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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 3483316" data-attributes="member: 18280">Depends upon how you limit the definition of "plot".  IMHO, Tolkein wasn't attempting a straightforward plot in the way that he had with The Hobbit.  LotR is an "interweave" where there are several stories ongoing, all at the same time, and all impacting the main plot.  The more you skip, the less the ramifications of the main plot make sense, and the shallower the work as a whole becomes.As an example, there's a bit of discussion in the bar at the beginning of LotR, where Sam says that his cousin saw a tree walking.  This relates to the story of the Ents in Fangorn Forest, where they are searching for the Entwives, who would like country like the Shire.  But Sam isn't there; only Merry and Pippen, so the Ents never learn what Sam could tell them.  A sort of mini-tradgedy story within LotR.One merely has to read The Hobbit to see how Tolkein's views of Middle Earth changed between that work and LotR.  In the original version of The Hobbit, Gollum gave Bilbo the Ring.  That the Necromancer was Sauron was a retcon....a brilliant one, but a retcon nonetheless.  Or one could read The Father Christmas Letters for an idea of what Tolkein's early languages were like.  It might be true that he had created scattered hints of what would later become The Silmarilion, but it is far more likely that he used his disparate projects to create a single cohesive background only when he began actual work on LotR.</blockquote>

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