The Designs

CHAPTER 3

Each these works has a similar pattern and development.  In the case of The Lord of The Rings this may have been imposed fortuitously, since it was not originally intended as a trilogy.  However, it is generally thought of as a trilogy now, and the trilogy structure in fact fits both the tales well.  In each case the first part sets the scene and outlines the magnitude of its hero's quest and perils.  The initial summons to adventure (in The Lord of The Rings beginning with The Hobbit) in each case resembles those in such classic tales as Treasure Island or The Lost World.

Soon, however, it becomes apparent that the summons is not to mere excitement or personal enrichment, but to a quest infused with elements of nobility and sacrifice.  At first much is small-scale, provincial and domestic.  Early in the piece the guide who had initiated the hero into the quest is lost.  A series of adventures end with a breathing-space.  As the first section concludes, immediate perils have been survived, and the hero is beginning to appreciate that he has taken on more than he bargained for.  He has grown in experience and wisdom, but the great Enemy's strength is basically intact and aroused.

The second part of each tale is more complex.  New characters appear, new complexities are revealed.  The heroes face new perils and are wounded.  At the end of each second part things are looking black, with important "good" characters in the hands of merciless enemies.  The good side is battered and in danger of losing all.  So far the development may be seen as reflecting, and symbolising, the development of an individual life.

The third part is "higher".  In "Return of the Jedi", Luke is not involved in a major conventional battle (nor is Frodo in "The Return of the King").  But there is a strangely enhanced sense of magic and mystery.  Partly this is due to a skilful use of names, like "the Forest Moon of Endor".  "Endor" is an echo of magic, and the Emperor's name for it, "The Sanctuary Moon", sounds hardly less "perilous".  Endor's still forests are also something like The Perilous Realm.  We are getting somewhere new, beyond mere adventure.  We are coming back to a human scale, but a significantly changed human scale.  The name of the shuttle "Tydirium" seems to suggest "tide" -- an echo of the feeling that a tide is now flowing.  The shuttle's cockpit aspect resembles the head of an heraldic horse, another hint that we are getting beyond the technological:  the matter is moving into the hands of higher powers.  An echo of the word "delirium" here also suggests that things are moving out of ordinary control and reality.

In The Lord of The Rings a similar process is at work, though it is much more explicit and needs less indication on these pages:  it is the process which has been at work throughout, by which language and atmosphere become "higher". ⁽¹⁶⁾  On the military level tactics and skirmishes are replaced by grand strategy and battles royal.

While the wars between the armies of Good and Evil go on, each hero is exposed to the confrontation with the black, Deathlike Enemy.  In each case the hero is subject to more than a flesh-and-blood individual (the spirit in the body) can bear.  In theological terms this may be seen as symbolising the fact that man alone cannot conquer Death.  To give oneself over, even with the best of motives, to the Ring, or the Dark Side, to the dream of Man becoming God, is to do Death's work for it.

In each case the hero, and the quest, are saved by an intervention at the last moment.  The Enemy, the Death-figure, is destroyed.  In the temporal or political sphere there is rejoicing.  The champions of good have grown during the struggle into nobility, but there are war-ravaged worlds to be rebuilt.

In both The Lord of The Rings and Star Wars technology is neither intrinsically good nor evil.  Indeed, it is not very important.  In the milieu of the Star Wars galaxy faster-than-light spaceships and laser-firing guns are taken for granted.  There is no science or pseudo-science to explain hyper-drive motivators.  The spaceships are there for the story, and to create "magical" effects.  The Imperial cruisers, ATAT Walkers and so forth bespeak power and menace, as the ramshackle rebel fleet creates an effect of desperate improvisation.  Other films with comparable visual effects have not had anything like as much success, partly because the effects have not been used coherently or with a sense of wholeness and rightness, and, often enough, because other film-makers have found themselves entrapped in cliches.  This is a matter of creative artistry.  Star Wars can get away with the spoof aliens in the Mos Eisley canteen and at the court of Jabba the Hutt because the scenes do not violate the spirit of the story.  Indeed they add to it, by reminding the viewer that the galaxy may contain all kinds of things and is a great place for adventures.  It is a logical development of the literary convention of setting adventures in remote and undiscovered countries, full of marvels.  Both tales have about them something of the atmosphere of the Arthurian "Matter of Britain" and of German märchen, a sense of islands of civilisation surrounded by The Wild -- which is also a metaphor of the human condition.

Though hostile critiques of both works have tended to be at bottom ideological, the common first hostile criticisms have been that they are artistically unoriginal.  As far as both are the product of long traditions, this criticism is hardly valid, unless it is attacking them for being what they are.  Their traditionalism is part of their structure, and to denigrate them as works of art for being what they are and not something else is illegitimate as an aesthetic judgement.  As works of art they may be judged successes or failures insofar as they succeed in being what their makers set out to make them.

In any event, within their traditions they are actually very innovative.  Tolkien could hardly, almost single-handed, have revived the entire genre of heroic fantasy by being anything else.  There had been nothing like The Lord of The Rings in modern times.  It broke practically every rule of commercial fiction publishing, and must have seemed to those who saw it first to be totally out of touch with the spirit of the times (a Zeitgeist perhaps more obviously reflected in something like 1984).

Similarly, to call Star Wars derivative is to miss the point:  there had been some good, even classic, science-fiction films before, such as Destination Moon, It Came From Outer Space, The War of The Worlds and This Island Earth.  But there had been nothing to touch it in its entirety.  Unlike 2001:  A Space Odyssey, its plot was well-made, consistent and unpretentious.  Star Wars departed from the more stifling Hollywood science-fiction conventions, but in a creative rather than a merely innovative way.  Princess Leia does not look like a standard Hollywood princess, for example, nor Obi-Wan like a standard Hollywood father-figure.

Forced to watch the destruction of Alderaan from the Death Star, Princess Leia, after having done her best to save it, does not resort to futile screaming like the standard Hollywood woman.  The ATAT and Scout Walkers -- war machines like prehistoric monsters and giant chickens -- were quite original.  Conventions of plot structure are successfully broken, because they are broken for good reasons.

In "The Empire Strikes Back" the normally climactic battle is at the beginning, and the rest of the film depends upon interaction between individual characters.  Another break with Hollywood and other film-making conventions, which in this context is most significant, is the growing "knightliness" of Luke.  The more ossified film convention (deriving perhaps ultimately from Rousseauian myths of the Noble Savage) would have cultured, well-mannered and well-spoken upper-class villains and loutish heroes (whose presumed hearts of gold become less apparent with the passage of time).

Another way the story breaks contemporary conventions is thai the characters are not motivated by egotism.  They are not "bound for glory" as if "glory" were the purpose of it all.  The motives ol the good people are (or, significantly, become) not to be "rich and famous" or to "win". ⁽¹⁷⁾  Fame, glory and honours are shown to be rewards (by-products, as it were) of great achievements, not ends in themselves.

This is an old-fashioned concept, hearkening back to the days when the term "hero" was reserved for someone dead.  The notion of heroism in The Lord of The Rings and Star Wars returns to something like duty in the Nelsonian sense.  It thus avoids two common contemporary perversions of heroism:  the "we-consciousness" of collectivism, expressed in things like Nuremburg rallies and May Day parades in Red Square, and the Nietszchean superman concepts expressed ultimately in the promotion and adoration of celebrities who have no particular qualities except being well-known.

There is nothing, at least on the "good side", of the violent and apocalyptic assertion of the self that has been a feature of much fashionable contemporary writing (represented in America by, for example, the works of Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, John Barth, William Burroughs, Ralph Ellison, James Purdy, Allen Ginsburg, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, John Rechy, Hubert Selby and Kurt Vonnegut).

Heroism can, in these tales, be achieved by anyone.  Once achieved, however, it is celebrated with ritual, ceremony and public honour. ⁽¹⁸⁾

Roger Scruton has written that "traditions arise and command respect wherever the individual seeks to relate himself to something transcendent". ⁽¹⁹⁾  No conventional Hollywood writer or director would have dared to have Luke Skywalker defy the Emperor's demands with the words "I am a Jedi, like my father before me", words that go straight to the values of honour and tradition.  Again, a convention-bound director would have made the Emperor a standard aristocratic villain, tall, well-spoken, cultivated, impeccably dressed, not a small, deformed, hissing black thing. ⁽²⁰⁾  In making Luke Skywalker "knightly" (quite literally a member of a knightly order), George Lucas turned against the whole cult of the anti-hero.  In The Lord of The Rings, of course, the knightliness of the heroes is explicit.

Tolkien wrote to W.H. Auden of the traditional backdrop of the story, explaining that it came in part from:

[T]he deep response to legends (for lack of a better word) that have what I call a North-Western temper and atmosphere ... [I]f you want to write a tale of this sort you must consult your roots, and a man of the North-West of the Old World will set his heart and the action of his tale in an imaginary world of that air, and that situation:  with the Shoreless Sea of his innumerable ancestors to the West, and the endless lands (out of which enemies mostly come) to the East. ... ⁽²¹⁾

In the tale that builds on tradition much can be taken for granted.  We do not need to know details of how The Shire's economy is controlled, as in The Wind in the Willows we do not question that Mr Toad can drive motor-cars (however badly), ride a horse, impersonate a washer-woman, comb dried leaves out of his hair, and still remain a toad.  This does not, of course, mean that detail is unimportant.  Tolkien pointed out that:  "Tyrants even in such tales must have an economic background for their soldiers and metal-workers".  Our knowledge of the Shires and its atmosphere would be diminished if we did not know that Hobbit wills require seven signatures in red ink.  Tatooine would not be Tatooine without two suns in its eerie purplish sunset.  In both The Lord of The Rings and Star Wars there are few logical inconsistencies.

The way "technology" works is taken for granted.  The palantir, the fire-weapons of Sauron and the wizards and the Ring itself are important for what they are, not how they work.  In The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings characters are sometimes carried by eagles when special transportation over very long distances is required.  The eagles' role is similar to science-fiction's matter-transmitters and hyper-drives.  Both are convenient plot-mechanisms but both also contribute to an atmosphere and sense of wonder.

Machines are accepted as necessary but their potential is distrusted.  Tolkien wrote to his son in 1945, before the first use of atom bombs, that:

[T]he first War of Machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter -- leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many injured and maimed and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant:  the machines. ⁽²²⁾

On a superficial viewing Star Wars seems completely caught up in the excitement of machines and technology, but in both Star Wars and The Lord of The Rings the point is explicitly made that technology is not the last word, and it can be used for good or ill.  In "Return of the Jedi", Obi-Wan, arguing against Luke's hopes of saving Darth Vader, states sorrowfully that:  "He's mostly machine now".  Vader's part-machine body symbolises the loss of his humanity, as his action in cutting off Luke's hand and forcing him to use a mechanical substitute is at least a potential step in corrupting Luke.  In neither tale does much action take place in cities.

The line between magic and science in these tales is unclear.  Tolkien wrote that in Middle-Earth both sides live by mainly ordinary means, but evil magic and evil science have the same purpose, that is, power:

The basic motive for magia -- quite apart from any philosophic considerations of how it would work -- is immediacy:  speed, reduction of labour and reduction ... of the gap between the idea or desire and the result or effect.  But the magia may not be easy to come by, or at any rate if you have command of abundant slave-labour or machinery ... it may be as quick or quick enough to push mountains over, wreck forests, or build pyramids by such means.  Of course another factor then comes in:  the tyrants lose sight of objects, become cruel, and like smashing, hurting and defiling as such.  It would no doubt be possible to defend poor Lotho's introduction of more efficient mills, but not Sharkey's and Sandyman's use of them. ⁽²³⁾

Tolkien's work is saturated with the atmosphere and environment of England, a relatively small country and the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.  It is impossible to see England without being constantly struck by the contrast between its pre-Industrial rural and natural beauty and the spread of post-Industrial ugliness, not merely the derelict mills and mine-dumps upon which time is beginning to work a strange enchantment, but also the deliberate hideousness of things like 1960s tower blocks, typical artifacts of social-engineering tyranny, intended to intimidate and systematise the human material processed through them.

While Tolkien hated the pollution and destruction of nature, he did not have that extreme, frenzied hatred of science and reason that characterised, for example, William Blake and D.H. Lawrence.  (Blake, though hating the Enlightenment -- his famous phrase "dark Satanic mills" refers not to factories but to universities -- welcomed its child, the French Revolution, which he took as a joyous explosion of natural, anti-rational instincts).  Both Tolkien and Lucas seem to recognise the benefits of industrialisation and machines, the products of science, but to be acutely aware of their potential to be put to evil ends.

Part of Tolkien's "Englishness" is bound up with a recognition of the fact that the Industrial Revolution did radically improve life, particularly for the poorer classes, though of course it is not the purpose of the tale to spell such things out:  he was not writing an economic history text.  In The Lord of The Rings the people of the City of Gondor have a good and civilised life.  Gondor is not rustic, and its economy has surely developed to the point where people do not have to labour in fields in all weathers and sleep in hovels with animals as they did in pre-industrial England.

Tolkien of course rejected any sort of "scientism" (a belief that science, alone, can ultimately resolve everything).  In The Silmarilion, the lure of the Silmarils, jewels created by Elvish "science" for the best of motives, works to vast destruction.  In The Lord of The Rings the situation is precisely similar:  the Ring is an artifact of perverted science.  Gandalf, however, has aspects of a good scientist.  Tolkien wrote:

Sauron found [the elves'] weak point in suggesting that, helping one another, they could make Western Middle-Earth as beautiful as Valinor.  It was really a veiled attack on the gods, an incitement to try to make a separate independent paradise ... the elves came their nearest to falling to "magic" and machinery.  With the aid of Sauron's lore they made rings of Power ("power" is an ominous and sinister word in all these tales, except when applied to the gods). ⁽²⁴⁾

In Star Wars the first Death Star, referred to proudly by its commander as "the ultimate power in the Galaxy" is destroyed by Luke's use of The Force.  Darth Vader's warning:  "don't be too proud of this technological terror" proves justified.  Grand Moff Turk in perishes through hubris, refusing to evacuate the Death Star although warned, and Vader himself, partly dependent on technology, barely escapes.

Machines and magic offer the deadly-dangerous "short-cut", the temptation to God-like power.  In The Lord of The Rings the One King is the expression in Evil of supernatural power.  Its good side is expressed in the Three Rings of the Elves, but these are only for knowledge, healing and defence.

In Star Wars the Force is the expression of supernatural power, its Dark Side being, as Yoda says, "quicker, easier, more seductive".  A Jedi, Yoda says, uses the Force for knowledge and defence, not for attack.  The Emperor and Darth Vader, when attempting to corrupt Luke Skywalker, dwell on the point that aggression and power are part of the Dark Side.  Thus in both tales the supernatural seems at first morally dualistic though events show that in fact it is not.  Meanwhile, of course, evil not only has apparently dominating supernatural powers but also overwhelming "conventional" forces.

Both stories have a human scale, but with fixed values of good and evil their ultimate references must be beyond the human.  They are products of the notion that all individual lives are given meaning by a sense of destiny, not of the egotistical kind commonly romanticised in contemporary fiction but by a chance to be on the right side.

At the same time, the natural world is emphasised by the wild and strange landscapes in which the stories take place.  In a sense the human consciousness is taken out of itself by this:  it is an answer to the depressing claim that "inner space" is the true area of the science-fiction or fantasy writer.

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ENDNOTES

16.  Compare these two descriptions of conflict from the first and the fifth books of The Lord of The Rings.  Kitchen-sink is replaced by Epic:

1. Frodo had a very trying time that afternoon.  A false rumour that the whole household was being distributed free spread like wildfire, and before long the whole place was packed with people who had no business there but who could not be kept out.  Labels got torn off and mixed, and quarrels broke out.  Some people tried to do swaps and deals in the hall;  and others tried to make off with minor items not addressed to them, or with anything that seemed unwanted and unwatched.  The road to the gate was blocked with barrows and handcarts.

   In the middle of the commotion the Sackville-Bagginses arrived.  Frodo had retired for a while and left his friend Merry Brandybuck to keep an eye on things.  When Otho loudly demanded to see Frodo, Merry bowed politely.

   "He is indisposed" he said, "he is resting."

   "Hiding, you mean" said Lobelia.  "Anyway, we want to see him and we mean to see him.  Just go and tell him so!"

2. Stern now was Eomer's mood, and his mind was clear again.  He let blow the horns to rally all men to his banner that could come thither;  for he thought to make a great shield-wall at the last, and stand, and fight there on foot till all fell, and do deeds of song on the fields of Pelennor, though no man should be left in the West to remember the last King of the Mark.  So he rode to a green hillock and there set his banner, and the White Horse ran rippling in the wind.

   Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
   I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
   To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
   Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!

   These staves he spoke, yet he laughed as he said them.  For once more lust of battle was on him;  and he was unscathed, and he was young, and he was king:  the lord of a fell people.  And lo!  Even as he laughed at despair he looked out again at the black ships, and lifted up his sword to defy them.

   And then wonder took him, and a great joy, and he cast his sword up in the sunlight and sang as he caught it, and all eyes followed his gaze ...

17.  Much in this tradition, the later George Lucas fantasy film Willow has a very hobbitish hero, a halfling type whose domestic rather than Ubermensch or romantic-apocalyptic aspirations are emphasised by the fact that he is a contented husband and father, anxious to complete his task (delivering a human baby he has found into safe hands) and get back to his family.

18.  It would be interesting to know if critics who saw Fascist overtones in the final scene of "A New Hope", where Princess Leia presents medals to Luke Skywalker and Han Solo before a parade of troops in honour of their destruction of the Death Star were similarly disturbed by the manipulation of crowd psychology shown not in fiction but in real life by, say, contemporary rock singers.

19.  Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism (Penguin, 1980), page 40.

20.  A hint that this convention is wearing out in film is the 1970s vampire comedy Love at First Bite, in which the aristocratic vampire Count Dracula is presented as the hero.  Dracula, expelled from his Transylvanian castle by functionaries of the new People's Republic, at one point states "this time, we are the good guys", and makes the very pertinent and chilling point to the vengeful Transylvanian villagers that without him their life will be about as exciting as "Bucharest -- on a Monday night".

21.  Letters, pages 212-213.

22.  Ibid., page 111.

23.  Ibid., page 200.

24.  Ibid., page 152.