J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were good friends. Tolkien often accused Lewis of making his religious allegories too obvious, and Lewis accused Tolkien of making his too subtle.
It wasn't just after his death that Nietszche's work was taken out of context by his sister. Within his lifetime Wagner was actively doing the same thing. Nietszche wrote a whole book, Nietszche Contra Wagner, trying to understand how the same person can write such wonderful operas and also be such a detestible anti-semite. Later, Hitler adopted Nietszche's Ubermench (from Thus Spoke Zarathustra) and other imagery, using edited versions that destroy the real meaning. For example, the part where he says the antisemites should get out of Germany was removed from (I think) The Gay Science (or was it Beyond Good and Evil? There were pretty similar books.)
@@defaultyorker6096 Radagast the Brown is a wizard in who appears briefly in The Hobbit, LOTR & The Silmarillion. Some describe him as a plot device. Originally called Aiwendil, Radagst was a Maia created from before Time who descended to Arda in order to serve the Valar.
Who the hell thinks lord of the rings was about a real world war or something else than the story itself? This is the very first time ive heard this. Weird.
Dirk Watermann Trust me mate I've heard tons of people online or in reviews about Tolkien's work that it was a metaphor. And yeah, they're wrong, cause it isn't. It's High Fantasy and that's it.
Dirk Watermann I never thought of LOTR as an allegory for anything, really. He wanted to create a mythology and did so brilliantly. That said, there are some clear parallels with Tolkien's personal experiences in the First World War. NOT allegories, more along the lines of translations. (Even the four hobbits.) There is an excellent book on the subject called Tolkien's World War. I recommend it.
Idk I'm not really convinced that Lotr wasn't an allegory. Just looking at the map between middle earth and valinor looks like Europe and America. The fact that the shire is north west of middle earth like England is to Europe can't be coincidence. The books are full of symbolism.
Nathan Brinkerhoff Those things don't make it allegorical. If it were an allegory, it would mean that he was telling one story to represent another (real) one. You're right about the maps, they are very similar, but that doesn't mean that he meant it to BE that. He just used maps of places he was familiar with. Valinor does not equal America, etc. You're also correct about symbols. They're everywhere. The trouble is that people decide to interpret them in their own particular way. Often that's fine, but sometimes in stories things really are what we are told they are. One can cite sources of inspiration without applying the whole source to the work it inspired.
This is a nice demonstration of how the artist, once he has placed his/her work into the public eye, has zero control over how that art is interpreted. It's fine to discuss intent, but different people are going to see different things.
Nice video. Except for the comment about The Prince being a satire. Machiavelli wrote the Prince as a means to get into the good books of the Medici family after they had returned from obscurity after a popular uprising. He wrote The Prince as a guide to impress them with his expertise after he had been second chancellor of the republic for a number of years and a roving ambassador but because of his support for the uprising he had fallen from grace. He also wrote the discourses on the decade of Livy (within which there is a reference to Machiavelli writing a small, serious book about how a Prince should conduct himself I.e, the first mention of 'The Prince' as a serious study) as a means of talking about how to organise a republic inc. creating a citizen militia which Macheivelli had run when he was second chancellor and which he felt was crucial to a republic that was often at the mercy of Italy's constant inter-city Wars fomented by mercenaries who made money from the chaos. It was in no way a satire. There wasn't much of a sense of humour at that time in Florence. It was basically a job application.
dasuberkaiser6 At least what the video wants you to believe, nothing he said was definitive, especially The Prince. Also if what he said was true we shouldn’t be listening to him spoon-feed us information and dumbing us down.
The Chronicles of Narnia were subtle about one thing: Each book is based on on of the planets from medieval cosmology. The Lion..., Jupiter. Prince Caspian, Mars. ...Dawn Treader, the Sun. The Silver Chair, the Moon. A Horse and His Boy, Mercury. The Magician's Nephew, Venus. The Final Battle, Saturn. Check out the book Planet Narnia; it also goes into the Space Trilogy and the very long poem Lewis wrote about the medieval planets.
New title: Misconceptions about 10 books made by people who haven’t actually read the books but everyone who has read the books knows: I still get some wrong.”
Perhaps a better way to describe it is as celebrating chivalry? In other words, Quixote's yearning for chivalry and honor is seen as a noble goal, whereas it's intended to make Quixote the buffoon for thinking such a thing?
Nobody thought Don Quixote was meant to make knights look cool, for one thing. And I always thought the most common read on LotR as allegory was as of the industrial revolution, and rural, pastoral life being wiped out by mechanization and exploitation. The WWII thing seems like a bit of a stretch. I mean, Tolkien's British, too. Isn't it only Americans who think that America swooped in and saved the day, and won WWII?
Well, Churchill certainly thought so while it was happening. He said the night after Pearl Harbor was the easiest he'd slept in two years because he knew Hitler's defeat was now certain. (Almost no one in the West expected the USSR to recover and fight back as successfully as it did.)
The Prince isn't satire. It's more of a practical, amoral guide that is entirely counter to the author's views but nevertheless effective. Machiavelli essentially separated his morality and political views from his logic and put himself in the shoes of a despot.
Noooooope, it's not really about effectiveness at all. It's more like "This is what makes sense for the current rules, it's utterly despicable and that's why we should be against them."
Perhaps a better way to describe it is as satire that was nevertheless effective if taken literally. I mean, you can say "It is better to be feared than loved" and then launch into a long argument that that is the case. Perhaps you're hoping to shock people, so that they say, "Isn't that terrible and immoral? I hope this convinces leaders to pursue being loved by the people," but don't be surprised when your logical argument for "feared" does work.
The prevailing opinion about The Prince by actual scholars is that it was not a satire. There are some scholars, like Rousseau, who believe that it is, but they are in the minority. The general consensus is that it was something between pragmatism and a sort of job application. On one hand, the Medicis removed him from the sphere of political influence, which was the thing he loved the most. He very much wanted to be involved with government again, and it's not surprising that he would dedicate a book about ruling through dictatorship to the new dictators of the country in order to try to accomplish this. In terms of pragmatism, the other part of it is that although Machiavelli may have actually believed that democracy was a superior form of government, he still realized that the reality of the world is that sometimes you get dictators. For him to write a book that says "This is the best way to rule as a dictator" doesn't imply that he agrees with this form of government, it simply means he's trying to lay out the best way to achieve a stable dictatorship, so that the suffering of the people is at least minimized. When dictatorships are tumultuous and power is constantly shifting hands, it means common people die by the thousands. Given that he WAS a supporter of republicanism, wouldn't he want to advise his dictators to rule in a way that would benefit the populace most?
Tom Bombadil was most likely a leftover from an earlier draft that Tolkien was so attached to that he couldn't bear to cut him out... even though he was completely out of place and WAY off-topic in the story. Tolkien apparently tried cold-writing LOTR from the beginning over and over again, instead of plotting out the direction it was going to go first. As a result, there were a lot of versions of the BEGINNING of the story that were just abandoned. Tom probably belonged in one of THOSE versions.
Wow... you're wrong about Frankenstein. To start with, it was not 'written' as part of a contest between Shelley, her husband, and Byron (others may have been there as well and even the relationship between Shelley and her 'husband' is questionable at the time since there's some belief that they were not married at the time). For one, it was a game in order to pass a boring summer that was freezing due to the eruption of Mount Tambora (I could be wrong on the spelling of the volcano). Secondly, during that summer, she basically conceived a short story that would eventually become Frankenstein by the time it got published three years later. Interestingly enough, during that summer, Byron also conceived the idea that would eventually create our view of vampires though he himself didn't write the book The Vampyr. Finally, according to the introduction SHELLY HERSELF put into the 1831 copy of the book, "Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world." But I guess it's not about play god...
Talks about Don Quixote, fails to mention the major point of the plot "Tilting at windmills" i.e. a foolish quest for meaningless glory fought against imaginary foes.
One of your better videos, gentleman. One thing though, You seem to think that Socialism and Communism are the very same thing. Or, close enough that a Socialist like Orwell would think that Communism is peachy keen. In a video about misunderstandings, you've commit the very same sin yourselves. There are very much important differences between the two. Important enough that many Socialists are rabidly opposed to Communism. And Orwell was no exception.
NGMonocrom - Tough to say that Orwell was entirely against communism considering Animal Farm puts both Lenin and Trotsky in a positive light. He was entirely against Stalinism, though, and that is abundantly clear by his works. I guess it really comes down to whether you're using communism in the loose sense or specifically referring to the type of communism the world saw develop post-war.
+writerpatrick Sorry but no, it wasn't. And that's coming from someone who was born into it. Dad made the mistake of openly telling a neighbor he wished the government did a slightly better job of taking care of its people than it had been doing. Another neighbor overheard, and turned him in. Since dad had a habit of forgetting that American 1st Amendment rights don't exist in the Soviet union, they gave him 15 years. Keep in mind, in a Soviet prison. Where prisoners are beaten and tortured on a regular basis. Well, after his sentence was up, it turned out they failed to break him. So they exiled him. We went with him. In an actual Socialist society that type of crap doesn't happen. Citizens don't live as slaves in every way but name. The former Soviet Union was nothing like a Socialist nation.
Orwell is a recognized Socialist. No one refers to him as a Communist. Again, there are clear differences. Also, "Animal Farm" highlighted the dangers of how power can corrupt, utterly. This is regardless of whose in charge. Although the ending was unrealistic, a good part of the book was a cautionary tale. One that easily applies to anyone who gets real power. Not just Stalin.
Or there's the idea that Catcher In the Rye isn't a story about childhood angst, but really it was a way for J.D. Salinger to cope with what he saw in WWII. In interviews, Salinger often said that he got his points off better by writing instead of speaking, and after he fought in some of the bloodiest American battles of the war (Hurtgen Forest), he wanted a way to cope with that loss. Holden's brother's death is the war, and the desire to go back to childhood for Holden is Salinger's desire for life to go back to the peace and happiness that it was before the war.
You've kinda missed one out. According to Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club isn't about lashing out against the demasculinization and commoditization of men in 90's America. It's actually about "a man getting to the point where he can commit to a woman."
Books are art, no matter the intention of the author, it is the reader's view and feeling that come through for them that matters. Books like 1984, Frankenstien and Fahrenheit 451 may have been written with different purposes and those porposes are there but so are other themes that reach people. Art is subjective to the viewer.
Yes, yes, yes!! So glad you brought up that bit about the Lord of The Rings! I get really irritated when people say it's a metaphor for WWI/II. Cause it's really not, it's a timeless high fantasy story. Simple as.
I think it's easy to suggest that something is an allegory for ww2 because honestly that whole thing was just strait out of an ancient poem or something. It was literally a big bad guy trying to take over the world.
Wait, aren't socialism and communism two different political ideologies? Yeah, they sit on the same side of the political spectrum, but communism is further left, is it not?
They are definitively the same ideology. Socialism: "a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole." Communism: "a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs." tl;dr, the "community" and "public" are one and the same.
just a quick reminder that socialism is supposed to be the way to communism. So communism is more of a utopia where everyone is equal and all that while socialism is the tool to establish it.
Socialism in a political ideology, Communism is an economic system. They're often associated because socialism is the political system best suited to the communist economic system - in theory anyway. Most communist countries that get labeled 'socialist' are actually totalitarian, and most socialist countries have thriving capitalist economies.
There has only been 1 actual communist system of government in the world ever, and that is North Korea, and even they recently (quietly) removed the word communism from their manifesto. Russia was never communist. it was just the goal.
jedaaa I'm pretty sure North Korea was never actually communist either. It's an impossible ideal. It may have been their long term intention, but they never got there.
Sometimes stories can parallel and allegorize aspects of reality outside writes intention. Story has a life of its own, there is objective interoperation yes, but all art has subjective room for context based change over time and each individuals personal connection to a story.... both are relevant.
How is The Prince satire? It doesn't read like satire. And, when you consider the historical context, Machiavelli is far less extreme than he appears. He lived in a violent period, and compared to what was considered normal back then, The Prince is almost moderate.
Lord of the Flies was written as a response to a book that covered the same scenario but positively (British Schoolboys abandoned on a island and make a utopia, as opposed to a dystopia). The Coral island was all about the 'civilising effect of Christianity' and the 'importance of heirarchy and leadership', and Lord Of The Flies was written to be its polar opposite.
Almost all of my college English class did not know "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" was a Christian allegory, and when my teacher told us, they were all astounded... They had no clue, and she had to explain it. This was a college in the Bible belt.
Tolkien may have refuted those claims, but if you think that his experience in the war didn't directly influence parts of the book like the Dead Marshes, then you're having a laugh.
There is an argument to be made that the Battle of the Five Armies was an allegory for World War 1, where every side has a weird claim to the treasure, they spend a bunch of time grinding each other down to the nub, and then the Eagles come in and wreck faces. It makes a little more sense than LOTR being about WWII.
You forgot St. Thomas Aquinas' "Utopia", which everyone thinks is a recipe for the perfect society, but, like Gulliver's Travels", is a cutting critique of where society was headed at his time.
OOI, Tom Bombadil was Tolkien's version of The Green Man, from English folklore. And it was World War ONE that Tolkien served in, not World War TWO. He certainly drew upon his experiences of the war, but - yes - there was no actual allegory intended. xx
You are right Tolkien was not writing about World War II as it was published in 1937. It is however undeniably influenced by his experience as a soilder in WWI.
Frankenstein being about taking responsibility for your own actions only applies to the original version. The version that Shelly rewrote, & released towards the end of her life removes that theme entirely, and replaces it with "fate is going to fuck you up no matter what you do" instead
Would like to point out, from entry 3, that communism and socalism are different things. Easily explained in that scotland prides it's self on being a primaraly socalist state and is most deffinatly not communist. You're use of language on this entry could do with a tweak, in this instance you could even make a point that Orwell was pro socialism and anti communism, as his publications clearly describe how the best intentions of communism,which are also the morals behind socialism, are sound but once this morphs into a communist state of governance these ideals are warped and manipulated and the public dosen't seem to notice 9/10 times.
Really there's no one definition of either, there's a huge variety of movements and theories that have been described as either or both. however, Orwell was definitely a critic of *Soviet* communism.
I've never understood that, either, I loved Tom Bombadill. I think, tbh, people don't like that they can't file him under a nice, neat category; most people seem to hate that. But he is quite properly chaotically folkloric and I appreciate that. Jar Jar Binks...? No comment. Wouldn't be fair, b/c the movie as a whole irritated the heck out of me, coloring my view of the character.
What an awesome video! Although (and someone might have already pointed it out earlier) whether or not the Prince is meant to be a satire is still very much an open debate among academics.
Really? Some1 sayed that Lord of the Ring is about WW2? Never heard that before. This book is about civilization progress. Elf, humans, dwarfs are traditions, environment care etc. They fight against mechanization, industry, pollution and megacorporation lust of power symbolized by Sauron and orcs.
No its not. Tolkien explicitly said that the book isn't allegorical of anything. Regardless, even if it was allegorical, your allegories fall flat a ton. The Dwarfs are super technological and industrial and the books make a strong point in emphasizing how Dwarfs were best at crafting armaments for war.
He did say in the Hobbit that the goblins (orcs) were the best at inventing clever devices for killing lots of people in one go. And the Dwarves' greed was a fatal flaw, corresponding to the Elves' pride.
OK, this is a list not for those, who misread these books, but for those, who actually never read them, but just heard about them... It's obvious what they are and what they are not about, if you read them...
Yes Don Quixote is kind of a satire about people who still believe in knights and chivalry etc. BUT it's also a satire of the people trying to "cure" Quijana, who in his madness, takes on a curious and poignant nobility
Yep about the Prince. Machiavelli wrote it at a time when there were lots of people trying to write books about how to rule, based on the works of Livy. The goal for centuries after Rome fell was to recreate the Roman empire--somehow. And Livy's history of Rome was the Bible of this movement.
"Don Quixote" is basically just an old version of "that stuff will rot your brain", in this case, I think it's not just a jab at knightly literature (though the text itself makes that pretty darned clear), but also of the printing press, that made such literary fads possible ... a century or so later, fantastical travelogues would be all the vogue (Gulliver's Travels and the like), and then the Western (just as the Frontier was considered "closed".) Now it's space sagas, and mutated humans ....
This was a really good video. I've read The Prince, but I didn't realize it was intended as satire of what is commonly considered Machiavellianism. But at the same time, I didn't read it as endorsing "Machiavellianism" in the first place. The book seemed to place notable emphasis on the fact that enemies are more expensive than allies. I read the book as a straightforward instructional text, because I found credibility in how it seemed acutely aware that even if you're motivated purely by rational self-interest, it's still a bad strategy to go around screwing people over when it's not completely necessary. I thought the fallacy was in assuming that Machiavelli was advocating anti-social behavior, not that he was just being insincere through and through.
You know you've binge-watched too many Whatculture videos when your mind automatically does the outro - "Hi, I'm billionaire philanthropist Not-Bruce Wayne"....
The plot of Frankenstein is NOT about taking responsibility for your own actions. it is very very very explicitly about the dangers of unchecked ambition. Frankenstein pretty much says it to Walton in the book. The Plot: * The conflict is established as being whether or not Walton can make it through the Arctic Ocean by ship. * The first turning point is meeting Dr. Frankenstein who tells a story of his own ambition to (YES) play God by creating man. * It escalates when Frankenstein reveals the result, a murderous monster set loose on the world who wants to breed. * The climax is the monster killing Frankenstein, before deciding to die in the arctic alone. * The conflict resolution is when Walton, seeing the increasing dangers of his journey as he gets further in, turns his ship around and heads back to Europe. Frankenstein's ambition was playing God. It resulted in the death of his family and himself. Walton's ambition was traveling from Europe to Asia via the Arctic ocean, and it caused misery and the death of two crew - but after Frankenstein's story he decided not to allow his own crazy ambition to determine the fate of his crew.
I suppose next you're going to tell me Wizard of Oz isn't really about early industrial age agrarian economics... or da Vinci's The Last Supper isn't really about enjoying the fine dining experience at Olive Garden
i pretty knew most of that. i kinda got lucky to find an app on appstore called Freebooks where most if not all these books are there in their original glory. when u read the eal thing, it feels so diffrent!
a) Narnia is NOT a Christian allegory. To be sure, it contains Christian elements (because that's what Lewis was interested in), as well as elements from Norse mythology, Greco-Roman mythology, Arthurian romance, and the Arabian Nights (because Lewis was interested in those too). But to call it a Christian allegory is to imply that the sole point of the story is to stand for and deliver a Christian message. The Narnia books are just too interesting, complex, and diverse to be interpreted reductively in that way. Also, Aslan himself isn't an allegory because he doesn't STAND FOR or REPRESENT the Christian God; he IS the Christian God. Lewis put the Christian God in his novel in the same way that Dumas and Maquet put historical figures like Richelieu into "The Three Musketeers." Which doesn't mean that the intent of the Narnia stories can be reduced simply to a message about the Christian God, any more than "The Three Musketeers" can be reduced simply to a message about Richelieu. (Lewis DID write a novel that IS a Christian allegory, "The Pilgrim's Regress," and it's utterly dull.) b) The interpretation of Machiavelli's "Prince" as satirical is rejected by the majority of Machiavelli scholars. There are interesting issues about how to reconcile "The Prince" with "Discourses on Livy," but the continuity between the two is too great to dismiss the former as simply a satire. c) If "Frankenstein" is not about playing God, how do we explain the subtitle? d) While Nietzsche's sister did edit many of Nietzsche's posthumous works to remove anti-racist and anti-nationalist passages, she didn't do this with "Zarathustra," which had already been published.
I think the main moment in Fahrenheit is when Monteq (i hope i wrote the name right, i've read the book not in english) and his chief have conversation about books and the chief (sorry dont remember the name, it was very long time ago) start to explain every book he see and time when it was writen, what people thought about it etc. Before this conversation we think that the Monteq's chief is just uneducated stupid person who just follows orders but we suddenly realise that he actually read ALL these books and even knows history and culture of ancient nations, but reject it's importance and Monteq is just a romantic naive person who just want to do something he wants.
It doesn't have to be, there's plenty of communal living groups throughout the world. It is, however, extremely vulnerable to corruption and power hungry dictators using it to achieve totalitarianism, so it's probably best avoided unless all humans suddenly got a hell of a lot nicer. Which I very much doubt.
JumboCod91 People who are unhappy when they win the lottery have lived under the illusion that everything would be great if they only had the money to pay for it. When they do have the money, they waste it finding out that illusion just wasn't true.
Pure communism is impossible. Ever tried to get even a small group of people to all agree on something... even something as simple as what to have for lunch? That doesn't mean socialism and communism don't have any good ideas though. As always, there are no inherently bad forms of government, or economic principles for that matter, its people that are the problem.
Only problem with that LotR entry is that JRR Tolkien penned a small series of letter outlining how the ring was an allegory for wealth and the self destructive means men will go to to have it. I’ve even heard theories that it’s an allegory for addiction but never heard this WWII shit before 🤷♂️
For Lord of the Rings, try the First World War not WW2. Though after having been in the trenches himself, Tolkien's work would have been stained by what he experienced anyway.
Author's intent does not always equal what a reader takes away from it. If '1984' and 'Animal Farm' have become to be read in such a way as to be a critique of communism, and 'Fahrenheit 451' has become to be linked to the dangers of censorship, it is not necessarily wrong that the context of the novel has grown and developed over time. Just because the author didn't intend for it to be taken that way, doesn't make it 'wrong.'
The problem with the Gulliver is the same with the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland There are so many different "versions" carrying the authors name that is hard to find each one is the original if you arent read the books.
As a kid, I always thought The Lord of the Rings was a condemnation of the over-industrialization of society and the callous disregard for nature and the planet's health. The good guys were peaceful farmers, Rangers, and wood Elves. The baddies were tree burning, air polluting monsters.
That is a massive oversimplification and just plain wrong in some respects. Aragorn was a ranger wandering in the wild because his people had fallen so far, but originally they were the most technologically advanced humans on the planet.
Lord of the rings is actually kind of a rip off of the finnish folk tale "kalevala". In Kalevala, a master blacksmith creates a device of endless riches to a witch who resides in the frozen north, but shit hits the fan after that, and then an old Wizard called "Väinämöinen" gathers a fellowship of heroes and sets on a journey to steal the device. it all ends in the device getting destroyed and peace being restored, after which the old wizard sails away never to return. Sound familiar?
Ever heard of the literature theory “death of the reader”? It comes from (I think) modernism and basically says the author’s intent is subservient to the reader’s interpretation. In other words: however you want to read it is right, to a greater or lesser extent.
A book means what, I the reader, interrupt the book to mean. Using the reference of Fahrenheit 451 comments as an example, if you tell me what the book is suppose to mean, are you not spoon feeding me the information the same as the author says TV does? If I was to interrupt Lord of the Rings as a love story, would I be wrong (I don't by the way)? We may disagree with the interpretation, but we each can interpret our own meaning based on the views of the world we each have.
I think it ironic I'm here being spoon-fed Author's intents, when one of them, you highlight, is about the dumbing down of people via a spoon-fed medium. I think I'll just stick to reading the books and deciding intent myself.
J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were good friends. Tolkien often accused Lewis of making his religious allegories too obvious, and Lewis accused Tolkien of making his too subtle.
Joke on u I have dyslexia. I've been reading everything wrong
I am not sure if he is dyslexic,but he didn't understand shit :/
Day my made you.
LOL
2 years later, this video finds my suggested, and this comment brings me joy. Have a like.
Oh. Too me.
It wasn't just after his death that Nietszche's work was taken out of context by his sister. Within his lifetime Wagner was actively doing the same thing. Nietszche wrote a whole book, Nietszche Contra Wagner, trying to understand how the same person can write such wonderful operas and also be such a detestible anti-semite.
Later, Hitler adopted Nietszche's Ubermench (from Thus Spoke Zarathustra) and other imagery, using edited versions that destroy the real meaning. For example, the part where he says the antisemites should get out of Germany was removed from (I think) The Gay Science (or was it Beyond Good and Evil? There were pretty similar books.)
Who is Tom Bombadil?
"Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow! Bright Blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow!"
That is the earliest passage that made its way into LotR - it was a poem he'd written much earlier for his son when his son was still very young.
Fan theory: Tom Bombadil is Radagast (but I haven't done much research, I may be disproven very soon). I'll let you chew on that for a while...
TB is one of the “people of the Valar” mentioned in the Silmarillion. IMO.
And his wife is a pretty lady, River-Woman's daughter. Slender as the willow wand, clearer than the water.
@@defaultyorker6096 Radagast the Brown is a wizard in who appears briefly in The Hobbit, LOTR & The Silmarillion. Some describe him as a plot device.
Originally called Aiwendil, Radagst was a Maia created from before Time who descended to Arda in order to serve the Valar.
Who the hell thinks lord of the rings was about a real world war or something else than the story itself? This is the very first time ive heard this. Weird.
Dirk Watermann Trust me mate I've heard tons of people online or in reviews about Tolkien's work that it was a metaphor. And yeah, they're wrong, cause it isn't. It's High Fantasy and that's it.
Ben Chenery exactly what i was thinking. People tend to overanalize things
Dirk Watermann I never thought of LOTR as an allegory for anything, really. He wanted to create a mythology and did so brilliantly. That said, there are some clear parallels with Tolkien's personal experiences in the First World War. NOT allegories, more along the lines of translations. (Even the four hobbits.) There is an excellent book on the subject called Tolkien's World War. I recommend it.
Idk I'm not really convinced that Lotr wasn't an allegory. Just looking at the map between middle earth and valinor looks like Europe and America.
The fact that the shire is north west of middle earth like England is to Europe can't be coincidence. The books are full of symbolism.
Nathan Brinkerhoff Those things don't make it allegorical. If it were an allegory, it would mean that he was telling one story to represent another (real) one. You're right about the maps, they are very similar, but that doesn't mean that he meant it to BE that. He just used maps of places he was familiar with. Valinor does not equal America, etc. You're also correct about symbols. They're everywhere. The trouble is that people decide to interpret them in their own particular way. Often that's fine, but sometimes in stories things really are what we are told they are. One can cite sources of inspiration without applying the whole source to the work it inspired.
*Sees Title*
*Turns Book Right-Side Up*
Thanks....
Lol
Frankenstein is undoubtedly about playing god, among other things. It's freakin subtitle is "The Modern Prometheus"
Yeah and it's got Paradise Lost basically oozing out of it. I agree with most of these but the Frankenstein one they definitely got wrong.
Rory Russell In that he is named Victor as a direct parallel to God, or 'the Victor' in PL, yes I completely agree
One could also argue that Frankenstein could be a representation of god and his creature representing humanity
Yeah.
You didnt read the book to say that is about playing god.
It's also a cautionary tale about science and technology: how just because we can do something, doesn't mean we should.
This is a nice demonstration of how the artist, once he has placed his/her work into the public eye, has zero control over how that art is interpreted. It's fine to discuss intent, but different people are going to see different things.
Nice video. Except for the comment about The Prince being a satire. Machiavelli wrote the Prince as a means to get into the good books of the Medici family after they had returned from obscurity after a popular uprising. He wrote The Prince as a guide to impress them with his expertise after he had been second chancellor of the republic for a number of years and a roving ambassador but because of his support for the uprising he had fallen from grace. He also wrote the discourses on the decade of Livy (within which there is a reference to Machiavelli writing a small, serious book about how a Prince should conduct himself I.e, the first mention of 'The Prince' as a serious study) as a means of talking about how to organise a republic inc. creating a citizen militia which Macheivelli had run when he was second chancellor and which he felt was crucial to a republic that was often at the mercy of Italy's constant inter-city Wars fomented by mercenaries who made money from the chaos. It was in no way a satire. There wasn't much of a sense of humour at that time in Florence. It was basically a job application.
This should be titled "10 Famous Books You've Never Read and You've Always Assumed Was About X Because You've Never Actually Read Them".
toriloveSubarukun lol
You've never read these? Get to work good person!
@@lynnevetter I am illiterate of course I've never read these.
I'm glad Keanu Reeves agrees with me!
I don't know how you can definitively say that it's being read "wrong" because someone interpreted it differently than you.
This isn't about the video maker's interpretation, it's about what the books are actually supposed to be about.
dasuberkaiser6 At least what the video wants you to believe, nothing he said was definitive, especially The Prince.
Also if what he said was true we shouldn’t be listening to him spoon-feed us information and dumbing us down.
"My first ABC" is actually a survival manual foe Atomic, Bacteriological and Chemical warfare with robots....
Why wouldn't anybody take Don Quijote as anything but satire? The main character is literally a comic relief and actually insane.
The Chronicles of Narnia were subtle about one thing: Each book is based on on of the planets from medieval cosmology. The Lion..., Jupiter. Prince Caspian, Mars. ...Dawn Treader, the Sun. The Silver Chair, the Moon. A Horse and His Boy, Mercury. The Magician's Nephew, Venus. The Final Battle, Saturn. Check out the book Planet Narnia; it also goes into the Space Trilogy and the very long poem Lewis wrote about the medieval planets.
New title: Misconceptions about 10 books made by people who haven’t actually read the books but everyone who has read the books knows: I still get some wrong.”
Who in the name of fuckery has been imagining that Don Quixote is about "how great knights are"?
Perhaps a better way to describe it is as celebrating chivalry? In other words, Quixote's yearning for chivalry and honor is seen as a noble goal, whereas it's intended to make Quixote the buffoon for thinking such a thing?
Nobody thought Don Quixote was meant to make knights look cool, for one thing. And I always thought the most common read on LotR as allegory was as of the industrial revolution, and rural, pastoral life being wiped out by mechanization and exploitation. The WWII thing seems like a bit of a stretch. I mean, Tolkien's British, too. Isn't it only Americans who think that America swooped in and saved the day, and won WWII?
Well, Churchill certainly thought so while it was happening. He said the night after Pearl Harbor was the easiest he'd slept in two years because he knew Hitler's defeat was now certain. (Almost no one in the West expected the USSR to recover and fight back as successfully as it did.)
The Prince isn't satire. It's more of a practical, amoral guide that is entirely counter to the author's views but nevertheless effective. Machiavelli essentially separated his morality and political views from his logic and put himself in the shoes of a despot.
Noooooope, it's not really about effectiveness at all. It's more like "This is what makes sense for the current rules, it's utterly despicable and that's why we should be against them."
Perhaps a better way to describe it is as satire that was nevertheless effective if taken literally. I mean, you can say "It is better to be feared than loved" and then launch into a long argument that that is the case. Perhaps you're hoping to shock people, so that they say, "Isn't that terrible and immoral? I hope this convinces leaders to pursue being loved by the people," but don't be surprised when your logical argument for "feared" does work.
You guys should do a programme like this more! Love it
The prevailing opinion about The Prince by actual scholars is that it was not a satire. There are some scholars, like Rousseau, who believe that it is, but they are in the minority.
The general consensus is that it was something between pragmatism and a sort of job application.
On one hand, the Medicis removed him from the sphere of political influence, which was the thing he loved the most. He very much wanted to be involved with government again, and it's not surprising that he would dedicate a book about ruling through dictatorship to the new dictators of the country in order to try to accomplish this.
In terms of pragmatism, the other part of it is that although Machiavelli may have actually believed that democracy was a superior form of government, he still realized that the reality of the world is that sometimes you get dictators. For him to write a book that says "This is the best way to rule as a dictator" doesn't imply that he agrees with this form of government, it simply means he's trying to lay out the best way to achieve a stable dictatorship, so that the suffering of the people is at least minimized. When dictatorships are tumultuous and power is constantly shifting hands, it means common people die by the thousands. Given that he WAS a supporter of republicanism, wouldn't he want to advise his dictators to rule in a way that would benefit the populace most?
As always, wonderful video WhatCulture!
Tom Bombadil was most likely a leftover from an earlier draft that Tolkien was so attached to that he couldn't bear to cut him out... even though he was completely out of place and WAY off-topic in the story. Tolkien apparently tried cold-writing LOTR from the beginning over and over again, instead of plotting out the direction it was going to go first. As a result, there were a lot of versions of the BEGINNING of the story that were just abandoned. Tom probably belonged in one of THOSE versions.
I always thought it was about a donkey called Hotee.
Lord of the Rings is often thought to be about World War One, not World War Two. If you're going to criticize a theory at least get the theory right.
I think Tolkein is pretty definitive in his foreword that Lord of the Rings is NOT allegorical at all.
soddof But what does he know. He did it subconsciously, so in fact it was except he was trying to be a knob about it.
"The naked lunch" is not about food.
I thought it was about taking a lunch break at a strip club.
Wow... you're wrong about Frankenstein.
To start with, it was not 'written' as part of a contest between Shelley, her husband, and Byron (others may have been there as well and even the relationship between Shelley and her 'husband' is questionable at the time since there's some belief that they were not married at the time).
For one, it was a game in order to pass a boring summer that was freezing due to the eruption of Mount Tambora (I could be wrong on the spelling of the volcano).
Secondly, during that summer, she basically conceived a short story that would eventually become Frankenstein by the time it got published three years later.
Interestingly enough, during that summer, Byron also conceived the idea that would eventually create our view of vampires though he himself didn't write the book The Vampyr.
Finally, according to the introduction SHELLY HERSELF put into the 1831 copy of the book, "Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world." But I guess it's not about play god...
Where did you get rhe information about these books from?
Wtf!! Who tf ever thought lotr was a fucking metaphor for the war. Literally how do you jump to that conclusion!??
Talks about Don Quixote, fails to mention the major point of the plot "Tilting at windmills" i.e. a foolish quest for meaningless glory fought against imaginary foes.
One of your better videos, gentleman. One thing though, You seem to think that Socialism and Communism are the very same thing. Or, close enough that a Socialist like Orwell would think that Communism is peachy keen. In a video about misunderstandings, you've commit the very same sin yourselves. There are very much important differences between the two. Important enough that many Socialists are rabidly opposed to Communism. And Orwell was no exception.
NGMonocrom - Tough to say that Orwell was entirely against communism considering Animal Farm puts both Lenin and Trotsky in a positive light. He was entirely against Stalinism, though, and that is abundantly clear by his works. I guess it really comes down to whether you're using communism in the loose sense or specifically referring to the type of communism the world saw develop post-war.
The USSR called itself Communist but was effectively Socialist. That's mainly why people think of the two as the same.
+writerpatrick
Sorry but no, it wasn't. And that's coming from someone who was born into it. Dad made the mistake of openly telling a neighbor he wished the government did a slightly better job of taking care of its people than it had been doing. Another neighbor overheard, and turned him in. Since dad had a habit of forgetting that American 1st Amendment rights don't exist in the Soviet union, they gave him 15 years.
Keep in mind, in a Soviet prison. Where prisoners are beaten and tortured on a regular basis. Well, after his sentence was up, it turned out they failed to break him. So they exiled him. We went with him. In an actual Socialist society that type of crap doesn't happen. Citizens don't live as slaves in every way but name. The former Soviet Union was nothing like a Socialist nation.
NGMonocrom - And this is the point I was getting at with the two connotations of the word communism.
Orwell is a recognized Socialist. No one refers to him as a Communist. Again, there are clear differences. Also, "Animal Farm" highlighted the dangers of how power can corrupt, utterly. This is regardless of whose in charge. Although the ending was unrealistic, a good part of the book was a cautionary tale. One that easily applies to anyone who gets real power. Not just Stalin.
Or there's the idea that Catcher In the Rye isn't a story about childhood angst, but really it was a way for J.D. Salinger to cope with what he saw in WWII. In interviews, Salinger often said that he got his points off better by writing instead of speaking, and after he fought in some of the bloodiest American battles of the war (Hurtgen Forest), he wanted a way to cope with that loss. Holden's brother's death is the war, and the desire to go back to childhood for Holden is Salinger's desire for life to go back to the peace and happiness that it was before the war.
Holy shit, I learned like half of these things back in Uni. Them people at WhatCulture know the fuck out of things.
You've kinda missed one out. According to Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club isn't about lashing out against the demasculinization and commoditization of men in 90's America. It's actually about "a man getting to the point where he can commit to a woman."
Zack Ward.
Books are art, no matter the intention of the author, it is the reader's view and feeling that come through for them that matters. Books like 1984, Frankenstien and Fahrenheit 451 may have been written with different purposes and those porposes are there but so are other themes that reach people. Art is subjective to the viewer.
Yes, yes, yes!! So glad you brought up that bit about the Lord of The Rings! I get really irritated when people say it's a metaphor for WWI/II. Cause it's really not, it's a timeless high fantasy story. Simple as.
I think it's easy to suggest that something is an allegory for ww2 because honestly that whole thing was just strait out of an ancient poem or something. It was literally a big bad guy trying to take over the world.
So thats why i failed my literature class, my interpretations were correct all along they were just different from the general consensus
Anybody who actually reads:
"NO SHIT."
Psssh - like I'm reading it wrong, I can't even read, jokes on you wotculture
Wait, aren't socialism and communism two different political ideologies? Yeah, they sit on the same side of the political spectrum, but communism is further left, is it not?
They are definitively the same ideology.
Socialism: "a political and economic theory of social organization that
advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange
should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."
Communism: "a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war
and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and
each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs."
tl;dr, the "community" and "public" are one and the same.
just a quick reminder that socialism is supposed to be the way to communism. So communism is more of a utopia where everyone is equal and all that while socialism is the tool to establish it.
Socialism in a political ideology, Communism is an economic system. They're often associated because socialism is the political system best suited to the communist economic system - in theory anyway. Most communist countries that get labeled 'socialist' are actually totalitarian, and most socialist countries have thriving capitalist economies.
There has only been 1 actual communist system of government in the world ever, and that is North Korea, and even they recently (quietly) removed the word communism from their manifesto. Russia was never communist. it was just the goal.
jedaaa I'm pretty sure North Korea was never actually communist either. It's an impossible ideal. It may have been their long term intention, but they never got there.
I wondered if "Where's Waldo?" would be present.
It's not about where waldo is, but instead the journey to find him.
Sometimes stories can parallel and allegorize aspects of reality outside writes intention. Story has a life of its own, there is objective interoperation yes, but all art has subjective room for context based change over time and each individuals personal connection to a story.... both are relevant.
I'd rather say that Fahrenheit 451 is not JUST about censorship.
How is The Prince satire? It doesn't read like satire.
And, when you consider the historical context, Machiavelli is far less extreme than he appears.
He lived in a violent period, and compared to what was considered normal back then, The Prince is almost moderate.
Lord of the Flies was written as a response to a book that covered the same scenario but positively (British Schoolboys abandoned on a island and make a utopia, as opposed to a dystopia). The Coral island was all about the 'civilising effect of Christianity' and the 'importance of heirarchy and leadership', and Lord Of The Flies was written to be its polar opposite.
Almost all of my college English class did not know "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" was a Christian allegory, and when my teacher told us, they were all astounded... They had no clue, and she had to explain it. This was a college in the Bible belt.
But it's so obvious?
I mean as a little kid in Sunday school and who loved the chronicles of Narnia even I could see it...
Tolkien may have refuted those claims, but if you think that his experience in the war didn't directly influence parts of the book like the Dead Marshes, then you're having a laugh.
There is an argument to be made that the Battle of the Five Armies was an allegory for World War 1, where every side has a weird claim to the treasure, they spend a bunch of time grinding each other down to the nub, and then the Eagles come in and wreck faces. It makes a little more sense than LOTR being about WWII.
You forgot St. Thomas Aquinas' "Utopia", which everyone thinks is a recipe for the perfect society, but, like Gulliver's Travels", is a cutting critique of where society was headed at his time.
Fahrenheit 451 is about censorship AND all the things you talked about. But don't forget the censorship part
OOI, Tom Bombadil was Tolkien's version of The Green Man, from English folklore. And it was World War ONE that Tolkien served in, not World War TWO. He certainly drew upon his experiences of the war, but - yes - there was no actual allegory intended. xx
You are right Tolkien was not writing about World War II as it was published in 1937. It is however undeniably influenced by his experience as a soilder in WWI.
Frankenstein being about taking responsibility for your own actions only applies to the original version. The version that Shelly rewrote, & released towards the end of her life removes that theme entirely, and replaces it with "fate is going to fuck you up no matter what you do" instead
Would like to point out, from entry 3, that communism and socalism are different things. Easily explained in that scotland prides it's self on being a primaraly socalist state and is most deffinatly not communist. You're use of language on this entry could do with a tweak, in this instance you could even make a point that Orwell was pro socialism and anti communism, as his publications clearly describe how the best intentions of communism,which are also the morals behind socialism, are sound but once this morphs into a communist state of governance these ideals are warped and manipulated and the public dosen't seem to notice 9/10 times.
Really there's no one definition of either, there's a huge variety of movements and theories that have been described as either or both. however, Orwell was definitely a critic of *Soviet* communism.
You forgot the 'Where's Wally?' books.
Thank you! I never understood the hatred of Tom Bombadill. And, yes, I also like JarJar Binks. Send have responses here.
I've never understood that, either, I loved Tom Bombadill. I think, tbh, people don't like that they can't file him under a nice, neat category; most people seem to hate that. But he is quite properly chaotically folkloric and I appreciate that.
Jar Jar Binks...? No comment. Wouldn't be fair, b/c the movie as a whole irritated the heck out of me, coloring my view of the character.
What an awesome video! Although (and someone might have already pointed it out earlier) whether or not the Prince is meant to be a satire is still very much an open debate among academics.
This is very good (and the presenter didn't shout or talk too fast!). May there be many more.
In the discussion about LOR, you said WWII. I had always heard it was WWI that influenced some of the imagery in LOR.
Really? Some1 sayed that Lord of the Ring is about WW2? Never heard that before. This book is about civilization progress. Elf, humans, dwarfs are traditions, environment care etc. They fight against mechanization, industry, pollution and megacorporation lust of power symbolized by Sauron and orcs.
No its not. Tolkien explicitly said that the book isn't allegorical of anything.
Regardless, even if it was allegorical, your allegories fall flat a ton. The Dwarfs are super technological and industrial and the books make a strong point in emphasizing how Dwarfs were best at crafting armaments for war.
He did say in the Hobbit that the goblins (orcs) were the best at inventing clever devices for killing lots of people in one go. And the Dwarves' greed was a fatal flaw, corresponding to the Elves' pride.
OK, this is a list not for those, who misread these books, but for those, who actually never read them, but just heard about them... It's obvious what they are and what they are not about, if you read them...
Yes Don Quixote is kind of a satire about people who still believe in knights and chivalry etc. BUT it's also a satire of the people trying to "cure" Quijana, who in his madness, takes on a curious and poignant nobility
It is a theory that The Prince may have been a satire but that is not anything like established fact.
Yep about the Prince. Machiavelli wrote it at a time when there were lots of people trying to write books about how to rule, based on the works of Livy. The goal for centuries after Rome fell was to recreate the Roman empire--somehow. And Livy's history of Rome was the Bible of this movement.
"Don Quixote" is basically just an old version of "that stuff will rot your brain", in this case, I think it's not just a jab at knightly literature (though the text itself makes that pretty darned clear), but also of the printing press, that made such literary fads possible ... a century or so later, fantastical travelogues would be all the vogue (Gulliver's Travels and the like), and then the Western (just as the Frontier was considered "closed".) Now it's space sagas, and mutated humans ....
This was a really good video. I've read The Prince, but I didn't realize it was intended as satire of what is commonly considered Machiavellianism. But at the same time, I didn't read it as endorsing "Machiavellianism" in the first place. The book seemed to place notable emphasis on the fact that enemies are more expensive than allies. I read the book as a straightforward instructional text, because I found credibility in how it seemed acutely aware that even if you're motivated purely by rational self-interest, it's still a bad strategy to go around screwing people over when it's not completely necessary. I thought the fallacy was in assuming that Machiavelli was advocating anti-social behavior, not that he was just being insincere through and through.
Never heard about the LOTR theory, that it is about WWII, but I get the appeal
You know you've binge-watched too many Whatculture videos when your mind automatically does the outro - "Hi, I'm billionaire philanthropist Not-Bruce Wayne"....
Frankenstein, was about written because Mary Shelley lost her child and it was a coping mechanism, and it is not a scary tale as per modern standards.
So you also didn't find out what the heck Tom Bombadil is... Six minutes of my time that won't get back.
Am I the only that thinks this guy hasn't actually read any of these books?
The plot of Frankenstein is NOT about taking responsibility for your own actions. it is very very very explicitly about the dangers of unchecked ambition. Frankenstein pretty much says it to Walton in the book.
The Plot:
* The conflict is established as being whether or not Walton can make it through the Arctic Ocean by ship.
* The first turning point is meeting Dr. Frankenstein who tells a story of his own ambition to (YES) play God by creating man.
* It escalates when Frankenstein reveals the result, a murderous monster set loose on the world who wants to breed.
* The climax is the monster killing Frankenstein, before deciding to die in the arctic alone.
* The conflict resolution is when Walton, seeing the increasing dangers of his journey as he gets further in, turns his ship around and heads back to Europe.
Frankenstein's ambition was playing God. It resulted in the death of his family and himself.
Walton's ambition was traveling from Europe to Asia via the Arctic ocean, and it caused misery and the death of two crew - but after Frankenstein's story he decided not to allow his own crazy ambition to determine the fate of his crew.
Lord of the Rings' message is basically, don't try to escape death, it comes to us all even if you're an immortal elf
Then what do you suppose is the meaning behind Lord of the Flies?
In answer to your question; Tom Bombadil is, I've read, based on a doll Tolkien had as a child. Dante.
I suppose next you're going to tell me Wizard of Oz isn't really about early industrial age agrarian economics... or da Vinci's The Last Supper isn't really about enjoying the fine dining experience at Olive Garden
i pretty knew most of that.
i kinda got lucky to find an app on appstore called Freebooks where most if not all these books are there in their original glory. when u read the eal thing, it feels so diffrent!
a) Narnia is NOT a Christian allegory. To be sure, it contains Christian elements (because that's what Lewis was interested in), as well as elements from Norse mythology, Greco-Roman mythology, Arthurian romance, and the Arabian Nights (because Lewis was interested in those too). But to call it a Christian allegory is to imply that the sole point of the story is to stand for and deliver a Christian message. The Narnia books are just too interesting, complex, and diverse to be interpreted reductively in that way.
Also, Aslan himself isn't an allegory because he doesn't STAND FOR or REPRESENT the Christian God; he IS the Christian God. Lewis put the Christian God in his novel in the same way that Dumas and Maquet put historical figures like Richelieu into "The Three Musketeers." Which doesn't mean that the intent of the Narnia stories can be reduced simply to a message about the Christian God, any more than "The Three Musketeers" can be reduced simply to a message about Richelieu.
(Lewis DID write a novel that IS a Christian allegory, "The Pilgrim's Regress," and it's utterly dull.)
b) The interpretation of Machiavelli's "Prince" as satirical is rejected by the majority of Machiavelli scholars. There are interesting issues about how to reconcile "The Prince" with "Discourses on Livy," but the continuity between the two is too great to dismiss the former as simply a satire.
c) If "Frankenstein" is not about playing God, how do we explain the subtitle?
d) While Nietzsche's sister did edit many of Nietzsche's posthumous works to remove anti-racist and anti-nationalist passages, she didn't do this with "Zarathustra," which had already been published.
I never heard that theory about LOTR. I guess you learn something everyday
Wait, people think LOTR is a metaphor for WW2? I have literally never heard that in my life, and it's one of my most favourite book series.
Who the fuck thought LOTR was based on WW2?
the eagles arent shouting amurica while dropping bombs on the battlefield
Great video - I'd love to see more videos on literature! That's culture too!
I think the main moment in Fahrenheit is when Monteq (i hope i wrote the name right, i've read the book not in english) and his chief have conversation about books and the chief (sorry dont remember the name, it was very long time ago) start to explain every book he see and time when it was writen, what people thought about it etc. Before this conversation we think that the Monteq's chief is just uneducated stupid person who just follows orders but we suddenly realise that he actually read ALL these books and even knows history and culture of ancient nations, but reject it's importance and Monteq is just a romantic naive person who just want to do something he wants.
Guy Montag, like the paper company.
WHAT IS THE SONG PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND?!?!
this may be true.... true but for the wrong reasons.
i was attempting to read these books with my toes.
Says 1984 and Animal Farm aren't about the wrongs of totalitarianism then says 1984 and Animal Farm are about the wrongs of totalitarianism.
2bobthetramp He says they aren't about the wrongs of communism not totalitarianism. Although granted communism has a tendency to be very totalitarian.
It doesn't have to be, there's plenty of communal living groups throughout the world. It is, however, extremely vulnerable to corruption and power hungry dictators using it to achieve totalitarianism, so it's probably best avoided unless all humans suddenly got a hell of a lot nicer. Which I very much doubt.
Communism by definition has to be totalitarian or it doesnt work at all.
JumboCod91 People who are unhappy when they win the lottery have lived under the illusion that everything would be great if they only had the money to pay for it. When they do have the money, they waste it finding out that illusion just wasn't true.
Pure communism is impossible. Ever tried to get even a small group of people to all agree on something... even something as simple as what to have for lunch?
That doesn't mean socialism and communism don't have any good ideas though.
As always, there are no inherently bad forms of government, or economic principles for that matter, its people that are the problem.
Anyone here familiar with 'the death of the author?'
Only problem with that LotR entry is that JRR Tolkien penned a small series of letter outlining how the ring was an allegory for wealth and the self destructive means men will go to to have it. I’ve even heard theories that it’s an allegory for addiction but never heard this WWII shit before 🤷♂️
Damn I wasn't expecting them to go that far back I think the newest book here is nearly 70 years old and the oldest is around 500.
I feel like a better title for this video would be "10 Famous Books People Get All Wrong Because They Didn't Actually Read Them"
For Lord of the Rings, try the First World War not WW2. Though after having been in the trenches himself, Tolkien's work would have been stained by what he experienced anyway.
Author's intent does not always equal what a reader takes away from it. If '1984' and 'Animal Farm' have become to be read in such a way as to be a critique of communism, and 'Fahrenheit 451' has become to be linked to the dangers of censorship, it is not necessarily wrong that the context of the novel has grown and developed over time. Just because the author didn't intend for it to be taken that way, doesn't make it 'wrong.'
The problem with the Gulliver is the same with the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland
There are so many different "versions" carrying the authors name that is hard to find each one is the original if you arent read the books.
The Prince isn't satire. Just because you say it is, doesn't make it so.
As a kid, I always thought The Lord of the Rings was a condemnation of the over-industrialization of society and the callous disregard for nature and the planet's health. The good guys were peaceful farmers, Rangers, and wood Elves. The baddies were tree burning, air polluting monsters.
That is a massive oversimplification and just plain wrong in some respects. Aragorn was a ranger wandering in the wild because his people had fallen so far, but originally they were the most technologically advanced humans on the planet.
Lord of the rings is actually kind of a rip off of the finnish folk tale "kalevala".
In Kalevala, a master blacksmith creates a device of endless riches to a witch who resides in the frozen north, but shit hits the fan after that, and then an old Wizard called "Väinämöinen" gathers a fellowship of heroes and sets on a journey to steal the device. it all ends in the device getting destroyed and peace being restored, after which the old wizard sails away never to return. Sound familiar?
Ever heard of the literature theory “death of the reader”? It comes from (I think) modernism and basically says the author’s intent is subservient to the reader’s interpretation. In other words: however you want to read it is right, to a greater or lesser extent.
Well... More like 10 thinks I thought everyone knew... Thank you for teaching me some people do not get this points. It actually explains a lot 😅🙈
A book means what, I the reader, interrupt the book to mean. Using the reference of Fahrenheit 451 comments as an example, if you tell me what the book is suppose to mean, are you not spoon feeding me the information the same as the author says TV does? If I was to interrupt Lord of the Rings as a love story, would I be wrong (I don't by the way)? We may disagree with the interpretation, but we each can interpret our own meaning based on the views of the world we each have.
I think it ironic I'm here being spoon-fed Author's intents, when one of them, you highlight, is about the dumbing down of people via a spoon-fed medium. I think I'll just stick to reading the books and deciding intent myself.
First time I heard someone even perceived LoTR as an allegory. Doing so would be beyond absurd.