Questions about Lord of the Rings...

  • Thread starter FoundationOfRancor
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FoundationOfRancor

Guest
1) Why does the ring turn Hobbit's invisible, but not Sauron?
2) If the Ring gives one so much power, why didnt Golllum rise to any noticable status with the ring in his possesion for so long?
 
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Elrond

Guest
I'm not completely sure about these answers, but here's my take.

1) Sauron doesn't become invisible because he doesn't want to, and seeing that he created the ring he's capable of controlling it to that extent.

2) Gollum didn't rise to power because he didn't really know what he had, and wasn't powerful enough to use it even if he had realized what it was.
 
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Gizmo

Guest
When you`re a nigh-invincible 10-foot tall Sorceror King, and youve just spent ages getting some wicked-cool new armour made...

...why the hell would you want to go invincible?
 
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Bob

Guest
It answers them in the book. The ring gives power according to the current power of the weilder. Thats why Gandalf and Galadriel wont wield it. It wont just turn them invisible. It will make them like evil demigods.
 
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theorgg

Guest
But Bilbo, already pretty much invisible to non-hobbits, simply became more invisible?

Interesting...

Even though Tolkien was a racist bastard, I've got to read the books...
 
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Mr_Pestilence

Guest
Now, now, don't judge people in the past by current standards. Look at Mark Twain - he used the "n" word all the time. It was simply the standard usage at the time, and doesn't mean he was a racist.

As for LotR, I hated the books, loved the movie.
 
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theorgg

Guest
Mark Twain didn't make the entire "Evil" people and "Good" people represent different races.

Notice how the Elves are "Aryan"? Notice how the Orcs are "perverted elves?" They represent People of African lineage. My highschool that I would have gone to before Georgia used that book as the Senior Class's study focus...
and they exhaulted the racist points of the book...

It saddens me, truly. I am SO glad I'm not living there, still...


Twain called a board a board, and shovel a shovel. People of African lineage were simply called "negros" back then, and variations therof.

Tolkien made races that mirrored real-world ones, and then made them so badly steriotyped that people exhaulted him for it in that time period...

:[ (
 
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arhar

Guest
I'm sorry, Orgg, but that's BULL. Just because your high school teacher said there are racist undertones in LOTR, doesn't mean it's so! A work can be interpreted in infinite amount of ways. Some people think that the original Star Trek was all about the US(Federation) vs USSR(Klingons)

And there are no "Grey" characters, because it's a fantasy epic, and it's not supposed to represent real life, where there is no pure good and evil.
 
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theorgg

Guest
Not my highschool-- the highschool I would have gone to if I had not have moved from Missississippi.

It shocked me, as well.

I've been a bit... put off by the trilogy after that, but I am planning on reading it as soon as I get all the books, now.

Imagine what reading a senior's discarded English worksheet based upon that whole thought did to a fourteen-year-old budding Fantasy fan?

I had read The Hobbit when I was twelve, and was a member of the Sci-Fi book club about that time as well...

I might have been put off of Fantasy all together if it wasn't for Terry Pratchett's humour and obvious good natured commentary on current issues.

That high school "lesson" migh have put me down quite a wrong track...

Thankfully, it didn't.
 
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Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Still, like arhar says, just because a (so far) single high school says it doesn't make it so. I'd want to see their research and why they came up with the conclusions they did before taking their word for it.
 
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Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
A lot of fantasy worlds use darker versions of the races to distinguish between good and evil. Like that thread says, I think it's because you have "good vs evil" or "light vs dark" so either the author subconciously transfers that over to his races or subconciously copying others.

Other examples are the Dark Elves and High Elves in Warhammer (and Dwarfs and Chaos Dwarves, the latter who are more "sooty" or colored more black and red), and the Iron Tower series (which is pretty much a takeoff of LOTR) where the southern races who align with Modru, the evil one, are swarthy and dark-skinned (of course, they also live in the south and in a desert climate).
 
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Mr_Pestilence

Guest
...or Star Wars, in which Darth Vader wore black, and Luke Skywalker wore white.

...um, of course, Luke did later wear all black, and the Stormtroopers wore white...

...uh, never mind.
 
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