All that and nothing about Balrog Wings?
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. That is the exact point I was trying to make–he recognized the weapon for what it truly was and sent it on to its destruction.
Hey guys - we’re looking for new (or newish) discussion questions here, thank you very much.
sorry 
$12.99 for two dozen super hot at Flaming Moe’s. Some questions have definitive answers.
That one, at least, is fairly straightforward. All, or at least the vast majority, of male dwarves have beards, and the females are often mistaken for the males. QED.
This might be of interest - Lego LOTR: Lego Lord of the Rings figures coming this summer - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
So do Lego balrogs have wings ?
Also a bigger sense of duty to doing his own appointed job, I think.
Naah, it would have been fine.
A wizard did it.
But seriously, I think he probably was going to enlist Fangorn in the War.
I’ve just read the volumes of HoMES that deal with the Lord of the Rings, and interestingly enough, Tolkien didn’t even conceive of Arwen until the battle at Minas Tirith; practically the entire story had been written before he came up with that subplot. She was tacked on nearly at the end. Heck, for brief time he’d considered the idea of Aragorn marrying Eowyn. From a purely practical standpoint, adding more of the romance into the storytelling would have meant rewriting large swaths of the otherwise already finished books, instead of the insertion of the more subtle references that are there.
Next questions - Why was Aragorn’s identity/heritage kept secret for much of his life? I’m a little confused on this point.
People often wish they knew more about the other wizards, Elrond’s sons, or other characters. Would those have been interesting stories without the hobbits’ POV? For me this is where Tolkien’s writing fails for me in The Silmarillion. I just find it boring without the authors’ unique creation, the hobbits.
that’s it for now. others?
Sauron was actively looking for descendents of Elendil to eliminate them. This was the reason for him to hide his identity.
I would have loved more detail on many of the other characters or even about Aragorn’s time in service in Gondor & Rohan as Thorongil. (sp).
Parts of the Silmarillion were really exciting but most was like reading history but I like reading history and mythology and so it worked for me. Fingolfin’s fight against Morgoth was stirring and Beren & Tuor made for good reading.
I wish for more on the 4th age though with Aragorn consolidating power and hopefully more Hobbits.
Consolidated hobbits are something you want? :eek:
Halflings gotta be freeeee…
I do not agree. Although it is never made fully explicit, I think one of the underlying themes of the book is that the more humble, ordinary and down-to-earth a person is, the better they are able to resist the power of the ring (the allure of evil and power). We are told that “the great” are particularly susceptible to it. Aragorn and Gandalf, and, presumably, Elrond, know this, and refuse to even touch the thing, and I am pretty sure it why they want a hobbit to be the ringbearer.
Galadriel is severely tempted by just the sight and offer of the ring. It takes longer to corrupt Boromir, despite him being close to it for some time, but although he is a great and aristocratic warrior, he is a mere mortal, and not royal. Thus, like his smarter but less vain brother Faramir, he is only moderately susceptible. By contrast, Bilbo, who (as we know mainly from The Hobbit) is very much an ordinary, middle-class sort of guy, is scarcely corrupted at all by the ring, despite having owned it for decades, and having actually worn it quite often, once (in the palace of the wood elves) for a long, extended period (about two months, IIRC). Despite all that, Gandalf does not have a huge amount of difficulty in persuading him to give it up.
Frodo, by contrast, does not own the ring for nearly as long, and never wears it very much: I think only for a second or two in the Prancing Pony, maybe a few minutes on Weathertop, and for a bit longer (a couple of hours, maybe?) on Amon Hen. Nevertheless, he is quite strongly affected by it by the time they reach Mordor, snatching it back angrily and very ungraciously from Sam, and, of course, ultimately refusing to throw it into the Cracks of Doom. However, by this point of the story, Frodo has already largely been transmuted from being the sort of humble hobbit that Bilbo remained throughout his adventures, into a heroic figure, incipiently one of “the great”. On Amon Hen, indeed, Frodo (whilst foolishly wearing the ring) takes a deliberate decision to play the hero, taking the whole responsibility (and, of course, chance for glory) on himself. If Sam had not scotched that hubristic plan, Sauron would have won.
Also, IIRC, Frodo’s hobbit lineage is rather more aristocratic than his uncle Bilbo’s, with both Brandybuck and Took (i.e., Fallohide) blood, whereas, I think, Bilbo only has a bit of Took. Merry and Pippin are more aristocratic still, of course, but they never get to touch the ring, or even, I think, see it much, if at all, so they are never directly exposed to its power.)
Sam, however, is the most humble, down-to-earth character in the whole story. Not only is he a mere hobbit, he is peasant-class hobbit with no pretensions to “greatness” at all, even within the deeply provincial Shire. He is really only along on the journey out of loyalty to his “master,” not for any desire to be a hero, or for the love of adventure. Thus Sam, of all the major characters in the story, is the least susceptible to the ring. (It is true that Gollum was also originally a hobbit of humble stock, but the ring had literally centuries to work its evil on him, and he is scarcely even a hobbit any more by the time we meet him.) Even after having worn the ring for a significant amount of time (as he trailed the orcs with Frodo’s body), and at the threshold of Mordor, where it is at its most powerful, Sam has little difficulty in returning it to Frodo.
I like to think that if Frodo had had the strength and wisdom to accept Sam’s offer (and despite the fact that the very fact of the offer shows the temptation is starting to work even on Sam), then Sam, unlike his master, would have been able to complete the mission and throw the ring into Orodruin, not to be the hero, but just to fulfill his duty and keep his promise.
As it is, of course, the final destruction of the ring comes about thanks to that other unheroic hobbit of humble stock, Smeagol.