This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Robert: This certainly isn't complete, but it's a start. I'll add more later, unless someone else volunteers. I've put it at The Lordof The Rings, because that's the actual name of the book. Lord Of The Rings can be a redirect.
Pepinson: How are Frodo and Legolas designated heroes, and where's the prophecy twist?
Robert: Legolas achieves practically nothing, as Tolkien himself said. Frodo is explained on the Designated Hero page. The prophecy twist is the death of the witch king, who no man could kill.
Tanto: I liked the films a great deal, and I acknowledge the great debt most modern fantasy owes to Tolkien, but for the life of me I've never been able to enjoy the original books. This evidently makes me a heretic among fantasy fans, but I had to get it off my chest!
...So, anyway, I kind of take issue with the argument (not here, just in general) that subsequent fantasy is somehow lessened because it derives so much from Tolkien. Who cares? Chaucer was derivative. So was Shakespeare. The value of any story lies in its presentation...
Fast Eddie: See, Tanto, if you go slinging truth around like that ... the outcome could be messy. :-) I'm in your camp, I think. I read the books as a teen, and I remember using them as an example of "writer indulgence" in an essay for a class. Scored rather well, that paper. Tolkien was so absorbed by his notes. All that detail has absorbed a lot people, since then, though. Maybe in 400 more years we will all be remembering only Shakespeare, for the leaps of thought, and The Simpsons, for the detail.
Robert: Scoring well on essays has only the flimsiest of links with being right, even when there is an objective truth, which there wouldn't seem to be here. It's got rather more to do with rhetorical skill. I won't deny that there are some parts of LotR that could have been cut (though there are many who would dispute even that), but the sheer number of people who yearn for more about Middle Earth strongly suggests that Tolkien didn't indulge himself enough.
Of course, while describing something as indulgent is a nicely subtle way of smearing it as a wasteful pleasure, indulgence can actually be a good thing. A life without any indulgences is little better than complete sensory deprivation — the plainest, cheapest foods (rather than indulging the taste buds), life in a plain white cell (rather than needlessly indulging the aesthetic sense), no recreational use of a computer (the purest indulgence) — and such a life is not for many. Thus, I would not be impressed by attempts to dismiss Tolkien as an example of 'writer indulgence' without addressing the awkward fact of his great popularity (not that popularity implies greatness; that's a different debate.)
Tolkien had his roots too, mostly in genres a thousand years dead, so criticising his successors for copying him would be hypocritical, but Tolkien made original use of his sources, which not all of his successors have done. Those who do nothing but copy Tolkien without understanding are lesser writers; those (and there are many) who add something original are not.
However, we could spend ten years debating these points and get nowhere — not one of my preferred indulgences. I'll try and restrain myself to Tolkien's tropes.
Ununnilium: Argh! Why, why do we need another series name beginning with "The"? @.x
Robert: It's the name of the book. Blame Tolkien. :) Anyway, I think its seldom used in contexts where the 'the' must be omitted, unlike trope names. We may often want to talk about X being an Aragorn, making The Aragorn an awkward name; we do this with series and book titles somewhat less.
Tamfang: I updated "Christopher Tolkien has published ten volumes" to "fifteen", counting The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, the 12 volumes of History of Middle Earth, and The Children of Húrin (which appeared very recently).
ccoa: Tolkien did not single-handedly create the High Fantasy genre. George Mac Donald began the high fantasy genre with his novel Phantastes in 1858 and his remake of it as Lillith in 1895. Tolkein's works were noticably influenced by MacDonald's novels. As such, I have changed that line to something a little more accurate.
Max: ...Sorry, who?
ccoa: George MacDonald
. I swear, no one reads anything older than 50 years unless it's required for a class.
Satanic Hamster: I find this a bit questionable:
- Kissing Cousins (Aragorn and Arwen) Albeit so many generations removed that it hardly matters: Arwen is the daughter of Elrond, and Aragorn is the great-great-etc.-grandson of Elros, Elrond's brother.
Isn't this more like having crush on a great, great, etc. grand aunt or something?
Narvi: For the UT who got his Fridge Logic about dragonfire destroying Rings of Power; it doesn't apply for the One Ring. They tell you that in the same scene. Learn to read. Teehee.
McJeff: There are an immense amount of tropes on this entry that have no explanation of any sort. They need to be explained or removed. I haven't edited on this entry yet, so I'll give it a week or so before I start cleanups.
berr: Removed the Vegeta And Kakarot reference from the "Characters" page and replaced with Red Oni, Blue Oni. (consolidated trope)
I don't want to start a whole thing so I thought I'd bring this up here first. The Army of the Dead (at least as it's portrayed in the film version of the Return of the King, seems to this troper to be one big, stonking Deus Ex Machina.
Oh no! We don't have enough troops to fight the big bad's army of ultimate badasses! What are we going to do? Well, you could go talk to that big, even badass-ier army that we've never mentioned before (like, say, at Helm's Deep) and just happens to be right next to our camp, and happens to be bound by a curse that only you can break, Aragorn. Convenient, huh?
Or is it just me.
Battle Hamster: It's not just you, if you're talking about the movies.
In the book, of course, they are gray shades who drive the Corsairs into a "madness of terror", like a much individually weaker but way more numerous version of the Nazgul, making them jump overboard. (They had the same affect on Gondorians, who fled their homes.) Then Aragorn releases them, because (1) an army that does that to everyone isn't much good in a normal battle and (2) they fulfilled their oaths. But the Gondorian captives were chained to their oars, so they couldn't jump. After they get over the horror, they come along with Aragorn and the Rangers (who were menioned way back at the Council of Elrond and have been around for a while) to Minas Tirith on the Corsairs' ships. Plus the (previously mentioned, as in "Oh God, why haven't more of them arrived to defend Minas Tirith yet? We're running out of time here!") people from the coasts of Gondor join up with them. And it's still a long and hard fight after that, in which many people die, as mentioned in a (this is JRRT) song at the end of the chapter.
In the movie, bunch of glowing, green ghosts sweep the ground before Minas Tirith clean of the enemy. Man, too bad Theoden and the Rohirrim bothered to show up. All they really needed to win were a bunch of magic ghosts.
Sorry, but that was always kind of a Berserk Button for me.
Alright, well I put a Deus Ex Machina tag and specify it's for the films.
Kraas: Removing this for now:
- Even the Elves have a choice as demonstrated by some few of their greater heroes. Basically, the sort of death experienced by Man is considered a gift of Eru that has been propagandized as a terrible thing. The Elves immortality comes at the price of having to leave Middle-Earth as the elder days fade. Some say this is because of how Feanor and his Noldor spread their curse so efficiently. Others say this was always intended. My personal thought, those elves that stayed behind after the West closed (probably Legolas's kin) eventually dwindled into a mortal race themselves over time, losing their immortality. In the long run, I expect that Elves, Orcs, Men interbred into one species. It was already happening with Elves and Men, as could be seen in the differentiation of High Men and Half Elves. Saruman probably kickstarted orcs joining into the mix. Trolls being an imperfect imitation of Ents probably didn't fare as well and Dwarves having a different manner of creation might have stayed seperate.
- What.
We probably shouldn't be putting personal theories on main trope pages. Put it in WMG.
Fighteer: Cut the Cerebus Syndrome section, because The Hobbit was not originally written with the greater Middle-Earth continuity in mind and its incorporation into Lord of the Rings was actually a Retcon. Anyway, Tolkien was evolving his world from beginning to end, so it's hard to identify any one place where things got much more complicated. The original section is preserved below.
- Cerebus Syndrome: LOTR is much darker in tone than The Hobbit. The early parts of Fellowship of The Ring still bear signs of pre-Cerebusness.
- Not a genuine example, as the Hobbit was written independently of his "serious" Middle-earth stories, and the story integrated into the previously existing Middle-earth continuity, upon which he took on its tone.
- I think it still counts though. And middle-earth itself is a genuine example, with the Book of Lost Tales being about a sailor who lands on an early version of Tol Erresea and hears a bunch of stories that would become much darker by the time of the Silmarillion, or the original Tale of Beren and Luthien, which was much less dark than the later version (although that's one of the lighter stories anyway).
- Not a genuine example, as the Hobbit was written independently of his "serious" Middle-earth stories, and the story integrated into the previously existing Middle-earth continuity, upon which he took on its tone.
Fighteer: I cut the entire Relationship Writing Fumble entry below, because it's turned into a Wall of Text that doesn't belong on the main page. We have an Analysis section if you really want to get that crazy.
- Relationship Writing Fumble: Sam, get away from Frodo.
- Not really, as the whole setting has different standards. People are openly emotionally and physically affectionate without it being percieved as emasculating or sexual. It's not Tolkien's fault if some people don't or can't realize that, and apply their "modern day" society's prejudices to another culture which does it differently.
- Indeed, the fandom is really, really misaimed. But This Troper thinks that, even before modern times, a guy who was really attached to his best friend, like Sam is to Frodo, didn't trouble himself with who he should live with: a woman, the love of his life, or his best friend. Sam is in this situation, because he would like to marry Rosie, but not leave Frodo and this inner struggle makes their relationship a little ambiguous.
- In fact, it actually is a form of RWF because Tolkien likened their relationship both to a marriage and to the animal partnership that exists for mating purposes. The second one is remarked in the passage where Sam battles Shelob to save Frodo. There Sam is described as a small creature(...)that stands above its fallen mate. The first comparison is written in the epilogue, when Elanor, Sam's daughter, hears that Celeborn and Galadriel have separated and that Celeborn tells Aragorn that he hopes Aragorn will not be separated from Arwen like he has been from Galadriel. And Celeborn uses the word treasure to describe his true love, Galadriel. By picking up on the key word treasure Elanor's response likens Sam and Frodo's relationship to that of at least one, if not two, married couples( Celeborn/Galadriel and Aragorn/Arwen). Not only that, Celeborn's comment and feelings become understandable for Elanor through her father's feelings for Frodo, because she tells Sam these words: He knew that Lady Arwen would stay, but that Galadriel would leave him. I think it was very sad for him. And for you, dear Sam-dad. (...) For your treasure went too. I am glad Frodo of the Ring saw me, but I wish I could remember seeing him. Sam does not, as might be expected, correct his daughter's comments as a childish misunderstanding. Neither does he explain to Elanor that he is in fact married to Rose Cotton, or that the two relationships are of a different nature. He does not contest or modify the comparison at all; instead he tells Elanor that his sadness has lessened and confides that he hopes to see Frodo again, thereby implicitly validating his daughter's insights. So, no matter how much Tolkien denied it, he still framed Frodo and Sam's bond in terms of marriage and animal mating.
