There are several similarities between Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings:
Ø
Epic fantasy story-line with a theme of Good vs.
Evil and the fate of the world is at stake.
Ø
Villain is a largely unseen enemy working behind
the scenes or from afar. Arawn and Sauron even sound somewhat alike. Mordor and
Annuvin are also alike in being a sort of realm of Death.
Ø
Though not uncommon in all fantasy novels or
even ancient mythology, both series have special enchanted objects. Some, like
the Ring of Power and the Black Cauldron, serve as MacGuffins for the
characters to pursue. Eilonwy’s magic bauble and the Palantir are
seemingly-innocuous magical objects that turn out to be much more powerful than
the characters believe at first. And then there are the special swords: Narsil
in The Lord of the Rings, and Drnwyn
in The Chronicles of Prydain, both of
which are meant for specific people to wield and are used as symbols of the
power to defeat evil.
Ø
Both books involve “fantasy” beings such as
wizards, dwarves, and giant animals (although Llyan is way preferable to Shelob
in my humble opinion!). There are also the Cauldron-born, Huntsmen, and the
Horned King, which could easily be compared with orcs (specifically Uruk-hai,
as both the Cauldron-born and Uruk-hai are “manufactured” warriors),
ring-wraiths, the Wraith-king.
Ø
Like the stewards of Gondor, the Sons of Don
have kept the evil at bay for a long time before the story begins.
Ø
Caer Dallben, a sort of farming sanctuary, seems
to share the same timeless safety as the Shire, and the value of simple living
and fruitful labor that Taran eventually learns is a lot like the Hobbit
mindset.
Ø
Many characters bear similar characteristics or
serve similar roles:
o
Aside from Arawn – Sauron, the best example of
this is the commonalities between the warrior-prince Gwydion and Ranger/heir
apparent Aragorn.*
o
Eilonwy – Eowyn
o
Gurgi – Gollum
o
Doli – Gimli
o
Dallben – Gandalf
o
Magg – Wormtongue
o
King Pryderi – Saruman
Ø
SPOILER ALERT BELOW
I'm warning you
If you haven't read the book this is your last chance to stop here and not find out the ending
Okayyyy here goes:
Both stories end with the majority
of the characters leaving the country by sailing off to some unknown,
Paradise-like land.
Although I enjoy LOTR, I wouldn’t say I’m as huge admirer
as the average Tolkien fan. Because the books are so dense, the world so
intricate, and the themes so noble, it can be easy to lose perspective and give
Tolkien too much credit, which results in accusing other fantasy writers of
copying him. So LOTR fans may look at Prydain and criticize it as “Middle Earth
Lite,” when that’s not really a fair assessment.
Firstly, if anyone
is to be accused of copying Middle Earth, it’s Narnia. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R.
Tolkien, along with other authors and thinkers, formed the Inklings and were
active in reading and commenting on each other’s work. Aside from a
predilection for going by their initials, Lewis and Tolkien’s works have a lot
of commonalities, and I find it strange that neither of them commented on this
or asked that one or the other of them make some alterations in order to
differentiate their worlds a bit better. If Tolkien didn’t mind Narnia, I doubt
he’d mind any similarities Prydain might share with Middle Earth.
A second objection I have is connected with another
misconception made by LOTR-worshippers: that Tolkien’s work is the first
attempt at creating a mythology for Britain along the same lines as Egyptian,
Greek, and Roman mythologies. No doubt Tolkien creating a mythology. But to say
there was no British mythology before that is incorrect. Even if one were to
discount characters like Rhiannon, Pwyll, or Cocullain, the legend of Beowulf
would qualify, and definitely the stories of King Arthur and Camelot should
also be considered.
Thirdly, the reason that Prydain and Middle Earth are
similar may not be because Alexander was copying Tolkien (although I think it’s
fair to say he was aware of LOTR and could have been influenced even
subconsciously if he’d read the books), but because Alexander and Tolkien were
going off of the same source materials. Tolkien himself translated a version of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and
Alexander specifically based Prydain off of the ancient Welsh collection of
legends and myths, The Mabinogion, a
work that Tolkien probably was familiar with as a linguist, if not a mythology
buff and world-builder himself.
Just because two things are similar doesn’t mean that one
necessarily has to be better than the other, and that “the other” therefore has
to be an inferior copy or plagiaristic. If anything, I would think that fans of
either Prydain or Middle Earth would be happy that there is another series of
novels out there that they can read if they ever get tired of reading and
rereading their favorite books but want to find new stories with a similar
feeling.
*For the record,
Alexander wasn’t ripping off Aragorn when he wrote the character Gwydion,
because he didn’t create the character Gwydion in the first place. He’s one of
the few characters Alexander pulled straight from The Mabinogion as a connection to his source material. So if
anything, Aragorn is a copy of Gwydion, not the other way around.
To give credit where it's due, Alexander was in many ways the more capable writer. The man never wastes a sentence. He paints vivid pictures without being florid. His character dialogue is crisp, snappy, and often quite funny. The Prydain stories move along briskly, never dragging, never getting caught up in lengthy asides.
ReplyDeleteTo a degree, Tolkien managed the same thing with The Hobbit, but by the time he got to LOTR his writing style had gotten quite thick. I hate to say it, but someone has to: there are long passages of LOTR that are just plain boring.