Trampling the Legacy, Remaking the Myth - Page 5
© Michael Martinez
The past is a mystery, and should be treated with the respect normally accorded to a mystery. That is, the reader should be given glimpses and clues about the greater picture, but should be brought to the full realization of what happened only near the end of the tale. Or at least near the end of the process which requires the ancient lore to begin with.
Many people seem to have no problem identifying the fact that history is a big part of what makes Tolkien so appealing. It gives his world a depth which is rich and enticing. The readers want to learn more, but they want to learn it after they have read the primary story, not before. Too many authors seem to be trying to capitalize on the desire for history in a formulaic process. History becomes important to a reader only when the characters produced by that history become important. This is probably the chief reason why Tolkien moved so much of his Arwen material to the appendices. She was important to Aragorn, but not yet so to the reader.
Of course, people try to improve upon Tolkien in other ways. For months after word had spread that Peter Jackson was making new movies based on the book, people in many forums expressed the hope that Tolkien's racism wouldn't be reflected in the movies. That racism is purely a product of perception, rather than the author's hand. There is racism in The Lord of the Rings. The story condemns it. Those who rise above the evils of racism are the characters who produce the greatest achievements.
The myth of Elf-Dwarf hostility has been taken up by many stories and fantasy worlds. Tolkien's Elves and Dwarves have become estranged, but they are not racists. They once shared a long friendship, but that friendship has been forgotten, largely because the people who shared in it have all fled or been killed. Legolas and Gimli don't dislike each other when they first begin to interact. They are merely oversensitive to anything the other's race says about his own race, and both are defensive. But neither harbors ill-will toward the other.
Tolkien made one brief comment in his appendices about an ancient grudge held by the Dwarves against Elves. And that one comment was for quite a while never questioned by his readers. What was the nature of the grudge? Why should the Dwarves have a grudge to begin with? And why should Tolkien's Dwarven grudge translate into some sort of universal dislike between Elves and Dwarves in other writers' hands? Tolkien had something specific in mind, and it appears that the grudge was based upon a misunderstanding. There were no wars fought over the grudge (which had nothing to do with the Silmaril). There could have been wars, but the Dwarves were wiser than that.
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