Vir, congratulations, you won the ice-cream. Now, go out and buy it yourself to enjoy it!!!

Do you KNOW how many orcs it takes to change a lightbulb!!!!!!?

I'm reading The Hobbit right now. And I found the following description worth wondering about :



I began to think, at this point, why an Elf Lord would be greedy for wealth. Then the same para continues as follow :



This was from the chapter "Flies And Spiders". The following part is from the next chapter, "Barrels Out Of Bond" :



Now this description is much nearer to the image of the Elves I have in my mind. But then it contradicts with the very first one I've quoted. Any comments on this?

Tolkien wrote the Hobbit first (officially). He had always had the Silmarillion in his head, working it all out, but wrote it down late. In the first edition of the Hobbit, there are much changes in Riddles in the DArk. Gollum is nice. He was actually going to give Bilbo the ring, except Bilbo had already found it in the tunnel when BIlbo won. So he showed him the way out instead. At least I think that'show it goes. Then he wrote TLOTR. And he never really finished the SIlmarillion. Christopher Tolkien put all his drafts and that together and published it anyway. Same with Unfinished Tales.

I was watching TFOTR earlier today and this something about the Wizard's staff that made me wonder a little. How does Gandalf get his staff after escaping from Saruman? And speaking of staffs, what use are they exactly? What exactly do they do? I remember of the following from the chapter Over Hill And Under Hill from The Hobbit :



Gunpowder? Someone said gunpowder?

Hello Floyd. Well, T’rin turambar and I were discussing this in another forum actually. I kind of liked the image of the elves from The Hobbit, the fact that they weren’t so stuffy in a sense. T’rin had a good point and stated that perhaps Tolkien didn’t quite have the clear image of elves that he had in LOTR, which makes a certain amount of sense, especially since Legolas is Thranduil’s son, and he is nothing like the elves described in The Hobbit.

Regarding the following quote:


Upon close reading, perhaps Thranduil, since he didn’t mine or work metals or jewels, horded everything that he could get his hands on. He was fascinated with it because it was something they didn’t and couldn’t do (pure speculation of course). Also, since he didn’t ’bother much with trade,’ perhaps he didn’t actually know the appropriate rules of trading, which is why he wouldn't give the dwarves what they thought to be their due. However it is, Legolas definitely seems to be of a higher character than his father’more like the elves of other regions, except for the green outfit of course .

I think this is because THeHobbit is told in a 'storytelling' style, as if Tolkien was telling it himself (I did an English essay on this) and of course who he would be telling it to would have heard of gunpowder. Have you noticed in the Hobbit is sounds like a storyteller is telling a little kid a story? It's not like any of the characters mention gunpowder. So yeah. Am I making sense?

Unfinished Tales.

Yup, Unfinished Tales would work. But maybe HOME would too? (I haven't read them, I wouldn't know). Anyone who's read them know?

No, books 6-9 are all about the creation of Lord of the Rings, Grondy. I just cannot get on with the idea of Aragorn's earliest form being a Hobbit called Trotter, though. I'm pleased JRR saw better judgement before publishing.

Trotter...*shudders* glad that bit was changed.

I think it is kind of interesting to read the many versions that JRRT went through. But I think that there is really no reason to publish them, I wouldn't want rough drafts that I wrote to be published. I guess that anything with Tolkien's name on the cover sells.

I'm not entirely sure why Christopher did it, Grondy. The money cow is an obvious conclussion, but sales of HOME must be insignificant compared to LotR and the Silmarillion. I think it was a labour of love... trying to organise all those old manuscripts into some sort of order. Maybe something in the blood? JRR never appeared willing to end the Silmarillion. It took Christopher to put it into it's final form, and maybe he then got the bug. Maybe he wanted to show the world just how extensive his father's work really went, for without these later books, few people would really know.

For the likes of myself, it does give an interesting challenge unique among authors to Tolkien. There is enough depth in there to be a literary archeologist. With painstaking work you can research stories behind stories, and see the evolution over time of the finished product. Due to this depth, LotR and the Silmarillion become so much more than just fiction. The depth behind them makes them feel real. Tolkien wanted from the outset for the Silmarillion to be a British folklore or mythology. With this depth he achieves it.

No, all I could find was that when Beleriand sank beneath the waves, some of Morgoth's minions escaped east. Shelob would have fled from her home in the Ered Gorgoroth, the Mountains of Terror to Cirith Ungol. The route and number of layovers she took on her journey can only be speculated. One map (pg 41) showing all the relocation good and evil alike in Karen Wynn Fonstad's Revised Edition of The Atlas of Middle-earth also shows Shelob's suspected route. That is all I could find.

Why was HoME published? Just my opinion, but 1) for the developmental reasons stated (the Silmarillion was begun in the teens, while Tolkien said he stopped work on LotR temporarily due to distractions from a little thing called the Blitz, and had no more idea of what happened after Bree than we,) and 2) for folks like me (and him) that like the Silmarilliion sooooo much more (it's just so epic) but lament the lack of detail. In the Quote something... thread from which I just came I list "Great is the Fall of Gondolin." True, but in the Silmarillion it just states that the Doom of Mandos was uttered; no specifics (and in fact the above is the only one of which I'm aware extant.)

Now to stir controversy (heh, heh: )

Staves, aye, well, Gandalf bore Narya (the Ring of Fire) the whole time he was in Middle-Earth. Does anyone recall him doing anything unquestionably magical IN THE BOOKS (in which the wizards duel in the movie never occurred) that didn't relate to fire or light? How did he get his staff back when captured by Saruman? He never lost it, and carried it with him when Gwaihir rescued him. Gandalf did all sorts of things with fire in the books, from fireworks to wargkabobs, but he bore Narya. Twain said "the difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." "Like gunpowder" is not gunpowder. On that note....

The implication I get is that the Orcs used gunpowder at Helms Deep, but Tolkien leaves this mysteriously ambiguous (deliberately, I think.) I'd bet on gunpowder if he was here to ask (a question for a later day, I suppose) but it could've been Greek fire, too. Heck C4's not that hard to make; it COULD have been that, but I wouldn't bet on it. Methane would work, and I suspect Orcs have plenty of that. Hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg odor) would work wonderfully, too (and why do they give gas an odor with explosive hydrogen sulfide? Aren't gas leaks dangerous enough?)

Gunpowder's my bet at Helms Deep, but when Gandalf zapped stuff/lit his staff, IMHO it was Narya. Others dispute this. There's no way to be certain of what happened in either case based on the text alone. The books are relatively skimpy on magic that's not a) from the holy West or b) a product (the Rings of Power) either derived from or themselves (the One Ring) essentially evil. As I'm flashing back to a discussion of whether Galadriel COULD or WOULD make her Mirror without using Valinorean knowledge (I concede the former but am dubious of the latter) I'll stop now.

I'm embarrassed to confess I'll have to take your word for it, as my TT is in shreds; every time I open it more pages come lose, and I'm too tired to remember. Their (ugh) paperbacks I received for Christmas in '87, and its cover completely detached before I got through Book III. That was the first of nine passes, and while I do need to read it again, I think I'm getting a new set first. I might be able to remember if I hadn't been up a solar day after a thirty plus hour stint broken by... hmm... four hours of sleep, I think. Maybe three.

All of that said, I do now recall Gandalf expecting the newly reforged Sword of Elendil to the first thane that asked for it, but he got all upset when asked for his staff. "Would you deprive an old man of his only support?" or something like that wasn't it? Think he meekly handed over Glamdring, too. The question now becomes whence his staff came, but it does seem like, while the verdict remains "inconclusive" the burden of proof has shifted to me.

*Morambar casts Unsummon*

What's with Tolkien's fascination with names? Gosh, so many characters have so many different names, its confusing!

Tolkien invented different languages for the different races he used in his writing as well as Common Westron which they used in when conversing between them. Thus an individual could have a different name in each of these languages. For example ie:

Somebody should post in some Tolkien threads or create new Tolkien threads. I'm weary of all those trivial tavern threads.

I'm afraid I can't do that. It gives me the uncanny feeling that only I am interested in delving deeply into Tolkien's writings.

I'm sorry you feel that way Vir ...I am a true Tolkien fan and I do like all of the book I've read so far but I'm not a writer myself as I've learned to know you both are .That's why I let others do their job while I do mine .I have read most of your stories Vir and I think they are great !! Please don't make us feel small and not truly/deeply interested in Tolkien because I think most of us really are .That's the main reason why I joined PT