American Society Portrayed in Tolkins The Player and Among the Dead :: Tolkin Player Among the Dead

A Fractured American Society Portrayed in Tolkins The Player and Among the DeadThe novels The Player and Among the Dead are not manifestly tales about any given character, as it would appear, but in fact they represent Tolkins own personal vision of what he thinks American society is becoming. Namely, that it is a fractured society built on false values, where people have difficulty dealing with the truth of feelings or situations and where people will do anything to make money. The individual(a) plots are realistic though, and they seem to work as both true-to-life dramas and broader social commentaries. This gritty realism becomes apparent after a brief flavor at the events of each novel. Part of a major Hollywood executives job is to reject writers in the polite dont call us, well call you fashion. But when The Players Griffin torpedo starts to receive death threats from an anonymous writer, he panics. In an attempt to clear his conscience of not replying, he contacts a writer at random from his rare diary, who he cant even remember, and chases him down to apologise and offer him a job writing a new film. But when the writer laughs in Griffins face, Griffin goes distressed with frustration and murders him. The rest of the story involves Griffins slow breakdown involving knowing hell get caught his romantic attachment with the writers widowed girlfriend his realisation of knowing hes getting previous(a) and a new young hot-shot producer threatening his job, and the real death-threatening writer still trying to kill him. This also acts as a broader social scuttlebutt on the way American society, particularly Hollywood, is made up of lies, false values and dishonesty to the point of absurdity. Among The Dead begins with another executive, Frank Gale, writing a garner. This garner is a carefully crafted forgive-me note in which he confesses to an affair hes been having. The plan is to take his wife on holiday and give her the letter and then die the rest of the time trying to sort out their marriage. But Frank takes too long saying goodbye to his mistress and he ends up missing the plane, which then crashes killing everybody on board, including his family. The book then follows Frank dealing with his wife and daughters death and the way in which the Airline company find Franks letter in the wreckage, and sell it to create a sensational news story and also in defence against a law suit from the victims of the crashs families, as blackjack against Frank.