Re-reading The Lord of the Rings: chapter by chapter

[BAYLOR]

It surprises me that you have read Silmarillion more times than any of his other books. This is the one which (imho) is the most difficult and least interesting of his books/ Perhaps that is because , after reading The Hobbit and LOTR, I came to it last and - expecting another interesting story - ended up with a different type of book altogether.

I agree that most of hearken back to the 'good old days' (even if they weren't always that good!) and The Shire epitomises those carefree days of Summer in the countryside.

Ive read the Silmarillion and true, parts of it were not an easy to read but overall , it has majesty and power all its own . As ive said before, I wish J R R Tolkien has made this into a saga such as LOTR . With the amount of material here , he would gotten 3 books. I think that in that form, it would it would been the equal of LOTR.

 

[HareBrain]

Ive read the Silmarillion and true, parts of it were not an easy to read but overall , it has majesty and power all its own . As ive said before, I wish J R R Tolkien has made this into a saga such as LOTR . With the amount of material here , he would gotten 3 books. I think that in that form, it would it would been the equal of LOTR.

I don't think he could have expanded it without giving it a more natural (for the 20thC) style, and that would lose some of the "majesty and power" you rightly say it has. This was done with the release of "The Children of Hurin", which I thought inferior to the Silmarillion sections dealing with the same characters.

 

[Justin Swanton]

I'm especially fond of the Silmarillion because of the vast scope of its storytelling and the innumerable characters and their tales in it. Its style is deliberately laconic in the manner of the Anglo-Saxon chronicles but I don't have a problem with that - the Bible can be similarly laconic and still be very readable. The Silmarillion after all isn't a novel - it's a collection of Elvish MSS that record the history of Middle Earth from their own POV. The laconism means it can reach truly poetic heights - IMHO the Ainulindale is more a poem than anything else. Furthermore its deliberately dark-age chronicle style gives it an authenticity that makes it worldbuilding more believable and hence more absorbing: Earendil the Mariner, Luthien Tinuviel and Beren, Finwe and the Silmarils, Fingolfin and his last battle against Morgoth, and the Valar themselves, are all etched in my imagination.

Over all the tales hangs something that is only hinted at in LOTR: the ultimate futility of all that elves, dwarves and men build up in Middle Earth. Everything turns sour and crumbles. The elves aren't really in their place - they were made for Valinor. Men are made for somewhere else that isn't revealed to elves. Dwarves are something of a mistake but their final destiny isn't Middle Earth either as everything they build there is ultimately abandoned. A perspective I can relate to, having grown up in a society (Rhodesia) that is now just a memory.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Ive read the Silmarillion and true, parts of it were not an easy to read but overall , it has majesty and power all its own . As ive said before, I wish J R R Tolkien has made this into a saga such as LOTR . With the amount of material here , he would gotten 3 books. I think that in that form, it would it would been the equal of LOTR.

Yes, may have been his 'magnum opus' if it had been completed. But I suspect it was on a scale that meant it never could have been completed in one man's lifetime. As it is ,and when I first encountered it, it felt unfinished, a box full of jigsaw pieces waiting to be put together. But I think that once you get over the shock of it not being another LOTR or Hobbit, you appreciate it more for what it is; a glimpse into the mind of it's creator, the 'workings out' in the margin. This presumably what the body parts of his other works looked like before they were lovingly crafted together into one coherent unit.

 

[BAYLOR]

Yes, may have been his 'magnum opus' if it had been completed. But I suspect it was on a scale that meant it never could have been completed in one man's lifetime. As it is ,and when I first encountered it, it felt unfinished, a box full of jigsaw pieces waiting to be put together. But I think that once you get over the shock of it not being another LOTR or Hobbit, you appreciate it more for what it is; a glimpse into the mind of it's creator, the 'workings out' in the margin. This presumably what the body parts of his other works looked like before they were lovingly crafted together into one coherent unit.

Im somewhat surprised that Christopher Tolkien didn't; take up the mantle and complete the Silmarillion as an epic.