JRR Tolkien's "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" are one of the most feared works in the history of world literature. Among the books that have sold more than 100 million copies, "The Lord of the Rings" ranks second with 150 million copies (No. One is Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" with 200 million copies, and "The Hobbit" ranked seventh with 100 million copies. The original began with The Hobbit, which was actually a children's book, and gradually turned into a grand masterpiece.
After being adapted into a movie, the Lord of the Rings trilogy is a classic work that has won a place in the history of film both in terms of box office and evaluation (IMDB score The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the 9th, 11th and 16th in the film history, and the box office is 8th, 11th and 16th respectively. 9th and 26th). Although the "Hobbit" series trilogy has lost its former glory, it is still a topical work of the year, so if you want to make up lessons about The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, it is still too late.
【Who is the Hobbit? ]
There are so many handsome guys and beauties in it, and it actually makes many people unhappy that the Hobbit will be the protagonist.
They look very human, just shorter. But in fact they still have such characteristics. Tolkien mentioned in "The Lord of the Rings" that the hobbits are about two to four feet (0.6 to 1.2 meters) tall, with an average height of three feet six inches (1 meter). "Elves with pointed ears", feet covered with curly hair (usually brown, like hair), and tough skin underneath, so most hobbits don't wear shoes. Hobbits enjoy simple life. Hobbits are not considered adults until they are 33 and middle age at 55.
Therefore, Hobbits are related to humans, but they are not humans, but parallel peoples. But hobbits are closer to humans than dwarves and elves.
【What happened to these races? 】
This is an important question and a huge achievement for the original author, JRR Tolkien. The entire creation history of "The Lord of the Rings" can also be seen as Tolkien's own exploration of mythology, philosophy and religious systems. He absorbed the social system mainly from Roman Catholicism, combined elements of Norse mythology, Germanic mythology, and also referenced elements of Celtic, Persian, Greek, and Finnish mythology. Created the basis for the magical character setting of the "sapient humanoid species".
Tolkien created "elf", "dwarf", "hobbit", "orc" and other races. Among them, "elf", "dwarf" and "orc" have been widely used in various fantasy novels and works. The "homo sapiens race" system developed by Tolkien as a whole, through the expansion of the "Dungeons and Dragons" series, has formed the now extensive "human-demihuman-orc" mythological race system.
[What language do they speak? 】
In The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, characters often speak languages that even Zhang Haidi may not understand. Where do these languages come from?
Tolkien devoted himself to the compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1918, and philosophy and linguistics were his life-long fascination. For "The Lord of the Rings", he created Dwarven (used by dwarves), Godogrin, Quenya (used by Noldor), Sindarin (used by gray elves), Western Common (a fusion of lower human languages) language) and more 18 languages! ! ! These languages are also aggregated into the "Arda Language" system. Has a complete language history, grammar and vocabulary system.
Among them, Quenya, which is widely used in "The Lord of the Rings", is beautifully written and accurate. It has been perfected by many people in the later period and has formed a very serious language. At present, there is already a Wikipedia compiled entirely in Quenya.
Speaking of artificial languages, Korean, the written language of our neighboring Korea and Korea, was also established in 1443 by scholars organized by King Sejong the Great.
[Why is the magic in Lord of the Rings weird]
Since it's a wizarding world, Gandalf and Saruman's magic is a bit of a pedigree compared to other magic movies such as Harry Potter or the Game of Thrones series. They couldn't send a Frostbolt or rub a fireball, and there were many times in which magic with the same function as a flashlight appeared.
In fact, it's just that everyone is holding back. Gandalf, Saruman and Sauron, the ultimate demon king, were all servants of the god known as "maiar" (you wouldn't think Gandalf was human too! He was immortal). Before the story of Lord of the Rings, they fought some wars of the gods very old-fashioned, and then learned a lesson to leave Middle-earth, leaving only their servants to guide all beings, and not to release overly explicit magic and mana.
So in fact, the mana in The Lord of the Rings is very powerful, and it is silent. For example, Sauron's mana in the Lord of the Rings can manipulate people's hearts.
[The far-reaching influence of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings series]
Tolkien has to say that he is a master. This master's Lord of the Rings has almost become a model for all fantasy art in the later period. The model is like this, you can bring it in at will :
- Hero vs. Dark Lord
The main line of the story is the individual hero(s) against the Dark Lord, you think, even Star Wars.
- Adventure scenes
The stories all contain the exploration process of a magnificent world, think about the Narnia series
- magic is
not only magic, but especially the way of showing magic, there is very little magic that destroys the world, more is close-range manipulation or mind-manipulating magic in Lord of the Rings, such as the Jedi in Star Wars The Force
- Medieval Setting The Lord of the
Rings sets his world to be a medieval-like setting, which has almost become a norm , Narnia, Ice and Fire, Dragon Knight and Wheel of Time, etc., all happened in this era
- race setting
Influenced by The Lord of the Rings and founded in the 1970s, the Dungeons and Dragons series, the race system in it, has also become the standard configuration of all fantasy works.
Therefore, I am convinced that the "Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings" series are indeed the first classics of the establishment, and they have also derived a lot of good things besides movies.
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