When I was young and romantic, I loved Elves. Now that I'm older and (hopefully) wser, I prefer hobbits. The hobbit way of life is very traditionalist. After all, LOTR tells us in the prologue that hobbits had faces with..."mouths apt to laughter, and to eating and drinking. And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily...They were hospitable and delighted in parties, and in presents, which they gave away freely and eagerly accepted." (Unwin Paperbacks, 1978, p. 14). Plus, they lived till like 100+ years:)
They also were enviromentally friendly. Theirs was a simpler way of life:
"...for they love peace and quiet and good-tilled earth...They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom..." (Idem, p. 13.)
BTW, caring for environment should be a right/traditionalist cause, though by some strange reason, (some) American conservatives appear to think that right-wing is all about tax cuts for millionaires and support of big corporations and banks, not preserving the traditional way of life.
Hobbits also had big families who often lived together, just like the Victorian style British families so often described in Miss Silver books:
"The houses and the holes of Shire-hobbits were often large, and inhabited by large families...Sometimes, as in the case of The Tooks...many generations of relatives lived in (comparative) peace together in one ancestral...mansion. All Hobbits were...clannish and reckoned up their relationships with great care." (p.19).
I bet they didn't need a government official to combat loneliness. And, though not warlike, they were still proficient with arms. Si vis pacem, para bellum. In short, what's not to like?
What are your favourite LOTR characters?
I always found Elves rather annoying. All that singing and being perfect. I think Gandalf the Grey was my favourite -until he became White.
ReplyDeleteI also think that Sean Bean should have been Aragorn, not Viggo Mortensen. What a Ranger Sean Bean would have been! I cannot understand that mistake in casting.
This is my favourite scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmFnv-TZzRs
Agree about Elves! Too much pathos for me:) BTW, I prefer the book to the movies though the movies are quite OK and have great visuals. It's a pity Tolkien didn't make a series out of it, he could have made them throw the Ring into the ocean and write 30+ sequels about what happened after that:)
ReplyDeleteI have always liked te ending of LOTR. Because it is so real: usually in fantasy novels everybody's happy ever after. But in LOTR, the ending is not really happy: the price paid was too high, even though it had to be paid. That's how life is like so very often.
ReplyDeleteI can't help thinking he meant WWII because the price the Brits paid for their victory was a total destruction of their traditional way of life. And anyway, when you only take into consideration the novel, the Old World which got destroyed together with the Ring was so much more interesting! That's why in my opinion, he should have just had them throwing the darn thing into the ocean and write a series of novels about the world he created:)
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