Do you enjoy The Lord of the Rings?

I really like the LotR, pretty much every aspect of it.

One of the things that I particularly like though is that he doesn't stop with the victory against the ring. It would have been so easy to do that, but I've always been impressed with the way that he carries the story back into the shire, and ties it up with foreshadowings from the very early parts of the story.

Most stories build to a crescendo and then finish. This is a story that contains an ebb after the triumph, and is all the better for it.

Cheers

Can't give you XP, but I definitely think that the scouring of the shire and Grima's escape to the west is excellent, and it really does set it apart from those happy-ending-right-after-climax stories.

The Scouring is the most important chapter in the book, because I see LotR as the story of the growth in character of the four Hobbits, just like The Hobbit was about Bilbo growing. All the other stuff is just detail. The best part of LotR is when the four arrive back to the Shire and realize just how much they've changed, contrasted against the way they fled the place at the beginning.

I've always linked my like and dislike for the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to my like and dislike of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I really enjoy both the Hobbit and Tom Sawyer...but find the other two bland and somewhat wanting.

To me, regardless of the reality of the situation, both The Lord of the Rings and Huck Finn come across as chum to the public. While I'm sure both originated organically, when I read them there is a feeling of needless expansion of an already overworked idea. While the other books produce the ideas in such splendid clarity and brevity it seems a shame to have them spread over a new needless narrative. I distinctly remember thinking after reading Huck Finn that it seemed like a poor squeal to a great movie by a favorite director.

Though I don't directly remember what I was thinking after reading the Lord of the Rings I have always equated the same type of thought to it. While I would never directly ascribe to the authors popular-ism as a motive that is the taste I get after the read.

shrug

I've never directly researched the timeline or bio so I have no idea whether my feelings are founded in any literal way.

That's an interesting way to look at it [MENTION=24413]Wild Gazebo[/MENTION]. I find that I actually prefer Huck Finn and The Lord of the Rings. I feel like the juvenile approaches to Tom Sawyer and The Hobbit don't have the same level of appeal as the more sophisticated and erudite approaches of Huck Finn and LotR.

I'm going to have to mull that over some more now, but you've given me a new context to think about. Just a brief thought, I feel that the main characters of the sequels are more interesting and nuanced and less one-note and archetypal.

Mercutio01 said:

That's an interesting way to look at it [MENTION=24413]Wild Gazebo[/MENTION]. I find that I actually prefer Huck Finn and The Lord of the Rings. I feel like the juvenile approaches to Tom Sawyer and The Hobbit don't have the same level of appeal as the more sophisticated and erudite approaches of Huck Finn and LotR.

I'm going to have to mull that over some more now, but you've given me a new context to think about. Just a brief thought, I feel that the main characters of the sequels are more interesting and nuanced and less one-note and archetypal.

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I guess I see how juvenile might be applied to The Hobbit...but that would be a far stretch for Tom Sawyer. There could be a very reasonable debate illustrating the superior rhetorical nuances of Tom Sawyer over Huck Finn. I mean, Huck Finn (the character) really started out as a foil that was later expanded upon in Huck Finn (the novel). It really takes the same themes and characters and just stretches them out a little. I feel like more of a voyeur in Tom Sawyer and more of a tourist in Huck Finn...does that make sense? And I think that parallels my experience with LOTR as well.

Wild Gazebo said:

I guess I see how juvenile might be applied to The Hobbit...but that would be a far stretch for Tom Sawyer. There could be a very reasonable debate illustrating the superior rhetorical nuances of Tom Sawyer over Huck Finn. I mean, Huck Finn (the character) really started out as a foil that was later expanded upon in Huck Finn (the novel). It really takes the same themes and characters and just stretches them out a little. I feel like more of a voyeur in Tom Sawyer and more of a tourist in Huck Finn...does that make sense? And I think that parallels my experience with LOTR as well.

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I think there could be such a debate, but I'll just note that of the two, Huck Finn is by far preferred by educators and many of the literature professor-types that I know. The story of Huck Finn and his growing enlightenment about the workings of the adult world seem to me to tell a better story than the story of Tom Sawyer who comes off more like Peter Pan than Michael (to use a different story as a point of comparison). One character grows and enters the adult world. One is just a hyper-competent, very precocious child who remains a child.

I'm not saying there isn't a case to be made the other way around, but I do find that I prefer both sequels to both originals, and I think that is decidedly because they approach the themes of growth and the burdens of the adult world and the necessary changes that must happen in order to make the transition.

Mercutio01 said:

I think there could be such a debate, but I'll just note that of the two, Huck Finn is by far preferred by educators and many of the literature professor-types that I know. The story of Huck Finn and his growing enlightenment about the workings of the adult world seem to me to tell a better story than the story of Tom Sawyer who comes off more like Peter Pan than Michael (to use a different story as a point of comparison). One character grows and enters the adult world. One is just a hyper-competent, very precocious child who remains a child.

I'm not saying there isn't a case to be made the other way around, but I do find that I prefer both sequels to both originals, and I think that is decidedly because they approach the themes of growth and the burdens of the adult world and the necessary changes that must happen in order to make the transition.

Click to expand...

I would add that there are an important themes of moral growth in Huck Finn, and Lord of the Rings. And, to be fair, The Hobbit approaches these themes, as well.