Hello there,
I have just finished the prologue and first chapter, so here goes my first post.
Prologue
One of the first things that struck me upon beginning the book was the amount of information that Tolkien establishes before he even begins to tell the story. Not only does he provide a short history of hobbits and their ways, he also summarizes the previous occurrences narrated in "The Hobbit," as well as casually dropping names of races, places, and people that the reader has yet to discover. I have mixed feelings on this writing style: it was intriguing to hear of the existence elves, dwarves, men, and various other presences before I had begun the tale, but I found that the overload of knowledge was slightly complex and made it hard for me to distinguish what I really needed to know for the best possible reading experience.
In relation to the film, I have to say that I preferred the film's introduction. While the extra elaboration on hobbits and some of Middle Earth's history was interesting, I found that when I started reading the first chapter there was little that I cared to recall in conjunction with the text. I did, however, enjoy the film's introduction thoroughly. I found that, from (I assume) Galadriel's perspective and with her declaration of change, the story had already started -- in literary terms --"en medias res" or "in the middle of things." In a similar way, it shows the racial presences of the realm with the distribution of the rings, though much more concisely. There is a somewhat ominous tone in the narration here, which helps set the stage for the dark situation in which Middle Earth is. The viewer is directly introduced to Sauron, while the book has little to no mention of any outstanding evil force. The book also fails to mention any significance of the ring but for Gollum's obsession with it, while the film directly explains exactly what the ring is and the history that surrounds it, though the viewer is not positive that Bilbo's ring is the Ring of Power until Gandalf later confirms it. I personally found that, while it somewhat equals the reader to the book characters in their knowledge, I preferred having the information that the movie gives.
Chapter One
I found that this first chapter was a good start to a story that could develop into something fantastic, though the prologue was slightly lacking. Bilbo's (and Frodo's) birthday and that wonderfully whimsical number "eleventy-one" were a nice, quiet beginning that held stirrings of normal familial malcontent and illustrated the odd grandeur of Bilbo's past adventures. Gandalf's entrance and hasty exit leaves mystery around who and what he is: the reader knows that he is a wizard of some type, with talent in pyrotechnics, but not much else. The reader can see Bilbo's oddity throughout this chapter, especially in the speech he makes at his birthday party. I am eager to see what comes next!
In relation to the film, I thought that this section of the book was done rather well. I found I was not as interested in or impressed by Gandalf as I was in the movie (Ian McKellen is fantastic) but that the character still sparked curiosity. I noticed that Merry appeared more often than Sam or Pippin; this struck me as odd since I always assumed that Merry and Pippin would have been inseparable, and Frodo and Sam would have been closer. I thought that the film's screen writers made it work really well and that their dialogue flowed more smoothly than Tolkien's, finding that some of the lines I really liked from the movie were either slightly different or entirely absent (though "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve" was there).
I am very sorry about this one being so long; I imagine future posts will be shorter and cover less book content, making room for more interesting postings. Please feel free to agree, disagree, or otherwise let me know what you think in the comments.
Thanks for reading,
C
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