An Aura of Mystery

Ok, enough of the music rants. I really should think of more good topics besides either CD reviews or pointing out potential errors in a journalist's work. I've not been in much of a research/ geeking-out mood, so maybe that's why. Anyway, before philosophy class at college this morning, there was a rather hilarious discussion that led to me thinking of a more serious topic.

I'm a bit of a Lord of the Rings geek (I think anyone who reads The Silmarillion, has a Lord of the Rings dictionary, and a series of Lord of the Rings maps is :) ). I've read the trilogy a few times and own the trilogy in movie form. I'm currently making slow progress in re-reading the trilogy again after a few years, and I realized how much deeper and better the books are. I mean, no surprise there as movies rarely capture a book very well (except for Ang Lee's "Sense and Sensibility"). But in reading, I discovered something in the trilogy that I have yet to see in other forms of writing: an aura of mystery.

In "Fellowship of the Ring" (the book, mind you) the four hobbits make their journey across the Shire, through the Old Forest, to Bree, and then to Rivendell. On the course of their long trip, the four (later joined by Aragorn) go through very dark places, places with things that they can't explain. Take, for example, the journey through the Old Forest. The hobbits have all heard legends of the forest being a dark place with angry, living trees and such. Not only do these stories make the four slightly afraid as they travel, but strange occurances like the disappearing of the path and the trees moving so that the hobbits head straight for the strangest part of the forest keep them on their toes. But Tolkien doesn't explain fully why the trees move; as far as I remember, we don't learn of the ents until "Two Towers" and then it makes sense. It is this sense of mystery, the sense of "the hobbits and the reader don't know what's going on" that I found in reading. In a few places in the trilogy, the way Tolkien writes, he speaks of mysterious places, things that most people don't know or don't find an explanation for, like the watcher in the lake outside of Moria or Tom Bombadil. It gives me the sense of a vast fantasy world filled with mystery, a world much like our own where we can't explain everything and probably never will. This, I think, gives Middle Earth, a sense of being realistic and I think makes the story more real and more captivating in a sense.

I've yet to find the same aura of mystery in other fantasy stories. In "Cry of the Icemark," there is an instance of living trees (similar yet dissimilar to Tolkien's ents) that were rumored not to be real, but that sense of mystery is lost when the author explains what they really are. The Inheritance Cycle completely lacks any sense of not knowing what things are, probably because his elves are a bunch of rational know-it-alls. The Binding of the Blade series also lacks this same sense. In this way, to me, they feel a bit flat, a bit lacking in their worlds, making them sterile and as if everything has a rational explanation for it. Completely unrealistic, as there is so much to discover about our own planet and beyond that I don't think we can say we understand the universe. Tolkien, to me, captures this realistic mystery and brilliantly crafts it into his story, making it truly a great one.