Quote:
In FOTR, it was noted that in the aftermath of Bilbo's party, wheelbarrows had to be used to remove guests that had "inadvertently remained behind", and when Frodo jumped onto the table at the Prancing Pony in Bree, it was surmised that he was drunk. In The Two Towers Faramir gave wine to Frodo and Sam, and drank it in Minas Tirith himself. Why would it take a laboratory to produce ethyl alcohol? Drinks containing it have been made by various processes for thousands of years in our world. There are still peoples that utilize traditional methods even today. Why should it be any different in Tolkien's world? |
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
There is significant evidence in the sil to suggest that elves regularly hunted and ate meat.
The only specification I think was for green elves who were veggies. Or is my memory faulty? :D |
To everyone who says elves didn't hunt for sport:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
|
Lotrelf, suggest you look up the various techniques of wine-making, beer-brewing etc.
Alcohol is certainly *not* a modern invention- to be honest, I'm really quite amazed that you could think so.:confused: |
May be from a "dry" culture...:D unlike yours and mine Nerwen dear:cool:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
That's all I can say. |
Quote:
In the films, the dwarves were rude and mannerless, and the elves haughty and disdainful. Hence I wouldn't be surprised if serving a subpar dinner to the dwarves, accompanied with music and all, was an act of slight with finesse, whether it be in revenge for their poor manners or as a general "eww dwarves" notion. What saddens me most is that neither of the races is supposed to be like that. |
Quote:
Though in the book I found Dwarves quite ungrateful. They were cool when Gandalf was with them, but when he left they would be angry, why? When Bilbo did more than he himself had imagined to do, still for Arkenstone Thorin forgot all! Perhaps this is because of the naive understanding of the text and characters; and I'd certainly like to change my opinion about them. But so far many things done by Thorin and company, I didn't find "noble". Yet, I like them all. For the Elves, I hadn't liked Elrond in LotR:TTT much, and couldn't like him TH too. While in the book he is a different character. Perhaps what you said is true. I'll stop now. |
Quote:
|
To put this question in different context; Are Germans sober?
A great deal many are, but there are also a great deal who stay in pubs and bars all day. It's similar to asking whether humans are vegetarians. The response you get will be different depending on who you ask. |
Quote:
I don't think that this analogy is very helpful. Elves are a literary concept and thus constructed in a certain way. This is especially important when it comes to a writer like Tolkien who seldom tried to write certain societies as diverse as a real society would be. On the contrary, the societies, people and persons in middle-earth are described in a mythological manner and can share the same properties. I guess one should not try to examine or explain middle-earth like it was real. Nonetheless I don't see vegetarianism as a commonly shared ideology among elves either. I guess it's a more recent fantasy trope (maybe even dating back to those LOTR readers/fans in the 60's; darn hippies!) that elves have to be in total sync with nature, in every way. |
Quote:
Questions which have cultural variables don't have one set answer. |
Quote:
Your very examples show that this is a problem. The only elven tribe we could more or less) reasonably suspect to be all vegetarian are the Laiquendi, the evles of Ossiriand. The text hints that they have a problem with killing animals and yet they live scattered and withdram in the woods. Beren wandered and lived in the woods of Doriath for a very long time but he vowed not to eat animals. This doesn't make sense from a realistic point of view but from a literary or poetic one. The Noldor and Sindar, on the other hand, are civilised, wiser and by all means a higher class of elves and we do find great and prominent huntsman among them. |
Quote:
The defining elven trait would be musicianship, as there is reference to it in a lot of older media. |
Unless by sober you mean teetotal I don't think it is analogous. Sobriety is a state which fluctuates for the individual usually, on a continuum from those who never are never the least intoxicated to never not. Unless you are a total abstainer or incipient alcoholic it will vary. Vegetarianism is a way of life a perpetual state through religious or moral conviction or necessity.
Fact is that choosing ones diet is a luxury not available to many people throughout history or even now in much of the world. People ate what there was and didn't waste it. Modern food waste is pure decadence.. we fly out of season food round the world or grow it in artificial convictions and then often it is left to rot. I think many think elves might be vegetarian because of their affinity with animals. However we know they hunt and they use wood though they love trees too. If you look at Legolas' comment about the orkish love of destruction then it seems to me that they would eat meat as they use wood. Not killing more that they need and eating "nose to tail". It seems inconceivable that they would hunt merely for sport. |
Quote:
Moreover, I have the distinct impression that Celegorm, Curufin, Amrod, and Amras hunted for sport. That is to say, maybe they ate what they killed, but they definitely went out and killed it for fun, not because they were hungry. |
Does it? Sport and food not only reason for hunting - potential threat elimination also possible. Gimli and Legolas hunted many orcs and that was neither sport nor food. I still think it likely that most elves would eat what they hunted and I don't think the sons of Feanor are necessarily typical Elves. Kinslayers are hardly likely to have qualms about shedding animal life. Anyway hunting for sport is hardly evidence of vegetarianism. I can quite see there might be moral objections to killing animals but not eating them once they are dead is just wasteful. No doubt Dean Swift might have made a modest proposal re eating dwarves though I think you would have to cook them very slowly and they would be a nightmare to skin...
|
Quote:
Quote:
|
Quote:
Possibly Bombadil & Goldberry too? They served the hobbits cream, honeycomb, bread, butter, milk, cheese, green herbs & ripe berries. |
Quote:
As for Bombadil, he doesn't seem to have kept any animals, other than Fatty Lumpkin, and meat wouldn't appear to have been otherwise available to him. That said, it might be hard to say sometimes whether vegetarianism in Middle-earth, whether it existed or not, was a conscious choice of lifestyle, or simply borne of necessity when groups had no ready access to meat. |
Quendi And Eldar relates that the Petty-dwarves attacked the Eldar by stealth at night, or if they caught them alone in wild places...
... thus (in my opinion) the Petty-dwarves were hunted -- although it does say the Eldar at first thought them a kind of cunning animal too, noting that they rarely saw them in good light. Well that's how I interpreted this much anyway. |
Quote:
|
I was just thinking of a certain scene in the books (sadly don't have books with me, can't quote, but would appreciate if somebody did) from Flotsam and Jetsam that may be of interest. What kind of food do Pippin and Merry offer? They don't have much - beer, bread and honey, ham. Nothing says that or dear Legolas specifically did not eat the ham, but I've always assumed everybody ate everything.
So if it makes you happy, you can debate whether Legolas was surviving on bread and honey or if his behaviour proves that Elves are not vegetarian. ;) I don't really feel like arguing it either way. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
Quote:
I'm pretty sure the Sylvan Elves hunted already, the Eldar that had come to Mirkwood had adopted Sylvan culture, still they hunted and ate meat. Personally I think the Green Elves of Ossirand were just their own culture and had developed their ways of not hunting animals and cutting wood for dwellings only after Denethor had died in order to be as invisible to intruders as possible. If these aspects were really true for all of the Green Elven tribes (which probably were very disconnected from one another) Calling the humans "murders of animals" can mean a lot, perhaps the Elves just meant the men were hunting more than they needed to survive? |
Quote:
|
Consider the Plains Indian reaction to the white buffalo hunters. It wasn't that the Sioux and Arapaho had any objection to hunting buffalo, per se......
|
Would elves be vegans if they ate ents? Or aint ents edible?
|
Quote:
|
Well, Skinbark is supposed to be sort of like a birch tree, so I imagine his blood/sap can be boiled down to syrup, or used to make "hard" birch beer.
Actually I think you can make syrup out of oak sap too (I know you can make honey out of it, via aphids and sapin) so Treebeard and Leaflock may be at risk too (Leaflock is an oakish ent, right. He looked oaky in the PJ movie, but I seem to remember something about him actually being meant to be like an ash, or a beech.) |
Quote:
Tirion-on-Tuna, Alqualonde, Gondolin, Nargothrond, Menegroth, Ost-in-Edhil, Caras Galadhon, Mithlond, even Thraduil's caves - they were all cities. |
All times are GMT -6. The time now is 01:30 PM. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9 Beta 4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.