Like so many people, I’ve read The Lord of the Rings and watched the movies and appreciated the elaborate world-building of J.R.R. Tolkien with its dragons and people even shorter than me and fake languages and second breakfasts and grotesque orcs and all that. I don’t think I’d count myself as a huge fan, necessarily – I think maybe there’s more unfair anti-orc propaganda going on there than usually gets let on – but I get why the series is so beloved. It seems that at the end of the year a new Tolkien work was published for the first time after remaining hidden for 60 years. The work, called The Bovadium Fragments, is a sort of satirical fantasy about academics from some future piecing together an old manuscript – those fragments referenced in the title – and the reason I’m mentioning it at all is because it seems to be a thinly-veiled anti-car screed.
That seems worth talking about, right? At least quickly? That one of the best-known fantasy writers in the world, maybe the best known, really seemed to hate cars. I suppose that’s not so surprising, really; for reasons I’ve never entirely understood, most of the famous works of fantasy fiction have pegged their universes at a level of technology around that of, say, the 1300s, maybe or so. I guess maybe it’s because technology is, in many ways, a great equalizer, and it maybe takes away some of the drama of “magic” when a machine you can order off Amazon does the same stuff a wizard does.
Take, for example, this scene where noted local wizard Gandalf makes a rock glow to act as a light in dark mines:
Note how he waves his hand with a certain amount of drama to excite that chunk of quartz or whatever into luminescence; if one of the hobbits reached into their backpacks and just pulled out a bright LED flashlight, I suppose you’d lose some of the atmosphere.
Maybe that’s part of why Tolkien didn’t seem to like cars. That and the realization that if Frodo had access to a well-maintained Land Rover, the whole long slog to chuck the ring into the volcano could probably have been reduced to a couple of days or so. But there seems to be much more specific reasons for Tolkien’s automotive revulsion. This is from the Los Angeles Review of Books’ review of The Bovadium Fragments:
J. R. R. Tolkien first arrived in Oxford as a student in 1911. At that time, it was still a quaint and quiet university town. But a couple years later, a motor manufacturing plant opened nearby. Soon, thousands of cars were being churned out and thousands more people were being drawn to the area to support this growing industry. That combination of a motorized culture and a population explosion transformed the city… In his 200-page report, Sharp explained what the city was like at that time: “To-day heavy traffic breaks up what once was an urban paradise into a crowd of islands surrounded by vehicular torrents.”
As a lover of nature and an enemy of the motor vehicle, Tolkien would surely have agreed with Sharp’s description. What he didn’t agree with, however, was Sharp’s solution. Sharp proposed building a new road through the unspoiled Christ Church Meadow as the only way to alleviate congestion in the center of the city. As Tolkien put it in one of his private letters, “the spirit of ‘Isengard,’ if not of Mordor, is of course always cropping up. The present design of destroying Oxford in order to accommodate motor-cars is a case.”
So, it looks like it was sort of personal for Tolkien, as he wanted Oxford to remain, I think, as it was sometime in the late 1800s, forever.
The book itself re-casts cars – as written about by the long-gone society of the fragments – as “monsters” known as Motores, in a nicely unsubtle way. Similarly, the relationship of the Bovadies to their Motores is described like this:
“[M]any of the citizens harboured the monsters, feeding them with the costly oils and essences which they required, and building houses for them in their gardens.”
and
“On the days formerly set aside for prayers and rites in the temples many would now wheel their Motores out upon a platform before their houses and there tend them and worship them, prostrate upon the ground.”
So, again, cars. With oil and gas and garages, and people working on them on Sundays. J.R.R. sure thought we were fools for our love of them, which just adds to my sneaking suspicion that J.R.R. must have been kind of a chore to be around, always saying things about you behind your back in Elvish, hoping you don’t know what “pen-channas” means.
Really, I suppose this shouldn’t be much of a surprise; anti-industrial sentiment is all over Tolkien’s works, and he even wrote and illustrated a book for his children that was written around 1936 but published in 1964. The book, Mr.Bliss, is about a guy with a fondness for really tall headwear who buys a car and then proceeds to have all sorts of disasters with it.
Honestly, it’s really less about how terrible cars are as it is about how you really should learn to drive before buying one.
So, there you go, all of you gearheads who are also Tolkien fans: if you ever get a time machine and decide to go back to talk to him, don’t bring up cars. He’s not one of us.
Top graphic image: Image: The Tolkien Estate
I’m just happy I don’t walk along Dorkins Street.
The Fellowship is headed south in an old extended-cab Ranger. Merry and Pippin are complaining about always having to ride in the jumpseats, until Samwise points out “it’s Frodo’s adventure and it’s my truck!”
The auto industry followed him to Oxford from where he grew up on the edge of Birmingham in Longbridge. That Longbridge.
Even the ancestral origin of the name Tolkien is Hanoverian, from the region of north-central Germany centered around what’s now Wolfsburg…
felt though fortunately my place came with the house in the garden already
I’d argue about all sci-fi being in the 2300s. As a big fan it is back there but with dragons and fictional characters OR FUTURE and rockets and time travel. Really it’s hard to do sci-fi in modern times. Although hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, Eureka, Buck Rogers and other sci-fi theater might be okay. How do you do sci-fi modern day? Maybe the Librarian series which was good but with glaring errors but certainly not the series.
Cut Tolkien some slack, the first cars he ever met were British.
hmmm…that explains a lot…i don’t blame him anymore
JRRT was deeply anti-industrialism and anti-modernity, as were all of the Inklings. (Lewis even had a sword fight with a student once)
In the Hobbit he says that goblins invented machine guns and other modern weapons of mass destruction.
In LOTR he says that Sarumans corrupted mind embraced machines, gunpowder, and industrial processes instead of the natural world that he and the four other wizards were sent by the Valar to help care for.
His experiences in WW1 as a soldier, then followed up with WW2 as an older man, confirmed to him that modernity was inhumane and a deadly mistake.
That he didn’t like cars would be consistent with his stance on our industrial era.
I think pretty much anyone who took machine gun fire and gas attacks in the trenches of WWI would have at least a few doubts about the industrialist modern future. Also, I think Tolkien is throwing more shade at car owners than the machines themselves here.
I am in league with JRR’s Oxford contemporaries… “Not more fucking fairies!”.
And if I need sleep, there’s Frank Herbert to read.
Well, yeah. Look what happened when Saruman’s place got destroyed: Nature literally walked in (yeah, more walking) and stomped all over, kicked the life out of, and drowned Industry while the two smaller-than-Jason folks watched.
Not particularly subtle there, JRRT…
For those of us miscreants that were supposed to read the books in high school, but never got around to finishing them, a spoiler alert would have been nice.
Asking for spoiler alerts on media more than 70 years old seems less than reasonable.
I don’t want to spoil the Bible, but that Jesus character is gonna go through some rough shit.
A coworker once told a story – may have been made up, who knows – about a very small child at her church who, upon hearing about the Crucifixion for the first time, wailed “I didn’t know Jesus died!!!”
(Be aware that if one of your coworkers shares this story, laughter is apparently an improper response.)
You can get along perfectly well in Oxford without a car, even nowadays!
And that’s even considering that Oxford is basically a tourist destination with a bunch of small colleges.
Seems like a good place to post this: https://youtu.be/I3g6mFI4Fug?si=fnmo4jvlwsYwhXV9
I’d like my city to be more walkable, too.
But maybe, also, a few more public-access racetracks.
Seriously, I fucking hate being car-dependent but it would be awesome to have a track nearby. I love driving, and I love cars, but not in traffic or when it’s necessary to live. I drive like 6k a year, including road trips that should’ve been flights as one does in the midwest, and it’s still too much for me. Not relying on a car is a type of freedom that everyone should experience.
To be fair most British cars of his era were lukewarm garbage.
My thought as well. Why wouldn’t he hate them?
Without the automotive context, I’d have guessed you were talking about Lucas refrigerators.
s/of his era we/a/
“That and the realization that if Frodo had access to a well-maintained Land Rover, the whole long slog to chuck the ring into the volcano could probably have been reduced to a couple of days or so”
Or Ganfalf could have tapped his buddies, the hobbit carrying eagles back in the shire. They could have flown right over all those orcs, wraiths and whatnot right into Mt Doom, maybe even poking Sauron in the eye along the way.
Now I’m trying to remember – was there any aerial battle or attack in LOTR? Or was it entirely land-based? I definitely don’t remember any SAMs.
Eagles…
JRR died in 1970, we’d have to settle for Rambler Classics.
There be dragons but I don’t think they flew.
Smaug could fly, at least. So it would be safe to assume others could. If memory serves the ring wraiths also flew on the backs of… something. It’s been a long time.
Smaug was long dead by LOTR.
The eagles came and fought at the battle of the Morannon.
Meanwhile the Nine rode on flying fell beasts, creatures from an older age.
An attempt to fly the One Ring directly to Mordor on the eagles would have immediately drawn Saurons attention, hence the slow and sneaky route on foot to keep it out of his Eye.
The thing about birds is they can literally put crap into an eye. Or just peck it out. Or even just cover it with a sheet, it’s not like Sauron had arms to pull it off. So first blind Sauron, THEN fly the ringbearer to Doom.
See! Easy!
Unless the Eye had secret space lasers.
Ha, joke’s on Sauron! Do you know how to defeat a laser?
Mirrors!*
Bounce that beam right back into his eye to make a feedback cascade and BOOM! no more eye!
*Also smoke, clouds, haze, rocks nonlinear lines of fire,….
wow you’re right, some villain should have tried that with Superman’s heat beam! Get him good and pissed off, wait for the heat vision, whip out the mirror.
Nazgul flew on some sort of flying beast. Not sure of the name. Aerial attacks, yes.
You are correct, I had to look it up myself:
“later they ride flying monsters, which Tolkien described as “pterodactylic”.”
I’m not sure if that would have been enough. There were only nine Nazgul after all and presumably a LOT more than nine eagles in middle earth. Gandalf should have created diversions; send a few false leads on the ground to keep the Nazgul on their horses as long as possible while winging Frodo to Doom. Then as soon as Sauron realized what’s going on the Nazgul would have switched to their winged mounts; THAT’S when the rest of the eagles go after the eye.
Pretty sure they could have kept Sauron and the Nazgul distracted long enough to finish dropping the ring with or without Frodo into the fires of Doom.
The Eye on top of the tower was not a thing in the books, and even in the films, that’s not the physical manifestation of Sauron. He had a physical body but chose not to reveal himself because there was really no need for him to do so. It’s also important to understand how many tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of soldiers and untold beasts and other warriors there were in Mordor. Sauron himself also had a direct road from Barad Dur to Mt. Doom and could have gotten there very quickly once he understood what was going on.
Keep in mind that he was amassing forces and preparing for a direct confrontation almost exactly as you describe it. It’s not possible for it to have ever succeeded.
If the eye of Sauron isn’t corporeal what difference would it make if the ring bearer was on the ground or in the air?
Also all the forces he was putting together were ground based with the small exception of his part time air force of nine Nazgul. By putting the ring bearer into the air Frodo’s not only up and out of the reach of 99.99% of Sauron’s forces he’s also got a far shorter route between the Shire and Doom.
Plus an eagle can fly a lot faster and further than a horse even carrying a Hobbit. Pretty sure even faster than a sparrow carrying a coconut.
The Eye, as it’s used in the book, is more of a metaphor for the fact that Sauron doesn’t miss much.
You also need to understand that the Eagles are divine beings and do not generally concern themselves with the doings of humanity. The movie makes it seems as if they can be summoned at will, when in reality, they are almost impossible to reach and even if you can, they have their own troubles. It’s also stated in the books that carrying people is a burden for them and they can’t do it over great distances.
And Sauron had tens of thousands of soldiers and all manner of creatures in Mordor – it was the absolute epicenter of his power. Technically, yes, it would theoretically be possible for the Eagles to bring the Ringbearer to Mordor, but accomplishing the task of destroying the Ring would have been impossible.
“The Eye, as it’s used in the book, is more of a metaphor for the fact that Sauron doesn’t miss much.”
Isn’t the whole story about him missing every single thing he was looking for?
“You also need to understand that the Eagles are divine beings and do not generally concern themselves with the doings of humanity.”
And yet they showed up in the nick of time to pull Frodo and Sam out of Doom after they had already finished the job.
Since is clear they had at least that much interest in the doings of humanity they could have just taken them to to Doom in the first place and saved everyone the trouble.
“accomplishing the task of destroying the Ring would have been impossible.”
Why not? Since he didn’t bother to put together any kind of an effective air force despite an otherwise MASSIVE military force is clear the very last thing Sauron would have expected was an air assault. All they had to do was get Frodo and the ring there, once there it was up to him to throw the ring into made sure he did the right thing.
The eagles lacked air supremacy and were therefore only used in a CASEVAC role
I don’t recall what Sauron had that was any better.
True – which in this case means no one has meaningful air superiority. Mordor had plenty of anti air
Nothing an eagle couldn’t easily fly over, well out of reach and untouchable.
Not exactly surprising for a man who wrote books like he did seemly to escape the modern world he was in. It’s quite interesting in the 1920s when they were just starting to have a concept of preservation in the US. The people trying to restore Williamsburg seem to have had similar issues with cars and turned to Ford because his little back cars were ruining the area after he turned them down Rockefeller came in because of his oil. So cars were beneficial in historical preservation.
Plot twist- Frodo took the Land Rover because he was going to roll it into Mount Doom for insurance fraud. He made up all that bullshit about the ring because he needed Samwise to help him push.
If Gandalf had been on the ball he’d have sent a moth for Gwaihir way back in act 1 and had Frodo and Sam fly to Mt. Doom… no slog through the mines, no kidnapping of Merry and Pippin, no slog across where ever and through the spider’s lair… would have had the ring destroyed in a day. That one failure by Gandalf caused the deaths of untold numbers of people (humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, assorted other monsters). He should be impeached.
#NotMyWizard
The entire point of the mission was secrecy. Sauron would’ve known immediately what was going on if they had flown into Mordor on the Eagles and the Ring would’ve been seized – the Eagles were diving beings but not invincible and could not possibly have stood up to the full forces of Mordor.
Sauron also assumed that the Ring had been found by men and that they were planning to use it against him. He never imagined that they would want to destroy it and forfeit its power, which again, is why the mission demanded secrecy. Sauron was looking for a fight, and the Eagles would’ve immediately tipped him off as to what was going on.
Glad to see the other folks also pointing out the “eagle” approach… and we can all get delightfully dorky debating this 🙂
The Nazgul were unhorsed by the river when Arwen brought Frodo to Rivendell… the next time we saw the Nazgul on the flying beasts was weeks (months?) later… it must have taken a while to train those fell beasts to take a rider. So the Nazgul were in no position to intercept the eagles.
Sauron also seems to be just a disembodied eye (and one who can’t see everywhere at once). The eagles could have flown in without detection… and even if they were detected they’d have arrived at Mt. Doom long before any response from orcs or whatever could have come along (remember that Frodo would have been a lot quicker chucking the ring into the lava since it wouldn’t have had time to corrupt him… and the eagles would have dropped him right at the door).
Sort of like the SR-71… you can detect it, but by the time you see it, it has already flown out of range of your countermeasures.
And… the mission was already compromised by Saruman… which Gandalf already knew, since he had been captured and imprisoned (“delayed…” the understatement of the whole series).
#GandalfTheNotVeryHelpful
Frodo and co. were also in Rivendell for a very long time while it was decided what was to be done with the Ring. That it should be destroyed was not immediately apparent. There also was no “mission” at the time Gandalf was captured by Saruman outside of just getting the Ring out of the Shire.
Sauron has physical form, and the eye as it’s shown in the movies isn’t in the books. Sauron was a divine being and knew extremely well what was going in in his realm, plus, the Eagles are diving beings, too. To see them coming into Mordor would’ve immediately raised the red alert and they would’ve been intercepted. And that’s assuming they could’ve been convinced to actually fly the Ring there, which is very unlikely.
Frodo also would’ve been corrupted, regardless of how quickly he could get there. The point of the scene in Mt. Doom where Frodo gets corrupted is to show that this is the place at which the Ring’s power is the strongest. Even if Frodo had teleported from Bag End directly to Mt. Doom with the Ring, he still would’ve been unable to destroy it. It would’ve been physically impossible for him or anyone else to resist it at that point. It wasn’t a matter of time, so much as it was proximity to Mt. Doom.
Stealth was literally the only way the mission could’ve possibly succeeded.
I would think that a fantasy author would know how difficult it is to put the genie back in the bottle.
Tolkien: Cars are ruining Oxford!
C.S. Lewis: Yo! J.R.R.! Check out my new Hellcat!
Tolkien (under his breath): jerkface.
“Smells like chronic…”
“What?!”
“…cles of Narnia!”
C.S. Lewis: What if, now hear me out on this, Carjus. It’s Jesus, but as a car!
That’s an even better idea than Uncle Baby Billy’s Teenjus!
Now I’m not asking for the word here, I’m just asking for an eight ball and 2 million dollars!
It’s exactly what He would have wanted, too.
(would it kill you to throw in a couple of women of ill repute, as well?)
The only part that grinds my gears is the old man (I think his name is Greystache) who runs the MOT inspection stations. Dude is like “You shall not pass!” before he even hooks up the equipment.
He who would pass the inspection line
Must answer me these questions nine
Ere a valid sticker he find!
The whole machine age kinda bummed out a lot of people who survived World War One, especially if they participated any of the big attacks (which Lieutenant Tolkien did do). The industrialization of killing and chaos made some strong impressions at the time, and those impressions were seldom expressed explicitly until much later, if ever.
It even preceded the war. Mr. Toad’s crashups and campaign of terror in early cars were a big part of the best selling 1908 book The Wind in the Willows.
The book bemoans the threat to pastoral England, and it even struck an approving chord from Teddy Roosevelt, who wrote a fan letter to the author in 1909 and pushed for US publication.
Came here to discuss The Wind in the Willows! Now that, too, is quite the anti-car screed. A pretty solid strafing of RV culture too, as to Mr. Toad’s camper.
Tolkien can hate cars as much as he’d like as far as I’m concerned.
which is not much, these days.
We all know full well it still would have ended with Samwise having to carry a battered, bruised, and thoroughly disheartened Frodo up the mountain
Where’s Smaug? We gotta put some smoke back in the wires.
Smaug was vanquished by a catalytic converter.
COTD
I guess it’s not a big surprise. You allude to the fact that Tolkien was anti-industry and that is extremely prevalent in the LoTR books. Cars aren’t much of a stretch being part of the industrial advancement.
If we’re being honest, most of what he disliked about all of it was for good reason with current ecological issues being what they are. Hopefully we eventually get past the growing pains of the revolution and learn to be better stewards of the planet while being able to progress.
But an old man wanting time to stand still is hardly a new thing and time will always march on, for good or ill.