Having dealt with Tolkien’s Lesser Tales over the last month, there was really only one piece of Tolkien’s fiction that we could possibly turn to as a postscript to this series – what may very well be the Least Tale of Tolkien, as it were. Mention ‘Goblin Feet’ to a Tolkien lover, and you’ll get one of two reactions. The first (and much more common) is likely bafflement, a “huh?” and subsequent inquiry as to whether this is some sort of evidence about the origin of Orcs? The rarer, and desired, reaction, is a wry chuckle and a raise of…
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Last year, for the month of September, I did a little blog miniseries, focusing on The Hobbit and some of its less-appreciated themes and aspects. And, since I really enjoyed writing those posts, and having a theme to work towards…I decided to do it again this year! So, over the next few weeks, we’re going to be looking at three stories by Tolkien…stories which, actually, aren’t under-appreciated in the same way that The Hobbit is. But they’re also stories that a lot of Tolkien fans might not pay much attention to, or even know about…and that’s a great shame, because…
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I was flicking through the Appendices of LOTR the other day, on an unrelated mission, when something really curious caught my eye in the Dwarvish genealogy tree. It’s a really small detail, almost insignificant – but the more I thought about it, the more it intrigued me, and the more intrigued I became, the more I realised that it’s actually a whole lot of details all packaged up in a single detail. Namely, Durin VII. When was he born? When did he reign? And, perhaps most pressingly, how did he obtain that epithet? From the perspective of Tolkien as author,…
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I seem to be making a habit of discussing Ring-lore on this blog, which is wholly unintentional – but I came across a brief passage that intrigued me, that I’ve never properly noticed before, and that is entirely relevant to yet another misconception (exaggerated by the films) concerning the Ring. It’s a relatively typical line of fan inquiry to ask why Sauron never ‘spotted’ Gollum or Bilbo while they wore the Ring, or why Frodo himself is only truly seen right at the end of his quest, when he claims the Ring for himself at the Crack of Doom. A…
Leave a CommentThere are few more infamous passages in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy than when Faramir, Captain of Gondor, elects to take Frodo, Sam and Gollum into his custody, and to bring them and the Ring to Minas Tirith. For movie fans, it is a slightly baffling diversion – Faramir’s change of heart and release of the hobbits comes swiftly, and the episode results in few consequences to him or to Frodo and Sam. To lovers of the book, though, it is an outrageous change, a sign of everything wrong with the films, a complete bastardisation of one of…
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