Posts tagged lotr
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
Obsessed.
Peter Jackson Doesn't Get the Hobbit
Jeffrey Weiss writes at RealClearReligion:
Tolkien created Middle-earth with a very particular — and particularly Christian — set of moral laws. There is no Christ, of course, but there is a coherent mythos with the equivalent of God, angels and lesser supernatural figures. And the story of the One Ring, about the inherent corrupting power of worldly might, builds to a single moment that exemplifies Tolkien’s theology.
To recap: In book and film, Frodo has heroically carried the Ring to the one spot where it can be destroyed. Instead, he claims it and — in that one moment — Gollum attacks and bites off Frodo’s finger with the ring. In the book, this is what follows:
“But Gollum, dancing like a mad thing, held aloft the ring, a finger still thrust within its circle…And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell. Out of the depths came his last wailPrecious, and he was gone.”
In the movie, after Gollum bites off his finger, Frodo heroically launches himself at Gollum and hurls them both over the side. Gollum falls with the Ring into the lava but Frodo is barely saved by Sam.
I’ll grant that Jackson’s version is more exciting, in the same way that loading Ophelia with a suicide vest and having her blast herself to smithereens center-stage would liven up a production of Hamlet. But that wouldn’t be Shakespeare.
Here’s the key for Tolkein that Jackson ignores: Frodofailsin his quest but the quest succeeds. Jackson, however, has Frodo win.
To put it in Tolkien’s Christian framework, salvation in the book could not be achieved even by the most heroic efforts of men (or hobbits). To a secularist, Gollum’s fall might be read as an accident. To Tolkien, it was always providential, an act of grace.
If Jackson ever films “Othello,” wait for Desdemona’s handkerchief to hit the ground like a sheet of tin.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
‘Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel?’
But Sam lay back, and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer. At last he gasped: ‘Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?’
‘A great shadow has departed’ said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
I will love this forever.
from “The Fellowship of the Ring” by J.R.R. Tolkien
“Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel?”
But Sam lay back, and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer. At last he gasped: “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”
“A great shadow has departed,” said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known.
-J.R.R. Tolkien
