent man and I absolutely loved his books growing up. Unfortunately, his adult fans tend to be morons who're more interested trivialities and "world-building" than the actual literary quality of his books, probably because they treat fiction like a video game.

>Read it like what it's supposed to be, and it's amazing

That peasant from Nazareth was also literally god, so no, not even a tiny bit

When you say peasant, you're talking about the literal son of God, right?

He wasn't a hack but he's greatly overrated.

I don't think he ever completely stopped writing just because of that but it is true that he never really figured out whether orcs could be redeemed, and what that would look like.

You don't understand user. Peoples and cultures are all equally good, and saying otherwise is racist, which is the worst crime in the history of the world. Also, claiming that the ways and customs of your ancestors were good and are worth preserving is the same thing as gassing six million Jews, but only if you're white.

Nationalism's logical end is Fascism, fuck off.

Under enemy lines.

Exploding evil from within.

>people that think middle-earth is medieval or takes place in another world

>back then
Implying it's not still true

>litterary genius