As a matter of fact, I know who Tom Bombadil and his wife, Goldberry, are. People who have only seen the movies are likely to go, "What the blank?!" when they start the books and get to the three chapters of
The Fellowship of the Ring that Tom Bombadil is in.
"But this isn't in the movie!" they'll wail.
Now, intense fan debate rages over who and what, precisely, Tom Bombadil is. My best guess is that he is some sort of Maia, the spirit of the vanishing English countryside, as J. R. R. Tolkien himself put it. (An attractive fan theory also holds that he is Aule himself, the creator of the Dwarves. However, upon further consideration, that is unlikely.)
I used to intensely dislike Tom Bombadil and was glad that the movies kept him out. Now, however, my temper has cooled. I won't say that Tom Bombadil is a favorite character, but I don't mind him. I still see why he wasn't in the movie, but I regret that the "Fog on the Barrow-Downs" chapter didn't make its way into the movie. It explains so much, like, for example, how Merry's sword was able to defeat the Witch-king.
Um, that's
Dwarves, thank you very much. The capitalized D is optional, as the Professor was never very consistent himself on whether or not 'Elf' and 'Dwarf' and even 'Hobbit' should be capitalized. I prefer to capitalize them myself, but my fingers may occasionally slip.
I
always, however, spell the plurals with a 'v'. It is ELVES and DWARVES, not elfs and dwarfs. The 'f' makes one think of tiny stupid fairy tale characters, and the races belonging to the Professor's Middle-earth deserve more dignity than that.
I am totally doing this the next time I find myself in the middle of an argument. I doubt, somehow, that I shall end up doing this in class.
Although there is a possibility...
One of my favorite lines from the book (I have very many favorite lines, too many to ever list in one post), and Meriadoc Brandybuck is my favorite hobbit from LOTR.
Reasons?
He's the smart one. In the book, he is the only other hobbit than Frodo who was sneaky enough to catch Bilbo using his Ring and to steal a glimpse of his book. Realizing that Frodo is planning to leave the Shire, he forms a conspiracy to plan ahead and go with him, along with Pippin and Sam.
In Rivendell he looked at maps and things, while Frodo was off talking to Bilbo and Pippin was fooling around. After they escape from the Uruk-hai, he is able to confidently navigate them to and through Fangorn Forest.
He gladly swears allegiance to Theoden King (later he speaks of Theoden as a father to him) and wants to ride off to war - in fact, at one point he wishes that he were a tall Rider like Eomer and could blow a horn and go riding to the rescue. Despite the terror of the Witch-king, he rallied himself and stabbed him in the knee with his Barrow-blade, allowing Eowyn to finish him off. Despite killing the Lord of the Nazgul, he didn't pride himself on that accomplishment, only saying, "It's not always a bad thing, being overlooked."
Meriadoc Brandybuck for the win.
Note to self: Stay away from Firefoot.
The resemblance is undeniable.
'SR' stands for Shire Reckoning, one of the calendar systems the Professor devised for Middle-earth. He was thorough, that great and wonderful man. He devised tons of languages, calendar systems, alphabets, maps, and more for his fantasy world. Is it any wonder that, 75 years later (precisely!
The Hobbit came out on September 21, 1937), this fandom is stronger than ever? There is so much depth to Middle-earth that we shall never grow tired of it.
And, yes... that last line in Appendix B of
The Lord of the Rings never fails to make me tear up: "And at last was come to an end in Middle-earth of the Fellowship of the Ring."
Hahahahaha.
There is a reason I am not on Facebook.
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| The Fellowship of the Ring |
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| The Two Towers |
It was.
(Now, you may try to argue that there is a love triangle between Aragorn, Arwen, and Eowyn. There is not. Eowyn only crushes on Aragorn. It is not reciprocated. There was never any danger, at least in the book, of Aragorn defaulting on his promise to Arwen. Frankly, it got annoying to watch Eowyn keep going after Aragorn even AFTER she knows he has an Elvish girlfriend. I mean, seriously.)
Oh, look: I found pic I was thinking of as I typed that:
Where can I buy these?
You may all go and have nightmares for the rest of your life. *cackles insanely*
Apparently, Sauron rules AT&T. Given our experience with it, this may indeed be accurate.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
