# Tolkien



## tissue (Jun 3, 2003)

I personally find JRR Tolkien to be one of the literary genius's ever. His style of writing gave the characters almost a fourth dimension. Any thoughts on this?


----------



## rcallaci (Jun 4, 2003)

He is the Father of the fantasy genre, and much more then  that. I first read Tolkien over thiry two years ago in the  jungles of vietnam and his writings made me see the world differently ever since. His work is magical in the purest sense, and the world he has created will live on long after we're all gone.

Warm Regards,
Bob


----------



## tissue (Jun 4, 2003)

See! He gets Tolkien! It'll change your life. He saw our dreams and wrote them down.


----------



## Kimberly Bird (Jun 5, 2003)

I completely agree, Tolkien is one of the better writers out there.  But I wonder how many fans he would have had today if the movies didn't come out?  Not many but the older ones I would say.  Tolkien was all but petered out by late 70's, dead in the 80's & 90's.  I keep thinking the director may have been looking at Harry Potter's movie and thought, 'damn if I can't bring this series back to life, and get a new group of followers for it.'  There is a whole new group out there of cultish followers who now believe every word he wrote came from the Gods and believe he created the elfish language, which was the Finnish language I believe?  Anyhow, just rambling and wanted to share my thoughts on it.  I saw both movies, but I still enjoy the books more.

Kimberly


----------



## Bartleby (Jun 28, 2003)

Kim~

I think you may be giving fantasy fans the short end of the stick, by saying that Tolkien was petering out before the release of the movies. After all Tolkien's book have been on the shelf in constant print as long as I can recall, which while not an awfully long time but certainly covers the 80's. Just my two cents.


----------



## Anonymous (Sep 22, 2003)

tissue said:
			
		

> I personally find JRR Tolkien to be one of the literary genius's ever. His style of writing gave the characters almost a fourth dimension. Any thoughts on this?



What do you think it was about his writing that gave the characters such depth?

Personally, I didn't find much depth to the characters.  His attention to detail in Middle Earth is staggering, but I didn't get a lot of depth from the characters.  Character felt like a shortcoming of Tolkien's, to me.  Walking away from the series, I couldn't tell you what it was about Gimli, specifically, that Legolas likes so much.  I took their relationship more as a symbol that bigotry plagues both sides.  But their characters?  Sorry, not much there.

Its a great series, but not on the merit of the depth of its characters.

Stephen King is another *brilliant* writer who I can while away hours and hours with.  But his characters haven't got much depth.  He makes great use of characters already in our lives and has us flesh out the skeleton he describes.


----------



## Chuckwrox (Sep 22, 2003)

Whoops.  I neglected to sign in before posting the above note.  Sorry!  That's me, above!


----------



## Fantasia (Sep 22, 2003)

I have the greatest respect for Tolkien.  His imagination is -- well -- fantastic!  His imagery is rich, his plot revolutionary (how many stories/cartoons/movies have we seen with the same basic story line: A group of individuals with different powers, brought together by a common destiny...) and his use of words brilliant!  

However... maybe I'm not smart enough, but his attention to detail could get really boring, to put it simply.  I have to admit that it was a chore reading it before and I never really finished.  When the movies came out, I said to myself, "Maybe I'll find it easier to read this time!" But I suppose I haven't grown any smarter.


----------



## godisthyname (Sep 23, 2003)

I like Tolkien but you don't think he can be a bit too over descriptive? To describe a great big mountain will take him 20 pages alone.  Good at imagery and larger than life characters if you can spare the attention span required.  I prefer the style of someone like Evelyn Waugh personally, just because of his light and flowing narrative and humourous dialogue.  Then again I neve understood fantasy or sci-fi to the same degree as other literature.


----------



## kinetickyle (Sep 23, 2003)

godisthyname said:
			
		

> I like Tolkien but you don't think he can be a bit too over descriptive? To describe a great big mountain will take him 20 pages alone.



Amen!  I tried to read one of the LOTR books, and it was like reading Tom Clancy.  While I respect the man's vision and characterizations, I can't stand his writing style.  It seems like so many of the words just bog the story down.  I know there's a lot of people who are not gonna agree with me, but a story has to move fairly rapidly to hold my attention.


----------



## Elphaba (Sep 23, 2003)

I wholeheartedly (and second that "Amen!") agree that Tolkien's overly descriptive.  It got to be so much of a chore that I just started skipping over the geographical parts, because I *knew* I wasn't going to remember them anyway.

I never finished "Return of the King", not so I'd be surprised by the movie, but because my head was too full.


----------



## AdamR (Sep 23, 2003)

I actually enjoy Tolkein's 'overly' descriptiveness. Once he's done describing something, you can see exactly in your mind what he is talking about. I promise you that if Tolkein wasn't as descriptive as he was, the LOTR movies wouldn't have been nearly as good as far as scenery goes.

True, authors CAN get too overly descriptive. But Tolkein does it in a way where it is not boring and highly enjoyable, IMHO.


----------



## Fantasia (Sep 23, 2003)

No argument that the descriptions in the book made the movie magnificent, but I really gotta say that Tolkien's the most the descriptive of the most descriptive. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





  Maybe I have A.D.D. or something, but it was a bit too much to keep my interest for too long.  I like descriptions, but I'd like to imagine some things by myself too.

Tolkien's awesome as a writer, but his material's just not my type of reading, 'sall.


----------



## Anonymous (Sep 24, 2003)

I love the world he created and the story he told.  Most of his characters lack depth... but I think the focus of the story rested on hobbits... and the four hobbits he engaged in the story were quite well-developed.  But that's obviously just an opinion!  :wink:

Occasionally, the reading can be tedious... but I felt there was a payoff in the end.

Some things I've HEARD about Tolkien but won't take the time to verify (except through my own sources)...
-He wrote one sentence a day.  He thought about it all day long.  (According to my computer tech and amateur jeweler friend.)
-He created an entire language.  The elvish language he uses in the book.  He studied many languages and was interested in their origins.  The language he created was the only one created by one person to be grammatically and syntactically correct.  (Two teachers said something to this effect.  One was my sixth grade teacher, who introduced these novels and other fantasies to me.  The other was an arrogant college english professor I didn't like, even though he still managed to teach me a great deal.)
-He and CS Lewis were good friends.  (I think I read this somewhere.)
-He heard of fanatics who would go off into the wilderness and live in 'elvish' colonies, have 'elvish' ceremonies, and get married using the elvish language he created.  He deemed them lunatics and said something like, "I created this world and no one is more aware that it is a fictional place than I am."  Apparently, the 'elf-worship' irked him a bit!  (This was also a story told me by my jeweler friend.)

Anyway, the movies have certainly raised more interest in his saga.  My mother, though she'd heard of the books before, didn't actually have any desire to read them until she'd seen the movies.  There is nothing wrong with new fans!


----------



## Kittie (Sep 24, 2003)

Argh!  That was me up there... I swear I was logged in!


----------



## AdamR (Sep 25, 2003)

Anonymous said:
			
		

> Some things I've HEARD about Tolkien but won't take the time to verify (except through my own sources)...
> -He wrote one sentence a day.  He thought about it all day long.  (According to my computer tech and amateur jeweler friend.)
> -He created an entire language.  The elvish language he uses in the book.  He studied many languages and was interested in their origins.  The language he created was the only one created by one person to be grammatically and syntactically correct.  (Two teachers said something to this effect.  One was my sixth grade teacher, who introduced these novels and other fantasies to me.  The other was an arrogant college english professor I didn't like, even though he still managed to teach me a great deal.)
> -He and CS Lewis were good friends.  (I think I read this somewhere.)
> -He heard of fanatics who would go off into the wilderness and live in 'elvish' colonies, have 'elvish' ceremonies, and get married using the elvish language he created.  He deemed them lunatics and said something like, "I created this world and no one is more aware that it is a fictional place than I am."  Apparently, the 'elf-worship' irked him a bit!  (This was also a story told me by my jeweler friend.)



I can neither verify all of these, although I can say that points 2 and 3 are correct.

He did write a complete syntactical language that can be learned and spoken fluently. Tolkein _was_ a linguist.  :wink: 

Tolkein and Lewis were absolute best of friends.


----------



## Allusearna (Oct 3, 2003)

He made up SEVERAL languages, the forms of Elvish only being a few of them (and yes, he DID base the sounds on Finnish and Latin, for those who were wondering) but he spent his entire life making up languages, see http://www.ardalambion.com/ if you want to know about them.  



> He did write a complete syntactical language that can be learned and spoken fluently. Tolkein was a linguist



Yes, he did.  I know people who speak them 



> The language he created was the only one created by one person to be grammatically and syntactically correct



Not sure about this one, though, I know that thousands of languages have been created (there is a whole hobby out there called model/constructed languages, look it up on the net sometime).  But if you could find out more information that would be great.  I will agree that his elvish languages are the BEST.  Also, when you say ‘the language’ which one do you mean?

I first read LOTR when I was 11, and have loved it ever since.  It was about 1999 when I found out that the book was being made into a movie, so that didn’t move me to read them.  



> Tolkien was all but petered out by late 70's, dead in the 80's & 90's. I keep thinking the director may have been looking at Harry Potter's movie and thought, 'damn if I can't bring this series back to life, and get a new group of followers for it.'



Hmmm… I don’t think that LOTR were dying out, well not in my corner of the world, but the movies certainly sparked even more interest.  And Peter Jackson (the director) had been waiting for 20 years for someone to make the book into a movie, and no one did.  That’s one of the reason’s he made the movie.  He loved the books so much and couldn’t wait to see them on screen.  Well, that’s what he told me, anyway (yes, I DID grow up in NZ and my Aunt used to be personal friends with Peter so I know heaps of people who worked on the movies)

But to finish off, Tolkien is a genius.


----------



## Farror (Oct 14, 2003)

At the moment, I'm reading a short biography on Tolkien, the elvish language was based on latin and finnish, although he never really mastered the later. He based a good deal of the scenery on his child hood memories, such as the mill that he lived near, it was used as the mill in the shire. Would you not enjoy putting as much description as he did if you where describing childhood memories? 

A few more interesting facts:

-When Tolkien was a child, he lived in Africa and was bitten by a terantula and would have died if a quick witted servant had not sucked the poison out, that is probably why he included spiders in his novel

-The name Samwise Gamgee comes from the local
dialect, a cotton ball was a gamgee because it had been invented by Samson Gamgee.

-Tolkien based most of his characters personalities on people that he met in in the many places that he traveled too.

Anyways, I read Tolkien's books two years ago and loved them, they are fantasticly written and it is not suprising that they have always been very popular.


----------



## Kittie (Oct 18, 2003)

But... tarantulas aren't poisonous...


----------



## Farror (Oct 18, 2003)

Some are, it depends on the kind.


----------



## Myxamatosis (Dec 29, 2003)

Tolkien is good, but I dont think his writing can stack up against Dickens, Poe, or Dostoyevsky.

*He is the Father of the fantasy genre, and much more then that.*

Isn't fantasy older than the brothers Grimm?


----------



## gabriella (Jan 3, 2004)

I'm sorry, I can't really remember much of the books - I was in a coma the whole time!


----------



## Guineapiggy (Jan 3, 2004)

Tolkien was, IMO, a wonderfully creative man who inspired an entire genre, but his writing was, on the technical side of things, tedious. If it wasn't for his brilliant, original (For their time) stories people'd put his books down and say, 'Oh screw it.'


----------



## rcallaci (Jan 4, 2004)

"Isn't fantasy older than the brothers Grimm? "

It all depends how you classify fantasy. Tolkien created a world unto itself with its own history, legends and language. He was the forerunner of what we classify as modern fantasy in the vein of Morecock, Leguinn, Anthony, Jordon, Herbert, Eddings and the like. It was in that sense that I classifed him the father in that particular type of fantasy.

"Tolkien is good, but I dont think his writing can stack up against Dickens, Poe, or Dostoyevsky"

These were great writers indeed, but is an apple better then an orange or a lion greater then a tiger? How would you stack Dostoyevsky against Plato or Poe against Shakespere or Dickens against Hesse all great and masters in there craft. Tolkien too was a master in his craft and he'll always hold a special place in my heart.


Warm Regards
Bob


----------



## morningstar (Feb 22, 2004)

k, i could put down a big long post about why i love Tolkien, but there's no point cus its all already been said by the looks of things. i got the hobbit from my aunt for my 10th birthday and never looked back after that. it amazed me and i went straight for LOTR, but as i was only about 11 it confused me greatly. i read it properly when i was about 14 and i think its a book you must read in your lifetime, at least a couple of times to really appreciate the sheer scope of the thing. but yeah, Tolkiens great.


----------



## Dragonscales (May 21, 2004)

I read the hobbit when I was in grade one (approx 6 y.o) and soon after read lotr. As far as I'm concerned there is no greater traditional fantasy writer as Tolkien. Alot of people seem to be of the opinion that he was too methodical in his work, I think that this is one of the great things about his writing. Compared to alot of the watered down garbage that authors throw out these days that simply run through the motions, his books are a breath of imaginative fresh air. How many people can you honestly say have made a living, breathing world that is as close to complete as the world we live in as is humanly possible in one lifetime? Creating not only a present world but a whole timeline dating back to the begining of all things within It? Cultures, Languages, Geneologies, Entomologies. Volume upon volume of obscurities, maps and painstakingly thought out glimpses into the past, present and future of all that is within this marvelous world he spent a lifetime crafting. Even the bible was written by several people and isn't as in depth as Tolkien's writings. This man, is and always will be a literary genius and, in my opinion, one of the greatest writers of all time.


----------



## Leapord (May 21, 2004)

Agreed.  There is an amazing amount of detail in all of his books (which is what causes some people difficulty in reading them).  The depth and intricacy of the world he created is amazing.  Tolkien was able to make me feel like I was exploring a complete and truly amazing world in a way that no other author has managed.


----------



## Dragonscales (May 22, 2004)

oops, was supposed to read I "first" read them around the age of six, since then I've read them countless times as well as a bit of his other works too. Spose that's what I get fer typing in the early hours of the morning lol


----------



## frantic_scribbler (Jun 19, 2004)

Tolkien was a genius when it came to writing.  Not only did he create a whole world and several different languages to go along with it, but he also created or revamped the fantasy genre (however you want to look at it).  Before his books elves were thought to be little fairies or Santa's helpers.  Dwarves were thought to work on shoes.  Orcs weren't even heard of.
Tolkien did not "peter out" by the '70's.  You try keeping up your writing with a bunch of hippies hopped up on LSD or some other drug asking you if a certain sentence, paragraph, or chapter had a hidden meaning.
Also, Peter Jackson had the idea for making the LOTR movies long before the Harry Potter movies were ever made.  It just took him a while to get it off the ground because all the production companies wanted to make it either one or two movies, not three.  Also by making the movies it brings new fans to LOTR.  The older fans tell the younger fans about how the books were and the younger fans read the books.  I did not read LOTR until I saw the first movie.  After that I started reading it.  So you cannot say that the movies are ruining it for the books.
Tolkien's characters may not have had a lot of depth, but he didn't want to focus all on his characters I'm sure.  He just wanted to create his own world and lanuages.  He was an a professor of Anglo-Saxon history and a lover of languages.  Not only did he created Elvish, but he created Dwarvish (or Khuz-dul), Numenoreon, Entish, The Common Tongue (which is not English), Orkish and the Black Speech, and many other languages.
There's my two cents.


----------



## Dragonscales (Jun 19, 2004)

gnomish as well from off the top of my head, am sure there was one or two more though.


----------



## Spudley (Jun 19, 2004)

The thing is, once he'd written the one language, he got addicted and just had to keep writing more and more. He tried to stop, but found it was hobbit forming.


----------



## frantic_scribbler (Jun 19, 2004)

Actually Dragonscales, gnomish became the Deep Elves also known as the Noldor.


----------



## Dragonscales (Jun 20, 2004)

yea, but Noldor evolved from Gnomish, Gnomish was Gnomish until he decided to switch it to Noldor and change it a bit. Regardless, I think we both agree on the fact that he was a brilliant writer and disagree with others who think he isn't.


----------



## frantic_scribbler (Jun 20, 2004)

yeah, you're right.


----------



## gabriella (Jun 20, 2004)

You can't say he didn't focus too much on the characters and then say that he was a great writer because of the world and languages. Who lives in the world? Who speaks the languages? The people - the *characters.* If there was no depth, no love poured into those characters, there's no life in the story. The characters are what we relate to, what makes us cry, who sympathize for and hate. Not a beautiful mountain; not even a dark and doomy castle.

So what, he made elves bigger and the talent of Dwarves more generalized. The Elves were still pure and good, and the dwarves still built, although it was a lot more than shoes that they created. 

Oh, and about the bible.... Obviously it doesn't show so much detail about the geography of the world. As for the past? The bible is the past. The geography? We're living in the world the Bible takes place in, why would we need details on the sands we've spent years walking? The animals we hunt and eat? Know it, know it...know it. It's like reading an article on what your bedroom looks like. Not only that, but the bible isn't meant to teach you languages or show you different cultures or show you different landscapes... the bible is only one culture, only in one landscape, only one language. It tries to teach you morals; to help you learn from others mistakes. It has nothing to do with fantasy.


----------



## frantic_scribbler (Jun 20, 2004)

Well, since some of us are going on a rant here,
The characters may have spoken the languages and lived in the world, but that doesn't really mean all that much.  You can have a great story and still have flat characters.  For example, look at OUR world.  Everday is a great story in history and yet there are several people who are flat or don't have that great of character.  That is why people are attracted to Tolkein's fantasy.  One can easily tell who is good and who is evil and it is exactly what people are looking for in this post - 9/11 era.
One can be a great writer for embelashing on different things, not always on the character.  If we couldn't than we could say that God was a horrible writer because even though he created a beautiful world and gave people the power to speak many of his characters can be flat or shallow.  It just doesn't make sense.  One can say a certain author is a great writer because he/she does this and this and this, but doesn't agree with how the writer does this, this, and this.


----------



## Leapord (Jun 20, 2004)

Tolkien's writing was focused far more on the world than the specific characters that took part in the story.  Not ever story needs to focus on having in depth characters to be a good story; it is only necessary for those stories that have no other distinguishing factor.  At the time it was written, Lord of the Rings was incredibly unique in its conception of the world, although the characters were rather flat.  Since most fantasy written since then has little to distinguish it in how the world is constructed, character depth is necessary to make it worth reading.

Orson Scott Card goes into the different types of stories (character, world, etc.) in his book _How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy_


----------



## frantic_scribbler (Jun 20, 2004)

Thank you for backing up my point Leapord.  Most people don't know all that.


----------



## Dragonscales (Jun 21, 2004)

gabriella said:
			
		

> Oh, and about the bible.... Obviously it doesn't show so much detail about the geography of the world. As for the past? The bible is the past. The geography? We're living in the world the Bible takes place in, why would we need details on the sands we've spent years walking? The animals we hunt and eat? Know it, know it...know it. It's like reading an article on what your bedroom looks like. Not only that, but the bible isn't meant to teach you languages or show you different cultures or show you different landscapes... the bible is only one culture, only in one landscape, only one language. It tries to teach you morals; to help you learn from others mistakes. It has nothing to do with fantasy.



Actually the bible was set in alot of different places geography-wise. It also dealt with a great many people and cultures. The people in it also spoke more than one language. The fact that it tries to teach morales, I'll agree with, but the bible is also a tool to glorify a God about whom there is very little description about, not exactly the best way to get through to people. As for whether it is fantasy or not, that is in the eye of the beholder and something only "God" knows. Personally, I have been around religion my whole life and don't believe that it's true, only my view though of course


----------



## gabriella (Jun 21, 2004)

I still believe that the only reason Tolkien came out with the story was because he needed a way to let the world know about the wonderful and spectacular Middle-Earth he created, and it's not like someone would read a geography book tainted with history on some random world.

Oh no, wait, they did.

The Lord of the Rings.


----------



## gabriella (Jun 21, 2004)

oh haha I just realized how much I sound like Tolkien is my arch nemesis or something, lol. I thought it was a decent story, I loved Aragorn and Gollum the most, but I just don't think that he's all the hype everyone says he is, and I've read much better books by much better people.


----------



## frantic_scribbler (Jun 22, 2004)

You may have read better books.  But if they were fantasy books they never would have come around if it wasn't for Tolkien.  They also probably didn't create an entire world and people in it. They probably didn't create a history and probably didn't spend almost their ENTIRE life on their writings.  That's why people admire Tolkien.  Not so much because of his writing, but mainly because he spent almost his entire life creating a world with people and languages.


----------



## Dragonscales (Jun 22, 2004)

If that was the case though gabriella, why would he have bothered doing geneologies on most of his characters? If he only wrote the story for the sake of a geographical outing then he wouldn't have spent years giving family lines and histories, etc on the people involved in that world. Exactly how much of his writings have you read? There is alot more than just lord of the rings out there ya know. The fact that his son has spent his life sifting through all of Tolkien's pieces and painstakingly tried to fit it all together has to account for something. There are several books by his son alone that deal with only the characters. I own a few of them and all they deal with is trying to put the sheer mass of everything (Characters included) into something easily accessible by anybody. How many writers do you know that need their works laid out in a way that makes it easy for you to gain some sort of simplified grasp on it, rather than die of old age trying to understand it in depth? Lord of the rings was merely the delivery of the characters, to find out everything about them would take a lifetime of sifting through his unpublished pieces.


----------



## frantic_scribbler (Jun 22, 2004)

Thank you for backing me up Dragonscales.  You have helped in proving my point.


----------



## gabriella (Jun 22, 2004)

Thank you for proving my point, Dragonscales 

I never once said that I didn't respect him and that I didn't understand that he was a great monument in fantasy history. Nor did I say that I didn't understand how creative and imaginative Middle-Earth is. I'll even note that he was the one that inspired me to focus on my own world, and help create races, people, *languages,* and, yes, God-Forbid someone else pull this off other than Tolkien, *family trees.* (Although the inspiration he gave me wasn't that specific...it started with hauling my ass over to draw the map, and then a few forced creatures, which later led to an addiction of world-building.)

The Hobbit was a great story, and yes that was all I read by him - Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, typical. But before you say I need to read more, those are the best and most reknouned books written by Tolkien, and if reading those couldn't get me to worship the man, how will some pieces pain-stakingly put together by his son make me change my mind?

I said that I thought his writing was long and bland and that was when everybody starting taking it that I hated Tolkien with a passion and that I had no respect for the man, and that I apparently thought I've seen more imagination in a cat. 

He had great ideas, but I just don't think he worded anything right at all. 

Not only that, but everyone here who insists that Tolkien is magnificent, reread every post you've written. It only proves my point. That the writing style was weak and stretched, even though the imagination was wonderful. But I'm not talking about the imagination he poured into it, I'm talking about where the pen scratched.


----------



## Dragonscales (Jun 22, 2004)

Sorry if I came across as sounding like I thought that you hated or disrespected him, I honestly didn't get that from your posts. You merely have a different opinion on the matter than some of us, not a bad thing mind you. It is good in the way that a good debate on the subject can be had, something I enjoy alot  To Gabriella and anyone who I may have or will debate with, I just want to let you know something. In my opinion a debate is nothing more than a stimulating passtime meant to exchange ideas or thoughts and get the 'ol grey matter sparking up. When I engage in a debate with someone, I am doing just that, having an educated discussion on a topic that not everyone holds the same views on. I try to stay factual rather than emotional and never mean to upset anybody. If I do sound like I am having a go at someone, please don't take it as an offensive gesture, I certainly don't mean it in an agressive manner, well, most of the time


----------



## Dragonscales (Jun 22, 2004)

Because lotr and the hobbit is but a small morsel of the story, they may be his most renouned books to date, but you're missing the point that he wrote tomes upon tomes of information about the characters in both of them, so much that it wouldn't fit into several more books. To accuse him of having shallow characters is due to the fact that alot of people posting that here most likely haven't read anything but lotr and the hobbit.

The reason I brought to light the fact his son has spent years sifting through his unpublished works was to illustrate the fact that there is alot more to lotr and the hobbit than that contained therein.


----------



## Leapord (Jun 22, 2004)

I don't think Gabriella has missed the point about the depth and detail that Tolkien put into his work.  She seems to have grasped that perfectly well.

The point where I disagree with her... and nearly everyone else... is that I enjoyed Tolkien's writing style, and thought it to be prefectly appropriate for his purpose (to create a full mythology for England).  Every word he used, I felt, was crafted to use an older style of grammar and writing.  This makes it more difficult for most to read (though personally I don't see why).  Acltually, I've found his writing style to much easier to read than many of the older stories I've read in my American Literature class this summer.  

I truly don't believe Lord of the Rings could have been written much different than the way it was.  If it was was written using modern grammar and style, I don't believe it could have had the same ancient of mythological feel that it did.


----------



## gabriella (Jun 22, 2004)

> but you're missing the point that he wrote tomes upon tomes of information about the characters in both of them, so much that it wouldn't fit into several more books. To accuse him of having shallow characters is due to the fact that alot of people posting that here most likely haven't read anything but lotr and the hobbit.



I understand that he wrote tomes upon tomes of information on the characters, but just because there were stacks of family histories and name origins and geneologies and family status and names etc doesn't make a character in depth. What makes the character is the personality, his reactions to certain things, his thought process and feelings, and there was little to none of that that I found in his novels. Not only that, but they were two dimensional and black and white, which is what I hate the most in novels. 

To me, a good book needs to get into the minds of so-called evil, which is what my favorite authors Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman (fantasy writers who do, in fact, create their own world and races and languages, thought I'll admit nobody could come as close to Tolkien in the details of the creations) but they're characters are flawed, are black and white. You can argue that the Hobbit had several semi-gray dwarves, but that was merely their race, but Margaret & Tracy still incorporate a variety of thoughts and emotions for different races.

In Middle-Earth everybody was good, except those that had been created by evil. The "gray" characters (Boromir) were only gray because of the power of the ring, and I didn't like how it was the ring and the ring alone that corrupted people's minds and made them move to darker and more dangerous paths. Gollum was another one of these who were corrupted by the power of the ring, but nothing was just a person's willingness to travel other paths. 



> I truly don't believe Lord of the Rings could have been written much different than the way it was. If it was was written using modern grammar and style, I don't believe it could have had the same ancient of mythological feel that it did.



I agree, to a fifty-fifty extent. The choice of words he used were great to the theme of everything. But the way he worded them, was sometimes a little unbelievable when people chattered on and on about family history and geneology, especially when pressed for time, and also, as I said and still say, tooooo long. But you are right in that it could not have been written any other way, although I still stand by the belief that much of it could have been condensed into much less words and still keeping the same mythological feel to it.


----------



## Farror (Jun 22, 2004)

Refering to your "black and white chracters" or races comment. The group of people in the fellowship of the ring where all part of a council summoned together by Elrond. They are obviously good people.

A gray character could be king Theodin. He has a good deal of inner conflict as to whether to serve his country or the general good of middle earth.

As for the evil characters, the orcs where part of a nation bent on conquering, the urakai where created for war. What do you expect?


----------



## Warggarel (Jun 23, 2004)

As a rabid Tolkien fan, let me insert my two cents 

Characterization?  Bilbo - probably a cliche, but didn't I fall in love with him in the hobbit? Didn't I empathise with his desire to skip the adventure and sit by his fire with the tea kettle about to boil?  Didn't I grumble with him over the clumsiness and arrogance of the dwarves? Didn't I thrill over his discovery of the ring and gasp over his close escape from Gollum? ... AND OH OH OH!!! didn't I just love him taunting the bemused spiders and rescuing the dwarves? ... and his "Thag you berry buch" at the feast  ... and more ... what a brilliant character.  How many fantasies successfully used short dumpy homebodies for their main characters? ... no, usually they are testosterone saturated, sword swinging adonises (adonisi ...  :?: ...hm)

... and what about Gollum?  Even in his worst moments didn't I long for his redemption?  He wasn't black and white, nope ... probably more mucky muddy colored.

... and Gandalf ... okay he was white ... but he was gray first.  He wasn't perfect either.  He let Saruman get the best of him even though he knew (in the book at least) that Saruman was not to be trusted.  He was way to testy with poor Pippin ... but that character established the foil for 'wise advisor to the hero' and 'bearded, pointy hatted wizards' for miriads of books to come.

The fact that his characters are copied in other literature should say something about his characters too.  Orcs, goblins, elves, dwarves, magicians and even wargs :shock: keep popping up everywhere ...

hmph ... no characterizations? ... pfff ...


----------



## frantic_scribbler (Jun 23, 2004)

I am also a rabit Tolkein fan, but he was not known so much for his characters as he was for the languages and world he created.  He went were no writer went before and basically plowed and paved the way for the fantasy writers we enjoy today such as R.A. Salvatore, Stephen King, Tracy Hickman, Terry Brooks, etc.


----------



## gabriella (Jun 23, 2004)

Teeheehee, Bilbo was a sweetheart, I wuved him. So much more interesting than Frodo at any rate.

I found the Hobbit utterly better than Lord of the Rings - shorter, too. I breezed by it. I'm not saying much on the Hobbit, merely that I read it along with Lord of the Rings.



> As for the evil characters, the orcs where part of a nation bent on conquering, the urakai where created for war. What do you expect?



That's what I mean. Either you were born good or you were born bad. There's nothing in between. I'm not saying that makes everyone bleached white, but I'm saying that they were white. Evil people were evil people, they were born that way and yadda yadda yadda. 

I don't know what I expected, but having read book after book by Margaret & Tracy, I was being rained upon by evil elves, lazy dwarves, jealous mages, sluts-in-love... when I got to Middle-Earth, there was none of that. Just the good being good and the bad being bad, and it was so easy to distinguish good from evil - See an elf and your safe, see a dwarf and your safe, see an urakai and you're dead.


----------



## Warggarel (Jun 23, 2004)

> That's what I mean. Either you were born good or you were born bad. There's nothing in between. I'm not saying that makes everyone bleached white, but I'm saying that they were white. Evil people were evil people, they were born that way and yadda yadda yadda.


I don't think it was quite that they were 'born' good or evil, but that they chose to be good or evil.

Sauron was one of the Maia ... as good as they get without actually being one of the Valar ... and Morgoth (okay he's the bad guy in the Sillmarilion) WAS one of the Valar ... because of his arrogance and greed he became evil.  Same with Sauron ... and Sauruman ... none of his characters were BORN evil. Not even Gollum/Smeagol.  If anything was 'born' evil it was the ring.

The characters who were good had to fight tooth and nail to stay that way.  Arrogance, pride and a desire to control the world around them constantly twisted inside of each an every character from Gandalf to Pippin ... some more obviously than others.  I think one of the facinating aspects of the story is how the ring affected each of the characters.  Sam, who's probably as good as they get in the story, has his turn with the ring and is SORELY tempted!

What Tolkien doesn't do is develop the characters in the dialogue and action as much as we are used to in modern fiction.  He uses expository writing overmuch which turns a lot of regular folks off, but if you can read above a 6th grade (US) reading level it's not so bad.


----------



## Farror (Jun 23, 2004)

The orcs where created as a hideous imitation of elves. They are ugly and can't stand the light of day. I doubt they are going to turn out to be happy and jolly.

Also, Sarumon was a wizard. Five wizards where sent to middle earth to guide it and essentially be there to help the races. Sarumon completetly double crosses them. Good?


----------



## Warggarel (Jun 23, 2004)

Farror said:
			
		

> The orcs where created as a hideous imitation of elves. They are ugly and can't stand the light of day. I doubt they are going to turn out to be happy and jolly.



Weren't the orcs 'twisted' elves? Morgoth deceived and tortured some elves who had somehow fallen into his clutches and created the race of the 'orc' ... they (the captured elves) were not originally either good or bad until they fell into the wrong hands.  I wish Tolkien had written more about that. Much of orc/goblin history is vague.


----------



## gabriella (Jun 24, 2004)

Hehe, sorry I didn't post in a while, I'm not shaming away or anything, lol. Thing is, I know my response to this, just not sure how to word it. 

Greed, arrogance, and pride are all black emotions. They're not pure, as the bible clearly mentions. But that states what I said. The fact that they were greedy, arrogant, and proud shows that they were just like that, they were given alot and always wanted more. Or the fact that they were elves fallen into the wrongs hands isn't the fault of the elves. Why not take a purer emotion, like love, or the need to help others and then twist it around? It's possible; Margaret & Tracy did that, and they pulled it off perfectly.

He didn't have normal, average people longing for respect after being ridiculed their whole lives, or people who have committed a crime and felt there was no other way around it - a simpler way of stating it, is the greedy and arrogant and proud people you mentioned chose the dark willingly, and they never regret that decision. There isn't a single person I found that chose it unknowingly, or chose it because they felt they had no other choice, etc, and now look back.


----------



## Warggarel (Jun 24, 2004)

gabriella said:
			
		

> He didn't have normal, average people longing for respect after being ridiculed their whole lives, or people who have committed a crime and felt there was no other way around it - a simpler way of stating it, is the greedy and arrogant and proud people you mentioned chose the dark willingly, and they never regret that decision. There isn't a single person I found that chose it unknowingly, or chose it because they felt they had no other choice, etc, and now look back.


Actually, it's ALL about choices for Tolkien ... I think your problem with the books isn't that there isn't any characterization but that you don't identify with his characters.  Personally the "pity-me-i'm-so-abused" and the "i-couldn't-help-myself" characters make me wanna ... well ... regurgitate my breakfast  :roll:


----------



## frantic_scribbler (Jun 26, 2004)

You are all reading too much into it and trying to find hidden meanings that Tolkein never put into his writings.  This was the one thing that really pissed him off.  He did not like people trying to find hidden meanings in his works, especially since he didn't put any in there.  He just wanted to create a good adventure story that people would love reading.


----------



## Leapord (Jun 26, 2004)

Hidden meanings?  What we're discussing here are the superficial meanings and what makes us enjoy or not enjoy the story.  If we were after hidden meanings, we'd be analyzing biblical references or similarities, or talking about how Saruman's war and manufacturing efforts in Isengard are references to the Industrial Age and how it was destroying the environment.

Gabriella:  Your statements are completely accurate.  The only moral dilemma of significance presented in the stories is Frodo's battle with the Ring, which is far more cut and dry than one would expect from any real moral dilemma.  I believe this to be a result to the fairy-tale or mythological structure of the story, and personally see nothing wrong with it.  But hey, if you just don't like stories lacking in sufficient moral dilemmas, that's all well and good


----------



## A_MacLaren (Jul 6, 2004)

I read the Hobbit when I was seven, and I loved it. I still like it more than The Lord of the Rings, but mostly for sentimental reasons.
I really do enjoy Tolkien's style. When I first read The Lord of the Rings, when I was thirteen, I slogged through it and didn't enjoy it much, though I did like the story overall. However, when I read it again last year (and again just a few weeks ago) I was completely captured by his fluent, romantic style.
Where I disagree with many people is in the 'creative genius' side of things. I don't think he was that original; in fact, he was quite derivative. Having been inspired by so many different cultures, much of Middle-Earth can be traced back to mythical inspirations that range anywhere, from the Nordic cultures to the Anglo-Saxons (The Riders of Rohan). This is consistent with the prehistoric earth that Tolkien was attempting to create, but it's too easy to forget that Tolkien, like everyone else, is inspired. He took what he'd read and studied and made it something new, but it wasn't terribly original. 
Take the poem 'The Rider'.



> 'Where now is the horse and the rider? Where now is the horn that was blowing?
> Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?'



Etc, etc.
This can be traced directly to an Anglo-Saxon poem called 'The Wanderer', which is longer. 
Tolkien is, perhaps, the father of _modern_ fantasy. The elves we see (all too often) in fantasy these days are taken from his ideas. Our dwarves and men, our lost kings, all of these things are taken from him, who in turn took them from ancient myths and legends. But because he made them new doesn't mean he should be given the credit for inventing them.
Man, that was a long and pretentious rant. Sorry to sound like such a tool.


----------



## Gladiator_008 (Aug 8, 2004)

Tolkien gave us a new way to look at things, and took most of his life to create Middle-Earth and the history behind it. He is the one that made most people want to become writers, and for that he should be commemorated. J. R. R. Tolkien will always remain in my memory throughout my life as the one who brought me to write, and I know that if I ever do get published, I'm giving him special thanks.


----------



## DarkAriel (Aug 19, 2004)

I only read the first book - the fellowship, and thought it was good and enjoyed it but there were moments were i was a bit bored, he described things a bit too thickly and so i sort of wound up skimming those parts and getting back on the story (I do the same with Anne Rice novels). 

What i loooove about his stories are the choices in names, they are just so damn gorgeous! Mooooordooor lol, good names are hard to generate.


----------



## crackpotkate (Oct 22, 2005)

Tolkein was a ground breaker in literature.  As the Beatles were to music, so Tolkein was with books.  Some of his work can be tiresome, unfortunately I found it to be 'the fellowship' as it was devoid of a lot of the action the next two books possess.  I persevered and am glad I did.

As to the basis of his ideas, apart from being a cunning linguist (my favourite kinda man...ahem) he also studied early written myth and legend. If you look at the ancient texts of celtic myth and the icelandic sagas, you'll find a whole lot of people and places you'll recognise.  The elves were inspired by the 'sidh' the faerie folk of ancient myth.  Check it out.  If you like Tolkein you'll be inspired as he was.  I certainly have been.


----------



## VinrAlfakyn (Oct 27, 2005)

gabriella said:
			
		

> He didn't have normal, average people longing for respect after being ridiculed their whole lives, or people who have committed a crime and felt there was no other way around it - a simpler way of stating it, is the greedy and arrogant and proud people you mentioned chose the dark willingly, and they never regret that decision. There isn't a single person I found that chose it unknowingly, or chose it because they felt they had no other choice, etc, and now look back.



I love anything dealing with Middle Earth. I've read the Hobbit about 4x, LOTR about 3x, and I've also read The Book of Lost Tales 1 and 2, The Lays of Beleriand, and I'm almost done with The Silmarillion.

In response to the above quote, The Silmarillion deals with the first and second age. Gondolin was a city built in that time to remind Turgon (the founder) of his home back over the sea. His sister left Gondolin and was found by a dark elf. She was forced to marry him and had a son, Maeglin. Maeglin wasn't evil when he was born. It says he loved hearing stories of Gondolin, even though his father tried to prevent him from hearing them. Obviously he loved his mother more than his father. Finally he and his mother were able to escape to Gondolin. His father, Eol, found out they left and followed them. When he came to claim them, neither would leave. Maeglin disowned his father. From all this, it sounds like Maeglin isn't all that bad. He was a good fighter and loved by the king. And yet he was also the person who betrayed Gondolin to Morgoth when he left Gondolin. A factor that influenced him in betraying Gondolin was his desire for something he could not have, his cousin Idril, but he was also tortured before he told. In his mind, it was a way to get her and become the ruler of Gondolin.

My point is not all the characters are "black and white." If Maeglin had never left Gondolin, Morgoth probably would have still found Gondolin, just at a later time. And when he did come, Maeglin would have been fighting for Gondolin, not against it. The circumstances influenced his decision. He's only one example of a character that didn't really have a choice. It was either tell, become a thrall, or die. Not much of a choice there.


----------

