Lord of the Rings

Don't forget his faithful companion Banazir, Ban for short.

"We hates the Labingi!"

Small brain: Sauron is the principal antagonist in Tolkien's work
Medium brain: Morgoth is the principal antagonist in Tolkien's work
Galaxy brain: Lobelia Sackville-Baggins is the principal antagonist in Tolkien's work

"i know it was you otho, and it breaks my heart"

re: smeagol/trahald, i wonder if he was still called “gollum”? since that’s just a reference to the weird noise he makes.

only 1 chapter left before my mini-bookclub finishes Return of the King.

I read “The Scouring of the Shire” chapter today and i’m shook! that was so heavy. and the allegory is really not disguised at all, seems like one of the few times in the books where Tolkien is really openly working out his post-war grief.
also after the whirlwind wrapup festival of the previous two chapters, going back to like, full story mode was quite welcome, i was afraid the whole last section of the book would be yadda yadda’d to the end lol

saruman really is a petty cunt though. jfc

Quite so!

And your timing is good with that chapter when it comes to...not this NEW episode of the podcast about to appear but next month.

ooh yay! :D

I normally read about 30-40 books a year, which is utterly impossible now I have a toddler, so instead my plan to read 3-4 very long books instead: Middlemarch, Jonathan Strange, 20 Years After, and... Lord of the Rings, which I've never read.

A question: I loved the early and middle parts of The Hobbit but was kinda bored to tears by the battle at the end (and don't get me started on the awful resolution to Smaug's story). Is there any of the early, funnier Tolkien in LOTR (or something that's different but still interesting)?

There is, and there's more of an engrossing plot, but there is also way more ponderous battle stuff

and don't get me started on the awful resolution to Smaug's story

OUT.

Our next episode in a couple of days on the Rankin-Bass Hobbit reminded me about how as I read the full book as a kid after seeing their version slowly but steadily (over multiple rereadings) got me used to the slightly deeper waters in the book towards the end -- hints of power politics and the like. I think he manages that pretty well!

Apropos of nothing I discovered this tweet yesterday, and the accuracy

oh man idk about this Hobbit recut pic.twitter.com/nuck6MH4bT

— bimbo baggins (@strongbadegirl) August 6, 2018

The lord of the rings is not much like the Hobbit

This is not a criticism of either

Ok, that's reassuring actually

The beginning of LOTR is similar to "the early, funnier Tolkien" but the bulk of LOTR is definitely and intentionally a more serious affair with higher stakes. There is some discussion upthread that many people's (including mine's) favorite bit of the LOTR is the first book's gradual subversion of the earlier, funnier Tolkien by the growing sense of terror and doom.

gradual subversion of the earlier, funnier Tolkien by the growing sense of terror and doom

Okay very intrigued now

OUT.

― Ned Raggett, Saturday, April 3, 2021 4:38 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ha! Although would happily hear a defence of Smaug's "oh, er, somebody random shot him, let's say" ending (but maybe this isn't the thread)

very beginning, actually

(or something that's different but still interesting)

About 90% this.

The scenic journeying stuff from The Hobbit is still there, but the tone is very different. Not so much "I'm going on an adventure!"

yeah doomy Tolkien was a cool discovery for me - the entire first half of Return of the The King is all turning the screws & he’s so good at it

As Tolkien himself says in the introduction to the revised edition to LOTR, it took him a while to get to the growing terror/doom phase -- once he had finally cracked things with "The Shadow of the Past" in particular (and in the process essentially accepted that the original Gollum scene in the Hobbit couldn't stand, which required its own revision in turn), then it all started to really gel. The early drafts of the starting chapters really show how he steadily embraced the deeper stakes the more he worked through it -- at one point the original 'Black Rider' that Frodo first encounters was a heavily cloaked Bilbo, and Strider/Aragorn was a Hobbit called Trotter. So it really could have been a much lighter story in the end.

Doomy Tolkien was weirdly enough essentially where he started -- the original Book of Lost Tales, however randomly lighter its surrounding framework at the time, essentially established that a key part of his mythology wasn't merely a Biblical level fall of sorts but destructive futility on the part of the side of good, at least as defined by the Elves in rebellion who seek to fight Morgoth and basically not only lose but worse. The lighter sides were always there and recurred at many points in the 1930s -- Farmer Giles of Ham, Roverandom, Mr. Bliss, even the Father Christmas letters plus The Hobbit all show this. It's the dovetailing of this sense with the grim, strange sense of historical and mythological romance in what he'd created with his other work that makes LOTR what it is.

I definitely enjoyed that sense of Tolkien “discovering” the story as it revealed itself to him throughout the books

Ned on some LOTR trip like some 6th C. Scholar that knows all the apocryphal books that got excised from the New Testament.

Ned on some LOTR trip like some 6th C. Scholar that knows all the apocryphal books that got excised from the New Testament.

It's what I do! I've got five shelves of Tolkien/Tolkien-related books here for a reason! :-D

Although would happily hear a defence of Smaug's "oh, er, somebody random shot him, let's say" ending (but maybe this isn't the thread)

Oddly enough, though we don't address this point directly, our latest episode brings up another example where we talk about a part one of us thought was better in the Rankin-Bass version than the book in terms of basic story-telling mechanics. Similarly it can be argued that by introducing Bard directly in Rankin-Bass when the Dwarves arrive in Lake-town, however briefly but as a person with a sense of authority, like there wasn't a mayor figure at all, provides a bit of needed focus. I'm fine with how Bard appears in the book, essentially suddenly but set up briefly as someone with a rep for the serious and concerned, but I can see how it seems random. (At least it wasn't the bizarrely extended elaboration in the Jackson films but that's another story, nothing against Luke Evans...)

I definitely enjoyed that sense of Tolkien “discovering” the story as it revealed itself to him throughout the books

We've noted this a few times over the podcast's run; my cohost Jared is particularly at pointing this out -- characters suddenly appear in his stories and then he starts thinking about them more in revisions or wondering how they fit into deeper cosmologies. Galadriel is like this, the Ents and Treebeard as well. Even Ghan-buri-Ghan, who almost literally appeared out of nowhere after one short draft where there's only some shadowy half-seen guides.

(xpost) Yeah, I thought something similar too - if he'd turned up a few pages before, it would've seemed less anticlimactic.

It took me a bit of page-flipping to realise that Smaug was actually dead, and who killed him. (I must admit I was skimming a bit by that point.)

Although I suppose I'm just inured to big movie climaxes and that's not really Tolkein either, thank goodness

It's all part of the setup for the actual climax. Smaug is dead, the Lonely Mountain is miraculously open for the taking, the dwarves barely had to do a thing. But Lake Town has been destroyed, which wouldn't have happened if Bilbo and the dwarves hadn't showed up. And it's thanks to a Lake Towner that Smaug is gone. So Thorin finds himself under an unanticipated obligation, which quickly turns ugly, and the real conflict begins.

Right, and that bit of extra complexity as opposed to simply 'we killed the big dragon hooray we're done' makes it even more of a really great story. There's even a sense of in-universe criticism of the setup, with Bilbo's appreciably practical wonderings -- partially prompted of course by Smaug himself in their confrontation -- of how exactly the whole division of the treasure or the profits was supposed to happen. By the time he makes the Arkenstone offer, he's not only showing awareness of that but illustrating by example why it's all so destructive -- and essentially earning that final Bilbo/Thorin exchange to the full.

One thing I like about the main resolution in LOTR is that we never have a 'bunker' scene (to put the WWII comparison he always hated, I admit). I'm fully cognizant that there's a counterargument that this is part of an intrinsic flaw where the Enemy as broadly stated is inhuman and unknowable -- our orcs episode the other month touches on this in various ways and we'll yet say more -- but for the purposes of the story, I appreciate how in essence the destruction of the Ring and Sauron's fall happens incredibly swiftly and with little detail. Unlike in Jackson's film, where the moment is streeeeetched out and all, we don't 'see' Gollum and the Ring's destruction, Sam only sees a brief and confusing vision of Barad-dur's collapse, then we pull back in subsequent chapters first to the battle at the Black Gate and then finally to the moment where Faramir and Eowyn watch on the walls. They're all moments of high drama but they are, ultimately, moments.

Anyway, it must be true

pic.twitter.com/vJcrFIOqJf

— Shannon 🦉 (@shay3322) April 3, 2021

LOTR does have that masterful logarithmic scale of stakes-raising that is at the heart all the best RPG campaigns... a party, a journey, get to Bree, get to Rivendell, get to Mordor, save the world

the first half of Two Towers got a little tedious in spots, what with all the journeying

but overall i love the trilogy as a whole and the deep changes that the 4 hobbits go through is so affecting & beautifully illustrated - without ever really making a point of saying that outright? he gives you the chance to get to know them so well over the course of the books that by the end it’s purely in your own mindseye’s contrast that you see the ghosts of their former carefree selves almost, idk, floating away

that sense of being hunted and lost, the "behind enemy lines" vibe of the first book through rivendell is so great.

i think strider being somewhat obscure in his abilities- capable, trusted by gandalf, sure, but unsure, imperfect, certainly not up to taking on the forces hes up against and knows it- is critical to the shift from hobbit-sized danger to a story that becomes a young adult/adult touchstone.

― kim rong un (darraghmac), Tuesday, 28 April 2020 22:47 (eleven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

ppl will refer to lotr as a work that birthed every cliche going but there's something quite striking in how useless direct confrontation is with a powerful enemy is, and how *badly* it turns out time and time again.

only second tier characters want to fight, gandalf and strider are the most powerful respectively in magic and arms of the fellowship and they spend large parts of the story avoiding having to demonstrate this and the story makes a point of demonstrating why, imo

of course, the movie glorying in special moves like a final fantasy cut scene gets this utterly wrong also.

might read it again with this new-sprung take tbh

― kim rong un (darraghmac), Tuesday, 28 April 2020 22:56 (eleven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think these thoughts from the bump a while back are relevant re the tonal shift from hobbiton to "oh shit" and also tolkien's unwillingness to have a big boss enemy you can directly confront and win out cleanly

Id add (from today's posts) that the real "oh shit" difference between hobbit and LOTR is that our guiding lights, strider and gandalf, have very early in their LOTR arcs moments that let the hobbits and the reader know that they havent a clue about anything other than that they are not up to this task.

Thats a huge jump from children's tale hobbit (gandalf is bigger than any episodic danger bar smaug) to teenager/older adventure of a much less certain and bumbling type

the first half of Two Towers got a little tedious in spots, what with all the journeying

Cannot agree, these books are about *walking* after all, as proved upthread

One thing I like about the main resolution in LOTR is that we never have a 'bunker' scene (to put the WWII comparison he always hated, I admit).

I do love that we get the briefest insight into Sauron's mind as "his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare." I don't think the movie caught this very effectively, tbh - the slight double-take as the spotlight turns towards the Cracks of Doom (though I don't like Sauron-as-literal-giant-eye very much to begin with.)

The whole sequence inside the mountain is like three pages. LOTR can be incredibly fast and exciting sometimes.

Cannot agree, these books are about *walking* after all, as proved upthread

story woulda been way better with a transcontinental railroad

Love Éomer's amazement at how good they are at walking.

"Wingfoot I name you. This deed of the three friends should be sung in many a hall."

it was surprising how short the final mount doom sequence was - but the impact is not minimized at all, it hits hard with maximum efficiency

also i love in this from Scouring of the Shire, after Frodo tells the Gaffer that Sam is one of the most famous people in all the lands:

... “It takes a lot o’believing” said the Gaffer,“Though I can see he’s been mixing in strange company. What’s come of his weskit? I dont hold with wearing ironmongery, whether it wears well or no.” ...

Best line in the book is gaffer about frodo teaching sam his letters tbrr

but overall i love the trilogy as a whole and the deep changes that the 4 hobbits go through is so affecting & beautifully illustrated - without ever really making a point of saying that outright? he gives you the chance to get to know them so well over the course of the books that by the end it’s purely in your own mindseye’s contrast that you see the ghosts of their former carefree selves almost, idk, floating away

this is very charmingly put

i seem to recall tolkien saying something to the extent that with merry and pippin he actually wanted to have characters that are mostly unchanged (unspoiled might be a better word even) by the horrors they experience (well, not counting the Palantir Experiment i guess) as a testament to the resilience of hobbits but also as an expression of hope that we can retain our humanity even after going through inhumane experiences

the funniest difference to me btw the books & the movie is how much storyline the movies give to aragorn & arwen vs the handful of sentences they get in the books including “oh and btw they got married & it was v nice”

it cracks me up

it doesnt me

yes yes i know yr v serious

darraghmac on Tolkien
i know
i know
it's serious

heeee

yeah darraghorn

(and don't get me started on the awful resolution to Smaug's story).

i found smaug's fate disappointing when i first read the book as a kid -- it seemed odd that the book's great villain should be killed by a character who had just been introduced a couple of pages ago, and not by our heroes who we've been hanging out with for the past 300 pages. on the other hand...what's the alternative? there really is no plausible way for thorin and his pals to get rid of the dragon. they don't even seem to have a plan, unless their plan is to have bilbo sneak in and steal all the treasure back, one cup at a time. (admittedly a pretty funny thought.)

My niece recently suggested that the hobbits should've waited till "the dragon was doing a poo" and then snuck in and stole the gold