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I can't exactly relate to it either but a lot of people just really don't like a) whimsy and b) verse, let alone whimsical verse, in their novels. I think it's that more than any kind of social pressure to pick on Bombadil specifically.
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Feb 16, 2013 18:13
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Radio! posted:Also Feanor kind of hated them and left them behind when he crossed the Helcaraxë in the stolen ships- Finarfin's people were the ones who had to walk to Middle Earth. Fingolfin's too - Feanor left everyone behind except his own sons and followers, even those who did participate in the Kinslaying. In fact they outnumbered Finarfin's people because many of these (led by Finarfin himself) turned back when Mandos yelled at them about the Kinslaying, well before the question of walking to Middle-Earth arose.
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Feb 16, 2013 21:23
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rypakal posted:If you're just looking for entertainment, they're probably not worth it. Some of them very much are, particularly the ones that aren't nigh-purely about the process of writing Lord of the Rings - there's a lot of interesting otherwise unpublished material in there. (Admittedly the only real reason I'm anything like "a student of the mythology" is entertainment.) For something a bit unusual I'd recommend Lays of Beleriand, if you can stomach it. Unless I'm much mistaken you don't often see fantasy writers make a serious attempt at epic poetry, let alone come out with anything readable, but I really quite like Tolkien's results, unfinished as they are.
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Feb 18, 2013 16:31
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FrensaGeran posted:Haven't read the books in a while so this may be a dumb question but why is it Aragorn who takes the throne of Gondor? Why did his father remain in hiding, or his father, etc? Was there some prophecy about Sauron's return that needed to be fulfilled before Isildur's bloodline could come out of hiding? Gondor refused the claim of Isildur's line when Ondoher, the last king of Anárion's direct line, died together with his children; instead they crowned one Earnil, a successful general and direct male-line descendant of a king's younger son a few generations back. If they'd chosen otherwise, their new king would have been Arvedui, then king of what remained of Arnor and married to Ondoher's daughter Fíriel; as it was, though, Arvedui was in serious trouble what with Angmar moving in, and ended up drowning. His son Aranarth survived (by virtue of having fled in a different direction), which is how the line carried on and ended up producing Aragorn II, i.e. Strider. But there wasn't any Arnor left to be king of even after Earnil's son Earnur finally got around to coming up and defeating Angmar, so they just called themselves chieftains of the Dúnedain for a while. Unfortunately the Witch-king wasn't gone or anything, just driven south, and proceeded to taunt Earnur (now king, and childless) by challenging him to single combat until he accepted. Presumably he got soundly ruined, if there even was any kind of actual fight, because he was never heard from again. The Witch-king and his buddies must have been content with that bit of revenge, because they proceeded to not do much of anything until their boss got back and the Ring finally surfaced. So then the stewards who were ruling in Earnur's place just sort of kept at it in the southern king's name instead of calling in the northern chieftains, who for their part must have known (foresight again, I assume - broadly interpreting Arvedui's birth prophecy whereby "much sorrow and many lives of men shall pass, until the Dúnedain arise and are united again") to wait for a more dramatically appropriate moment, i.e. the War of the Ring.
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Feb 19, 2013 03:36
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After all these years I still haven't read Eddison, but I've read Peake and I wouldn't say he was at all a world builder - his approach is more expressionistic than meticulous. If you can tell Tolkien was a philologist, you can tell Peake was a painter. His writing is full of vivid images, strange digressions, and colourful dialogue. Extremely worth reading but very dissimilar from Tolkien's work, in my opinion, whatever that's worth. v vBut, yeah, for Tolkien I'd recommend either going in order of publication and moving on to the Silmarillion, or reading Children of Húrin first. It really depends on what you're interested in. Much of the Silmarillion really severely follows the original idea of a collection of ancient histories and annals; I love that a lot, but it's a turnoff for many. Children of Húrin does its best to mold what exists of the fullest version of one of the Silmarillion's major stories (much fuller than the one included in the published Silmarillion) into a novel in its own right, and is very worth reading as such. I think if you're coming from the more popular novels just now, I might actually recommend giving it a shot before the Silmarillion unless you're really fired up for fictional mythology like I was.
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Apr 2, 2013 22:39
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Data Graham posted:What always gets me is how gradually the tone of the dialogue ramps up its archaic texture until by the climax of RotK it's all "lo, forsooth" and nobody notices when it started. This is deliberate, though, what with the viewpoints travelling from pintsize bumpkinland to (the remains of) the grandiose old high fantasy kingdom.
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Jul 9, 2013 01:30
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The reason everyone keeps calling Bilbo a burglar is because Thorin wanted to hire one and Gandalf got him to go for Bilbo by scratching a sign meaning "yo, burglar for hire" into Bilbo's door without telling anyone. It's just what his role in the party is supposed to be.
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Dec 30, 2013 17:41
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James The 1st posted:I've always loved LoTR and the Hobbit and am now greatly enjoying reading the Silmarillion for the first time. Now I was looking to purchase the Unfinished Tales and the children of Hurin, but some people on Amazon are saying the story in Hurin is also in Unfinished Tales word for word. Is this nonsense? The Silmarillion has a short version of that whole story, which is in actuality editorially cobbled together from older short versions and parts of drafts of the expanded version; Unfinished Tales has some of the latter interspersed with Christopher Tolkien's notes and commentary, skipping some parts of the story that aren't sufficiently different from the Silmarillion version. The version in Children of Húrin is a unified tidied-up narrative. Most of the material in it is included in either Unfinished Tales or the Silmarillion, although not precisely; different drafts/manuscripts were used, Christopher Tolkien wrote a few bridging pieces to connect things together with the parts that were never fully expanded, and so on. Hamiltonian Bicycle fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Jan 12, 2014 |
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Jan 12, 2014 11:19
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euphronius posted:Basically the Ring would give you the power to dominate people and plants and shape the earth to some degree. If you do that too much (Saruman) you are Evil. Some people like Galadriel are right on the line and the Ring would probably have tipped her over to outright evil. Not quite, that's sort of missing the point - you don't have to be particularly close to any line, you just have to be capable of being tempted by the power it offers, which everyone is. Gandalf doesn't trust himself with it: The Shadow of the Past posted:'No!' cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. 'With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly.' His eyes flashed and his face was lit as by a fire within. Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great for my strength. I shall have such need of it. Great perils lie before me.' Elrond lays it out pretty clearly: The Council of Elrond posted:'Alas, no,' said Elrond. 'We cannot use the Ruling Ring. That we now know too well. It belongs to Sauron and was made by him alone, and is altogether evil. Its strength, Boromir, is too great for anyone to wield at will, save only those who have already a great power of their own. But for them it holds an even deadlier peril. The very desire of it corrupts the heart. Consider Saruman. If any of the Wise should with this Ring overthrow the Lord of Mordor, using his own arts, he would then set himself on Sauron's throne, and yet another Dark Lord would appear. And that is another reason why the Ring should be destroyed: as long as it is in the world it will be a danger even to the Wise. For nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so. I fear to take the Ring to hide it. I will not take the Ring to wield it.'
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Mar 24, 2014 23:49
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Then I'm confused as to what you meant. The point of those quotes is that anyone is vulnerable to the corruption of the Ring (in the form of either becoming subservient to Sauron or replacing him, if powerful enough) if they make the mistake of trying to use it, or even if they hold on to it for too long - specifically not just people who are "right on the line". It's impossible for there to be a person who is good enough to use it without becoming all Saurony, as it were.
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Mar 24, 2014 23:59
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Oh, okay. I don't necessarily agree about Galadriel either, but that makes more sense.
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Mar 25, 2014 00:09
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