{"id":1635,"date":"2001-12-02T14:46:56","date_gmt":"2001-12-02T19:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=1635"},"modified":"2014-06-13T17:14:41","modified_gmt":"2014-06-13T23:14:41","slug":"why_tolkien_is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/12\/02\/why_tolkien_is.html","title":{"rendered":"Why Tolkien is better than Rowling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brian Carney in the WSJ<\/i> analyzes two tales of magic<\/a> that are on the screens this winter, and determines that Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings <\/i>is much more sophisticated and moral than Rowling’s Harry Potter<\/i>.<\/p>\n

This kind of moral complexity is simply absent from Ms. Rowling’s books. Contrast Tolkien’s careful use of the ring with Ms. Rowling’s rather flip use of another great artifact of legend, the philosopher’s stone. Alchemists believed the stone would turn lead into gold. As a bonus, it was also thought to confer eternal life. The conceit of “Harry Potter” is that such a stone has been made and the bad guy wants it.<\/p>\n

This is a setup worthy of Tolkien; indeed, it mimics his tale in vital respects. But Ms. Rowling’s story manages to bring to light none of the moral dilemmas–of mortality, wealth, power–that the existence of the stone naturally suggests. The reader simply accepts as given that both sides want it, no particular importance is assigned to its powers and Harry never shows any interest in using it. He merely wants to keep it away from the bad guy. Once that’s accomplished, the stone drops out of the story, like a token at the end of some video game.<\/p>\n

In Tolkien’s world the temptation of evil is one that all, or nearly all, of his characters must confront. The argument of Tolkien’s tale–controversial, to be sure–is that, while intentions matter, the way we act is far more important than why we act. His story, for all its narrative brio, presents a serious rebuttal to the idea that good ends justify using evil means.<\/p>\n

Well, duh.<\/p>\n

I mean, Rowling was out to write a good story. Tolkien drew on grand themes, intentionally creating an epic with profound ethical implications. Both succeeded, but to compare the two is like comparing … well, Goldfinger<\/i> and Lawrence of Arabia<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Still, it’s an interesting article. And it made me want to catch the first installment of LotR <\/i>even more. Got to arrange a sitter for the 19th ….<\/p>\n

(Via InstaPundit<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brian Carney in the WSJ analyzes two tales of magic that are on the screens this winter, and determines that Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is much more sophisticated and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36,527,382],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-books","category-harry-potter","category-lord-of-the-rings"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":27256,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/03\/26\/potter-pics.html","url_meta":{"origin":1635,"position":0},"title":"Potter Pics","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 26-Mar-12 3:41pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A drawing of the cast of Harry Potter characters, done in 1999 by J. K. Rowling.It's actually remarkable how closely some of these resemble the characters in the movies (the first of which came out in 2001). Partly it's that they are somewhat generic, part of it is that the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2362,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/07\/06\/just_wild_about.html","url_meta":{"origin":1635,"position":1},"title":"Just wild about Harry","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 6-Jul-02 5:35pm","format":false,"excerpt":"DRENCHED by a mysterious rain, Harry Potter is transformed into a fat, hairy dwarf and stripped of his magic powers as he battles the forces of evil in the shape...","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":43401,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/08\/the-return-of-rita-skeeter.html","url_meta":{"origin":1635,"position":2},"title":"The Return of Rita Skeeter","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 8-Jul-14 6:53pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's a beautiful new Potter-verse story by J K Rowling: a Rita Skeeter column on the VIP visit of \"Dumbledore's Army\" to the 2014 Quidditch World Cup in Patagonia. Delightfully scandalous \/ snarky.\ufeff Read J.K. Rowling's new post for the latest Harry Potter 'gossip' Can\u2019t get enough of Harry Potter?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":755,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/11\/16\/save_harry.html","url_meta":{"origin":1635,"position":3},"title":"Save Harry!","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 16-Nov-01 1:56pm","format":false,"excerpt":"While I like the concept that soft drinks (soda pop, cokes, whatever they call them in your part of the country) are \"liquid candy,\" I don't think that this site,...","rel":"","context":"In "Coffee"","block_context":{"text":"Coffee","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/food-drink\/coffee"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":22078,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/10\/reading-harry-potter.html","url_meta":{"origin":1635,"position":4},"title":"Reading Harry Potter","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 10-Aug-11 10:31pm","format":false,"excerpt":"So I have been rereading the Harry Potter books, in commemoration of the final movie. \u00a0And it's ... interesting. I think I finished the first book before the first movie, in fact (and intentionally), which is now a decade ago. \u00a0I'm surprised to find that it's only been 4 years\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/Harry-Potter-and-the-Sorcerers-Stone-203x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":128437,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/25\/a-map-of-middle-earth-annotated-by-tolkien.html","url_meta":{"origin":1635,"position":5},"title":"A map of Middle-earth, annotated by Tolkien","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 25-Oct-15 9:07pm","format":false,"excerpt":"This is very cool.(Word has it that Christopher Tolkien will be issuing a trilogy of atlases based on it.) Tolkien's annotated map of Middle-earth discovered inside copy of Lord of the Rings Map goes on sale in Oxford for \u00a360,000 after being found at Blackwell\u2019s Rare Books inside novel belonging\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42684,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635\/revisions\/42684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}