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The lord of Tolkien's words
UW professor Neil Randall has studied the fantasy writer for
years and is ready for the new wave of enthusiasm
Friday December
14, 2001
Harry Currie
RECORD STAFF
Kitchener-Waterloo
Record
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Neil Randall, a Tolkien expert, steps into the spotlight
with the release of the movie The Lord of the Rings.
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Neil Randall's journey with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of
the Rings began when he was 17 years old, and the end is nowhere in sight.
"I picked it up at the time because a lot of people
were reading it and it was recommended to me," he said in an interview.
"I didn't like fantasy per se, but I did like epic . . . stories and I'd heard good
things about it. It took me about three months to get through the first 200
pages and two days to get through the rest of it."
Now the University of Waterloo professor teaches and researches Tolkien's works, as well as fantasy literature, Canadian literature and, predominantly, human-computer
interaction and multimedia design.
"I was enthralled by The Lord of the Rings,"
said Randall, "and I probably read it a couple of times while I went
through university, and from that point I've been reading it ever
since."
That adds up to approximately 40 times, plus all the
supplementary material at least once, and in the case of some books, two or three times.
Randall has also seen an advanced
screening of the movie The Lord of the Rings and is sure he'll see it many
more times. The movie is in theatres Wednesday.
"Although it's associated very strongly with the
'60s, it's really very anti-'60s in a number of ways," he said.
"People then weren't questioning good and evil, and this was a pure sort of story
and that's what I really fell into."
Randall feels that Tolkien is all over the map as a writer.
"He ranges from being lyrically beautiful to being
pompously New Testament," he said, "and the most
important things in the book -- the big decisions -- are
conveyed in one-syllable words. John Milton did this in Paradise Lost. Tolkien has a very strong command of the
language, and this allows him to play, as the book goes on, with an older style that
is reminiscent of Renaissance, pre-Renaissance and even back into New Testament translation. This often confuses
people."
Over the years much has been written about the allegory
and symbolism of The Lord of the Rings, and, as usual, most of this is the
interpretation of academic writers.
"According to Tolkien he was just trying to tell a
story," said Randall. "He maintained this in one of the rare
interviews he gave, and he states this in the forward to the book. Many writers state that they are
just writing for themselves, and though that's
not really true in most cases, I think it is for Tolkien. He wrote and
created this mythological world just because he liked doing it."
Tolkien's created world allowed the author to escape from
the follies of the real world, and this world of his mind was one which he
could control, unlike the disastrous direction he perceived of reality.
"The Lord of the Rings is really about the Quest --
about the meek inheriting the earth," said Randall.
"You have this weak central character who takes on this quest which is
way over his head, and the quest is against ultimate evil, so it's sort of like the
responsibility we all have as human beings to do everything we can to save
and protect one another for the greater good."
Randall feels this is the essence of The Lord of the
Rings.
"There is no sense in that book of any other type of gain,"
he said. "It's all about high morality."
Born in 1892, Tolkien would have been 11 when the Wright Brothers first flight was made, and the automobile was
already making serious inroads against the horse and buggy. As he matured, he
feared the mechanization and industrialization of the world.
"This wasn't unusual among British artists of the
time," said Randall. "There are all kinds of references in Tolkien about big machines being bad, and
he picked up a lot from Dickens about how bad things were as we became more
industrialized. Tolkien didn't like new anything.
"He liked the stuff that was there, that was old,
that was entrenched -- being surrounded by trees that had been there forever
-- that sort of thing. He hated any attempt to remake the world. That's why
he stuck with old-fashioned mythology and old styles of good rather than the
more relative sense of good and evil that came about with the approach
of modern times."
All of the characters and creatures in The Lord of the
Rings are clearly identified as good or evil except for one.
"There's this marvellous creature called
Gollum," said Randall.
"He's probably the only grey-area character in the book, and he becomes so much more
dramatic because of that. He does ostensibly bad things, but we're forced to
understand him, and that does a lot for the story."
In some ways Randall's philosophy echoes that of Tolkien, for in his
research into human-computer interaction he is developing technology interfaces which are designed to
make computers two-way communicative systems rather than just tools to be
used.
"Until we accomplish this," he said,
"computers will always be unwieldy."
How does the new film of The Lord of the Rings compare
to the book?
"I've seen it once already and I'll probably see it a
couple of more times in the theatres," said Randall. "When it comes out on DVD I'll probably watch it every
couple of weeks."
That seems to say it all.
Randall is currently considering a
semi-academic book project about Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, of which he is an unabashed fan.
Tolkien for the new millennium, perhaps?
Editor's note: Neil Randall has also written extensively about
rock music, serving as The Record's album
reviewer for several years during the late '80s. In addition, he writes
extensively about video and computer games and his reviews
are published in a number of specialty magazines across Canada and the United States.
Be sure to check Saturday's Perspectives section for Randall's commentary on how The Lord of
the Rings has become imbedded in our literature and culture. And look for his
review of the movie in Wednesday's paper, the day the film opens.
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