The Hobbit was supposed to be a children's story that took place in the large, darker fantasy world. So I'd more compare it to Tom Clancy writing a Spy Kids movie.
As someone who's never read/watched the Hobbit & LOTR universes I frankly have no clue wtf this is supposed to mean
But godspeed to you, little rat
It's an almost perfectly accurate analogy.
So, JRR Tolkien wrote The Hobbit for his school age children. It's a novel that is designed to be read to children one chapter a night as a series of bedtime stories. It tells the tale of Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit enjoying his quiet life in the suburbs, being swept along on a quest along with some dwarves and a wizard to slay a dragon that stole some treasure. Along the way a series of adventures ensue, one of which involves Bilbo finding a handy magic ring that turns anyone who wears it invisible.
Several years later, Tolkien decided to write an epic trilogy of novels that tell a much more mature story in the same setting. See it turns out that the fun invisibility ring Bilbo found is an all powerful evil artifact hand crafted by the setting's equivalent of Lucifer as part of a jewelry-based ploy to take over the world in the name of evil, and the only place the ring can be destroyed is in the fires of the volcano in which it was forged in the first place. It falls on Bilbo's nephew Frodo Baggins to carry the ring from the suburbs to this volcano to destroy the ring and defeat evil once and for all.
Tolkien made it sound cooler than I just did.
The Hobbit was meant for kids. Then Tolkien was like, "what if I took that story that was meant for kids and wrote a really long, complicated series of sequels to it that kids of the right age to read The Hobbit will probably get bored with and stop reading half-way through the first book?"
Nothing against LOTR, I'm just doubtful most 10-year-olds read it.
It is my understanding that Tolkien wrote The Hobbit for his kids when they were of bedtime story age, and then wrote The Lord of the Rings for them when they were young adults and ready for a more mature story. It's not his fault everyone else for the rest of time wouldn't have that built-in delay.
LOTR was not written for children. It was literary fiction to talk about Tolkien's experiences with the Great war mixed with a lot of his philology studies. Some even say the LOTR world was just Tolkien's excuse to use his constructed languages. The Hobbit existed first as loose night time stories for his own kids that got formalized as a book and had no concept of the wider LOTR lore. The success inspired him to write another book, for a wider audience and more complex themes. Then he decided that the Hobbit could be made to fit into the overall world building of middle earth. So he made changes to both books so they fit together. That's why the first and second edition of The Hobbit are actually a bit different.
At least please try to watch the movies. They and the books really are worth every bit of hype you’re heard.
So Redwall?
I've been chewing on the idea that Sauron is part of the fellowship lately and this seems like the opening I need to tackle the framing.
I think there's one perspective in which The Eye is an unrelentingly repressive aspect of authoritarianism and The Ring is both part of Sauron and a catalyst for the unnameable evil inherent within her.
Alternatively The Eye's power is identifying the thing that corrupts, and The Hobbit's power is carrying it. Singling anything out is an isolating task for Mean Girls, and in her work separating the Ring from everything else in the universe Sauron grows the thorniest, vilest crows she can to shield her loneliness. Still, when the Hobbits are at their lowest she reveals herself to hold their hands.
It seems that one approach to devils is pointing them out for somebody else to hurl into the fire and another is relegating them to the negative space by directing identity towards the Main Picture.
I thought it was obvious but now I'm not sure. Who did Stuart's nephew kill?
