Or, as one of my Call of Cthulhu peeps has called it "The Suffering of Frodo, Parts 1-3", although that was about the films. So I really wanted to and meant to read these books for nearly 2 decades, but little adhd me couldn't for the life of me get through the 1980's Hohlbein translation. I barely made it through the Hobbit and I remember just about zilch. But a friend's mom lent me her English copy of LOTR and now I have zero excuse not to read it. My estimate is about 4 full days. (So, considering stuff I got planned the next few days, Tuesday). I have watched the extended films, and kind of liked them, but I'm aware there's, uh, major differences. I'll be doing a chapter-by-chapter commentary, and will probably put those on my poor neglected blog, although spaced out a bit more, heh. And will revive this thread for reading and commenting on other classics that passed me by. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING - Chapter 1 Actually, there's a prologue concerning the hobbits. PROLOGUE - CONCERNING HOBBITS Man, we need smallcaps on this forum. Ah, yes, reference to The Hobbit, which I remember only in fragments. A small and fae-like people who love the results of hard work, eating, and are good with tools, but mistrust machinery. Hmhm. Something about mistrusting everything that was invented after you hit adulthood and yelling about sour grapes and how your hard work is being devalued by the machines... There's such a thing as innate magic that does not lend itself well to being studied academically. Also, tend to be gemütlich (this word is about impossible to translate, sorry people reading this who don't speak German), but are also quick when they need to be. Hobbits are OP pls nerf. Also there's like Hobbits who are twice as tall as other Hobbits. I could go and quip about something here, but... Dude Tolkien whatever "good-natured rather than beautiful" means, but I gotta say a face can be as culturally pretty as it gets, but if the smile doesn't reach the eyes it automatically fails in my eyes. Map, map, where's the map... Ok, fpund one, but it'd be really nice if I could find half of these place names on it... (I say, and find it.) Ah yes, the darker Hobbits clinging to their tendency to live in caverns... And the lighter ones who hold high ranks in the other lines ::/ And then they all lose their language and heritage to the Humans and Elves, but them not having much interest in the past is a documented thing. Out of sight, out of mind. It's kind of good they seem to be friendly folk, for they would have made frightful assassins had they had the inclination... But why was such a fertile land abandoned in the first place? Tolkien, what kind of league? Nautical league is the only one Google offers me rn so I'm using that, 40 by 50 leagues translates to 222 by 277 km... looks to be about as big as Bavaria. I'm now imagining the Hobbits as bavarians, in Lederhosen and Dirndl, with Bier and Sauerkraut and Weißwurst and Laugenbretzeln, saying things like "Jo mei" and "Grüß Gott". Seriously though, if the land has been so fertile and the humans still have some sort of historic record and legends, how come no one tried to find this place. Also Hobbits are hoarders, pass it on. They ought to be related to the dragons. They even have a damn word for it. Aurgh. The Hobbits get all the cool things and they don't even have to work for them. Fucking jealous. Ah yes, the rich and the poor have the same taste in buildings, the rich just pimp them out. Not that I'd say no to a well-constructed Hobbit hole for a house myself, they're easy to temperature-regulate and I can have a damn garden on my roof. They're clannish, but they do not war. They're clannish and reclusive, but welcome guests. They are meticulous in their family trees, but have no history. They love crafts, but distrust machinery. They are, in fact, fucking infuriating. Clannish and don't war, but see necessity in a police-force? Well, okay, those guys deal with cattle more often than not, but still... The quotation marks around favourite 'nephew' look imply something oo_00 To be fair "What have I got in my pocket?" is a damn fucking mean thing to ask as a riddle. Correct me if I'm wrong, but all these centuries he more adventurous streaks in Hobbits would be merely tolerated, but it takes one Hobbit to go out and slay a dragon and suddenly the Hobbits, who, until now, had a flaky relationship with theirs (oral tradition and the only thing written were family trees) were suddenly all over their history? Sure. Blrgh, this edition doesn't have the referenced appendices. (I love cross-referencing stuff. I also loved House of Leaves) Also every time I read the name "Forodwaith", my brain autocorrects it to "Frodowain".
Because Middle Earth is practically post-apocalyptic and most of the North is largely uninhabited. There's a reason the movies are full of all those big swooping landscape shots with nothing but ruins. Three miles, or 4.8 km.
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING - CHAPTER 1 - A long-expected party You know, looking at the map here, and the distances in the last post, there is no way in hell that you can see the sea from Tower Hills. Hobbits: EverythingInModerationTM Say what you want, but the Hobbits strike me as greedy little bastards. "There's something weird about this guy but he pays us off so #no hair off my feet" And then young Frodo was given as an offering to his strange uncle by his parents. Wonder if they thought Bilbo was draining the youth from people, or some other weird stuff. Or if they just got paid off. No seriously, Frodo is like, the Golden Grandchild and ol' Bilbo is the Narc Patriarch, but that was in part Ring influence iirc. ... Not that the other gabbers are any better, oh my fucking god. Is this what smalltown politics are like? I've lived all my life in big cities, I can't tell... Mr Drogo #lol#got Frodo is the Stallion That Mounts The World, you heard it here first folks Welcoming and all, but one guy keeps his hall full and suddenly he's weird. Well, Master Ham Gamgee, if ol' Bilbo is so free with his money it gotta come from somewhence, hm? Huh, so Gandalf's hat is blue in the original. Expensive colour if you don't have woad. So birthdays are just excuses not to gather mathoms, but to get your home a bit free from them? Got it. How did Bilbo manage to cram all that and the square mile of guests into one day?? Ahahahahhaa Lobelia and Otho got trolled hard by that invitation. Also Frodo is a good cook, apparently. That kind of got glossed over in the films, I wanna see if it's a one-off in this chapter or it gets referenced again later. #YOLO Why does Frodo not get to make his own announcement at his own damn coming-of-age party? Seriously wtf Bilbo None of this was about Frodo, it was all about Bilbo. That fucking ring. "If you say that again, I shall. Then you will see Gandalf the Grey uncloaked." That sounds like a fucking porn line. Talking about a ring, too Maan, those gifts are all passive-aggressive as fuck, but from what I've seen of the hobbits until now, they're all well-deserved. Hah, I knew birthdays are there to clear up the accumulated mathoms. Greedy, passive-aggressive little gremlins those Hobbits are. Fiddlesticks #equiusemoji #ceilingwizard is watching you Also #theplotthickens I know I said Bilbo sounded narc-y at times, but some of the other people (*cough*Lobelia*cough*) have him beat by far. No wonder he wanted to travel again.
Ooh. Sounds like I need to delve more into the histories. But what kind of miles #pedantry Still 192km by 240km and about the size of Bavaria
I would super recommend the Encyclopedia of Arda as a supplement/cross-reference for lore, timelines, and maps! the TL;DR of the 'post-apocalyptic' descriptor is that Sauron has been inciting wars and releasing plagues for millenia, and about six human kingdoms have gone down in flames with nothing to replace them.
And before that, about a bazillion Elven kingdoms went down in flames fighting Sauron's boss, and half the continent sunk into the ocean when they finally got rid of him.
THE FELOWSHIP OF THE RING - CHAPTER 2 - The shadows of the past Ominous title is ominous. a year and a day, so 366 days. The Hobbits really like their elevens. Man, Frodo, you're allowed to celebrate your own birthdays, you know? Also, expecting someone who is the equivalent of 18 to settle down is ridiculous. Some of those hobbits really need to grow some sense themselves. "Where is [Bilbo] then?" - "Far, far away from your nagging, probably riding a dragon." Man, I always thought LOTR was like all those other teen hero stories, but here Frodo is, being 50, and it being a fucking midlife crisis. Yay, walking trees! I think in this specific case, they're ok. So like three thousand years after whatever spooked the Hobbits out of their ancestral home, it bubbles up again and this time even the elves and the dwarves are like "fuck that shit we're out of here"? World building, world building, we get to know about the rings~ Sam's eavesdropping, isn't he "Saruman is a great a+ wise dude but he doesn't give half a shit abt Hobbits who are the a+ perfect people of this world" yeah sure Gandalf Yeah Saruman already sounds like a power-hungry dick of a control-freak. Probably looking for those rings, too. I remember this poem, and I distinctly remember a German translation, and vastly preferring it. Hrm. The whole meter of this is off. Like you'd expect the split to be 4-4, but it's 5-3, and that's just ugly. But yes, the ring is Bad News TM, and you probably can't FedEx it into the next volcano. Weren't the rings elven work? Did the Dark Lord, like, commission them -- "Yo I'm totally not planning anything evil, but can you make me these rings with these brainfucking enchantments?" So the ring up and vanished and Sauron couldn't/wouldn't cast Locate Object on it so he thought it was gone, and now it's been hidden away and like 3 people know about it and now he knows? The official story Bilbo told could've been about any kind of bling, geez. Sméagol, poster child of "curiosity killed the cat" Things I did not know: Sméagol calling Déagol "My Love". I'm sorry, but that's gay. Thank you, Gandalf, for recognizing that Gollum's fate is, indeed, a sad one, for his only crime was that the ring went 'dibs' on him, or more like he couldn't resist the irresistible by fucking design thing and it corrupted him utterly. ::/ "Hobbits don't cheat" Frodo, my lad, the question of "What's in my pockets" is fucking cheating. The Ring is basically an addictive drug. Once it's in your system, it rewrites it so that your system needs it, even if you want to get away from it, until you're a shadow of your former self, only concerned/obsessed with your next high. Wonder if Gollum, who was made to cold-turkey the ring eighty-ish years ago, had some chance to recover his sanity after all these decades and centuries of the Ring eating away at it. Bilbo hadn't been in its grasp for that long, and now about 17 years outside its influence, and Gandalf suggested it helped. Single Ring looking for Good Bearer. With all Gandalf has been digging, I wonder if that's what ultimately filtered back to Sauron, because some dude started asking very specific questions. Aah, Gollum broke the news. Gandalf you idiot, couldn't you have looked at the damned map and seen the direction into which Gollum was headed? Thank you, Gandalf, for shutting down Frodo's "But he deserves to die!", although one might consider ending Gollum's life to be ending his suffering and being merciful. But that debate is also a can of worms about as big as middle-earth. Naive little hobbit. See the world, expand your horizons, and stop talking out of your ass. You're fifty, stop acting like you're the hobbit equivalent of human 15. I'm pretty sure you need at least a proper forge to try and melt down a ring, especially a magic mind-fucking one. Don't think a plain hearthfire is going to cut it. Frodo, you very simply were at the right place at the right time, or at the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess. If you want an answer to that, ask the ring, but I'm fairly certain it'd give you the same explanation I gave. And now stop whining. Yeah, Sam is definitely eavesdropping. Gandalf, constantly dissing the Hobbits since chapter 2 Frodo, can you please, please, stop with the 16 year old edgy deuteragonist bullshit? Also, is this where that came from. Tolkien, are you to fault for this. IS THIS YOUR DOING. Frodo, that pang in your heart when you thought about having to say goodbye forever to Sam... well, that's gay. Kind of love their interactions. And then Gandalf went and recruited him.
Sauron showed up to a famous elf artisan not looking like a Dark Lord and went, "Heeeyyy, I have this GREAT idea for these magic rings! Can you help me make them? :D" and they made the Seven and the Nine together, and then Sauron went home and made his own ring that hacked into a security backdoor he left in the designs. He can't get at the Three because the elves made those without his input, so he couldn't brainjack those the way he could the others. If you believe how it's narrated in The Hobbit, Bilbo didn't originally mean it to be a riddle, but then Gollum thought it was and he just sorta rolled with it. But "Hobbits don't cheat" is definitely BS, what with how Lobelia stealing silverware is a running joke.
this is a good thread. i like the concept of bavarian hobbits. also, [sets up campsite and waits for more]
I don't think there can really be any doubt that hobbits are small town busybodies. That's sort of the essence of hobbititude, which is a word now.
An important thing to keep in mind is that the prologue itself is "in-universe" and part of a potentially flawed history. This can be said about the entire canon, actually, leading to many to pick and choose what details or versions of events that they prefer. Or to even throw some things out entirely. So we can say "Hobbits don't cheat" but that's just some fucking asshole Hobbit historian saying that. Do the texts we have actually show this? No? Well, damn. I guess that fuck was wrong or potentially even trying to mislead us. The same can even go for Tolkien's own prologue info. ARGUE WITH TOLKIEN. TREAT THE BOOK LIKE ACADEMIA. Though I know that this isn't everyone's favorite thing. It is however a very big part of why the various Arda works are my favorite thing ever basically, and why I feel we've really yet to surpass the works. It's not necessarily the story itself, though that is nice too. It's the metatextual academic element that really makes it stand out for me. EDIT: Really, I like the fact that Frodo claims that Hobbits don't cheat a lot. It's says things about how Hobbits view themselves as a culture versus how they actually tend to act. Which is one of my favorite things about culture. We say a lot about what we believe in, but the question is do we act that? Or just say it? It's why anthropologists can't just rely on interviews. Even if we're not attempting to lie a lot of what we say just doesn't match up with reality. Also I know you said this doesn't have the appendices, but you really should know about like. The in-universe methodology behind the book. Namely how exactly Tolkien "translated" it. He has this entire fucking thing about oh I gave these people these names for reasons and tone and here are the original names and this is how I kept this linguistic link alive. One of the most fun bits for me is that he admits that "dwarves" is actually just a private mistake that he happens to like for aesthetic reasons. With all this in mind it's really neat to sit down and think about what this book actually is. It is one Hobbit's recounting of a particular war, not all of which he lived through. That was then taken and recorded into two other books, the original being lost all together. All copies after that were then made from those two, in particular the Gondor book if I recall right. Then our translator Tolkien got a hold of a copy of the manuscript somefuckinghow and translated it how he felt best into modern day British English. Then we took this translation and translated it again into German which you are reading now. We are many lines removed from the original Red Book copy that was penned by Frodo. A whole three ages and at least three transcriptions down the line.
As far as poetry goes...Yeah. I always found the Ring poem a bit off in terms of sound. There's bits of it I like a lot, but something just doesn't gel. In general Tolkien's poetry has a lot of really nice bits, but it's rough around the edges in many areas. I think his best work poetry wise is his Anglo-Saxon styled epic verse stuff, like seen in the verse Narn i Chin Hurín. Tolkien's poetry is probably at its worst when he's trying long rhyming couplets as seen in The Lay of Luthien. I like the Lay of Luthien a lot, but honestly I feel it's best that that form of the story died.
Yeah, the nice thing about all of Tolkien's texts having in-universe authors and being presented as being in translation is that if you want to argue that, say, the various deus ex machina eagle rescues are actually places where the characters were saved by dissonant factions of orcs and this was "corrected" by an orc-racist historian at some point because clearly that couldn't be the case, you can. Or "elves are all good Catholics and are inherently incapable of extramarital affairs" from Laws and Customs of the Eldar could be a wildly incorrect literal translation of a metaphorical idiom.
Frodo is kind of the hobbit equivalent of early twenties-ish (just had his coming-of-age a decade and a half ago, in a species that seems to live about 3/2 as long as human) so he should probably be given a little leeway in his edgy bullshit. Think of him not as a teenager, but as a second year in college who has just started reading Western Philosophy texts for class.
I just wanted to read a classic, I didn't sign up for this -laughs- Maybe on second readthrough... Actually, reading the english version. My parents have the original german translation which is nigh-unreadable. also mostly through chapter 3 at this point. talked to my pathfinder dm about it. he considers the films to be vastly superior, and has very loudly proclaimed that lotr are terrible books and tolkien has no sense of when and when not to sing.
I hate the films so much. Like they're cool in terms of set building and such, but in terms of like the actual themes of the work they fall flat. Very, very fucking flat. The Eowyn fiasco is probably the worst bit, though Faramir is also pretty fucking dead in the water. Also song is vital to LotR I feel. To the setting in general. The world was literally made through song, after all. But besides the theological and cosmological implications of cultures that are heavy on singing it's just...nice seeing songs at all? I like seeing in-universe art. It helps add a sense of reality to the setting. The Elder Scrolls has a pornographic play about lizard titties, Kencyrath has the Tentir poems (written by readers!), and Tolkien has songs. Lots of them. Granted, I also care less about plot flow than some people.
