Tolkien general thread

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Hugbox Kommissar said:
Tolkien isn't a misogynist because of Arwen and Eowyn, he's a misogynist because the Chaddest race in Middle Earth keep their women  barefoot bearded and pregnant in the kitchen and don't let them go out on adventures.
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IIRC Tolkien straight up just said "Dwarf women go on adventures but nobody knows their women" or something like it - Pratchett took that whole line and ran wild with it.
 
Just finished reading Silmarillion.... I'm sad now.

I don't know what it is, but whenever I finish Tolkien novels I always end up wanting more. This is pretty much the only reason I ever check out other fantasy like Dragonlance. But they don't fill the void.

It's rare, too. Usually when I'm done with a book, I'm glad to move on.
 
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Scarlett Johansson said:
I have seen people accuse him and Lewis of being misogynist. Tbh I'm really only looking at it from a "of the time" perspective. But then you have Galadriel and Eowyn and (film!Arwen). We do not speak of the abomination that is The Hobbit.

Also one of the main villains in Narnia is female so.....how....I fail to see how they are misogynist.

Iirc wasn't Tolkien a @Friend of Dorothy Parker too?
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Actual retards making shit up. If anything Tolkien's work for the times were strangely, and I hate to use this terminology "progressive." I like Conan for example, but the women in Conan during a time when he was alive and writing LOTR were mostly eyecandy. Adventures boiled down to singular heroes who were literal superhumans, but he makes a huge emphasis on the teamwork of all the races and the Hobbits who brought the ring to Mordor. He also doesn't wank the elves despite them being literal, angelic beings if you know of Feanor or the other Noldor elves.
 
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JJLiautaud said:
The word he's looking for is unfallen beings they never comitted an Original Sin.
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But they did though. Or at least, the ones that returned to Middle-earth did. That whole sacking of that one port city (considered the only blood ever spilled on Aman soil) so they could get the ships?

And Elves came from Middle-earth to begin with, had to be brought to Aman by Ulmo, but many desired to remain behind which is why there were still elves when Feanor and co. came back.
 
The firstborn are depicted as being closer to the divine than men, and generally as a rule more beautiful and powerful, but the sticking point in this argument about their "angelic" nature is their capacity for evil. They are capable of greater goodness but also deeper evil because of their high and mighty nature. The Noldor of the House of Feanor are guilty of possibly the greatest sins of any being that is not in the service of the Enemy (the Kinslaying, and all the horror that followed), except arguably that of the last king of Numenor (war on Aman).

What he may be getting at is that usually the elves are shown to be unwavering foes of Morgoth and Sauron, and they have special powers that make them more similar to and closer to the valar and maiar, and also kinship with the elves is consistently used as a sign that a mortal character or a tribe of men/dwarves are more trustworthy and wise ("elf-friends" are pretty much always good guys). Not exactly angels per se (that would be the maiar), but "angelic"? Sort of yes.
 
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The elves were somewhat of Tolkien's thought experiment - what if Adam hadn't fallen? So in a way they're not quite angelic (like the maiar) but more "unfallen" - obviously they can err and sin, but the whole race isn't searching for a Savior the way that Tolkien would say the humans are.
 
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reptile baht spaniard rid said:
The elves were somewhat of Tolkien's thought experiment - what if Adam hadn't fallen? So in a way they're not quite angelic (like the maiar) but more "unfallen" - obviously they can err and sin, but the whole race isn't searching for a Savior the way that Tolkien would say the humans are.
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Tolkien and CS Lewis were both practicing Catholics, which was uncommon at the time for Oxford academics, and I remember reading both authors discussed its influence in their writings. Both incorporated elements of Church theology very subtly but if you're a Catholic you can see it in the works of both. I appreciate the care they both took not to bash anyone over the head with it, but Tolkien probably remembers that converting had a negative effect on his late mother's life. I agree with @Farmholio , they were an example for others in Middle Earth as well as the reader, to identity with. Both authors wrote for children, after all.
 
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I know everyone hates Rankin-Bass RotK, but for all its clumsiness I found it way better than their Hobbit. "Frodo of the nine fingers" and "WHERE THERE'S A WHIP THERE'S WAY" live rent-free in my head.
 
reptile baht spaniard rid said:
The elves were somewhat of Tolkien's thought experiment - what if Adam hadn't fallen? So in a way they're not quite angelic (like the maiar) but more "unfallen" - obviously they can err and sin, but the whole race isn't searching for a Savior the way that Tolkien would say the humans are.
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I dunno. The elves of middle earth are very much fallen, cursed to wither away because their pride brought them from the undying lands back to the fallen lands of middle earth.

I think the elves are less a thought experiment on the nature of morality, and more one on mortality. What if we could live forever, on this world, rather then the world to come when God finishes his great labor of creation. The elves are cursed with Immortality, to live in a fallen world while men get the gift of death to go and dwell in the presence of the creator until the appointed hour.
 
mindlessobserver said:
n the world to come when God finishes his great labor of creation. The elves are cursed with Immortality, to live in a fallen world while men get the gift of death to go and dwell in the presence of the creator until the ap
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That's basically just the other side of the coin for Tolkien; death is the doom of man (and in Catholic theology death is a direct result of the sin of adam, etc, etc). But like many punishments from God it's also a gift, in ways the elves can't really understand but yet somehow envy. (There's a story in one of the making-of that covers some of it - Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth in Morgoth's Ring, the Internet tells me.
 
The greater a'tuin said:
I know everyone hates Rankin-Bass RotK, but for all its clumsiness I found it way better than their Hobbit. "Frodo of the nine fingers" and "WHERE THERE'S A WHIP THERE'S WAY" live rent-free in my head.
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I always thought ROTK was a little underrated myself.

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