The Hobbit

Proceeding with my own quest in exploring fantasy literature for a feasible topic to work on, I joined Bilbo Baggins on his quest for the dwarves’ lost treasure. I had read the The Lord of the Rings trilogy partially. That means I have read about one half of the three volumes taken together and didn’t quite finish it. So, I already had an insight into Middle Earth.

Bilbo Baggins, an unlikely hero of this tale is reluctant to accompany the dwarves but the plot has to proceed with him rather than without him and so, begins the journey. Tolkien’s writing is lucid enough but, at times, I do feel he could have cut down on things. But then when you are creating a whole new world, I guess that’s bound to be difficult, almost impossible. So, I hung on to the book and closed it with a satisfied smile in the end.

The narrator talking to the reader all throughout the book is common in children’s literature, I guess. Lewis Carroll did it and so did C S Lewis. But that doesn’t lessen its appeal in any sense to adults. (whatever or whoever they may be.) Tolkien’s simple, lucid style which never deteriorates into moralizing teaches a lot of lessons while pretending not to teach at all.

The world he creates begins with Bag end where the Hobbit lives comfortably in a hole in the ground. Then we travel to the mighty Misty Mountains, then through Mirkwood and, finally, to the Lonely Mountains. The journey itself is filled with adventures and what follows in the end is merely an additional adventure. Nonetheless, it’s a journey that will stay imprinted in your mind for times to come. It began in 1937 and it still continues…

The Word for the World is Forest

Published in 1972 as a novella/extended short story, it unfolds on a planet situated 27 years away from Earth/Terra. Part of Le Guin’s Hainish novels, I find it an interesting take on the tendency of ecological destruction that seems ingrained in many of us present day Terrans. After having destroyed the ecology of their own planet with only some wild rats left as the sole animals and all forests destroyed, the Terrans are colonizing what they call New Tahiti but which the natives of the planet call Athshe which means forest and, hence, the title (which wasn’t actually the author’s idea it seems. Who knows?)

I like the contrasting ecological depictions in her fantasy and SF works. In her Fantasy works, we find a society harmonized with nature. The fantastic world values the nature and its magic to a certain extent. It doesn’t seek to dominate it. (There may be other pressing concerns in their lives I guess.) The economy of nature foregrounds the events, may it be the Uplands depicted in Gifts or the Marsh People of Gavir’s village found in Powers. In Earthsea, the dependence on nature is much more apparent.

In her SF works, as the novels proceed, so does the technology move apace with time. The ansible arrives in New Tahiti and with it comes a change in the policy of the mindless ecological destruction that the current regime in New Tahiti had let loose. The colonization of Athshe brings to mind the colonization of Australia way back when. Australia, an island cut off from the invading colonisers of Europe for so long, had flourished with most species endemic to that piece of land alone. Marsupials did not originate in Australia but flourished there more than anywhere else.

However, with the colonizers arrived their own animals which wreaked havoc on the delicate ecological balance of that island. The hunter-gatherer stage was an important event in the so called progress of human civilization but hunting was for satisfying hunger not for recreation. Over time and with more ‘progress’, hunting metamorphosed from an activity for survival to a sport for recreation. The colonizers brought their own game from their native lands into Australia since such game was lacking there. With new plant and animal species introduced into a land where they were immune to the native diseases, these flourished, slowly devouring the natives. (Australia is just an example, it happened elsewhere as well.)

Moving from the hunter gatherer economy into an agricultural economy, we were no longer dependent directly on forests for our survival. Quite the contrary, I guess. We hunted animals in the forests where they thrived and as a consequence didn’t harm the forests but with agriculture that dependence dissolved. Even today, we have tribals subsisting in the hunter gatherer stage where studies have shown that they follow a system of restraints which ensures that the forests are replenished through various restrictions that the hunters impose upon hunting and gathering activities.

Coming to our own recent history on earth, the colonizers were simply invading New Lands and bringing civilization to the uncivilized in their eyes. On Athshe, it was a whole planet getting a crash course in civilization. Le Guin gives a new meaning to racism, where on Athshe all Terrans (irrespective of race) come together to wipe out another species. In spite of scientific proof that these native inhabitants are humans, the Terrans(at least the majority) refuse to acknowledge it treating them as animals. (But they don’t mind raping animals.) The size and the fur add to their outlook of creechies being animals.

Athshe was being depleted of its forests for the lumber which was needed on Terra. Doesn’t this deforestation bring back memories of the large scale deforestation undertaken by the colonizers in the colonies? It was the colonized timber that built their invading ships.

It is the blinding sense of their own superiority that leads to the Terran downfall. You cannot really expect animals to revolt now, can you? Here is where the history of Athshe diverges from that of Earth in the last century. The Athsheians successfully revolted and led civilization back into spaceships bound for home, never to return for a long time to come. They did leave knowledge of violence on the peaceful planet. It was an irrevocable knowledge which Selver regretted to have acquired. He was the one who dreamt of war and it ate into him bit by bit. But the Athsheians are left alone to their own way of life more or less.

The colonies on earth weren’t so successful. Even after the colonizers withdrew, they left behind their mindset. In settler colonies, the natives were more or less destroyed. The Aborigines of Australia, the Indians of North America…

Athshe seems to be the fulfilment of a history that could have been ours.

Gifts - The First Novel in The Annals of the Western Shore Trilogy

It was in August last year that I read this book for the first time. Ursula K Le Guin is an author I had wanted to read ever since I did a course in Science Fiction and Fantasy in my Post Grad class more than a year ago. Books by not so popular authors are hard to find in India. (Not so popular in India I mean!) The book that was mentioned in class was The Left Hand of Darkness (chiefly for the gender issues that it deals with) and of course her Earthsea Trilogy which later became 5 books.

Browsing in Landmark , one of the only two bookstores in Pune where I have found Le Guin books, I happened to find Gifts in the Children’s books section. I hadn’t really looked up Le Guin earlier, so I didn’t know anything about her books except a couple of titles by her. But then I have always believed that when you are meant to read a book ,you will find it when the time is right. Plus I avoid looking up about authors and their works before reading the book itself to avoid any prejudice that I might develop. So I picked up Gifts and began reading it immediately. Fantasy was a genre I hadn’t delved into deeply for some reason. Harry Potter was the farthest I had got in school and now when I look back at those days I wonder why it took me so long to plunge in to the world of fantasy. Now, after six months of living in that world, it seems like I always belonged there.

Gifts was my first book when I got back to fantasy and since then I haven’t stopped. Introducing the readers to the Western Shore, we are told the story of the people of the Uplands who inherit gifts in their lineage. The gifts vary in different domains and are passed on from father-son and mother-daughter. Through, Orrec Caspro, the young narrator, son of the brantor of Caspromant, Le Guin weaves a story that draws you into the lives of the people of the Uplands and their gifts. The domains are mostly in conflict and the gifts are used to protect one’s domain. Set in a natural landscape ravaged by poverty, the domains struggle to survive through stealing livestock, farming, etc. Orrec, the main character, surfaces in the next two parts of the trilogy in smaller roles.

The subtlety of her writing is what I enjoy the most. If you don’t pay close attention you often tend to miss things. After having read her Earthsea series (later on), I would say I like the change in the framework. With Earthsea, I often felt the action was lacking. It was more her way of writing that I liked in Earthsea but here it’s not just the writing, there’s much more.

With this review, I hope to begin blogging regularly on the books I read…