[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>Joshua wrote:
> >Does Brin have an on-record opinion on the Hobbit or LOTR?
>
>Snork!! Wheeze! ROFLMAO. Oh, Josh, you couldn't be further from the
>truth. I hope Julia can dig up his rant for you, because I remember asking
>him if he'd read the same Tolkein I did after he posted it. He did one of
>his Star Wars type rants against _LoTR_ and Middle Earth in general. IIRC
>he was trying to get a reaction, though.
Yeah, well, I didn't really stop to ponder. :) Was there some mention of
Gandalf abdicating responsibility for the One Ring and leaving it in the
hands of a downtrodden Hobbit? Maybe I do remember the rant...
While there is definitely an elite/mundane paradigm in place, there's the
distinction that from Star Wars that it's explicitly a medieval fantasy
world, where having a hereditary king is just what you do because other
notions like education and democracy haven't been invented yet and at least
the king has a good chance of having been trained for the job and learned
responsibility for his people. The characters that make the most difference
in the tale - even against immensely powerful evil - are the mundane little
guys. Meanwhile, the elites are fighting a battle that is mostly symbolic,
and not nearly as globally important.
Also unlike Star Wars E1, where the elites decide they want to say out of
things or go and hide, in LOTR the elites throw themselves into the fray
because no-one else can; Gandalf sacrifices himself for the Fellowship. The
impact of the war on the populace (as represented by the Hobbits) is at
least somewhat explored; the company returns to a Shire decimated by the
results of economic depression and lawlessness.
I'll eagerly await Julia's digging.
Joshua
PS: Favorite quote from the books: "Has it been a bad year, or what?" -
Meriadoc Brandybuck, upon returning to the Shire after the War of the Ring.
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