Eowyn stands as perhaps my favorite female character in all of fiction. A few there are which stand near her- Harriet Vane, for instance- and a few I will acknowledge as being, to my experience, as well written- Orual (Till
Santa Claus and Bacchus fit comfortably in the Narnian metaphysic. In reading The Chronicles of Narnia, you have perhaps gotten the occasional fits of the Tolkiens: uncontrollable disjointure from the narrative upon encountering Santa Claus or Bacchus. Indeed, to the reader
The modern day is cold and swift and made of mechanism, number turning number…. To Eomer, nephew of Theoden, Aragorn declared a reminder apt to us in the modern day (as Tolkien is wont to be): “The green earth, say
Allegory versus application The question of who Tom Bombadil is has puzzled Tolkien’s readers ever since he came out. Maiar? Valar? Man? Elf? Something else? He seems to possess certain traits which imply or exclude each of these, and the
This work requires knowledge of Tolkien’s Turin Turambar. Find commentary here. “Evil have been all your ways, son of Hurin. Thankless fosterling, outlaw, slayer of your friend, thief of love, usurper of Nargothrond, captain foolhardy, and deserter of your kin.
The steady pattern of a story’s plot is to go downhill at three speeds: fast, faster, and even faster. Then, the climax hits and (if it’s a comedy) the thing suddenly shoots upwards, fast enough to make you dizzy. In
The Lord of the Rings is famous for taking ‘too long’ to end. The Ring is destroyed in chapter 3 of Book 6 of the story, followed by the final battle with Sauron in chapter 4. The next five chapters
The Lord of the Rings movies have three major pitched battles: Helms Deep, Pelennor Fields, and the Fields of Cormallen. Unfortunately, for all that Helms Deep is a (flawed) masterpiece, its successors are, in my opinion at least, not nearly
The Lord of the Rings is hands-down the greatest work of fiction ever penned by mortal man. I could talk for ages. Ask my family if you doubt me. The Lord of the Rings is the story that made me
Bilbo called himself, “thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread,” and our stories can be the same. A story can be stuffed with plot, bursting with characters, burdened down to the water by themes, and still