Tolkien and his fans

Goblins, elves, hobbits, spells and magic... The universe's salvation and eternal love. Most of you have watched the movie “The Lord of the Rings,” directed by Peter Jackson, and perhaps used to be quite carried away by Tolkien's book. There is not a person interested in fantasy who hasn’t heard of it. Everyone knows something about 'The Ring's' existence, little hobbits, kind wizards, cruel orcs and nazguls. 

Fans of Tolkien's work know all characters' names, their lineage and the history described in the book. An Oxford professor of philology has created a whole world where the reader is carried away and finds new connections while following the story of fictional countries and nations. 

Who was the creatоr of Middle-earth and Arda, John Ronald Tolkien? What was he like in real life? Either a cranky audial professor who rewrote his works for years in a pursuit to achieve perfection or a real genius with a striking imagination who made up a world where a green sun has it's place? It appears to be the second variant because audial and visual vectors have to be highly developed to create such a masterpiece. In spite of the fact that many authors before Tolkien have written in this genre he is considered to be the father of modern day fantasy. 

Everyone is fascinated by the places described in his books where more than dozens of nations live, who have their own history, culture, religion, behavioral peculations, unique traditions, legends, languages and dialects including complex phonetics, spelling and grammatical rules. 

The fantasy that created the whole universe, a cult world for many generations of readers, can't exist without a visual imagination. Tolkien as a true visual person, loved drawing scenery since childhood. His mother developed his artistic taste and fostered his love for botany. She was a very religious and educated woman, knew a few languages and influenced Tolkien's development as a child. Before her death, she assigned Tolkien's guardianship to Fr. Xavier Francis Morgan,a man of uncommon personality, who developed an interest towards philology within Tolkien.

The boy's talent for linguistics was discovered early, friends helped him create a secret system of symbols to communicate with each other. He showed his passionate desire to make up new languages all his life. In elementary school he knew more than seven languages, but simple studying became boring, thus he started working on his own – 'elvish' ones. Quenya – a language of the immortal elves, that Sinadarin was based on, became the dialect for general use among other elves. Later the professor created dialects for the rest of races populating Middle-Earth - gnomes, orcs, people and ents. 

John Tokien's attitude towards pronunciation was special and when composing a new language, he followed the beauty of a sound. He said, “Nobody believes me when I say that my book is an attempt to create a world where a language corresponding to my personal aesthetics can easily exist in nature. It is quite true though.”

At the age of 24 John found his love, their marriage lasted 56 years. As a person with the anal vector whose biggest value is family, John did everything to make their lives happy. He was faithful to his wife till the last day, dedicated his poetry to her and crated her image in his novels. 

Love is the highest emotional value that reaches it's peak in some way in the audial and visual vectors. So Tolkien's love was presented the same way in his books. He manifests endless love that overcomes all obstacles: war, lies and immortality, for example, the stories of Beren and Luthien or Aragorn and Arwen. 

Tolkien wrote, 'You say, there is a hope. I think you are right, and love wins when armies are defeated. If love is weak - nothing wins. So why do we live? '

Perfectionism is one of the distinctive qualities of people with the anal vector. He wrote slowly, rewrote chapters of "The Lord of The Rings” a few times, systematizing, bringing perfection to his novel. He had worked on it for 12 years, so the world and the myth would be interesting and fascinating. 

Tolkien denied critics' opinions about his philosophical motives in his creative works and said that he wrote for his own personal pleasure exclusively. However, it is impossible not to notice ideas about death and life, about the meaning of life and other subjects that excite audial minds. 

“However I can note that if my story says anything, it is not about power. The desire to have power is a motive and an impelling force. The book talks about Death, Immortality, ways to escape, cyclic longevity and memory accumulation.”

"A person's death is real. Their time comes and they leave the world, therefore their names are only guests and wanderers. Death is their destiny. Death is the Creator's gift, that with the course of the time immortals will be jealous of."

As a participant of World War I, Tolkien indignantly declared that those who searched his works for parallels to the Second World War were entirely mistaken, “One must personally come under the shadow of war to fully feel its oppression; but as the years go by it seems often forgotten, that to be caught in your youth in 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead”.

The first Tolkienists appeared in the middle of the 60s after the trilogy was published. The more the books spread outside England the more the phenomenon gained popularity among the masses. Very soon it developed into a subculture. Tolkientists predominantly are people with audial and visual vectors.

Nowadays there is a huge amount of information about Tolkien's novels. Tolkienists all around the world collect and systematize the data relating to his works. There are dictionaries and text books to study elvish languages including phonetics. 

Some audial fans in an attempt to escape reality think that the world described in Tolkien's books existed in real life. They look for evidence of it and live according to their convictions. It is known that during the population census in Russia “elves” and “hobbits” were an option to choose when filling out the “nationality” field. 

Tolkienists like role games based on the events described in the books. They either take the names of the characters, their magical races (elves, hobbits, goblins, orcas or gnomes) or create their own according to the languages created by the author. 

There is a opinion in the world that fanatic attitude towards fantasy is a way to escape the real world and the young people who do so got tired of general social values, excessive rationalism and pragmatism. They try to live in an unreal world, like a fairy tale. The audial and visual vectors provide their bearers with rich imagination and high intellect so they prefer appropriate literature: fantastic, philosophical and psychological books. 

People with the audial vector think abstractly, they are able to understand abstract notions, such as infinity and eternity, the physical and the metaphysical, life's meaning and their role in it. They perceive this kind of literature as an allegory, feeling the hidden sense in the fictional plots. Reading between the lines, they search for meaning in their imaginary worlds. 

The deeper they get absorbed into the world of fantasy, the further they go inside of themselves, loosing touch with reality. That's why we can often hear what they say about fantasy fans - “he lost his perception of reality”. The search of an audial person can be tolerated at some age when it comes to fantasy, but some people get stuck there forever, being carried away yet again with the next book. 

Even in the past century, fantasy and philosophy could bring satisfaction to audial people's desire. Today the beauty of a world created by writers sank into oblivion. The biggest thing it can help them with is to develop the thoughts and feeling of audial and visual children in the right direction. To keep reading it is like searching for meaning where it doesn't exist.