Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza

So this thread was originally posted forever ago and sadly it has been lost but... lets revive it it's a good thread to be on here. Also I've had more time to sit and think on it and expand my initial points thanks to the little bit of discussion that was had in the first one.

CW: Homophobia, Suicide mention (especially in the article)

I found a fantastic article, that covers a lot of what I'm going to say in a lot more detail you are welcome to read it in full HERE Queer readings of The Lord of the Rings are not accidents by Molly Ostertag.

It dives into it quite quickly really, and that is that there are a lot of male/male relationships explored, most are things like mentor and student, equals in battle, friends from different races that shouldn't be and then there is Frodo and Sam.

These two were of so much M/M slash and lemon back when the LOTR first came out and back before LGBTQA+ was considered acceptable in Canada. It wasn't illegal but even in Canada you couldn't have a homosexual marriage until 2005, the US was almost a full decade later and Australia followed two years later. This was perhaps my first real dive into homosexual anything as a child - I grew up in a town where to this day our government representative thinks it's okay to torture LGBTQA+ people and publicly voted to allow conversion therapy to be excluded from the criminal code. So growing up there was understandably not a lot of representation to understand myself as a pansexual person the very first representation that I can think of that wasn't satirical that was generally accept by everyone... was Frodo and Sam.

Nobody questioned it it's just how it was, did it make strict conservatives where I grew up uncomfortable? Absolutely. Did it make me happy and I didn't know why as someone living in the kitchen cupboard? Also absolutely. I went and I reread the books and it was all there, all of it was still there, this wasn't some added bonus message that was being pushed for the 21st century, it was in the original.

Why is it breadcrumbs though? How is it able to be read as anything else?

I think perhaps this is in the world that Tolkien grew up in, and wrote in. It was highly dangerous for a gay man to admit to ANY sort of homosexuality in his era. In fact it only became 'legal in your own home' 5 years before Tolkien passed away, and yet there were examples of homosexual men all about him, and he seemed very much to be a proponent FOR the loving who one wanted to love.

Where do we see this? In Tolkiens own wording ' A small creature defending its mate', how often they kiss, how often Sam states that he loves Frodo, Frodo telling Sam he should move in with Rosy into Bag End (which is a possible nod towards Polyamorous relationships) Sams heart ache at Frodo leaving for the West, and his eventual journey there as well to his treasure. This is in his books, but we also see it in books and authors he supports and helps to publish including W.H. Auden an openly gay poet, Mary Renault who he taught and was published writings with same sex relationships in ancient greece while being in a relationship with another woman, as well as Geoffrey Bache Smith a friend of Tolkien who was killed in the War but whose poetry is considered homoromantic by current standards. In his later writings to people back and forth you see him even making mention of strange happenings of elves that do not find 'mates' meaning that what he wrote and was published later by Christopher about the female and male side of elves spirits wasn't always an end all and be all (perhaps even eluding to Gimili and Legolas being more than friends with Gimli being accorded a place on a ship to Aman)

We also see it in other words he choses to use including queer and fairy - both of which were the terms in use for gay men during the time he was writing and creating both the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, now could he be open about it entire? No, that would be a death sentence and Tolkien would undoubtedly know about affairs in the world like Commanding officers committing suicide to avoid the same of going home because their letters containing homosexual relationship details in them had been caught and they were going to be sent through trial. Turing was on trial two years before Fellowship of the Ring was released and he committed suicide from the sentence shortly before it was released. So wording and coding would have been very much needed to keep Tolkien safe from similar even as attitudes started to change. At no point does Tolkien ever vehemently speak against it. Whereas other members of his group (CS Lewis) are very much seen as anti LGBTQA+ and this reads very much in how their stories are presented. There is no seeing yourself in Lewis' books when you read them if you are not Heterocis - most books in fact do not allow for that. So to find Tolkiens writing very much has that aspect to it that one can see oneself in it certainly rails against the standard perception that 'Tolkien was a God fearing Cathloic that didn't accept diversity'.

Hi @I Said What I Said, its a shame this thread does not get any traction. When you posted the first time I went off topic with my wild ideas of The Hobbit as queer theory and so on. I'll leave that now. But I do think the post by @Vorondir on the 'Mastery' thread has some relevance to thinking about the same sex relationships in LOTR, not incompatible with what you say but showing how such relationships are different at different moments in history.

Yes well I have to admit I'm note entirely surprised @Chrysophylax Dives I did enjoy your wild Hobbit queer theory as well though. And I saw the post by @Vorondir and quite enjoyed reading it. And definitely something to think about in relation to this thread. (Personally I'd say feel free to re-add your The Hobbit Queer theory.

@Chrysophylax Dives and @I Said What I Said, thank you for noticing my post! I think you already know most of the things I have to say

I think sexuality is largely absent from the Lord of the Rings, but romance is unusually strong and ubiquitous.

Tolkien seems to be mostly preoccupied with presenting fiction that feels authentic, and he does this by using tropes that are historically authentic, such as the officer-batman type relationship between Frodo and Sam or the comrades-in-arms platonic love between Legolas and Gimli--incidentally, both types of relationships that have often historically sheltered homosexual male love. The only thing that seems to distinguish heterosexual relationships, such as those between Aragorn and Arwen or Beren and Luthien, is that the men in those stories seem to be instantly smitten--a sort love-at-first-sight scenario--but even that is still more historical trope than anything else.

The only thing I can say for certain is that Tolkien strikes me as a very sensitive man who deeply appreciates human connection. I also think that, in his life, he was able to explore a type of heartfelt male camaraderie, free from machismo (that, post - world war one, seems to have gradually gone extinct). I don't know how accepting he would have been of alternative lifestyles but I sure like to imagine that, based on the depth of affection he explored in these books, he would have been kind and respectful.

I do wonder @Vorondir to what extent the historical trope you name in the masculine (and potentially queer!) romances could be distinguished from a genre or literary trope in the heterosexual relationships. I don't have as clear a connection for Beren and Luthien or Aragorn and Arwen -- although love at first site is certainly a trope we're all familiar with -- but Aragorn's relationship with Eowyn, actually, or lack thereof, has always reminded me in some degree of the relationship between Aeneas and Dido as Virgil describes it in The Aeneid.

Now, maybe I'm looking at the wrong end of Europe for Tolkien's inspirations, but the quick version of Aeneas and Dido's relationship is that he washes up on the shores of recently founded Carthage (by the time Virgil is writing a classic enemy of Rome) where Dido, having fled her home after the death of her husband, is setting up a new city. She shelters him, they have a romance, and for a time things are good, but Aeneas, called on by his duty to found Rome, abandons her and Dido commits suicide.

Now, there are some differences -- Aragorn never feels love for Eowyn, at least not in the final version of the story, but nonetheless I think it's worth considering the way that that spurned / abandoned love falling into grief -- to the point of Eowyn, imo, being nearly suicidal, although not exclusively because of Aragorn -- is another example of heterosexual romances which feel more mythically patterned, as opposed to the historical foundation of Sam / Frodo and Gimli / Legolas's relationships.

This is one of the discussions that I tend to find rather difficult to engage in because there are so many ways in which one can offend or hurt others in such a discussion. I am not sure that I am doing the wise thing by posting anything here, but please let me know if I should inadvertently hurt any feelings due to my inadequate grasp of English.

When having such discussions at all, I think it it important to distinguish between a number of variant questions, that are too often conflated. E.g.

1. Did Tolkien intend X in his book?
2. Does the book allow for the reader to read X into the book?
3. Was Tolkien aware that, and did he accept, that the reader could read X into his book?
4. How did Tolkien react to X in his own life?

And the list can go on to e.g. examine the position of Roman Catholicism in England, and perhaps particularly of those who were the leading theologians of the Birmingham Oratory, and how well integrated Tolkien's personal values were with the directions of his faith on the issue of X.

I have deliberately used an “X” here, because I see the same issue with a number of discussions about paganism in Tolkien's work, so this is not just related to homosexuality.

I recall reading Molly Ostertag's article with some interest, but feeling distinctly dissatisfied with the analysis. Unfortunately, the article further muddies the discussion by conflating Tolkien and Jackson, which really doesn't help things, and which, in my view, weakens the article severely. It is a strong and fine article about representation based on applicability, which, as Tolkien tells us, “resides in the freedom of the reader”. Despite its wording, is is exclusively an exploration of item 2 on my list above.

I won't even try and begin such an analysis here at this point, but just for the fun of it, I'll add my own best guesses at the answers to my questions when taking the suggestion of a homoerotic relationship between Frodo and Sam suggested by Ostertag as my X (except for question 4, of course, which will be about homosexual people as such).

1. No, he did not.
2. Absolutely! And with me cheering it from the side
3. I cannot tell. I would consider it quite possible as he was certainly an intelligent man who did have homosexual friends, but on the other hand, Lewis somewhere points out that he sometimes overlooked the obvious.
4. He appears to have been quite relaxed with it, having, as Ostertag points out, several close friends and colleagues who were homosexual.

I cannot say for certain about the canonical ( ) views of the Catholic Church of a hundred years ago, but my impression is that it was less fiery than are the more conservative members we meet today. The Church didn't condone of homosexuality as such, but my vague impression is that it didn't exactly denounce it with the kind of fiery vigour we sometimes meet today. Tolkien, furthermore, lived in an academic world, where we could expect a greater degree of acceptance of queerness (of all kinds – not merely related to sexuality), and so would probably be, in his daily dealings with other people, even more accepting than what his faith might otherwise have dictated – he certainly did not in any way denounce or dissociate himself from his homosexual friends.

Fuin Elda wrote: ↑Fri Sep 03, 2021 1:10 am So this thread was originally posted forever ago and sadly it has been lost but... lets revive it it's a good thread to be on here. Also I've had more time to sit and think on it and expand my initial points thanks to the little bit of discussion that was had in the first one.


I found a fantastic article... there are a lot of male/male relationships explored, most are things like mentor and student, equals in battle, friends from different races that shouldn't be and then there is Frodo and Sam.

When the first version of this thread was posted I got excited and talked about the Withywhindle and the "source of all the queerness" but, to be quite honest, could not really connect with the Frodo and Sam bit. And I realised that Fuin Elda and myself were seeing LOTR a bit differently. Yesterday @Winddancer underlined Sam and Frodo as central to her early reception of LOTR and I finally got something. So this post has nothing to do with queerness, nor breadcrumbs (I still don't get what they are), and is just a sort of personal confession explaining one reason i look at the great story a bit differently from the two of you (and others).

All credit to @Boromir88, who since the start of nuplaza has been talking about the movies as key to how each one of us individually relate to the story. Mine is the tale of an oldie, reading LOTR at a tender age long ago before there ever was a movie (i think the animation came out around then, but it was not taken as 'the real thing' as the later trilogy was). Now, as i replied recently to the 'What age where you when you first read LOTR?' question, I was around 10 or 11 years. Here is a trap and a trick of these forums - because it might appear that the earlier the cooler, when the truth is that The Hobbit is for young minds and this sequel should not be attempted at so tender an age. This is my own story of underage reading trauma.

A friend of mine, in my class at school and who lived on the same road as me (but down the road on the other side - a creepy bit!) were both reading, encouraged by our teacher. the competitive element helped, and of course it was my first time reading the story (!!) but there was of course also this astonishing joy at the idea that i was like ten years old and actually reading such a mythically MASSIVE book. My mum had the three volume edition, and i finished the green and chomped through the blue. by this time i suspect my friend had given up. but then when i got to the brown volume and Minas Tirith it went all 'Verily, mayhap' and i never made it to the end of the Chief Ringwraith.

(A couple of times on here i've referred to my disappointment reading the Silmarillion a few years later - but actually, that was just a second Minas Tirith moment; as a kid i was not into that heroic/mythical style - skipped all the songs too!)

But now the window of necromancy had been opened. Because, you know, people now had me marked as 'one who has read The Lord of the Rings', and when anyone asked if that was true my courage failed me and i said 'yes' though in my heart the answer was 'no'. And i felt ashamed.

Now whatever was going on in my disturbed young psyche, to be honest, I'd don't like to dwell on overmuch. But it seems clear that a crack was opened that fostered a trauma. A few years later and at a new and much bigger school i began again, from The Long Expected Party, through the Old Forest to pause with Goldberry, and on all the way to Minas Tirith and beyond - and i finished the book (though i almost certainly ignored all the appendixes!) But, here is the rub, my new classroom was on a third floor of one wing of the school and i could never (literally) read the Stairs of Cirith Ungol and the rescue of Frodo by Sam without picturing the stairs to my classroom and the concrete and railings and bike sheds outside. Consequently, though I now read Sam and Frodo all the way to Mount Doom, my 14 year old self was too traumatised to properly read the story - which i only really entered again once they got back to the Shire!

I am a little grateful to Peter Jackson for providing alternative imagery for the Stairs of Cirith Ungol, though the truth is that today i still see my old school far more readily than the green light and grubby hobbits of the movie.

I'm not sure I've ever written about these young experiences of LOTR before. Maybe they are the breadcrumbs? But you will see, i hope, that my difficulties engaging with your post, Fuin Elda, as more generally my standing with Goldberry and discounting Sam and Frodo, is not a literary judgment but a reflection of my literary experience.

The hopeless trudge of Frodo and Sam, step by step to the cracks of Mount Doom is obviously the very heart of the story. But as a now ancient reader who perhaps attempted the story too young, I got burned and traumatised and never ever really made it past the giant spider at the top of the stairs.

So that is why on the queerness I'm looking into the house of Tom Bombadil.

:)

Fuin Elda wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 8:06 am Yes well I have to admit I'm not entirely surprised @Chrysophylax Dives. I did enjoy your wild Hobbit queer theory as well though. And I saw the post by @Vorondir and quite enjoyed reading it. And definitely something to think about in relation to this thread. (Personally I'd say feel free to re-add your The Hobbit Queer theory).

So, on Sam and Frodo I hope I have made clear that I don't feel in a position to add much. If someone says 'Frodo and Sam are gay' I go, 'well, that was certainly the direction taken in the movies and, in contrast to many other directions taken, that one never irked so, yup, makes sense to me.' But I got nothing in the way of insight, I am afraid. But with your blessing and some of my own redneck magic potion, let's start picking up some breadcrumbs on the other side of the story. Note that the following is not systematic - I have in my hands the facsimile of the 1937 first edition The Hobbit and list four 'breadcrumbs' - three at the start and one at the end (passing over several in between). Breadcrumb, in my usage here = usage of queer.

Still it is probable that Bilbo, her only son, although he looked and behaved exactly like a second edition of his solid and comfortable father, got something a bit queer in his make-up from the Took side, something that only waited for a chance to come out. (p. 13)

After a while he stepped up, and with the spike on his staff scratched a queer sign on the hobbit's beautiful green front-door. (p. 16)

"Excitable little man" said Gandalf, as they sat down again. "Gets funny queer fits, but he is one of the best, one of the best - as fierce as a dragon in a pinch." (p. 27)

Indeed Bilbo found he had lost more than spoons - he had lost his reputation. It is true that for ever after he remained an elf-friend, and had the honour of dwarves, wizards, and all such folk as ever passed that way; but he was no longer quite respectable. He was in fact held by all the hobbits of the neighbourhood to be 'queer' - except by his nephews and nieces on the Took side, but even they were not encouraged in their friendship by their elders.

I am sorry to say he did not mind. He was quite content; and the sound of the kettle on his hearth was ever after more musical than it had been even in the quiet days before the Unexpected Party. (p. 308)

@Chrysophylax Dives Am glad to have you in here again!

Yes I think part of it is that you were on a different definition of queer and then adding the breadcrumbs bit to it just confused you more I think I am quite happy to talk about other meanings being used here. But learning and discussing and talking is the best way to learn how to figure out things and sometimes after a bit of work things end up just clicking and you have a moment of clarity on the topic. So I am quite happy to learn what your perspective was, I have to admit I was far older than 10 when I was first introduced to the Hobbit or the LotR...

I personally was in grade 7 and I was introduced to the Hobbit via French class. I don't know how or why we certainly didn't read it in French, we didn't do any french translations on it... We watched the old 70's cartoon movie over two or three days and I (and only I am quite certain) was utterly captivated by it. By that point I was already very much the odd duck in the class - while I had crushes on boys I didn't have a boyfriend yet, I was over read, and under challenged at school. I was starting to write dark stories and do things that were not normal for a girl my age - quite often falling far more to the masculine side of gender spectrum in terms of what I prefered to do and read. I started reading LOTR in grade.... 9? I found it at a small book shop in the Forks Market in Winnipeg... and it was on sale (I still ahve that copy though my FotR is starting to lose pages) and I didn't even realize it was the same story line as the Hobbit until I read the hobbit and had flash backs about the horrible riddles in the dark animation and it finally clicked. By the time I was reading LOTR I was already vaguely aware I wasn't normal - we didn't have LGBTQIA anything where I was we still don't now that I've moved back I am probably the most open member of the Alphabet Mafia in town... And at the time the biggest representation I HAD of LGBTQ was Ellen DeGeneres had come out 4 years prior on the Ellen show and all of a sudden NOBODY where I lived watched that TV show because it would turn people gay so it was still very much a bad thing where I was despite it being 2001 by the time I started to read the Fellowship... I don't think in my first read through it ever came across as gay, gay friendly.

I think it took me a number of years and unlearning all of the homophobic sentiment that I was brought up in and rereading it for I can't even begin to tell you which time it was reading it that how Sam, and Frodo, and Aragorn (in a much lesser sense) And HOW they interacted with each other the men around them and the women around them at times started to click as 'hey... this isn't straight.' So that's what I mean by breadcrumbs, little hints at things that would lead you to figure something out. things that could easily be overlooked if you didn't know what you were looking for.



I think some of the quote you give using the term quite possibly lend themselves to my argument as well, I always found the Tookish side of things to be a weird way of putting things, and I will agree that Bilbo is found as not quite as respected is something that most certainly is something many especially back when the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit were written would have found the reactions of their neighbours and relations to be... Not quite as respected. That is actually if anything quite the gentle way of putting it (many of them would have been imprisoned or chemically castrated etc) but I think if one is writing in a coded format which if Tolkien did have friends that were homosexual and he wasn't the sort to overly object - he'd actually learn to use that coding even without being an ally he'd certainly use coded terms for a lot of things, and queer was certainly one of those words that got used a fair bit (I had to get my dad to help break my grandmother from using that term because she started to over use it for everything and was meaning it in a bad way) As such I think the quotes that you provided especially in the Hobbit, certainly would be breadcrumbs that one would follow towards a queer coded story.

Fuin Elda wrote: ↑Fri Apr 01, 2022 11:07 pm I think it took me a number of years and unlearning all of the homophobic sentiment that I was brought up in and rereading it for I can't even begin to tell you which time it was reading it that how Sam, and Frodo, and Aragorn (in a much lesser sense) And HOW they interacted with each other the men around them and the women around them at times started to click as 'hey... this isn't straight.' So that's what I mean by breadcrumbs, little hints at things that would lead you to figure something out. things that could easily be overlooked if you didn't know what you were looking for.

Fuin Elda,

I'm still not quite clear what you mean by 'breadcrumbs' but from what you say here I am starting to think it is something a bit similar to what I was saying about riddles on the Egg thread, where the clues can stir odd images and ideas that would not normally be said. I have an intuition that this 'hidden image' invoked by a line of a riddle has some relation to Tolkien's primary understanding of the word 'queer', which I think has to do with the nature of words and reality, the relationship between which is not nearly as 'straight' as we usually think. I don't know, but I would not be surprised if those who pioneered 'queer theory' were also aware of this linguistic side. In any case, it seems to me worthwhile separating here three distinct strands that are interwoven in Tolkien's storytelling:

(i) Old-fashioned values of a devout Roman Catholic of conservative political sympathies (generating, for example, The Hobbit with no female characters).

(ii) A profound inner tolerance and even sympathy and interest in and for almost all 'others' (Orcs seem outside the pale). I think you picked up on this in the now lost original posting in a comparison with CS Lewis - and once I read you on that I saw it to be true: Tolkien just has a wider emotional and intellectual vision and a happiness with otherness that feels to me largely absent in Lewis. (One anecdote about a 'Jew historian' in one of Tolkien's letters confirms my sense of a deeply tolerant man from another angle).

(iii) Professional study of language. Here is where we return to the riddles and the breadcrumbs and the code... It seems to me clear that Tolkien has some idea of language that relates to all these and in which 'queer' is a key term. But as I remain unable to explicate this idea, I cannot hold it up to you so you can see if or how it might relate to your own usages. (All I can do at present is what i keep doing on these threads: point people to the manifestations of this idea, primarily in The Hobbit.) My intuition, though, is that Tolkien's theory of language - and especially his chasing it down by way of Tom Bombadil and Bilbo Baggins - took him much further into 'queerness' than we would expect from (i) and even from (ii), and perhaps even than he fully acknowledged to himself.

It can be difficult sometimes to see how a different mode of looking at things both is and is not akin to one's own. I worry we may miss each other. So let me circle by quoting again from your post above:

'hey... this isn't straight.' So that's what I mean by breadcrumbs, little hints at things that would lead you to figure something out. things that could easily be overlooked if you didn't know what you were looking for.

I'm sorry if I seem to be overcomplicating what to you is first and foremost a personal statement. Your original post grabbed me first and foremost because I simply admired the bravery of the person who wrote it. On second reading it sparked all the 'queer theory' stuff I have spouted. Now I am wondering if we - the collective readers, the 'Tolkien fans' - have finally come of age to start to properly understand what Tolkien was doing.

Edit. I've been turning this around and around in my head since posting a couple of hours ago because I have a sense there is a disagreement somewhere between us that I am missing or obscuring. Maybe on the idea of a 'code'?

So breadcrumbs in this case are very much akin to Hansel and Gretel in terms of what they are. They are small clues that can lead you to a conclusion or destination. They are easy to miss/wash away/get eaten because that's the trick with them you do want them to be JUST visible enough you can see them or someone that knows can see them but not so obvious that someone dangerous could as well.

In this case the LGBTQIA+ community is very likely to see the breadcrumbs, and sometimes not even realize that they've seen them. I didn't fully pick up on them until my mid twenties when I was fully immersed in the LGBTQIA+ culture because where I grew up was EXTREMELY homophobic. It still is homophobic but not to the same degree. People my age are starting to be more visible and the older generation tends to be getting told off more often. My parents wouldn't read LOTR and see anything LGBTQIA+ friendly in it just as I think a good number of members of the plaza wouldn't have seen it yourself included! You went of on a fantastic other tangent that is amazing and I will totally admit sort of proved my point in that they are breadcrumbs but it also proves that a lot of people come from different places and catch different meanings.



That is also part of the post that is no longer in existence the difference between Tolkien and Lewis. Tolkiens words are very much open, there are no truly strict 'THIS race is pure evil' when it comes to most races (orcs,goblins,trolls and dragons being the exception really. Are there evil men? Yes. Are their good men? Yes. Is it possible that some of the 'evil' men aren't really evil it's just a case of they were raised by parents that have only ever really existed under Saurons control and therefore they have become a product of environmental factors like some of those people that I speak of where I live? They aren't good allies, they do horrible things/say horrible things but is it because they really mean it or because it is what they know and they don't know better?

Over all I really find Tolkiens wording to be more inclusive and adaptable where Lewis comes across - and this is possibly due to the Christian allegory that he beats us over the head with- anti inclusive. He has black and white there is no grey shades in which a person might find themselves able to see the good and the bad in a character (Edmund? I think is the closest we see we don't see this struggle in any really adult character. Adults are black and white. Where as we see the duality of good and evil and that it doesn't always make a person evil in almost every single race in LOTR. Lobelia for example as a hobbit, The elves have plenty, Turin is another such example where nothing is set there is room for interpretation