[Eurytus]

Ok, I will deal with many of the different posts in one reply, and be as brief as I can be since I think this discussion is approaching its limit.

Point one. The title of this thread is somewhat misleading as it was starting by Essex as a place for us to discuss the presence of ‘flaws’ in the book. He had indicated a viewpoint whereby he thought the book was perfect (later downgraded to nearly perfect) and I was arguing against that.

Point two. I standby my view that not really showing the impact of war is a flaw when you are trying to portray something as being the ‘end of all things’. Essex, I am really not going to argue any more about your list. You have a couple of deaths in that list and the others are things like “lost her father”, “lost their friend” etc. Those are pretty damn minor in terms of the potential losses in times of war. At the end of the day the good boys go to war (8 of them) and they all come back. The fact that one needs to take an extended rest break in some west coast Saga holiday is not really a great hardship.

Point three. As regards 7th Childs views on pre-20th century war. Sorry, but I going to continue to disagree with you. The North African city of Carthage was basically completely destroyed by the Romans. You might want to see the example of Anglesey too, the population of which was nearly wiped out by those pesky Romans. There are other examples too. All of which were completed without the need for 20th century weapons or transport systems. And with the example of the Smallpox, you have to remember that in North America it was a deliberate policy of spreading with infected bed sheets that helped this problem arise.

Point four. Paperthin characters. Sorry but I cannot see any room for manoeuvre here. Legolas IS laughably paperthin. It is not possible to start saying that he is a minor character. He is one of the nine members of the fellowship. Is that minor?
And then Aragorn is not a lot better. One of the books is named after him and yet he is also an archetype of a character.

Point five. As I have said MANY times before, I still like the book. None of this flaws are by themselves critical. But this discussion was originally started to debate just how flawless or not the LOTR is. Hence I have pointed out some.