How did you get involved with LOTR book? - Page 2

Imran Siddiqui · December 27, 2003, 20:49

And a better speller

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yavoon · December 27, 2003, 21:13

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Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

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they're nearly entirely superfluous to the telling of the story.

Of course they aren't! They show the power of the Fellowship, where an elf and dwarf, two members of antognistic races work together and become close friends. Its part of the main story that the evil of Sauron brings all sort of people together.

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u might wna jump off my **** there a lil boy.

Now if you spoke English, I may be able to understand this another note better

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I would have been happy if they were gone. they are like when u stick a black guy a female and a white guy in a picture to prove u aren't racist.

they weren't needed in the story.

yavoon · December 27, 2003, 21:14

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Originally posted by Q Cubed
i have a feeling imran's a bit older than you, yavoon.

and....?

yah thats what I thought, u huge dumbass.

yavoon · December 27, 2003, 21:16

Quote:

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
And a better speller

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weak and feeble minded individuals nitpick when the functionality is not compromised.

Verto · December 27, 2003, 21:20

What a naughty turn this thread has taken.

Pekka · December 27, 2003, 21:25

Yeah, please keep the argument on nice levels... I'd like to know more stories about how people got involved, and if it gets to flaming, then people don't easily contribute anymore.. keep on arguing though.

JohnT · December 27, 2003, 21:25

David Brin isn't a big fan either... http://www.davidbrin.com/tolkienarticle1.html

A few quotes:

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This fits the very plot of Lord of the Rings, in which the good guys strive to preserve and restore as much as they can of an older, graceful and 'natural' hierarchy, against the disturbing, quasi-industrial and vaguely technological ambience of Mordor, with its smokestack imagery and manufactured power-rings that can be used by anybody, not just an elite few. (Recall the scene where Saruman turns away from the 'good' side and immediately starts ripping up trees, replacing them with mining pits and smoky forges. The anti-industrial imagery could not be more explicit.)

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Let's not ignore, but instead openly acknowledge the underlying racialism and belief in an inherent aristocracy that J.R.R. Tolkien weaved into the books, without even much attempt at subtlety. Nor do I much blame him. He couldn't help it, coming from the imperialist and class-ridden culture that raised him. One that worried deeply about how "uppity" the masses were starting to become.

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Try as he might, and even confronted with the blatant romantic excesses of Nazism, Tolkien could not escape his own deep conviction that democratic enlightenment and modernity made up the greater evil. That hated trend, he feared, would ruin all the beauty that he found in tradition. In aristocratic-mystical hierarchies. In the ways of the past.

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Now ponder something that comes through even the party-line demonization of a crushed enemy. This clearcut and undeniable fact. Sauron's army was the one that included every species and race on Middle Earth, including all the despised colors of humanity, and all the lower classes.

Hm. Did they all leave their homes and march to war thinking "Oh, goody, let's go serve an evil dark lord"?

Or might they instead have thought they were the 'good guys', with a justifiable grievance worth fighting for, rebelling against an ancient, rigid, pyramid-shaped, feudal hierarchy topped by invader-alien elves and their Numenorean colonialist human lackeys?

Picture, for a moment, Sauron the Eternal Rebel, relentlessly maligned by the victors of the Ring War -- the royalists who control the bards and scribes (and movie-makers). Sauron, champion of the common Middle-Earther! Vanquished but still revered by the innumerable poor and oppressed who sit in their squalid huts, wary of the royal secret police with their magical spy-eyes, yet continuing to whisper stories, secretly dreaming and hoping that someday he will return... bringing more rings.

Imran Siddiqui · December 27, 2003, 21:25

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weak and feeble minded individuals nitpick when the functionality is not compromised.

Very good... did you run that through Word's spell check? That is the language we 'feeble minded' refer to as English.

yavoon · December 27, 2003, 21:27

Quote:

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Quote:

weak and feeble minded individuals nitpick when the functionality is not compromised.

Very good... did you run that through Word's spell check? That is the language we 'feeble minded' refer to as English.

yes cause when I misspell you as u its obviously cuz I have no concept of how to spell you.

I was unaware they made ppl as stupid as u.

Imran Siddiqui · December 27, 2003, 21:34

You, not 'u'.. You

And you did so well in that prior sentance. I guess we'll have to teach you more.

yavoon · December 27, 2003, 21:36

Quote:

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
You, not 'u'.. You

And you did so well in that prior sentance. I guess we'll have to teach you more.

sorry, if u lack the intellectual capacity to handle "u" and "w/" then maybe u shouldn't be allowed near sharp objects either.

Imran Siddiqui · December 27, 2003, 21:42

Someone who says 'u' instead of 'you' talking about 'intellectual capacity'

. Rich! Tell us another one, yavoon. Tell us another!

yavoon · December 27, 2003, 21:47

Quote:

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Someone who says 'u' instead of 'you' talking about 'intellectual capacity'

. Rich! Tell us another one, yavoon. Tell us another!

yes because intellect is inversely proportional to the use of shorthand.

ur just going to get pounded man. give it up. shorthand isn't going anywhere. so u might as well just live w/ it.

I feel kinda bad for u. stuck in a horrible position of having to oppose the use of shorthand just because of ur irrational and rabbid hatred for me?

Verto · December 27, 2003, 21:49

Stop threadjacking. This is one of the few threads in OT with potential!

Bosh · December 27, 2003, 21:49

My father read the Hobbit to me when I was six and then I went and read it myself in 3rd grade and the LoTRs in 4th. Lot of good stuff in all of them, but Tolkien is hardly a great story-teller and a lot of the points that Brin makes about Tolkien's romanticism and anti-enlightenment stance are spot-on...

Neutrino · December 27, 2003, 21:56

One of my friends in middle school was reading Tolkien's books, and he recommended them to me.

Imran Siddiqui · December 27, 2003, 22:07

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shorthand isn't going anywhere. so u might as well just live w/ it.

Yeah, it isn't going anywhere. Especially not on these forums where no one but you uses it

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JohnT · December 27, 2003, 22:08

Imran, yavoon:

Pekka · December 27, 2003, 22:28

Yeah, it's been portrayed as a book that you have to read, even if you don't read books, or especially fantasy books. A book you have to have in your shelve, like you have the bible and Dostojevskis.

JohnT · December 27, 2003, 22:29

<--- owns neither a Bible or a Dostojevski...

Pekka · December 27, 2003, 22:33

JohnT, you are a bad person.

JimmyCracksCorn · December 27, 2003, 22:47

Quote:

Originally posted by JohnT
I tried reading the Hobbit, found it to be most odd: juvenile and pretentious. Never bothered with the rest (even though they aren't as juvenile as the others, so I've heard).

I thought the Hobbit was by far the best (I was 13, I prob wouldn't like it if I picked it up today)... I couldn't even make it through the LOTR. I read part of the first one and just found it to be, like you said, very pretentious and very boring.

I really don't see what people like in that stuff.

JimmyCracksCorn · December 27, 2003, 22:55

I think what it comes down to, for me, is that JRR Tolkien is nothing more than a conceited, self-absorbed *******.

Anyone ever read "The Silmarillion" by him? Its nothing by grammar, maps, definitions and songs. God, just awful...

Pekka · December 27, 2003, 23:01

JimmyCracksCorn, true, but he was a linguist. Also, he did say that the whole work is of his interest to linguist things.. or that there was a strong leaning towards that direction.

Verto · December 27, 2003, 23:01

The Silmarillion was great. He did it because he wanted to. Nothing conceited about it.

Q Classic · December 27, 2003, 23:28

you don't have a dostoyevski, johnt? man.

then again, the only one i've read is crime and punishment... i liked it. no annoying singing high turds like tom bombadildo.

Imran Siddiqui · December 27, 2003, 23:33

Crime and Punishment:

I hate those, let's examine the human psyche books. 'The Scarlet Letter' was like that... horrid.

Q Classic · December 27, 2003, 23:44

the scarlet letter was horrid. at least crime and punishment had a whore and an axe murderer.

two things that even LOTR didn't have.

Imran Siddiqui · December 27, 2003, 23:45

Well I got to the whore and the axe murderer... then I got bored of it

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And if you were a Christian moralist, then I guess you could say the Scarlet Letter had a whore

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Q Classic · December 27, 2003, 23:48

nathaniel hawthorne is way overrated. and jeebus, anybody with half a brain was wondering why they didn't just burn hester prynne for having that dumbass name. dostoyevski isn't horrid, but i've yet to read his other work.