This is just a note about an interesting plot device I see Tolkien using quite often. He tends to slowly build the action and suspense in his stories, finally reaching a climax, and then cutting it off abruptly. The most obvious method of accomplishing this is having the viewpoint character black out in the middle of the climax. We saw this in The Hobbit with Bilbo getting knocked out by a falling stone in the Battle of Five Armies. This also has already happened once in our reading for The Lord of the Rings so far with Frodo blacking out at Ford of Bruinen at the end of Book I. That book is a very nicely done sequence of very slowly but steadily building action and suspense. I can also think of several more times where the viewpoint character blacks out in an episodic climax later on in The Lord of the Rings, or the action is otherwise ended abruptly. Do you think this is a good way to create drama or would more drawn out action sequences be better? Why do you think Tolkien does this?
~Ulmo
2 comments:
I'm sure there's a lot of reasons for Tolkien to write his action sequences in this manner but one that specifically comes to mind is that it's simply more realistic. No one person (even the protagonist) will see every battle, fight, and climactic event. It's incredibly difficult for me to believe that in a world as densely populated and vast as Middle-earth, every one of the main characters would be present for every dramatic moment in the narrative. I'm also of the belief that cutting off the action is just a better way of keeping the story from becoming exclusively about violence. The points we see characters blacking out are for the most part during scenes that could potentially become long and very intense if they were to be written in full. Having the characters hide in the bushes and watching the action or even partaking in it directly puts emphasis on the fighting and the drama, which isn't really what Tolkien's works are about.
-Varda*
I agree with Varda and I also see this as a way in which Tolkien shows that while this event is significant it is not what we have been waiting for. As we know he believed in eucatastrophe, I believe this is directly tied in. If there was a solution or the climax to the events building up to the ending of the book the eucatastrophe or the event we have been waiting for during the whole book it won't be as exciting to read.
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