It’s supper time at Henneth Annûn, and Faramir‘s men set out the evening meal. Soon the plates and the goblets are full (then empty, then full again) and Frodo and Faramir are chatting away about ancient history and current events, minus one or two topics that are best avoided at the dinner table. We observe the only real religious ceremony in The Lord of the Rings — and sidebar on why Tolkien left it that way — and Anborn’s poor eyesight (or judgment) raises serious questions about whether he should be allowed to carry a ranged weapon.
Recommended Reading:
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings (Mariner Books, paperback) “The Window on the West”, pp. 659-63
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit (Mariner Books, paperback)
Tolkien, J. R. R. (Christopher Tolkien, ed.) The Silmarillion (Mariner Books, paperback)
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (HarperCollins, paperback)
Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Mariner Books, paperback)
I think your being somewhat unfair to Anborn. None of the other scouts noticed Gollum. So the fact that he even saw anything (even if it was just a glimpse) may indicate that he is perceptive.
Also squirrels when threatened can make a sound that resembles both a dogs bark and a cats hiss at the same time. So you can call that barking, or hssing, or screeching.
I also think you are being unfair to Anborn (though I recognize it’s all in fun). In reality, all Anborn would know is that a) it is likely not an orc; and b) it is not native to Ithilien (otherwise he would have recognized it.) He would defer to Faramir’s greater knowledge of the wider world and could only think of a creature that he would have never had any direct contact with and probably only heard about in legend – the black squirrels of Mirkwood. None of the Gondorians would have been to Mirkwood to observe the creatures there and would have had no knowledge about how big they were, whether they had tails, or were even really squirrels at all. For example, many people would think Wolverines were some kind of wolf, not a really big weasel… If they’d only heard of them, they’d come up with any number of visualisations of the actual creature.. Wolverines also have a very small tail….
09:30
“Inner consistency of reality” (JRRT)
“Willing suspension of disbelief” (Coleridge)
I see where you are coming from guys. Coleridge is the non-believer (at best), JRRT the believer.
Actually it’s more complicated. As Flieger and Anderson discovered in preparing their edition of OFS, “inner consistency” is from the Oxford English Dictionary entry on the word Fancy. I’m fairly certain the OED writer found “inner consistency” in John Ruskin’s ‘Modern Painters’. The relevant quotations are in the OED Fancy and Consistency articles. The Consistency one goes
“it [imagination] forges these qualities together in such groups and forms as it desires, and gives to their abstract being consistency and reality”
Ruskin was riffing off Coleridge’s Famous Fancy-Imagination Distinction, which is a thing. I’m guessing this is how “inner consistency” got into the Fancy definition, even though it’s a definition of Imagination. F&A do point out, the OFS discussion is in the shadow of Coleridge.
I suppose I’m saying, you can read Tolkien as a Christian or a Catholic (the latter of which
I count myself). But you can also read him a a writer, picking up from where Romantics like Coleridge left off, according to the circumstances of his time.
I’m sure I’ll get banned for simply asking a few questions here, but, if “Tolkien is for everyone,” then why not make Galadriel in the Amazon series Puerto Rican or Dominican or Jamaican? Why is she still a blonde white girl? Why is Gil-galad not African? Elrond Chinese? Celebrimbor American Indian? Sauron Australian aborigine? Why are the main/canon characters still as lily white as Tolkien envisioned them? Did Amazon producers not read his stories and understand that Tolkien is ultimately about all the races coming together and every culture overcoming their differences and so forth and so on? Just the non-legendarium people have to come together and take a back seat to a ruling class of important leaders who are still all white????? Isn’t THAT incredibly racist and not terribly indicative of anyone “coming together?” Or is Tolkien still JUST SORTA for everyone, and if you make his stories TOO MUCH for everyone (you know, with the actual characters from the books diversified, not just the ones that got poofed into 2nd Age existence out of nowhere), it’s the opinion of Amazon producers that NO ONE watches the series? IOW, why can’t viewers get a black Galadriel, yet, hmmmm? That’s what Tolkien was all about, right? RIGHT?!
I hope there’s room in this community for the questioning of casting decisions without getting called racist. I think most people that are pessimistic about the Amazon series have valid gripes, so to paint people who oppose Amazon’s vision as bigots is extremely unfair and close-minded.