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Old 06-11-2007, 11:03 AM   #4
Legate of Amon Lanc
A Voice That Gainsayeth
 
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Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.
Well, from my point of view (but it is how I feel it), I cannot agree. First, I think what you say about the "small fight" is not comparable. If you'd read it right after the Silmarillion, of course you cannot compare it, the same as you cannot compare battle at Morannon - ha, ha, some few thousands of losers - with the War of Wrath. But a common reader, supposedly, sits down and then reads all the volumes of LotR, and he is in this story now, and when he comes to the last chapter, it just logically fits with the rest of what he read before. And that some thousands of years ago some folks did this and this, who cares? Túrin also killed Brodda, and who says it is a problem to read about it when you know his father fought the troll-guard of Gothmog? If you take it from the perspective of a reader, there is a battle in the Shire, a home of those you know, and a place you know and are really familiar with it from the story. And the hobbits - those who just sit and smoke their pipes all the time - are now confronted with something the main characters experienced, but they did not - the "real world". And in this the chapter is interesting, because you now see another point of view - these guys just saved the world and all Gaffer Gamgee says is that it's about time that they are back and that they should've never sold Bag End. "And while you're been trapessing in foreign parts, chasing Black Men up mountains from what my Sam says, though what for he don't make clear, they've been and dug up Bagshot Row and ruined my taters!"

Simply, you cannot think of Thangorodrim when you read about the Shire.
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