The Annoying Hobbit - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Ophelia · 02-23-2005, 03:51 PM

One fine day a writer drew a circle and wrote underneath , "Once there lived a hobbit..." That is where it starts .

As you all know Tolkien wrote the book for his children . But , as he said , children grew and so the story had to aswell . Ofcourse it got more complicated .

I grew up still at the Soviet system which provided a lot of corrections in books . I was 4 when I first became aware of the book . As a child I saw the pictures on the covers which indicated that it indeed is a children's book . I began to read but stoped doing that for whatwas written there was too complicated for a 4 year old so I started to look over the illustrations . After that day I was panically afraid of the book , I even had nightmares . Can you imagine what had they done ? All of the pictures were dim , dark , horrifying , full of monsters . Actually the pictures were mostly only of monsters as the person who drew them had seen them . Needless to saythat I never touched the book again .

Long years passed and after FotR came out in the theaters I remembered that once there was a book about hobbits somewhere in my shelves . Indeed . I found it but what I saw there was a true disaster . The dwarves in the illustrations were really ... more like garden gnomes , Bilbo was ...red-haired and withall the hair up in the air not to mention the nude elves . Thranduil was green with branches in his hair . It took me a while to get over all of that and I finally began to read . Most of the book was translated wrong or simply ridiculous . But no matter , I read it and found it to be no children's book at all . Even though the language was as simple as it could be , the story was quite hard and full of horror that you could sence . And besidesall that the ending is not quite the 'hapily ever after' one . There are losses . Many die , which is not a characteristic feature for fairy tales . Also the beginning of the journey is very depressive for Bilbo for noone wishes to talk to him , think him useless .That also I found hard to take . And it didn't end like that . He was an outcast with the dwarves untill he finally got their respect but when he finally did , the journey had ended and he went back home where he became an outcast for not being one by the dwarves anymore . From the series of 'you can't get something if you do not lose another thing' . Psycologically hard to take

. Though for one thing it is a children's book indeed - if you read it to children . For they tend to see the good and the funny in it even if only because they know nought of psycology . So it only depends on what age are you at when you read it first .

And still , The Hobbit is one of my favorite books , with all its dragons , wood Elves , spiders , Gandalf's pine cones and undeveloped Gollum

.

Ophelia

02-23-2005, 03:51 PM	#17
Ophelia Wight Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: somewhere between the sacred , silence and sweet . Posts: 169	One fine day a writer drew a circle and wrote underneath , "Once there lived a hobbit..." That is where it starts . As you all know Tolkien wrote the book for his children . But , as he said , children grew and so the story had to aswell . Ofcourse it got more complicated . I grew up still at the Soviet system which provided a lot of corrections in books . I was 4 when I first became aware of the book . As a child I saw the pictures on the covers which indicated that it indeed is a children's book . I began to read but stoped doing that for whatwas written there was too complicated for a 4 year old so I started to look over the illustrations . After that day I was panically afraid of the book , I even had nightmares . Can you imagine what had they done ? All of the pictures were dim , dark , horrifying , full of monsters . Actually the pictures were mostly only of monsters as the person who drew them had seen them . Needless to saythat I never touched the book again . Long years passed and after FotR came out in the theaters I remembered that once there was a book about hobbits somewhere in my shelves . Indeed . I found it but what I saw there was a true disaster . The dwarves in the illustrations were really ... more like garden gnomes , Bilbo was ...red-haired and withall the hair up in the air not to mention the nude elves . Thranduil was green with branches in his hair . It took me a while to get over all of that and I finally began to read . Most of the book was translated wrong or simply ridiculous . But no matter , I read it and found it to be no children's book at all . Even though the language was as simple as it could be , the story was quite hard and full of horror that you could sence . And besidesall that the ending is not quite the 'hapily ever after' one . There are losses . Many die , which is not a characteristic feature for fairy tales . Also the beginning of the journey is very depressive for Bilbo for noone wishes to talk to him , think him useless .That also I found hard to take . And it didn't end like that . He was an outcast with the dwarves untill he finally got their respect but when he finally did , the journey had ended and he went back home where he became an outcast for not being one by the dwarves anymore . From the series of 'you can't get something if you do not lose another thing' . Psycologically hard to take . Though for one thing it is a children's book indeed - if you read it to children . For they tend to see the good and the funny in it even if only because they know nought of psycology . So it only depends on what age are you at when you read it first . And still , The Hobbit is one of my favorite books , with all its dragons , wood Elves , spiders , Gandalf's pine cones and undeveloped Gollum . Ophelia __________________ I didn't lose my mind . It was mine to give away .