When Sam says, “Let me rub your weary shoulders, master. How’s that? Now, kiss me Frodo. Kiss me long and deep like I’ve never been kissed. Let your tongue explore the regions of my mouth that have seen only ham and gravy. Then hug me. . .hug me from behind with your shirt off, then let me run my stubby fingers through your bushy foot hair.”
My favorite Tolkein quote is the super-duper-long paragraph at the end of the Silmarillion, saying how it was rumoured that some sailors could still set off West and see the world fall below them and see somethingsomething, lovely and beautiful, before they died. I’m not normally one for Proustian-length passages but that one is really poetic and inspiring.
And, on the lighter side: “Here’s a pretty hafling skin/To wrap an elvan princeling in!” - or something like that.
I know that line doesn’t work cinematically, but I was still kinda disappointed it didn’t make it into the SE DVDs.
I also like the passage where Sam is originally tempted by, and then rejects, the ring. I’ll have to look it up when I get home.
Good gad.
I may never read Tolkien again. I may hide all his books I own…I may spend my entire income buying his books and locking them securely in boxes to be buried in some deep, dark vault.
Ooohh…good call. It’s the tiny print at the end of Akallabeth; if nobody beats me to it, I’ll post it as soon as I get home and my hands on the book.
Trunk: that kind of comment is called “thread shitting” and is pretty much a prime example of jerk-hood. This is an Official Warning and you will not do it again.
Yeah, I knew there was some terminology I needed to specify it, as it was after the Quenta Silmarillion, but before the recap of the Lord of the Rings era. (I actually have referred to it as “the end of Akallabêth” before.)
I do wonder, however, if the entire paragraph would be too long for this board’s copyright provisions, as it’s pretty long!
(Side note: Upon reading LOTR, I sort of didn’t want to know more about The West (Numenor OR Valinor,) as in fantasy, the unexplained sometimes holds more mystical charm than when you know every petty detail about something. Tolkein might be one of the few whose mythos actually became more intriguing upon being fleshed out more!
Here’s the last paragraph…I throw myself upon the mercy of the mods:
Later in the same battle:
“Last of all Hurin stood alone. Then he cast aside his shield, and wielded an axe two-handed; and it is sung that the axe smoked in the black blood of the troll-guard of Gothmog until it withered, and each time that he slew Hurin cried ‘Aurë entuluva! Day shall come again!’ Seventy times he uttered that cry; but they took him at last alive…”
Irresistible mental picture of this one guy’s last stand on a battlefield whence all but he have fled or been slain, heaps of bodies all about him… :eek:
I know the mods don’t need to explain themselves, but toss me one little bone here: how was THAT was thread-shitting, but posting from “Bored of the Rings” isn’t?
I could see if I wrote, “why are you losers talking about quotes from a fantasy novel? Why don’t you grow up and get a life?”
But come on.
IANAM (I am not a mod), but I am one of the people who posted from Bored of the Rings. I certainly didn’t intend to “thread-shit.” Most of the fans of Bored of the Rings are also Tolkien fans. That’s how parody works. Some of it was silly, and some of it was actually well-written. I posted the poem from BotR because I think of it every time I see or hear Tolkien’s Tom Bombadil poems.
If it made me laugh, then it just might make other Tolkien fans laugh. That’s why I posted it. I wasn’t just dumping random sexual content into the thread like you did. Yours came across as a “shock and annoy” post, not anything a Tolkien fan would write.
The sheer poetry of the text amazes me every time, and belies the fact it’s ONE FRIGGIN LONG PARAGRAPH.
I might look for my audio version of this and listen to it again. I bought the audio Silmarillion mainly to listen to the Ainulindale and this ending. The Ainulindale was quite good, and they even, like the LOTR films, started with “The Music”, symbolizing its existence before speech. But the Akallabeth ended with music over the text, ruining that paragraph somewhat :mad:.
An aside:
Very simple: bBecause no one reported any such earlier posts. Contrary to common belief, I do not have time (or inclination) to read through every post in every thread.* I, like other mods, tend to investigate when someone reports a post. (I don’t always agree with the reported assessment, but I do investigate.)
You may deplore this as unfair. No more unfair than when a cop catches you for speeding, but someone else going faster didn’t get caught. Them’s the breaks.
PS - Complaints or questions about Mod actions are best put in the Pit or ATMB forum, or in private email, to avoid hijacking.
- [sub]Especially long threads covering many pages, that don’t interest me. But that’s beside the point.[/sub]
That passage was also evoked in the lyrics to the Howard Shore/Annie Lenox Oscar-winning concluding song from ROTK, “Into the West”: http://www.lyricsdomain.com/1/annie_lennox/into_the_west.html
I love Pippin’s description of Treebeard destroying Orthanc: “He began to pull down a bit more of the walls, in a leisurely sort of way, just to amuse himself.” For some reason this line just sticks in my head - it’s so funny and so scary at the same time.
I can’t quite manage the Ents. Orcs, Elves, Black Riders, Dwarves, no problem, but Tom Bombadil I can’t handle at all, and have a difficult time seeing the Ents as “real”.
Ents are purely Magical (or at least magical spirits) creatures that at the bequest of the Valar Yavanna were brought forth to act as Tree shepherd, if you would. They original Ents were in the spirit of the Music of the Ainur.
They grew out of Tolkien’s love and respect for the age and majesty of trees*. They are at least as likely (or just as unlikely) as the Black Riders. After all, Nazguls are the powerful undead spirits of men that fell under Sauron’s sway via “Magic Rings”. No more likely than a magic sword making someone a king. 
Tom Bombadil was not part of the story in conception and did not fit well into Middle Earth. He was a character from some stories he made for his kids and when he needed a rescuer in the Old Forest, Tom Bombadil ended up as a built in enigma into the story. Tolkien had no explanation for him except that Tom belongs to the category of things unknown. Now I like Tom and I always liked that part of the story. I recognize that many find him jarring and out of sync to the rest of the story. Part of this is that the early chapters were still written in more of the fairy tale style of the Hobbit. It starts as a delightful story and an adventure. It does not really turn epic and serious until Bree and the meeting of Strider.
Jim
- Old Man Willow, came from the old fear of a large gnarly old Willow that was outside his window as a child and was quite scary looking in a windy storm.
It took a lots of searches to find the ones I remember.
I serve no man, but the servants of Sauron I pursue into whatever land they may go. There are few among mortal Men who know more of Orcs; and I do not hunt them in this fashion out of choice. The Orcs whom we pursued took captive two of my friends. In such need a man that has no horse will go on foot, and he will not ask for leave to follow the trail. Nor will he count the heads of the enemy save with a sword. I am not weaponless.
–Aragorn
War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.
– Faramir
I always liked Bilbo’s line at his party:
<i>I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.</i>
Must post another great one, which miraculously no one else has:
from Two Towers: “It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad he could not see the dead face. He wondered what he man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil at heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really have stayed there in peace…”