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“There cannot be any ‘story’ without a fall – all stories are ultimately about the fall – at least not for human minds as we know them and have them.”
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{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Aarrgh! Why do you post these things just when I’m going out of town?!
Quick question: Context of the quote, when & where’s it from?
Ha, revgeorge.
It is from one of his letters -to a Mr Milton Waldman to whom Tolkien replies “You asked for a brief sketch of my stuff that is connected with my imaginary world.”
The initial quote are his final words of that fairly lengthy epistle.
Thanks, Matthew. Is this quote then connected to his statement where he says something to the effect that all good stories are about death?
I get the first part of the quote very well. I’m still trying to puzzle out the second part, which I could probably get if I read the letter.
You would have to define ‘fall’ pretty broadly for this to be true, to the point where it really becomes meaningless. This is going way beyond the concept of ‘The Fall’, to include any negative circumstance that befalls the characters.
If you do that, the statement is true, I suppose, in the same way you can’t make a melody with only rising notes.
Perhaps a more accurate statement for Tolkien might be, “When you think about The Fall a lot, every story seems to include a fall. Or, as they say on House, “An oncologist sees cancer, a rheumatologist sees lupus.”
Agree that we need to define – or rather understand – what Tolkien meant by the word “fall”.
For example, revgeorge understands it to mean death, while SPT links it to the Biblical Fall – the Fall of humanity from its original state of innocence into sin in the Garden of Eden.
yourdictionary http://www.yourdictionary.com/fall gives 20+ definitions of the word; I’ve included only the ones which seem pertinent to Tolkien’s meaning:
noun
a dropping; descending; coming down
a coming down suddenly from a standing or sitting position
a hanging down, or a part hanging down
a downward direction or slope
a becoming lower or less; reduction in value, price, etc.
a lowering of the voice in pitch or volume
a capture; overthrow; ruin
a loss of status, reputation, etc.
a yielding to temptation; wrongdoing; moral lapse
I’m making the assumption that Tolkien isn’t talking about the Biblical Fall because he doesn’t capitalize it. I’m not sure about the connection to death either. My own interpretation would be a defeat, or a loss of status, power or virtue, or a wrongdoing, or a lapse. And often all of these things coming together.
You can see that theme reflected in Tolkien’s own writings, starting with Morgoth, through the downfall of Numenor, and then Arnor and to a certain extent, Gondor. And I’m pretty sure I’m missing a few civilisations and empires which also “fell” along the way.
But not all stories are about empires; most of them are about mortals and their small concerns. I’m not sure whether Tolkien meant to generalize to the smaller scale, or if he was talking about epics myths only.
It would help to read the whole letter, to undestand how widely he meant his meaning to be applied.
Contrary to Red Rocker, I think Tolkien was very much talking about the Fall, just not explicitly when he uses the word fall, instead generally as the overall topic of his sentence.
There are three clauses to look at. I’ll take them one at a time.
1. There cannot be any ‘ story’ without a fall
Here I believe Tolkien is talking about the conflicts and unfortunate circumstances which our fallen natures put us into–kind of a mini fall for each individual. You could simplify what he is saying into “you can’t have a story without a conflict to make it interesting” and get one of the points he is making here. Every story needs both rising and falling action and circumstances. If you look at the renaissance understanding of drama you can see this very well. They understood two main plot types: comedy and tragedy. Both made sort of a circular pattern in the circumstances of their characters: comedy starts at the top, sinks down into misfortune and then rises into a happy ending; tragedy begins at the bottom, the main character strives for power or achievement, achieves it for a moment, then loses everything and sinks back down into missery and loss. I could go into detail but perhaps this would take too long. At any rate, a personal fall is required for any of these stories to work.
2. all stories are ultimately about the fall
Here I believe Tolkien really is talking about “the Fall,” the biblical fall where innocence was lost and humanity became sinful. Because of the fall all people have flaws, corrupt desires, propensity towards some sort of evil, should it be murder or just quarreling. And there is also the sense that this has been reflected in the world at large as well. So in this way it is possible to say that every conflict, every personal mini-fall, links back up with the great fall in Eden and therefor you cannot have a story without the fall being somewhere back there behind it.
3. at least not for human minds as we know them and have them.
Here Tolkien is referring to the fallen nature of every human on the planet. Because this nature is so much a part of who we are it is impossible for us to look at the world and story in any way other than through this great calamity of our planet. I must say that I agree with him in this. I can perhaps imagine an unfallen world, say Malachandra in Lewis’ space trilogy, where I can believe people to have stories unconnected to the fall, but I cannot imagine what those stories would look like at all. They are so completely outside my frame of reference that even my imagination fails me. Perhaps when God finally has finished putting the world to rights at the end of the ages we shall be able to understand unfallen stories. Or perhaps this is another way in which Adam and Eve’s disobedience was a Felix Culpa, a fortunate fall: it gave us the ability to have Story.
I’ve looked up the letter (it’s #131 in Tolkien’s published Letters), and he was talking about the various “falls” which took place in the Silmarillion. Here is some more context for the quote:
Of course, in Tolkien death is the “Gift of Men” rather than a consequence of humanity’s fallen state.
To me, this sentiment actually sounds more appropriate to Lewis the Platonist than it does to Tolkien the Mythopoet.
I suppose the distinction is that Tolkien believes that there is “fall archetype” which all stories participate in, whereas Lewis would say that The Fall was the Ideal Form of the story and all other stories are shadows of it.
Sounds to me like he was talking in the context of myths and legends, i.e. on the epic scale, although that aside – all stories are ultimately about the fall- sounds like he might have meant more than that.
I could try to debate it, but feel inadequate to the task of challenging a Professor of Anglo-Saxon and English Literature at Oxford, a Bible scholar and a contributor to the OED.
Red Rocker said, “For example, revgeorge understands it to mean death…”
Actually I don’t understand it to mean death. I was just wondering if there was any connection between the two in Tolkien’s mind or in this letter.
I’m out of town right now so I haven’t had much time to puzzle much out about the quote. Just been asking questions.
Sorry about that, revgeorge.
Tolkien believed history and myth are “both ultimately of the same stuff.” He believed history is going to run its course much like the fairy-stories he describes in “On Fairy-Stories.” Dyscatastrophe, followed by eucatrastrophe. He calls history “the long defeat.” So just like The Lord of the Rings is about fallen people who almost allow evil to overcome and reign, and who are only stopped by an act of divine grace, so history will also look like the victory of evil followed by a sudden eucatrastrophe at its end.
That sounds very Judeo-Christian-Islamic, paralleling as it does the idea of the apocalypse. It’s a very religious thought, based on faith. I think you could easily extend his parallel to say that history, myth and religion are all ultimately of the same stuff.
Makes me wonder, a bit, about his objections to Lewis’ allegory/supposal. Was he not in effect doing the same thing, but just doing it more subtly?
I could be wrong, but I’m not sure Tolkien would draw much of a distinction between myth and religion. “They are not lies,” he said to Lewis about myth. And Lewis ended up with his “true myth” concept.
I’ll have to let someone else comment more intelligently on Tolkien’s beef with Lewis. I know that Lewis’s “hodge-podge” of mythic elements fueled part of Tolkien’s dislike for Narnia, and that Tolkien said he does not like any forced allegory whatsoever.
Certainly have to agree on the dislike for the hodge-podge. And for the forced allegory.
Prefer the subtle version with artistic integrity.
“All the other myths of the world are a mixture of truth and error – truth because they are written by those made by and for God – error because written by those alienated by God. But the Bible is the one true myth. It is a true accounting of truth, while everything else we do is mimicking.”
-J.R.R. Tolkien
“I have deliberately written a tale which is built on or out of certain “religious” ideas, but is not an allegory of them…”
- J.R.R. Tolkien
This link below is a speach about the LOTR and it’s connection to Christianity. The speaker is the author of: The Philosophy of the Lord of the Rings.
http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/28_lotr_christianity.htm
do any of you know a quote from Tolkien that goes something like; “I fear i have created a monster.” – concerning his Lord of the Rings chronicles.
Mitch, there is such a sentence in a letter to his publisher, Stanley Unwin, dated 24 February 1950, which is #124 in his collected Letters. Excerpt: