Why did Tolkien make Sauron the titular character of The Lord of the Rings?
>>24783894You should probably ask why Wagner made Alberich the titular character of Der Ring des Nibelungen, since Tolkien was just copying Wagner.
Also Tolkien art dump I guess.
>>24783899Alberich is much more involved in his story though, whereas Sauron is barely a character in his. He doesn't have any lines. It just seems odd to name the book after someone with no real presence in it.
>>24783894He was Catholic and so was a big fan of the antichrist. So to him the antiChrist was the good guy. He was super surprised when people thought Sam and Frodo were good.
>>24783928Sauron is ever present in the book. You'd have to be a moron not to get that just because he has hardly any dialogue. His presence is the point of the book.
>>24784038>has hardly any dialogueHe has no dialogue and because he's never directly encountered by the Hobbits he's never shown either, except when his shadow is seen in the sky when the ring is destroyed. Sauron is more of a secondhand presence when the ring is what the whole narrative revolves around. But the ring is not Sauron.
>>24783894>Title of book 1: Here is the villain! >Title of book 2: Focal point of good and evil!>Title of book 3: HARK! HERE COMES THE KING-HERO!Why didn't Tolkien start with the ending, OP? Such a mysterious man.
>>24784089The title of the first book is "The Fellowship of the Ring". Also LotR was written as a single novel not a trilogy, Tolkien's editors split it.
>>24784104PSHHHT. Something I rattled off. Doesn't change anything.
>>24784106
>>24783914what the story behind this one?
>>24784163Those are the Gates of Morning. Arda was originally flat until Eru shaped it into a sphere at the beginning of the Second Age, so during the First Age the sun and moon entered the sky through the Gates of Morning in the east and departed through the Door of Night in the west. Then they'd sail back around under the earth.
Frodo used the title The Downfall of the Lord of the Rings and the Return of the King(as seen by the Little People; being the memoirs of Bilbo and Frodo of the Shire, supplemented by the accounts of their friends and the learning of the Wise.)
>>24783894I always took it as a subtle implication that anybody could be "The Lord of the Rings". It's begging the question of who will be the lord of the rings or who is the "true" lord of the rings.
>>24784249Sam, Merry, and Pippin call Frodo "the Lord of the Rings" early on in the story and Gandalf chides them saying "there is only one Lord of the Rings." That's a direct line from the book.
Wings or no wings /lit/?
>>24784286Ted doing one of the Hobbit's dirty with that hair
>>24784286Is Tom that SMALL?
>>24784055He communicates directly to Pippin through the Palantir iirc
>>24784522IIRC he just looked at Pippin.
>>24783894Because evil is cool.
Weird how no one reacts to fell beasts as being, for all intents and purposes, fucking dragons.
>>24784625They're not. Tolkien said in a letter they were close to pterodactyls.
>>24784634I know they’re not goddamn it but if this swoops down at you, it demands all the panic and terror of a dragon. It’s still something completely inexplicable even in middle earth and no one seems to care.
>>24784646Well Nazgul on their own drove people mad with terror so there's not much left for their mounts to do.
>>24784390Definitely wings. I'm pretty sure it was at least implied, if not outright stated, that the balrog had wings.
I like the idea of Pleistocene megafauna existing in the dark corners of the world.
>>24784661It's not stated, the description is kind of nebulous and the question of whether it had wings or not has been a contentious one among Tolkien nerds.
Balrogs have wings because it harkens back to classic infernal demons. End of.
>>24784686I can't believe that's a big topic of debate.
