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by BonitaPersona
875 days ago
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Also, the intentionality of it being a designed world. Some implicit features are intentionally designed to be messages themselves. For example, the point of there being close to no technological advance in thousand of years is intentional: 1. Saruman's plan consists on mass industrialization. Beginning in Isengard, but at the end of the books projected even further: globalized. And he is one of the villains! 2. During the millenia that technology hasn't advanced, the elves did rule. Other than the disaster caused by the villains of the story, Tolkien intentionally made the elves not need such technological advance. They had no incentives to, they had enough. Same with the rest of the races. Those are two are messages Tolkien is telling to the reader. Shallowly described by me, of course. I also understand this as the reason for the worldbuilding to be so limited and sparse. The world that we find is enough for his vision and messages to get across, and adding anything more would make it repetitive or distracting. |
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We only get a hint in the stories that Middle-Earth is only one slice of the world at large. Mordor only seems to have diplomatic access to the states and countries outside of Middle-Earth. And he invites their armies to join with his to plunder this resource-rich and relatively undefended realm.
But there is scarcely any mention of these other countries even in the Silmarillion and the other short stories since. They didn't need much detail because the story takes place around the small people standing against the forces arrayed around them.
It's very intentional. Painfully so sometimes, which makes it a bit of a challenging work to enjoy.
When it comes to world-building for telling stories, it seems like "simulating," is a time consuming and possibly fruitless endeavour. Fiction is fiction. Coming up with the salient histories and facts to give your story a sense of time and place is an intentional, designed artifact... and you only need enough to get the point across!