The Tolkien Mega-Thread

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I’m up to the part where Sam seems to be excited to go with Frodo. The story has started to pick up as Bilbo’s birthday party kind of bored me and I was wondering if I could go on much longer.

You've still got a bit to go until Tom Bombadil.
 
I’m up to the part where Sam seems to be excited to go with Frodo. The story has started to pick up as Bilbo’s birthday party kind of bored me and I was wondering if I could go on much longer.
Bilbo's birthday party is there as a bridge from The Hobbit to Frodo's story, which I believe Tolkien wrote because he initially thought of LotR as a sequel to The Hobbit. (And that is, I understand, what his publishers had asked him for.) It isn't really part of the story in LotR. MAO is that the party, and the following sixteen or seventeen years of Frodo being a wealthy landowner and enjoying it, ought to have been cut by the editor.

A lot of this first part is slow, and it has little apparent conflict. It's hard to see the connection between the desultory things the characters do and the driving issues of the story. And most of the dangers and escapes that the central characters have before Chapter X are either completely unconnected to the main conflict, or resolved by dei ex machinis, or both. It's no wonder that a lot of readers grind to a halt before the story gets to Bree. (Of course, a huge number of readers loved it instead, including myself when young.)

I'll share a few more of my pungent opinions when you get to the relevant parts, if you like.
 
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It's an odd moment. Whimsical, but odd. Not representative of the book as a whole at all.
 
It's an odd moment. Whimsical, but odd. Not representative of the book as a whole at all.

That part was written by Merry, who clearly had something of the playwright in him, just as in his description of the March of the Ents.

Both of which, incidentally, representing Tolkien's critique of MacBeth
 
That’s one of my wife’s favorite scenes in Return of the King, if not the most favorite. I would imagine she is not alone amongst women.
 
Bilbo's birthday party does provide some great comic bits, though:

“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”


This was unexpected and rather difficult. There was some scattered clapping, but most of them were trying to work it out and see if it came to a compliment.

Some of the early parts of Fellowship of the Ring read almost like Tolkien doing Wodehouse.
 
I really enjoy the first couple chapters of Lord of the Rings but if you're looking for epic fantasy adventure that's not where you're going to find it. Most people stall out in the first couple of chapters or when Frodo and Sam are crawling across Mordor.

After killing the witch king Eowyn doesn't shout, "one down, eight to go, who's next." No she decides to become a nurse and a wife. Did the extended version of Return of the King do Eowyn and Faramir's love story?
 
After killing the witch king Eowyn doesn't shout, "one down, eight to go, who's next." No she decides to become a nurse and a wife. Did the extended version of Return of the King do Eowyn and Faramir's love story?

kiiiiiinda...in a very abbreviated way they meet in the Houses of Healing but without any context given. And then I think there's one shot of them together at Aragorn's coronation.

After Faramir's complete character assassination in Two Towers though, along with PJ & Co trying to insert a romantic triangle with Aragorn, it's a pretty deflated ending for both characters.
 
They followed it up with an unofficial sequel to Bakshi's incomplete Lord of the Rings animated film from the 70's, but in the same art style as The Hobbit.

It was equally weird, but I did like the battle between Eowyn and The Witch King better in that version, despite The Witch King sharing the voice of Cobra Commander.

Weird art and sound effects aside, they did a pretty amazing job translating the material to the screen. So weird that they are the same studio that did a bunch of the classic stop motion Christmas specials from the 1960s and 70s, Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman etc.

Speaking of stop motion, I'd totally pay to see a Vinton studios version, but with Will Vinton dead, no chance of that. A Harryhausen Hobbit or LotR would have been neat too, but also not happening , same reason. You just can't get good work out of dead people anymore.
 
That’s one of my wife’s favorite scenes in Return of the King, if not the most favorite. I would imagine she is not alone amongst women.
I think Éowyn has an even better bit earlier, in Chapter II of Book Five (near the beginning of The Return of the King), when she is talking to Aragorn at Dunharrow and he tells her to stay at home so that a proper warrior will be released to go to war. She cuts right through his fine words and shows exactly why they are sexist bullshit.

Éowyn, White Lady of the Rohirrim: not taking shit from sexists on either side since 1954.
 
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I almost quit when it hit TB. Not good imo. Also whenever they meet the elves.
The plotting is far from tight before Bree. Old Man Willow and the Barrow-wights are extraneous threats. Gildor is one deus ex machina, and Tom Bombadil is two.

I really don't blame anyone who bails out before Bree. I just like to assure anyone who is reading LotR as a task or chore, or because it is a cultural landmark, that it does get better after the first half of the first volume.
 
I can tell it’s going to get better but he’s not an easy read for me like my favorite Howard. There’s just some of his idiosyncrasies that I’m not used to.

Howard is the more naturally talented plotter but also benefits from the shorter forms he wrote in. His one novel, Hour of the Dragon, I found too picturesque and rambling for instance. Whereas his long stories like 'Red Nails,' 'Vultures of Whapeton' and 'Queen of the Black Coast' are among his best.
 
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Tolkien wrote in the novel form quite adeptly, with The Smith of Wotton Major, Farmer Giles of Ham, Roverandum, etc. Lord of the Rings tends to be more challenging for modern readers because Tolkien did not follow the structure of a novel, instead creating a unique blend of Anglo-Saxon poetic epic with modern storytelling techniques.
 
Tolkien wrote in the novel form quite adeptly, with The Smith of Wotton Major, Farmer Giles of Ham, Roverandum, etc. Lord of the Rings tends to be more challenging for modern readers because Tolkien did not follow the structure of a novel, instead creating a unique blend of Anglo-Saxon poetic epic with modern storytelling techniques.

Personally I didn't find the plotting the issue for me, more that TB and the elves and too twee for my tastes and uninteresting.

For me the real peak of the Fellowship is the Balrog and Gandalf. I barely finished the first book but I got it in paperback for a revisit. I think realizing the book's strengths and weaknesses better now I'll be more tolerant of them this time around.
 
I can tell it’s going to get better but he’s not an easy read for me like my favorite Howard. There’s just some of his idiosyncrasies that I’m not used to.
You will find that Tolkien does some interesting things with style, and particularly with different characters' diction. The better-educated characters, notably Aragorn and Frodo, adjust their diction to circumstances, speaking in different registers in according to whom they are addressing and what the circumstances are. And the Rohirrim, living in a culture closely engaged with its poetry, shift to a poetic diction as the majesty of circumstances rises. Théoden, Éomer, and Éowyn in particular speak fluent saga when circumstances get sagatical, Éomer even improvising staves (which is very much the thing in saga and Anglo-Saxon epic). Whereas Merry and Pippin, young aristocrats used to addressing everyone in familiar style and unfamiliar with the lays, don't. There's a lovely contrast at the climax in Sammath Naur between Frodo (who is highly educated in Elvish epic) adopting an elevated diction, and Sam (who is not so well-educated but who has great integrity) sticking with plain Shire-speech. Some characters consistently shift registers, others consistently do not; Tolkien is clearly doing it deliberately, and I at least find it effective.

More widely, Tolkien's style shifts as the mood of the story shifts, which is also as the characters come into different landscapes. This is mostly pretty well done, though as Voros notes some things in the early parts are a bit too twee, notably the fox with verbal mental processes, and everything to do with Bombadil.
 
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Neither, it's just weird.

... and he completely ruins the pacing and atmosphere when he turns up. There's a creeping atmosphere that builds through the Shire as the Hobbits are tracked by the Black Riders, a subtle dark feel of something sinister in such bucolic surrounding which I think is really clever and people can miss. But, then, Tolkien himself tramples all over it introducing Bombadil. It's really jarring and diminishes/destroys all the good work and slow tension he's built up beforehand.
 
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Honestly I really like the part with Bombadil. I completely get why people don't, but I like the thematic role he plays and the English folktale feel he has.

I think the ideas behind him are brilliant; it's the execution that I didn't like. I think I could even have handled his placement in the story better if his portrayal would have been different. Some of the fan theories are amazing too - Old Father Time, etc - about him. Yes, I really like who/what he may be; there's some potentially properly spooky, appropriate for folklore, stuff going on behind those yellow wellingtons.
 
From my understanding Tom was there before the Valar even showed up in Middle-earth?
 
To quote Sauron's blog "Iarwen Ben Adar, what the fuck?"

My own theory is that he's a manifestation of Eru , the creator, oldest and fatherless, there to enjoy his creation.

My thinking on the whole episode is that Tolkien is still very much in the Victorian mode when he writes the first few chapters. Go read Alice In Wonderland or Peter Pan or The Princess and the Goblins. Oh yeah! There it is, the rambling story with random poems and no sense of direction. It's not necessarily a bad thing but in many ways Lord of the Rings is a bridge between they mythic and the folksy children's story. Tolkien's preferences clearly lean towards the mythic and epic but the Hobbits are there to guide the readers across the bridge and into more dangerous territory. Old Tom's just hanging out by the bridge to wave goodbye. That being said, I've never known anyone who stopped reading after Bree because it got to serious and focused.

On the other hand...

The old house on the edge of the river valley was well kept but in the hour of twilight there was jolly nonsense singing and dancing which could be glimpsed though the warm amber light which escaped past the curtains. A tall misshapen form crept from the fens and crept towards the homely house with an ungainly stride. The ponies shied away from the grotesque and dripping form that made it's way up the path to the door to knock, with a rat a tat tat upon which it drew itself to full height, it's saurian features casting a draconian shadow down the hillside.

The door opened wide and a short, stout man in a blue tunic stood suddenly framed in the doorway.

"Hiya, meesa Jar Jar Binks," the dreadful apparition declared.
 
I don't want to get too much into an evaluation of it, because I've got other stuff I'm working on right now, but I've given ALOT of thought to the Tom Bombadil episode over the years. I think a lot of people see it as "whimsical" because he comes across as such a carefree, preposterous/larger than life character, but I actually think that it is Tolkien stealth transitioning the reader into a much darker world - think about what actually happens to the Hobbits while they are in Bombadil's realm - first a sentient tree attempts to crush and devour them, and then they end up dragged into an ancient tomb by undead spirits intent on sucking out their souls. And all this is nothing to Tom Bombadil, he is beyond comprehension and caring. He helps out the Hobbits, but that is only because they are visitors to his realm that he happened across - think about what then his realm is if those are the two encounters the Hobbits have just setting foot in it and tryig to leave - his entire realm is likely inhabited by horrific hungry things that simply don't bother him.

When it's proposed to the council that they give him the Ring for safekeeping, it's suggested he simply wouldn't care enough about it an would just as likely misplace it. Even when Gandalf visits Tom after the War of the Ring, Tom could care less about the events of the war itself - all those deaths, all the sacrifices are nothing to him. He is completely apathetic. And the more I think on that the more terrifying it is. Tom Bombadil is more like a Lovecraftian Elder God than anything - humanity simply means nothing to him, the battle between Good and Evil as meaningless to Tom as the fish in the stream.

When I think of Bombadil I think of Gandalf's words: “Far, far below the deepest delving of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not.”
 
heh...I used the passing fox in a fanfic once

A passing fox stopped and stared for a moment, "well, I see old Bilbo's been in his cups again," he sighed, "off to see the mountains again I expect, but he's headed west, not east, the missus will have a laugh at that."

It's here: https://www.rpgpub.com/threads/story-time-getting-your-toes-wet.278/#post-7207


The notion being that by Earthsea's standards Bilbo is a dragonlord. Which is to say someone a dragon will bother to talk to before eating them. I stalled out when I couldn't decide which dragon would be giving Sparowhawk trouble. I've been re-reading some of the later Guardians of the Flame books but I think Elgon isn't really well enough known and he's really not any kind of a problem. Well, if he's playing with children at the lake and you make trouble he might be a very big problem or if you're a threat to anyone remotely tied to the Cullinanes, he's a bit attached to them. I suppose a sarcastic, telepathic dragon who decided to taunt you with your darkest shames and secrets is one kind of problem. Ah well, one day out of the blue, it'll come to me.

Really, I think JRR Tolkien would have loathed The Guardians of the Flame. It's a foul mouthed and gritty deconstruction of heroic fantasy. But then, maybe he would have, the characters are well drawn and the setting is at least, a bit consistent.
 
I think when you read something plays a part as well.

I read the Hobbit in the 6th grade and Lord of the Rings in 7th. This roughly corresponded with my getting into RPGs (over the summer break between 4th & 5th grade) and in films also meshes nicely with the Rankin / Bass The Hobbit and Return of the King, Bakshi's Wizards and LotRs, Conan the Barbarian, Excalibur, Heavy Metal, and the last of the Ray Harryhausen films, Clash of the Titans and Sinbad & the Eye of the Tiger. The older 7th and Golden Voyage of Sinbad as well as Jason & the Argonauts were frequently on TV.

LotRs ruined fantasy fiction for me for a bit as other fantasy novels I could get my hands on were not good in comparison. Thankfully compellations of Greek and Norse mythology were easy to come by and before long I got my hands on The Once and Future King, and some of the RH Howard Conan books. By the mid 80s fantasy fiction was once again popular with many older books being re-published and new ones written.


I can re-read LotR now just fine, but not sure I would enjoy it the same if I was reading it for the first time.


As far as Tom Bombadil I see him as similar to Bjorn from the Hobbit. Two quite powerful beings who take little interest in the world outside of their lands. They are quite willing to assist decent people within their sphere of influence, but not interested in getting involved with the issues of the larger world.
Not really sure what Tolkien's intent was but it does provide an easy way to give the characters a break, and yet even when seemingly in their care things are not entirely without peril. Either could have easily Mary Sue'd the parties to their goal so the "not my problem" is one very easy solution to that not happening.
 

Nice. Some of those questions are things that I've considered, others I disagree with or reached other conclusions, but I agree overall that there is something deeply disturbing and sinister inherent in Bombadil, and Tolkien was quite fond of employing the "unreliable narrator" when it suited him
 
Bombadil is a force of nature, not a comfy sky daddy. I always liked that about him.
 
I read a quote on Reddit awhile back about nature itself being quite unsettling. Like when you look at a pastoral landscape there is an unseen war raging amongst all sorts of life. It is the way of things.
 
Nature is uncompromising. One of its best features IMO.
 
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