Next Game of Thrones book The Winds of Winter won't be out until 2016

[Imran Siddiqui]

That's why one disappears when putting your finger in it... it's to demonstrate that gays aren't real people

[kentonio]

The Ring represents Anal Sex. LOTR is antigay Propaganda! Boom! :dropsMike:

Bit harsh, not sure what MikeH has to do with any of this.

[Cort Haus]

CH, the Ring is POWER.
...
There's more to say, but crap, there went my lunch break.

Thanks for your thoughts and time, Elok. I appreciate that.

Yes, I'd always seen the ring as POWER, although hadn't considered the hobbitses lack of ambition as being the key to their resistance. We were given scenes of the temptation of Faramir and Galadriel, though not, IIRC, Gandalf, who wouldn't even entertain the fantasy for a moment. If, though, we take the fate of the 'bad' characters who did succumb as tied up in a religious, moral come-uppance we end up with a dualist morality play where the bad guys get punished and the good guys live happily ever after. Now that's fine, if you take it for what it is, but it doesn't really reflect real life.

GOT, however, sometimes punishes the good and rewards

Spoiler:

(for a time, at least - Valar morghulis)

the wicked, which can be uncomfortable, but is actually closer to the way our world actually works. I'm not trying to sell it to you at this point - you've made up your mind and so be it, but I am trying to explain why many have found it to have an extra dimension compared to the straight good v evil of LOTR. I should add that I love LOTR and have read it many times but I will probably only read GOT once.

[Elok]

It's not about "come-uppance." There aren't "good" and "bad" characters, only characters who have avoided temptation thus far and the ones who haven't. "Good guys living happily ever after" ignores the ruining of the Shire, the bittersweet parting of Elrond and Arwen, Frodo being so maimed that he sails off to die, etc. The moral complexity is there--it's just subtle.

I'll probably check out ASOIAF (that's the first one, right?), just for cultural literacy, etc., and I'll make what attempt I can to be unbiased. I mean, I was able to sort of enjoy The Winter King, and literally every Christian in the book (except Galahad, for some reason) is a preposterously hateful stereotype. Didn't enjoy it enough to go on to the next one, but it was okay.

[Elok]

I think it's easy to miss because it's all embedded in a Christian way of thinking, and our society is pretty thoroughly de-christianized. I suppose it also depends on what you mean by "moral complexity." And you don't really understand what's going on fully unless you've read the Silmarillion, etc. But the elves, for example, represent much of Tolkien's ambivalence about creativity, especially his own. In general, he's of two minds about the creative impulse and its potential for destruction. Sauron was originally a servant of Aule the smith-god, who's the most morally ambiguous of the unfallen Valar. Feanor is a brilliant craftsman, the greatest ever--but also impetuous, arrogant and rash. Etc.

[N35t0r]

The Silmarillion is markedly less 'black-and-white' than the main trilogy, IMHO. It can have a lot to do with the OMFGHUGE war going on in the latter, which tends to force people into either side...

[Elok]

Closing notes for the day: the hobbits' lack of ambition is something of a flipside to their love of simple pleasures--food, beer, ridiculous songs, tobacco, inane family gossip, fireworks, whatever. It sounds silly, but in the end, Tolkien believed that being rooted in a quietly happy life was the surest protection against the lure of power. To put it another way, the hobbits don't want more because they are extraordinarily happy with what they have. C.S. Lewis agreed with his friend there; there's a great bit in The Screwtape Letters where the old devil notes with disgust, "I have seen a man saved from a strong taste for worldly power by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions." If the ring draws you into the ethereal and fantastic, it helps to be very much attached, like Sam Gamgee, to your po-tay-toes.

Tom Bombadil is a more extreme example. Nobody knows, or likely will ever know, just WTF he's supposed to be (some kind of nature spirit?), but he's basically the same thing, squared. The guy's apparently spent millennia hanging around in the woods singing to the trees about his clothes. It's goofy as hell, but he has his perfect, simple happiness, and therefore is the one person in Arda who is absolutely immune to the Ring in every way.

Of course there's another side to this: most of the hobbits, for all their homeliness, are also deeply and happily ignorant of everything but the patch of dirt they happen to live on. They take no responsibility for the world's problems, and produce nothing beautiful, powerful or profound. Only a very un-hobbit-like hobbit such as Frodo could ever be induced to leave the Shire in the first place. Their triumph in LOTR is thus something of a "stone that the builders refused" deal.

This is leaving out the whole mess with the elves and creation, the persistent theme of fading/loss, and probably a lot of other things, but I'm supposed to be limiting my computer time and I'm way over quota for the day as is. CH, I think the Peter Jackson trilogy has overwritten your memories of the books. You may wish to revisit them, and check out The Children of Hurin (the book-length version released in the last decade or so) while you're at it.

[Elok]

Okay, I'm only about a hundred pages into the first book, but are people in this world even allowed to have healthy personal motivations? Aside from very young children, everyone seems driven by some mixture of pride, resentment and fear. Especially fear. Everyone appears to be afraid of something all the time. This book is really ****ing depressing, and not just because of the statutory rape, incest and infanticide.

[Lorizael]

Yeah, everybody is damaged goods in ASOIAF. I sometimes wonder what that says about GRRM's childhood. If it says anything at all, I feel really sorry for the guy.

[DinoDoc]

Is it bad that I only just recently realized that Gandalf was a low level angel?

[Jon Miller]

Okay, I'm only about a hundred pages into the first book, but are people in this world even allowed to have healthy personal motivations? Aside from very young children, everyone seems driven by some mixture of pride, resentment and fear. Especially fear. Everyone appears to be afraid of something all the time. This book is really ****ing depressing, and not just because of the statutory rape, incest and infanticide.

Unfortunately it seems like if there is no fear/etc and generally a good time is being had, GRRM doesn't feel the need to include it in the story. Many times, in later books, he seems to start writing about an area/person just as the good times end.

JM

[Jon Miller]

Is it bad that I only just recently realized that Gandalf was a low level angel?

Depends, did you only watch the movies and read the book once long ago?

JM

[kentonio]

Okay, I'm only about a hundred pages into the first book, but are people in this world even allowed to have healthy personal motivations? Aside from very young children, everyone seems driven by some mixture of pride, resentment and fear. Especially fear. Everyone appears to be afraid of something all the time. This book is really ****ing depressing, and not just because of the statutory rape, incest and infanticide.

Here's an idea, how about just reading the goddamn book and trying to enjoy it rather than stopping to analyse it every 100 pages?

[Elok]

HowTF do you enjoy it? I mean, it's readable, but every twenty pages something horrible happens. Every single character is a reprehensible scheming ****head, except for the Starks who are sort of stoically dour, probably because they realize their world is a pit for fighting dogs and they can't get out. I guess that makes them the moral center, insofar as half of them hate each other but they don't do anything overtly antisocial about it?

[kentonio]

HowTF do you enjoy it? I mean, it's readable, but every twenty pages something horrible happens. Every single character is a reprehensible scheming ****head, except for the Starks who are sort of stoically dour, probably because they realize their world is a pit for fighting dogs and they can't get out. I guess that makes them the moral center, insofar as half of them hate each other but they don't do anything overtly antisocial about it?

Or maybe, just maybe the book gets more complex and enjoyable as the story unfolds and the depths of the characters and their motivations unfold. Of course it's also possible that it's just not black and white enough for you, and you should go back to reading stories where the good guys have different hats to the bad guys.