How Tolkien's Childhood In South Africa Shaped His Life

In this video we explore the early life and story of J. R. R. Tolkien, as well as examine the effect that his birthplace of South Africa had on his life and views!

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Til Death Parts Us by Aakash Gandhi

Chords of Harmony by Aakash Gandhi

[AndreasSelzer]

I am a 22 year old South African and earlier this year I tried to go and see his father's grave, but the cemetery was closed up. Also we also used to have a group called the Haradrim, but they disbanded years ago.

[dudeboydudeboy-zjkd]

As a South African I am proud that Tolkien was born here despite him being not being a South African citizen. Oh and Baboon spiders are no joke those things aren't dangerous but pack quite the attitude. Oh and Bloemfontein is pronounced bloom-fontein.

[AndreasSelzer]

To add more context with his kidnapping, while I do not condone taking a child away without the parents consent, it was nothing malicious. He just wanted to show his family members the young Tolkien because he was fond of him.

[deiansalazar]

Tolkien is as important as Confucius or Plato. I'm not even joking. He's not a traditional philosopher but he'll be remembered as one of the greatest men of history and will slowly become more of a intellectual figure, not just a literary author figure. He will influence humanity indefinitely in culture and thought. He's likely to be remembered as a religious, literary, linguistic, philosophical and eventually political ideological figure(his ideology is very prevalent in his works). So he's like if Homer met Confucius. Or Shakespeare met Lao Tzu.

[Churchmilitant]

I really don't understand why you're subscriber base isn't larger, given the quality of your content. Thank you for the information! I didn't know Tolkien's family were originally protestant.

[gustyko]

The moreno I learn about Tolkien, the more I admire him!!

[antonyreyn]

The name Tolkien is contained within the name Thorkelin who was the first translator of Beowulf. Cheers from Mercia

[EdDantes-vc]

Interesting topic I’ve rarely seen even mentioned.

[sicko_the_ew]

When he was 10, the Boer War ended (in 1902), so he was presumably old enough, then, to know about the Concentration Camps that Boer women and children (and also blacks, in several places - in separate camps) were detained in, and where tens of thousands of them died due to neglect and mistreatment.

I at one stage thought that this was just "military efficiency" in action - so disorganized camps run by officers afraid to give their commanders bad news, and all this being "death by ordinary incompetence". It's reasonably possible that this is the "process" that led directly to all the deaths, since the camps weren't directly intended to be the extermination camps they became.

That's possible, but then I learned that the earliest such concentrations were used earlier on, in Cuba. The same kinds of deaths happened there. The generals must have known. A fair number of politicians would've known, too. So the neglect, given that background, was a pretty deliberate kind of neglect. At least some of those in charge would have known exactly what would happen.

The camps were quickly forgotten by even moral Britons. Embarrassing, I suppose. Doesn't fit with the humane self-image. So this didn't become a lasting "fashionable" moral cause. A moral cause is a moral cause. No problem with that. Apartheid needed to be condemned - even if with the hindsight we now have, a facile approach to how to remedy the issue wasn't justified by the immorality.

But concentration camps? Who even knows about the concentration camps today? Even Tolkien managed to somehow forget them.

[cerberus]

What amazing research! So, Mabel = Gilraen, Father Mirgan = Elrond,

[benvandermerwe]

Those Middle Earth forrests of Hogsback inspired some ideas.

[SMiki]

I'm curious whether Tolkien would've written more about Harad if he stayed in South Africa for a couple years longer to remember more about its landscape and wildlife

[EdVarkarion]

I love how in HOI; KR, Tolkein moves back to South Africa, after England's own communist revolution. There he writes the fall of numenor which is a metaphor for that event.

[Churchmilitant]

In those times, your choice of religion MATTERED, and the difference's between protestantism and Catholism were night and day. A protestant converting to Catholism was a real sacrifice. Not like now, where, what people think of as Catholism isn't much different theologically or liturgically than protestantism.

[AmericanImperium]

Excellent video. I’m aware of Tolkien’s thoughts on Apartheid, but I wonder what he would think of the Corruption within the ANC and the murdering of South Afrikaan farmers.