[The Saucepan Man]

I’ve taken a bit of time to catch up, so I’m coming rather late to this thread. Here are some thoughts that occurred to me while reading the (Second) Foreword and the many wonderful posts that have already appeared in this, the inaugural “Reading Club” thread.

What is the purpose of a foreword? This, it seems to me, is to provide the author with an opportunity to tell his readers a little bit about the book before they launch into the story itself. How the author chooses to exercise this opportunity is up to him/her. It is interesting that Tolkien uses his opportunity in different ways in the two Forewords that have been posted (and my thanks too go to Squatter for posting the First Foreword, which I had not seen before).

As to the First Foreword, I agree with Child when she says:

he seems to be talking to people he personally knows -- family, friends, members of the Inklings, and to those "admirers of Bilbo" who'd already crossed his path before.

As Squatter suggests, you get the sense that he is continuing a private joke shared with his family and scholastic co-conspirators. But, at the same time, he is opening up the joke to the wider audience that is encountering the book for the first time following its publication. And, while I would not go as far as some in wishing that the story really was real (*ducks metaphysical apples in a materialistic manner*), I do find the First Foreword charming for this reason. One feels rather privileged to be let in on the private joke. And it is, I suppose, valid to consider whether there is, in any event, an element of truth (or should that be Truth ) to the joke, in the sense that LotR draws on themes and ideas that have been conveyed throughout our history in mythology and folklore. In that sense, it might be said that LotR is a part of our history, or at least a presentation of aspects of it in a fresh (and beautifully crafted) vehicle. In this context, I am put in mind of the oft-quoted incident when a visitor asked Tolkien “Of course you don’t suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book yourself”, to which he replied “No, I don’t suppose so any longer” (Letter 328).

So, Tolkien uses the First Foreword to continue the “myth” that LotR is a fragment of a real history. But he does also include some authorial guidance when he says:

But since my children and others of their age, who first heard of the finding of the Ring, have grown older with the years, this book speaks more plainly of those darker things which lurked only on the borders of the earlier tale, but which have troubled Middle-earth in all its history.

While still couched in terms of a commentary on the history of Middle-earth, this passage also serves to provide an authorial (as opposed to editorial) function in preparing his wider audience for the marked difference in tone from the Hobbit, the only work of his which they will previously have encountered.

And so on to the Second Foreword. As others have noted, this fulfils quite a different function. Far more than the First Foreword it is aimed at those who have not yet read the book, and it seeks to provide some insight and guidance to them. In broad terms, as I see it, Tolkien is here using his opportunity to accomplish three things:

1. to provide an insight into how the book was written;
2. to flag up some of the book's themes; and
3. to explain how the book should be approached by the reader (or, more precisely, how it should not be approached).

As to the first of these, like others, I get the sense from the Foreword that the book almost wrote itself. Tolkien states at the outset that:

This tale grew in the telling …

It started out as a sequel to the Hobbit, to satisfy “requests from readers [of The Hobbit] for more information concerning hobbits and their adventures”. But it:

… was drawn irresistibly towards the older world …

So, while the LotR was borne of a desire to satisfy his readers’ yearnings for a sequel to The Hobbit, Tolkien was irresistibly drawn back to the tales that he had been working on since his youth and it became something altogether more dark and epic. These tales of the older world were the ones which Tolkien really wanted to tell and, since he was given the impression that they were “unpublishable”, LotR became a kind of bridge between those tales and the later more childish tale, which had already received a favourable reaction from the public. While the book did not of course write itself, it was natural (almost instinctive, perhaps) for Tolkien to write something more than simply “The Hobbit Revisited”. And, although The Hobbit is (to my mind) a wonderful book, LotR is undoubtedly the better for this.

I wonder if this is the reason that he was so steadfast in his resolve to complete the book, despite the many delays and interruptions that he encountered. Once it became inextricably linked in his mind to the older world that was so close to his heart, did it assume greater importance in his mind? Did he then feel compelled to complete it and achieve publication of something that, for these reasons, had achieved greater importance to him? Is this the reason why, as davem states, he wanted his readers to take the story as seriously as he did? And would the story ever have been completed if Strider had simply remained Trotter?

As to how the Foreword flags up the themes of the book, Tolkien (as Fordim points out) identifies the Ring as the central theme:

As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches: but the main theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of the Ring as the link between it and The Hobbit.

Again, the suggestion is that the story grew almost of its own accord. But what does Tolkien mean when he says that the Ring provides the main theme of the story? The Ring is a (the) subject of the story. How can it also be its theme? Since he gives no further explanation, this provides no real idea as to the nature of the theme that he is discussing here to a reader who is reading the Foreword and has yet to read the story. But what he is doing is flagging up for the reader the importance of the Ring in signifying the underlying theme (and, incidentally, highlighting the importance of the “crucial chapter”, ‘The Shadow of the Past’). And the Ring really does signify the essence of the story: the conflict between good and evil, between the corrupting influence of power and the ennoblement of the humble, between Sauron’s desire to control and the Elvish wish to maintain and preserve. Practically every “sub-theme” within the story revolves around that which the Ring represents and that which opposes everything that it stands for.

Thinking about it, it seems that Tolkien does give a further clue in the passage explaining how the story would have gone had it in fact been intended as an allegory of the “real war”. In suggesting that that the use of the Ring against Sauron and Saruman’s creation of his own Great Ring would have led to both sides holding Hobbits in hatred and contempt, he is indicating that the Ring is a corrupting influence and that the qualities displayed by those who seek to oppose what it represents are ones which should be valued. Sadly, but perhaps realistically, he impliedly concludes that they are qualities which are woefully lacking in the “real world”, at least among those with power.

As Fingolfin II states:

He says that in real life the Ring would have been used against Sauron, but in order to make a story of it he had to change reality to idealism

But perhaps he believed, or at least hoped, that the “ideal” still existed somewhere in “reality”. If so, I think that the immense and enduring popularity of LotR would certainly bear him out on this.

Finally Tolkien uses the Foreword to state categorically that the book is not to be taken by the reader as an allegory. While I accept that he was perhaps overstating his case in expressing his strong distaste for allegory, I neverthless find his concise statement of the difference between allegory and applicability to be profoundly instructive:

… one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

I have no difficulty in accepting this. Nor do I see any conflict with what he states elsewhere concerning his motives in writing LotR and his other “Fairy Stories”. To me, “allegory” in the sense that Tolkien is using it here requires two essential elements: it must be specifically intended by the author and it must relate to a specific set of circumstances. What Tolkien is saying here is that he did not intend LotR to represent any specific set of circumstances. Specifically, it was not intended as an allegory of the gobal conflict which was raging throughout much of the period in which he was writing the book. So, he is telling the reader, do not take it as an allegory of that, or of anything else, because that was not my intention in writing it. At the same time, he is (as he is bound to) giving his readers complete freedom to find within the book meanings which are applicable to their own lives, and doing so expressly. Yes, the book contains themes relevant to the human condition and the history of human existence. But this does not make it an allegory. It simply makes it applicable, in varying ways, to the “thoughts and experience” of the readers who share that condition and history.

Of course Tolkien had his own ideas as to what the book meant, and he accepts in the Foreword that it was influenced by his own experiences, but he does not impose those ideas and experiences on his readers. Even when he flags up the Ring as the central theme, he does not tell them what that theme actually is (and, in any event, themes to not equate with meaning in my mind: they simply provide a framework for applicability). So, Tolkien simply tells his readers in this Foreword that he wrote the book as a tale that he hoped would “amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them”, but leaves them to draw their own conclusions as to what it actually means to them. And I doubt that any who have read and enjoyed LotR could deny that he has succeeded in achieving this mission statement (even if some of us, while being deeply moved by parts of the book, are still waiting to experience that elusive moment of eucatastrophe ). Like Aiwendil, I run the risk of embroiling myself once again in the twists and truns of the Canonicity thread on this point ( ), so I will leave it at that.

But finally, and before I outstay my welcome (or perhaps I already have) I wanted to comment on one sentence which jumped out at me:

The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or write it again, he will pass over these in slience, except one that has been noted by other: the book is too short.

While I would not go so far as to describe any work of literature as utterly flawless, LotR seems to me to be pretty much nearing that ideal. I wonder what “major defects” Tolkien had in mind. But I find his comment that it is “too short” even more interesting. It contrasts nicely with CS Lewis’ belief, referred to in davem’s first post ( #5), that it would be “the better for pruning”. But that aside, I wonder what additional material Tolkien would have liked to have included. Or perhaps he was simply making a veiled reference here to his original wish to publish LotR and the Silmarillion together in two volumes.

Apologies for wittering on at length but, since I am not sure that I’ll have a chance to post again this week, I thought that I would simply blurt out all my thoughts at once. I’ll get my coat now.