It's something I am burning to know! I have only met a handful of people, who have actually read the Lord of the Rings, in its entirety. A smaller portion of that actually find the book interesting and, well, find it an excellent book in general. The rest claim it to be too long, too boring, or the one I find the most iritating(as if the latter two didn't itch me enough), it's too detailed/ to much description. Well which one is it? All of them? One of them? Another one?! And why, why!
Tolkien does take a lot of time for the action to get around. There is also a huge amount of detail to go through. Tolkien had literally created a world and he was willing to tell us everything about it. The lineage of the characters, etc.
Still, I think it would be good for me to re-read the books now that I've seen the movies a couple times. Once Tolkien gets rolling, he really gets going. It is just the first couple chapters that bores the heck out of you.
"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly." ~ Richard Bach
I only cared for the Hobbit, really. His lack of strong female characters infuriates me. And I just plain don't like his writing. Didn't like the movies, either.
Sing lustily and with a good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength.
Gosh I don't know. He doesn't have enough females. And yet, for generations, dating way back, people have been afraid of books. They ban Harry Potter novels in some schools. You aren't allowed to read your Bible. Farenheit 451 (sorries if i confused the title) had to be censored and re-realeased. Books have power, and people are afraid of that.
Yeah. You have to sign a permission slip to read certain books at my school library...which is really dumb...considering once my friend was reading the DaVinci Code for his book report and I was reading the Red Tent.
Rock on, Misty!
Graffiti is the most passionate form of literature there is.
Four pages of description for one sentence of action.
I'd like you to find one place in any of the books that has that, because I have never seen that.
People like to jump on the bandwagon of this supposed "extended description" but really when he wrote it, he didn't have the same luxury us modern fantasy writers can exploit - he couldn't just say "orc" and everyone would be like "oh yeh!". He needed description to fit a new fantasy world that we all use to such ease today.
You have to think about the context here people.
Nate wrote:And if YWS ever does become a company, Jack will be the President of European Operations. In fact, I'm just going to call him that anyways.
I feel more negative then positive vibes in hear, but that's good! It's why we're here...
Now, when you all say there's a lack of strong female characters, that may be true, but he comes through with Eowyn; she essential does an extraordinary deed that technically no man could have done. Sure, you may say it's to push the storyline forward, but really, one could look at it at a different perspective, and assume Tolkien (who was in a time when womens rights were only starting to cultivate) recognized that women were exluded from the chivalrous deeds of the time he was writing, through the fact that 'no man' could kill the Witch King, he would never expect a women to come to battle! "Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!", at that moment Dernhelm laughed, and he spoke "But no living man am I! You look upon a women." So, though the story istelf excluded women for the most part, Tolkien saw this and introduced a heroic women figure, Eowyn. And she did, what Gandalf may have died trying to do, a feat which earns Eowyn quite the title! It may not be enough, but it shows Tolkien wasn't a, well, whatever you may call him.
As for 4 pages of description, for a sentence of action? Absurd. In any case, books, especially long narratives, are supposed to be descriptive, if Tolk didn't describe half the things he may have, we'd be all scratching our heads. And yet he doesn't go far, he doesn't mention all the things we end up wanting to know!
On a sidenote, I go to a Catholic school, and I'm glad to say that we can read what we want, our opinions are not frowned upon, and in fact, there's a world religion class in grade 11, which I'm taking next year.
I've never had a problem with hardly any strong female characters because i know how women were thought of at the time, so i accept it.
As for reading LOTR, it took me three years to read all three books, they are very detailed and very hard to read, but once you have gotten past the first 100 pages everything settles down and it gets easier to read. The books themselves are very well written, just hard to get into if your not used to reading his style (like Charles Dickens - anyone ever struggled to read his books? Even though they are very highly thought of?) The Hobbit isn't really a stepping stone into the books, as the style is fairly different, but read it anyway because it's a good book.
Light travels faster than sound. That is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience
I read all of the books. Half way into the final book I got bored and put it away, then I came back to it and finished it. 'tis indeed confusing to read, but if it hadn't been so descriptive, it just wouldn't have been the same.
Cause i'm a one man,
I'm a one man,
I'm a one man,
I'm a one man revolution.
I don't doubt Tolkein's talent and that they are excellent books, but I haven't been able to get into them, I found them quite heavy-going when I tried to read them. My impatience probably doesn't help, but I'm sure I'll try again when I have a lot of time on my hands.
It interests me that you see Tolkien as sexist, in a broad sort of way. Strikes me as, perhaps, an excuse, because anyone who has read the book would recognize his stance on "women heroes."
There is an entire subplot of feminine oppression running through parts of the book: it strikes me that Tolkien realised that the freedoms granted to women in his time were substandard. Eowyn is a very good example of this.
She is, in every sense, the oppressed woman: she's seen as a sex-object by Wormtongue, something to be won and to possess; she is not allowed to go to war, though she would want to: the Prince Imrahil puts it quite nicely, when he says "have even the women of Rohan come to war at our need?" It has been, like it or not, the fate of wives and daughters throughout history to wave their men on their way to war: it's a helpless thing, and it's not right, but Tolkien was recognizing it.
That in itself doesn't show his understanding, but later on in the book, it is very obvious. When Eowyn is lying injured in the Houses of Healing, Aragorn and Gandalf are talking to Eomer about her, and Gandalf says something very true:
"My friend ... you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonoured dotage; and her part seemed to her more ignoble than the staff he leaned on."
It strikes me that Tolkien recognizes that women are equal to men, but have simply been denied the opportunity to show that; rather forward thinking for his time, not just conforming to the stereotype.
I don't find the Lord of the Rings difficult to read. However, I will admit that there were some parts that I had to read and re-read, and some that I rushed through. But I have only read the series in its entirety, 2 times. Usually, when you read something over it becomes more clear in every sense. Especially with the Silmarillion, which I understood on a larger scale then when I read it the first time!
The most important thing is to preserve the world we live in. Unless people understand and learn about our world, habitats, and animals, they won't understand that if we don't protect those habitats, we'll eventually destroy ourselves. — Jack Hanna
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