Yeah! I think it’s great that the theme was so unique and original!
That everything changes and you can’t go home again, but it’s okay.
Anyone can change the world.
The same message I take from Rosa Parks’ life.
Jim
You can have on hell of a weird dream when smoking the pipe-weed.
God is good and Satan is bad.
My husband says, “Loss and sacrifice.”
Things fall apart.
Don’t have dwarves over to party.
What!?
Shit happens. You have to do the best you can. Maybe it will all turn out OK.
You know, it sounds better in Sindarin…
I say!
Not only do this fine people hang up their coats and hoods, they provide the musical entertainment and wash up afterwards.
You couldn’t get a better class of guest…
Except that when they sleep over, they use every pot and pan in the house to make breakfast, leaving their host so much clearing up to do that he has no time to dust the mantlepiece.
You can’t go home again.
Especially after you’ve had gay hobbit sex right outside the entrance of Khazad Dum.
You seem really hung up on this. Maybe you should see somebody about your fascination with this concept.
In the meantime, it comes off a bit offensive when you keep doing this in Tolkein related threads. Perhaps you could please refrain.
Jim
Always … no, no, no … never … forget to check your references.
If you can’t keep track of your toys they’ll just get thrown out.
Okay, what’t THE theme of The Hobbit?
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Don’t party with dwarves.
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Your genes may make you entitled to wealth and glory, but you won’t get there on genes alone–don’t forget the little people who helped you along the path.
Gardeners and working folk can make a difference, but only by being slavishly devoted to gentlemen and kings, who after all know what’s best for them.
Or how about malevolent despotism = bad, benevolent despotism = good.
OK, here’s a serious answer:
One of the major themes seems to me to be clearly the struggle between hope and despair. Sauron embodies evil, of course, but he’s just a blank placeholder; there’s no real character there. The real tragic figure - the one that truly fails the moral test – is Denethenor, who gave in to despair. As opposed to Theoden, who is redeemed and becomes a hero because he shakes off the despair that keeps him from action. Frodo and Sam’s journey is of course one long struggle to keep going against all odds and against the thought that what they’re doing is hopeless, but nearly all the characters face the choice between keeping hope or losing it – Eowyn only recovers when she regains hope; Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli continue chasing the Orcs that kidnapped Merry and Pippin, although the Orcs have a large lead (and vastly outnumber them); even Gollum wrestles with himself over whether to have hope for a valid life without the precious. Gandalf doesn’t fulfill his mission by overcoming Sauron with force; he does it by encouraging the people of Middle Earth, and counseling them away from hopelessness. I don’t have a concordance for the trilogy (paging QtM?), but I’m pretty sure ‘despair’ is way up there, indicating a pretty major theme.
I agree with Quercus (his serious and his snarky answers…)
and here are some quotes that are very relevant, none of which are exact because I don’t have my books handy:
-when Gandalf tells Frodo we can’t choose the time we live in, but we can choose what to do with the time we have.
-Aragorn tells Eomer that we discern bad and good in these days as we always did - that they don’t change.
-Gandalf says (somewhere in ROTK) that is our duty to try to do the best we can for the world that comes after us, despite the fact that dangers and evil will never go away.
-and as Frodo says, some people must give things up so that others can have them.
I’m too wishy washy to choose one of the above as THE theme, but those are my contenders.
along with Bilbo’s warnings about going out your front door.
Inconsequential looking persons of no renown make the best infiltrators and suicide bombers.