So, I finally bought the Simarillion

There’s a bit about the many names of Gandalf in LotR, starting with “Olorin I was called in my youth in the West…”. If you re-read the tellings of the creation story, you’ll see that name crop up.

And I personally think that the creation story (in both tellings) is one of the best parts of the book, but that doesn’t stop me from advising others to skip over it. It’s very dense and very deep, which means that, good though it is, it’s difficult to appreciate. My own reading of the Silmarillion was delayed by at least a decade, due to getting bogged down there the first time I tried to read it.

And painful as it may be to read the Children of Hurin, it’s still the best writing I’ve ever seen anywhere.

I found The Silmarillion fascinating when I got it as it came out (I think I was 17 at the time). But, then, I had read Bullfinch’s Mythology cover to cover.

Same here on Bullfinch’s Mythology. I like reading history and books on myths and legends so the Silmarillion worked well for me. But the latter half of the book has some rousing adventure that exceeds anything in Bullfinch’s.

Funny, I found the creation story the easiest part to get into.

So now I’ve finished the Silmarillion, and my major question is this: where do the hobbits come in?
The origin of the elves and the humans and the dwarves are described- heck, even the Ents got a passing mention- but the hobbits pretty much pop out of nowhere in the last section of the book. When were they created? Were they hiding under rocks the whole time or something?

Also, where is the whole “re-embodiment” of Gandalf explained? In LotR he pops out of nowhere and says, “Just kidding. I wasn’t dead after all.” In the Simarillion his resurection isn’t even mentioned. But I keep reading all these details on the Internet about how he died, and got re-embodied, and whatnot. If it’s not in the Ring Trilogy, and it’s not in the backstory, then where do people get this stuff?

The Hobbits and Woses are just off-shoots of humanity. They are not actually a separate creation like the Elves, Dwarves and Ents. Treebeard was not actually correct in much of his conjecture on the races. The Hobbits just did not come into tales of the first age, tales that nearly completely concern the Elves and specifically the Noldorians. The Silmarillion is suppose to be from the books of Elven Lore that Bilbo assembled in Rivendell and sent back to the Shire with Frodo. A little comes from notes added to the Red Book from the historians in Minas Tirith.

As to Gandalf, the bodies that the Maiar and Valar wore were not truly them but rather a form over their spirits. Gandalf was not resurrected, he was re-embodied and released to use far more of his native powers. Olórin walked mostly unseen in Valinor and kept largely to the Gardens of Irmo. The familiar shape of Gandalf the Grey was but the body he wore to work quietly in Middle-Earth against Sauron.

It may be in Unfinished Tales or in the History of Middle Earth Series (aka HOMES), volumes 1-12, or it may be in The Letters of JRRT. Or in History of the Hobbit (aka HOTH).

Or someone may just be making it up.

Hobbits are of the race of mortal men, it’s not clear whether they appeared specifically at the awakening of men, or developed over time when a bunch of shorter guys could only score with shorter women, so went off on their own.

No hobbits in Sil. No Gandalf re-incarnated either. Sorry.

Seriously, get your hands on Fonstad’s book. It’ll help. The Atlas of Middle-earth - Wikipedia

It depends, like Bilbo and Meriadoc and Christopher Tolkien I am very interested in Maps. Maybe because of this I never needed the Atlas of Middle Earth though it is well worth buying anyway as she did such a great job on it.

Back to Gandalf, the hints are in the LotR with the “Gandalf was sent back” line but Tolkien talks about it a bit more in Letter 156. The article on the Istari in Unfinished Tales gives a few more hints about the true nature of the 5 Wizards.

There’s a line in one of the early chapters which says that Valar and Maiar wear bodies the way mortals wear suits of clothes. I LotR, when Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli ask what happened, he mentions that “I walked unclad for a time”.

Those two sentences have produced a torrent of verbiage from the fans.

I very much enjoyed the book and really got into it.

There’s a line in LOTR where the Orcs of Cirith Ungol are talking about how rotten the Nazgul are. They “will skin the body off of you and leave you naked on the Other Side”. This is fascinating, as it is the one of the few canonical examples of Orcs having the same kind of life as do the Elves. When killed, they are still bound to Arda, and, perhaps, can be re-embodied as well.
(Although, truth to tell, I don’t really believe in the re-embodiment of the Elves - I think Tolkien accidentally reused the name Glorfindel, and, rather than rewrite, decided on the spur of the moment that Elves could also be “sent back”. As far as I know, Glorfindel is the only cited example (other than Beren and Luthien, who are exceptional in any case.))

Tolkien almost always envisioned the Elves as staying in Arda and leaving the Halls of Mandos eventually. What he agonized over was being re-embodied or reborn. He finally settled on re-embodied towards the end of his life. I think as late as 1967.

Huh. I don’t remember that at all.

That sounds so wrong.

But anyway.

As much as i loved both LOTR and Sil i think it takes something away from it that some of the main characters were alive for both. For example Earendils story ceases to be a wonderful myth when Elrond can point up at the sky and say “oh yeah thats my daddy up there”. It can’t be a myth if its real.

It is at the end of the Two Towers in The Choices of Master Samwise. We probably get more hints about orcs in this chapter than anywhere else.

The two orc captains also cryptically talk in a way that may well indicate a their great age. They seem to be recalling a time before Sauron rose again and maybe before the Nazgul took over Minas Ithil and made it Minas Morgul.

Think of it as a kind of fictional Old Testament for LotR’s New Testament: you don’t have to have read the former to understand the latter, but it sure helps put a lot of stuff in context.

Don’t forget that their daughter Luthien, fairest elf who ever lived, taking after her mother.

I’m hoping – really hoping – that after The Hobbit they make a movie of the greatest love story ever: Beren and Luthien.

Don’t count on it. JRRT’s estate is opposed to allowing any more of his works to be turned into movies.

The rights for LOTR and Hobbit were sold long ago, but his estate retains the rights to all his other works, and is not inclined to release them.

I wonder why? I have many problems with the movies and yet recognize they are the greatest epic fantasies ever made and by far. They caught the vision of Middle Earth exceptionally well. What more does Christopher and the rest want? They should be willing to sign a deal where key family members are more involved in the writing and direction. I would love to the Story of Beren and Lúthien made into a 2 hour film and I think it would be easy to do so from the source material.