Character by Character?

[Himilsillion]

Not trying to sound like a Middle-Earth racist but, could you divide up the characters by race. (Elves, Dwarves, Men, Hobbits, Valar, and Miair ect.) Then you could further divide them up by book or I think dividing the races up by region would work better.(Elves of Lorien, Beleriand, Valinor ect. Men of Rohan, Gondor, Nemenor ect.) Then you could divide them up by book. This makes sense to me but might be very confusing to others. If it does I apologize.

[Farael]

Originally Posted by Himilsillion

Not trying to sound like a Middle-Earth racist but, could you divide up the characters by race. (Elves, Dwarves, Men, Hobbits, Valar, and Miair ect.) Then you could further divide them up by book or I think dividing the races up by region would work better.(Elves of Lorien, Beleriand, Valinor ect. Men of Rohan, Gondor, Nemenor ect.) Then you could divide them up by book. This makes sense to me but might be very confusing to others. If it does I apologize.

It's not a bad idea, but the thing is, there are probably MANY elves that are mentioned somewhere but they are not really important and well developed. And so, unless you opened threads for every character in every group at the same time, we might spend time discussing Legolas' third cousin who is mentioned once in the battle of the five armies before we even get to Frodo!! And same with humans, probably also hobbits and dwarves.

Just my point of view at least, I think that (while a little arbitrary) starting the analysis going through specific books and working our way from portatonists to other important characters will work better than making an 'enciclopedia' of characters (which would look great and would be very useful for finding information, but it would make discussion of the characters a little complicated)

Perhaps after all the characters have been discussed, someone could organize as you proposed.

[Boromir88]

A fine idea Hookbill and I think if we are to have a "Character Analysis" to be organized we would have to group people up.

As you say the first grouping could be the Fellowship. Then perhaps we could move to Rohan Characters, Feanor and his brothers, Dragons...etc wherever you want to go whatever you want to do. But, to make sure that we have an organized, focused analysis there should be some system of grouping.

And as Farael says I think dividing them into their races, though is groupings, it would just be too large, as there's sooo many elves and men, and hobbits...etc. The "groups" I think would work much better if they were more specified to a small amount of people (like say 9 as in the Fellowship), then other groupings could be the Elrond and his children, Feanor and his brothers...etc.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Thank you for bringing up this interesting suggestion, Hookbill. If you are thinking of something along the line and scope of the Chapter-by-Chapter and Sequence-by-Sequence discussions, with a chapter for each major character, perhaps even a sub-forum such as the other two, then the project needs to be approved by The Barrow-Wight and a moderator needs to be in charge. You are welcome to continue collecting ideas, but please understand that it may take some time for a decision to be made by the administration team.