Posted on 02/16/2014 6:26:21 PM PST by Perdogg
I would definitely recommend periodic re-reading, especially if you are a fan. I see new things in each book with each re-read, and I have read them many, many times. These are examples of the few books that can stand up to re-reading over a period of years.
He was just an amazing author.
I’ve read LOTR for the 17th time now. I’ve read The Hobbit to my children, grandchildren, and soon my great grandchildren over and over again. I studied the Silmarillion for three years and cross-referenced the notes to LOTR and the Hobbit. I’ve read everything that JRR and Christopher wrote...plus any other books I could get my hands on...biographies, letter, beastiaries, commentaries, etc.
In the 70s, my cousins sons and their friends (all high school kids), would come over to my house and we would study LOTR and the Middle Earth myth. When they decided to play D&D, they asked me to be their DM. Our entire gameplay was based on middle earth mythology. Maps, clues, directions, tasks were all written by yours truly using the Feanorian characters. It made the gameplay a lot more mysterious and fun. I never really got into studying or writing with Dwarfish Runes.
JRR was a brilliant man who wrote True Myth all grounded in his devout Christian life.
Reading level of Lord of the Rings is far, far higher than anything even remotely connected to first or second grades.
Yes it is.
However, you might be surprised that some kids read way above grade level.
Excellent essay. Thanks for the link!
I know the reading level of the Lord of the Rings, but my daughter read it, with the Appendices, in the first grade. She liked the movies when they came out, but wished they had followed the books closer.
And yes, she often has had problems relating to her peers...
I personally think some of the fairy tales of George MacDonald and CS Lewis are better.
I'm glad Tolkien did not take the advice of Auden, the book would have not been as good without the story of Arwen.
No problemo, Wolfe is the best living writer of speculative fiction in my opinion. Conservative, Christian, Korean war vet, helped invent the machine that makes Pringles. So it follows that his Tolkien essay rocks, heck he has poetry by Robert E Howard in the thing.
Freegards
Yep, according to the wiki bio on Auden, he lived a flaming homosexual deathstyle.
Have you read the Silmarillion , the unfinished tales by Tolkien and the Bible,too? When you have both of those books in view, Tolkien explains that the elves in some ways envied man’s mortality. The elves had to live in a cursed Middle Earth, where they knew they would be defeated by evil. Humans would pass to the Undying Lands upon death.
However, Aragorn was more of a believer in eternal hope than Arwen, iirc.
There is more depth and much poignant background in Tolkiens writings on Middle Earth that is not fully described in the Hobbit and LOTR.
Someone on this thread just mentioned the Christian ethos in 1 Cor 13.
Also, there is the figure of speech;
“It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
In heaven, my wife and I won’t be married anymore, but I am certain that being married to her for several decades makes sense — on many many levels.
I bet a sharp person could write a whole book on the topic of Tolkien-Auden-humans-elves-death-immortality-Middle Earth - heaven - Christianity vis a vis skepticism etc etc.
Beren and Lúthien Tinúviel set the stage for what had to be. Aragon needed his Arwen. The myth parallels biblical similarities and so you are right; the trilogy would have failed to illustrate this important relationship between men and elves.
She’s right. It’s a nonsense storyline, proved by the movies.
Along with submarines.
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