Your thoughts on the Lord of the Rings series

[Hornbein]

From the wiki page on Quenya
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenya

Tolkien took an interest in the Finnish mythology of the Kalevala, then became acquainted with Finnish, which he found to provide an aesthetically pleasing inspiration for his High-elven language. Many years later, he wrote: "It was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me."[T 2] Regarding the inspiration for Quenya, Tolkien wrote that:

Finnish is a Mongolian language unrelated to Indo-European.

In Bali I had a Finnish neighbor. He moved out and left some Finnish books behind. I took them to an open library in a restaurant where I happened to spy a young lady who had the Mongolian cheekbones and blond hair of a Finn. Would you like to have these books? She was and she would.

 

[Hornbein]

With not much care given to being the easy read I remembered.

Easy!?! Forsooth!

 

[strangerep]

Impressive. The only Elvish word I know is "melon."

I actually composed music to many of the poems/songs. (Long before Howard Shore came along and mostly blew away my puny efforts.)

"Into the West" is one of my favorite songs of all time, even though the non-Tolkien lyrics are a bit clumsy compared to JRR. E.g., "And dream of the ones who came before" is a touch clumsy when sung with the music. Imho, "And dream of those who came before" would have been better.

Except for...

Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,
yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!
[...]

For that, I still like my composition better than what was in the film, although mine is not really a Gregorian chant as Tolkien apparently intended.

Frustratingly they also put Legolas in the place of Glorfindel in the race from the Nazgul.

Huh? In the film, Arwen saves Frodo from the Nazgul, not Legolas. I didn't like that substitution initially, but now I don't mind it. The closeness of the horse chase was a bit implausible in places, but I absolutely loved that scene at the Ford of Bruinen with Arwen rampant, challenging the Nazgul.

The worst part was all that stuff with Arwen.

JRR once admitted that he always had difficulty with female characters. He tended to put them up on remote unobtainable pedestals, whereas Jackson's version is more of a "modern" woman.

I didn't mind the rest of the stuff with Arwen. Even now, when I re-read the Tale of Aragorn & Arwen it makes me feel quite sad at the end.

I almost hope they never make a film about the Tale of Beren & Luthien. The older I get, the more horrible it feels.

Anyway the film series is still great. One has to forget the books to enjoy it properly.

I just wish Cate Blanchett had actually studied the LoTR books properly beforehand. She doesn't really grok the true depths of Galadriel, imho. (See "Unfinished Tales" if you don't know what I mean.)

 

[strangerep]

And why did Aragon get to be the King of Men? He's descended from elves. He married an elf.

Sheesh. I hope you're just trolling, as usual.

Aragon and Arwen united the long-sundered lines of the half-elven, i.e., Elrond, and Elros (1st king of Numenor). Haven't you read the Silmarillion??

[Hmm, I'm almost embarassed by how much I know about LoTR.]

 

[pinball1970]

Huh? In the film, Arwen saves Frodo from the Nazgul, not Legolas. I didn't like that substitution initially, but now I don't mind it. The closeness of the horse chase was a bit implausible in places, but I absolutely loved that scene at the Ford of Bruinen with Arwen rampant, challenging the Nazgul.JRR once admitted that he always had difficulty with female characters. He tended to put them up on remote unobtainable pedestals, whereas Jackson's version is more of a "modern" woman.

1978 it was Legolas and Arwen in the film both missed Glorfindel revealing himself as an Elf lord.

The women are mainly secondary even though Galadriel is one of the most ancient and powerful elves in the story.
The mirror of Galadriel is her most significant part of the book probably, still smallish.
Arwen pretty insignificant and for me only Eowyn has a really significant part.

 

[pinball1970]

1. My neighbor of the same age as me handed me The Hobbit and told me to read it.

2. I was about 15 years old. It had a big impact on me, it introduced me to fantasy literature and soon afterwards I read The Lord of the Rings too, of course. That same friend also recommended Watership Down, which I also loved (the story about rabbits, with some flavors of fantasy too).

3. Well... what is not special about them? :)
The work of Tolkien is pretty much unique (at least at first, now there are loads of fantasy literature).

Tolkien wasn't the very first fantasy author, but his immense talent for in-depth world building, race (elf, dwarf etc.) building, language building etc. along with compelling storytelling made a huge impact on our culture and propelled the fantasy genre into widespread popularity in a modern age.

4. Pretty good, I think. And as I said above, Tolkien was pretty unique, and hugely influential.

5. I liked the films. My favorite is the first one. I thought there was an extra touch of wonder and fairy tale magic to the first film. I rank it as a 5++ on a scale from 1 to 5.

The only fantasy I encountered before LOTR was CS Lewis, Narnia series and Roald Dahl.
There was a great series called, “Tim and hidden people,” quite dark for a children’s book but I loved it.
It was for 8 year olds or something but it was new in our library and I like the pictures on the cover!

“Watership Down” was great as was “Duncton Wood,” (I read as an adult) and “The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.”

The Hobbit seemed silly to me by the time I read it, same with books like Toad of Toad hall and Lewis Carrol, never got into those.
I tried again with some of those classics but could not read them, it was LOTR or horror from then on and horror fell by the wayside because we had to start reading proper English Literature by then.

As an Adult I tried David Eddings, Stephen Donaldson, Jim Abercrombie and others all ok in their own way.

Very rare I read fiction these days.

 

[Janus]

Finnish is a Mongolian language unrelated to Indo-European.

In Bali I had a Finnish neighbor. He moved out and left some Finnish books behind. I took them to an open library in a restaurant where I happened to spy a young lady who had the Mongolian cheekbones and blond hair of a Finn. Would you like to have these books? She was and she would.

Though Finnish myself ( born in US, but all my grandparents were born in Finland), I never learned the language growing up, even though my parents spoke it. (about the most I knew was, Jo and Ei for yes and no, and how to pronounce sauna properly.) This is something I've always regretted. It wasn't until a couple of years ago, when I finally found an app that covered it that I began to pick up some more.
Even without understanding the language, I remember that during the scene where Arwen cast her spell over the river, that her chant hit chords that reminded me of the Finnish I heard my parents conversing in.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Not sure why everyone's down on the Hobbit Trilogy. Is it by comparison to the book?

Those movies were doomed from the get-go.

• It is the rare prequel indeed that is as good as the original.
• Many of the stakeholders wantyed another Grand Epic, and that's npt really what the story is.
• There is about 25% as much source material for the same length of films.
• The source was really,.if not a children's story, at least a Youbng Adult story.

 

[BWV]

Finnish is a Mongolian language unrelated to Indo-European.

Dont think that is correct, Finnish is Uralic and cannot find any reference that states any relation to Mongolian languages

 

[Hornbein]

Dont think that is correct, Finnish is Uralic and cannot find any reference that states any relation to Mongolian languages
View attachment 329225

I thought Mongolian languages were Uralic. Maybe not. It was twenty years ago that I looked that this stuff. Anyway, not Indo-European.

 

[strangerep]

1978 it was Legolas [..]

Ah. I saw the animated film when it came out, but was very disappointed. I now remember very little of it, except how ridiculous was their depiction of the balrog.

 

[strangerep]

Very rare I read fiction these days.

I'd have said the same thing, except that I now read quite a few MOND papers, too much of which is crack(pot) fiction, imho.

 

[pinball1970]

Finnish is a Mongolian language unrelated to Indo-European.

In Bali I had a Finnish neighbor. He moved out and left some Finnish books behind. I took them to an open library in a restaurant where I happened to spy a young lady who had the Mongolian cheekbones and blond hair of a Finn. Would you like to have these books? She was and she would.

My ex was Hungarian and mentioned Finnish, same family or something.

 

[Hornbein]

Very rare I read fiction these days.

My ex was Hungarian and mentioned Finnish, same family or something.

They're both Uralic languages. They say it is difficult to cross over to Indo-European and vice versa.

Hungarian has a lot of the same ts sounds as Chinese, at least to my quite limited exposure.

 

[Vanadium 50]

united the long-sundered lines

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Divine right of kings, rolyal blood and all that.

The Royal House of Gondor mucked it up in Numenor, and then abandoned Gondor to go camping - for something like a thousand years. If you want a modern example, what would the reaction of His Majesty King Charles be to someone who comes in saying "Hi, Chucky-boy. I'm Billy Plantagenet and I think you're sitting in my chair. Off you go!"

 

[PeterDonis]

How were you introduced to the books?

Heard of The Hobbit from a friend in 7th grade, got it and read it--if not all at one sitting, then pretty close to it. Found out that LoTR was a sequel, got those books and read them. Not really possible to do that at one sitting or even close to it, but I devoured them.

What impact did the books have on you?

They provide a nice alternate world to go to when I want a break from this one. I've lost count of the number of times I've re-read the books.

and....what did you think of the film?

Mostly couldn't stand them. See here:

http://blog.peterdonis.com/opinions/tolkiens-ring.html

The Silmarillion is included

Yep, I bought a hardcover of the first edition (still have it squirreled away somewhere) as soon as I found out about it. I was actually disappointed that it didn't include more.

Also I think Unfinished Tales deserves mention, since it filled in more details about many items of interest.

 

[PeterDonis]

How do we know that Sauron was evil?

Just from the hints in LotR proper, we actually don't have much direct evidence; it's all indirect, from his enemies, who as you note are hardly disinterested. (Although Elrond does admit that even Sauron was not evil in the beginning.) The Silmarillion (including Akallabeth and Of The Rings of Power) does a much better job of documenting the direct evidence against him.

why did Aragon get to be the King of Men? He's descended from elves.

From one half-elf who chose to be human (Elros). But Elros married a human, and so did all of his descendants. So Aragorn has, what, one one-hundred-tenth elven blood (if I've counted his ancestors correctly through the first few Kings of Numenor, the Lords of Andunie, the Kings of Arnor and Arthedain, and the Chieftains of the Dunedain of the North--I think it comes to 55 generations), with all the rest human. I think that counts as human.

He married an elf.

A half-elf who, by choosing to marry him, chose to be human, just as Elros did. Sure, it seems strange to us, but hey, I didn't make these rules, Eru did. Take it up with him.

 

[PeterDonis]

what would the reaction of His Majesty King Charles be to someone who comes in saying "Hi, Chucky-boy. I'm Billy Plantagenet and I think you're sitting in my chair. Off you go!"

Well, Charles isn't a Ruling Steward ruling in the name of the King. He is the King. Sure, there were a few intervening changes of dynasty by force, but hey, it's good to be the King.

 

[Janus]

My ex was Hungarian and mentioned Finnish, same family or something.

Along with Estonian( and some much less widely spoken languages), they all are in the Finno-Ugric family.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Charles isn't a Ruling Steward

No, but his predecessors Charles I and II were Ruling Stuarts!

 

[pinball1970]

Should I start with the Silmarillion? The first time I read it I realised I was going to have to take notes.
Now I can just print off family trees and maps from the net!
Much easier.
I tried to get one gf to read it and she just couldn't get into it (LOTR) or she was busy washing her hair or something but when she was expecting, she surprised me by asking me to read it to her.
Besides getting something akin to laryngitis, it was a great way to explore the book again. She asked questions I did not think of.
She cried like a baby when we got through Moria, again when the fellowship split and several other times. The ending was rough, I probably cooked her a nice dinner that day! Soften the blow.

 

[BillTre]

she surprised me by asking me to read it to her

I never read it until I was looking around for something to read to my first born in my promote reading in the offspring program. The program worked great and he reads quite well. Also learned swimming well (different program).

It is definitely fantasy and not the harder sci-fi I usually like.
Entertaining nevertheless.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I assume that the "Wow" means "best pun all year",. right?

I've poked some fun at Tolkein, partly because some of his fans take it a bit too seriously (Do balrogs have wings?) But it's best understood as Epic Myth, and as such has all the shortcomings of Epic Myth. One of those is that characters are either entirely good or entirely evii. There is relatively little nuance. Saruman was corrupted by using the Palantr (It's true! TV does rot your brain!) and not beause he intrinsically felt that the ends justify the means.

His books have ideas about race and genetic density that are. to put it politely and mildly, old fashioned. Of course Tolkein was a product of his time But there is stll a sense of interchangability of his non-Man characters. What differences of opinion is there betweem say Dwalin and Oin? Dwarves is dwarves, and elves is elves and orcs is orcs and that's all there is to it.

Steve Brust did a much better job of characterizing his "elfs" - they have their own motivations, their own desires, their own conflicts.

 

[Janus]

They're both Uralic languages. They say it is difficult to cross over to Indo-European and vice versa.

An example: welcome in Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish:
Velkommen, Velkominn Velkommen, Välkommen, and Tervetuloa.

Other differences:
No articles in Finnish(the, a, an)
Very little usage of prepositions (to, from, of, by, into, etc.), instead relying on cases:
talo - house(as the subject)
taloa - house(as the object)
talossa in the house
talosta - from/of the house(out of)
talolta - from the house (outside)
talolla- at the house
etc.
adjectives must be in the same case as the noun they refer to:
Punainen omena - red apple(subject)
Punainsta omenaa - red apple(object)
Punianset omenat - red applesVerbs are conjugated depending on the pronoun they are used with:
(minä) olen - I am
(sinä) olet - you are
(me) olemme - we are
( and thus the pronoun is often not even used)

There are 6 verb types, each with different rules on how to conjugate.
For example, Olen is formed from the type 3 verb olla ( to be)
The type 1 verb Etsiä ( to search) would become etsin ( I am searching),
while the type 6 verbs, Paeta( to flee/escape) and vaheta(to age) would become:
Pakenen (I am fleeing ) and vanhenen (I am aging)

 

[PeterDonis]

I assume that the "Wow" means "best pun all year",. right?

That depends on what you mean by "best". There wasn't a "groan" emoji so I did what I could.

 

[PeterDonis]

characters are either entirely good or entirely evii.

I wouldn't put it quite like that (although it is a fairly common--if IMO mistaken--criticism of Tolkien that he presents everything as morally black and white). I would put it that the way characters end up, their final fates, are either entirely good (e.g., Aragorn having a peaceful reign as King for 120 years) or entirely evil (e.g., Denethor burning himself on a pyre and trying to do likewise with Faramir). But that doesn't mean everything they do has the same valence. Aragorn makes mistakes, and Denethor does some good things.

There is relatively little nuance. Saruman was corrupted by using the Palantr (It's true! TV does rot your brain!) and not beause he intrinsically felt that the ends justify the means.

I don't agree with this. Saruman, for example, is not corrupted by the palantir. He is corrupted by Sauron through the palantir, but he is only vulnerable to such corruption because he has already adopted the view that the ends justify the means, and done so long before. (To be fair, much of this back story isn't even brought out in the Appendices to LotR; you have to read Of The Rings Of Power and several of the pieces in Unfinished Tales to fully appreciate what happens to Saruman and how long it takes to happen. For example, he prevents the White Council from driving Sauron out of Dol Guldur for 90 years because he believes that the Ring will reveal itself and give Saruman a chance to take it for himself if Sauron is let be for a time.)

Denethor, similarly, gives way to despair only after decades of successfully holding off Sauron's threat to his realm. (And note that Sauron is not able to corrupt Denethor through the palantir; all Sauron can do is affect what Denethor can see through the palantir, so he only sees the things that promote despair and not those that promote hope.) And what finally makes him give way is the apparently un-healable wound to his son; what father would not be at least somewhat vulnerable to despair under those conditions? But if he were open to the possibility of a King coming again, he might have wondered if the tales about the King's hands being hands of healing might be true and might provide a hope of healing for Faramir.

there is stll a sense of interchangability of his non-Man characters. What differences of opinion is there betweem say Dwalin and Oin? Dwarves is dwarves, and elves is elves and orcs is orcs and that's all there is to it.

To the extent this is true, I think it's just an unavoidable limitation of any storytelling--you can't possibly tell the full story of every character you present. Many characters, just by the nature of the medium, will end up being supporting characters with much less development than the main ones. Dwalin and Oin are supporting characters and don't get the same development; there's no way around that.

But if you consider the main characters of the different races, I don't think they're all the same. Gimli, and even Gloin in LotR, though his appearance is much briefer, are not the same as Thorin in The Hobbit. Elrond is not the same as Galadriel, or Cirdan, or Glorfindel. Even the main orcs are differentiated: Ugluk is not the same as Grisnakh, nor are either of them the same as Gorbag or Shagrat.

 

[DaveC426913]

From one half-elf who chose to be human...

A half-elf who, by choosing to marry him, chose to be human, just as Elros did....

So, elves are not exactly role models for today's trans-gender, fluid-orientation or racial equity issues...

The X-Men were a great role-model for "It's not a choice; it's who I am" that marginalized communities could get behind ... that is, until the movies decided that - "oh yes, there is a cure! Just a little pinprick and you're human!" That was a bad precedent. But I digress...

 

[Rive]

Dwarves is dwarves, and elves is elves and orcs is orcs and that's all there is to it.

Actually, I think he tried to address that lack of depth in Silmarillion, but it (of course) came later (well, mostly) and not really present in LOTR.

 

[Hornbein]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Divine right of kings, rolyal blood and all that.

The Royal House of Gondor mucked it up in Numenor, and then abandoned Gondor to go camping - for something like a thousand years. If you want a modern example, what would the reaction of His Majesty King Charles be to someone who comes in saying "Hi, Chucky-boy. I'm Billy Plantagenet and I think you're sitting in my chair. Off you go!"

Well if he showed up with a giant army of sword-wielding ghosts I'd say "Yes, Your Royal Highness."

 

[PeterDonis]

I think he tried to address that lack of depth in Silmarillion

Certainly in the case of elves the Silmarillion gives much more information about their particular history and motivations and how they differ from those of humans. However...

it (of course) came later (well, mostly) and not really present in LOTR.

I think there is plenty of information in LotR that differentiates elves from humans (and hobbits--the real question to me is how hobbits and humans in LotR differ). To take just some examples off the top of my head:

Gildor's strong reluctance to give advice to Frodo and Sam, even though he knows Gandalf has disappeared and that they are being pursued by servants of the enemy.

Glorfindel's abilities as compared with Aragorn's after he finds the company and when they are up against the Nazgul at the Ford of Bruinen.

The fact that all of the Elven leaders--Elrond, Galadriel, Cirdan, even Thranduil (Legolas's father), will only act in defense of their own realms, even though they clearly have great power available to them.

The desire to retain the past not just in memory but by keeping it somehow in the present, as is the case in Lorien.

And, of course, the fact that elves are not mortal as humans are.

For dwarves, there is maybe not quite as much information in LotR to differentiate them, since Gimli is the only dwarf character that is really developed in LotR. But even with him you can see differences from elves and humans. (Consider, for example, the by-play between Eomer and Gimli concerning whether Galadriel is the fairest lady that lives. Eomer, while never being patronizing, clearly recognizes a humorous element to it all, but Gimli never does. Or the different attitudes that Legolas and Gimli take to Fangorn, on the one hand, and the Glittering Caves of Aglarond, on the other. The latter is particularly surprising since Legolas's father's home is a system of caves, modeled on Thingol's stronghold of Menegroth described in the Silmarillion.)

 

[Vanadium 50]

he believes that the Ring will reveal itself

And to quote Sheriff Bart from Blazing Saddles, "And they was right!"

unavoidable limitation of any storytelling--you can't possibly tell the full story of every character you present

No, but you can give them more personality and less interchangeably that Tolkien did.

We have the example of the X-men. If you were to switch the words around so the wrong characters would appear to be speaking, we would notice. If on Star Trek Chekov and Sulu's scripts were switched, we would notice. Heck, we could stay with dwarfs and swap Bashful and Grumpy and we'd notice.

Didn't we have a Game of Thrones thread here? I like George R.R. Martin, although I don't think this was his best work. But there you have a giant cast as well, with a great deal of delineation between them, And there they are not neatly sorted into "good" and "evil" (although most are in the category of "evil"). So I don't think it can be done. I think it wasn't done.

I also believe Tolkien knew it and just didn't care. He didn't see himself writing a novel - he saw himself writing an epic poem, albeit in prose.

 

[DennisN]

Saruman was corrupted by using the Palantr (It's true! TV does rot your brain!)

 

[Hornbein]

He didn't see himself writing a novel - he saw himself writing an epic poem, albeit in prose.

I suppose that the mythic style is why I prefer the LOTRT to a novel. It's to immortalize the great acts of heroes. May their renown ring forever. It's the least we can do.

On the other hand there is a modern touch. Frodo suffers from PTSD. Did any of the famed heroes of yore? Nay, they made merry then went on to other deeds. They died either gloriously in battle or in an honored old age.

 

[strangerep]

The Royal House of Gondor mucked it up in Numenor,

Rubbish. It was the line of Al-Pharazon that "mucked it up" in Numenor, not the line of Elendil.

and then abandoned Gondor to go camping - for something like a thousand years.

More rubbish. Isildur didn't leave Gondor to go "camping", but to order the northern kingdom of Arnor. They were only reduced to being "Rangers" much later after eventually being decimated by Angmar.

If you want a modern example, what would the reaction of His Majesty King Charles be to someone who comes in saying "Hi, Chucky-boy. I'm Billy Plantagenet and I think you're sitting in my chair. Off you go!"

Irrelevant. Denethor was a steward, not a king, although he did indeed express that sentiment.
Initially, Aragon specifically refused to enter Minas Tirith as a "King returning" precisely because it would stir up trouble and dissent. He only entered as King later, (after Sauron's downfall), by explicit acclaim from the populace.

 

[Hornbein]

Vanadium 50 said:
Saruman was corrupted by using the Palantr (It's true! TV does rot your brain!)

In our times the brain-rotting capabilities of the Palantir abide with us. Palantir Technology made a deal with Aaron "Gangsta" Barr to supply spy software to the Chamber of Commerce. The goal was to collect damaging information on their political enemies, mostly union organizations like the AFL-CIO. The deal was exposed. While Barr stopped short of raising an army of warrior clones or immolating himself, he resigned as CEO of HBGary Federal, dyed his hair blue, and joined the Occupy movement. Close enough.

Wall Street is bullish on data collection/spy software. Palantir boasts two billion in sales with $400 million in losses per annum. Projections call for strong growth.