Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 21, 2019 10:58:41 GMT -5
I was wondering, what is everybody's favourite part of The Hobbit? For myself, while it's hard to choose a favourite among so much goodness, I've always really loved the section in which Bilbo and the Dwarves travel through Mirkwood. There's something deliciously otherworldly and creepy about Tolkien's description of the forest. Then there's all the fun and comedy of our heroes spying the festivities of the Woodland Elves through the trees and getting lost, the frustration of Bombur falling into the enchanted river and going to sleep, the peril of the encounter with the giant spiders, the jeopardous majesty of King Thranduil's hall, and finally Bilbo and the Dwarves' daring escape from the Wood Elves in the barrels.  |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 21, 2019 11:01:14 GMT -5
The visit to Beorn is probably my favorite. A close second is the encounter with the trolls.
-M
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 21, 2019 11:11:34 GMT -5
The visit to Beorn is probably my favorite. A close second is the encounter with the trolls. -M Yeah, the visit with Beorn is nice, and the trolls' scene is another big favourite of mine. It's the dialogue -- both the trolls' themselves and Bilbo's -- that really makes that such a great scene. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 21, 2019 11:17:16 GMT -5
I really love the encounter with the trolls. And I'll echo the journey through Mirkwood. The latter was certainly aided by the lack of Deus ex Gandolfus or Deus ex Eagles to save the day.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 24, 2019 1:22:58 GMT -5
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Post by thwhtguardian on Nov 24, 2019 9:56:06 GMT -5
The visit to Beorn is probably my favorite. A close second is the encounter with the trolls. -M That was definitely my favorite as well, the way the dwarfs had to enter in ones and twos was a lot of fun. Gandalf's trick there always struck me as something Odysseus would have done for some reason even though there isn't a similar situation in the Odyssey. |
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 24, 2019 10:59:43 GMT -5
That was definitely my favorite as well, the way the dwarfs had to enter in ones and twos was a lot of fun. It's exactly the kind of humour that you find throughout the book that the movies could've done with a lot more of. |
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Post by berkley on Nov 25, 2019 0:19:17 GMT -5
To mention a couple that haven't come up yet, I'll add the opening scene with Gandalf and Bilbo and then the Dwarves and also the whole Misty Mountains episode including Gollum and the riddle contest as other favourites.
But it's really the story as a whole that I find inspiring. The whole thing is packed with one magnificent set-piece after another, and the way it ebbs and flows from one to the next is so masterfully done that I'd almost say it's like a textbook example of how to construct an adventure or quest story, except that tends to imply the mechanical, paint-by-numbers approach all too many later and lesser writers have fallen into.
That is not at all what Tolkien was about, his work emerged through his love and fascination for Fairy tale, myth, and legend, his immersion in that kind of story-telling, and of course a tremendous talent and gift for putting the English language to use. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 25, 2019 0:29:49 GMT -5
Well, I finally got the chance to sit down and watch the Tolkien biopic. The last time I read a Tolkien biography was in high school (the Humphrey Carter book), so my memory of Tolkien's actual life events is fuzzy at best, so I wasn't able to discern fact from fiction as I watched it (except in the most obvious of cases like the battlefield delusions Tolkien experienced). It was a decent movie for what it was (I am not a big fan of biopics in general so it would have to be amazing to overcome my ambivalence to the genre for me to think it was more than that, and it wasn't amazing). It was solid, well-acted, and had an engaging story (though some of it was fictional), but offered no great insights or contributions to Tolkien scholarship. It was enjoyable, but by no means essential viewing.
I ended up doing a little fact-checking after the movie ended, and it got some stuff right, but embellished or made up a lot of stuff to add to the drama of the narrative. It tried to tell multiple story-lines at once tying them together as it interwove them; one was Tolkien in the trenches as he suffered from Trench fever, and the other Tolkien's friendship with the members of the TCBS through his adolescence and time at Oxford until two of its members were killed in the war and his burgeoning romance with Edith during that time, merging the two when Tolkien awakens in his sick bed after being returned to England because of the fever and learns of the death of two of his boon companions. It's final act shows the aftermath of all that and the path to writing the Hobbit it paved the way for and ends with Tolkien writing the first line of the Hobbit at his desk in longhand with a fountain pen.
If you are inclined to see it, do so, but go in with eyes open, and I wouldn't by any stretch recommend it as something necessary or even valuable to the Tolkien oeuvre.
-M
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2019 21:24:51 GMT -5
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Post by berkley on Nov 28, 2019 0:56:27 GMT -5
Are there any other books that give you a similar feeling to the Hobbit? For me, its chatty, humorous tone is part of a long tradition of English children's lit and reminds me of things like Kipling's Just So Stories, the early parts of TH White's The Once and Future King, the better passages of CS Lewis's Narnia series (i.e. when he isn't laying on the Christian allegory with a heavy trowel), and even Lewis Carroll's Alice books.
Obviously there is wide range of variation amongst all these different writers, but to me each of them employs their own individual version of this kind of authorial voice. Anyone have any other favourites along these lines?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2019 1:25:11 GMT -5
Are there any other books that give you a similar feeling to the Hobbit? For me, its chatty, humorous tone is part of a long tradition of English children's lit and reminds me of things like Kipling's Just So Stories, the early parts of TH White's The Once and Future King, the better passages of CS Lewis's Narnia series (i.e. when he isn't laying on the Christian allegory with a heavy trowel), and even Lewis Carroll's Alice books. Obviously there is wide range of variation amongst all these different writers, but to me each of them employs their own individual version of this kind of authorial voice. Anyone have any other favourites along these lines? Lloyd Alexander's The Prydain Chronicles (on which the second book became the Disney animated feature The Black Cauldron) is the most Hobbit-like in the way it evoked wonder and awe in me as a kid when I dissevered it. I haven't revisited the series in quite some time, but the two are intermingled in my experiences discovering fantasy and were of the same ilk. -M |
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 28, 2019 13:27:27 GMT -5
Are there any other books that give you a similar feeling to the Hobbit? For me, its chatty, humorous tone is part of a long tradition of English children's lit and reminds me of things like Kipling's Just So Stories, the early parts of TH White's The Once and Future King, the better passages of CS Lewis's Narnia series (i.e. when he isn't laying on the Christian allegory with a heavy trowel), and even Lewis Carroll's Alice books. Obviously there is wide range of variation amongst all these different writers, but to me each of them employs their own individual version of this kind of authorial voice. Anyone have any other favourites along these lines? Hmmm...I'm not sure there are any children's books that give me a similar feeling to The Hobbit. I think its uniqueness is part of why I like the book so much. Things like Kipling's The Jungle Book or C.S. Lewis's Narnia books always seemed a bit less mature to me, and Lewis' fictional land just never really seemed to have the "authenticity" or verisimilitude that Middle-earth had. I really liked Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, but its whimsy and surrealism make it a very different read to The Hobbit. There's also Kenneth Graham's The Wind in the Willows, which certainly shares Tolkien's love of the bucolic countryside around the Thames Estuary, but its anthropomorphised animals give the story a very different feel to The Hobbit. I think the only book that I read as a young teenager which gave me anything like a similar feeling to The Hobbit was probably Roger Lancelyn Green's The Adventures of Robin Hood from 1956. Green was, as I'm sure you know, a friend of J.R.R. Tolkien's and a fellow member of the Inklings literary group. The book is based upon the existent surviving Old-English ballads and rhymes about Robin Hood, and, as a result, it paints a very accurate (accurate to the legends, that is) re-telling of the stories. It's a classic British children's literature book, full of derring-do and stiff-upper-lipped heroism, but there's a grittiness and slight melancholy to the story, which elevates it above any other re-telling of the Robin Hood legend that I've encountered. |
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Post by berkley on Nov 28, 2019 21:44:41 GMT -5
I was thinking more specifically of the narrative voice: a very English way of speaking directly to the reader, like someone telling you a sotry, rather than anything to do with the content of the story - setting, plot, characters, etc. The Wind in the Willows would definitely another prime example.
Another one I remembered is an odd thing: WHD Rouse's prose translations of Homer. I thought it worked surprisingly well with the Odyssey but not at all so well with The Iliad, which is probably just too stark and brutal for that kind of style to feel appropriate.
Have you read anything else of Green's? I see he produced versions of King Arthus, the Greek myth, and all kinds of other things.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 29, 2019 2:03:14 GMT -5
Have you read anything else of Green's? I see he produced versions of King Arthus, the Greek myth, and all kinds of other things. I haven't, actually. However, I do know his tales of King Arthur are very well regarded. |
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