{"id":14634,"date":"2020-10-19T18:29:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-19T22:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=14634"},"modified":"2020-10-19T18:29:00","modified_gmt":"2020-10-19T22:29:00","slug":"readers-report-the-return-of-the-king-concerning-tombs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=14634","title":{"rendered":"Reader’s report: ‘The Return of the King’: Concerning tombs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Blogging my way through The Lord of the Rings<\/em>.<\/strong> I\u2019m on The Return of the King<\/a><\/em> now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading impressions: I was struck, as most readers will forever be now, I suppose, by the differences between the movies and the books. I know this, and yet it always sort of surprises me. The impression I always get from the movies (and of course it\u2019s much easier to watch the movies than read the trilogy) is that the movies are pretty faithful, except for a few obvious changes. The role of Arwen is the most famous. The omission of Tom Bombadil is another. And we could go on and on, in orders of relative importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in fact, the movies are very different from the books. The general plot lines are largely the same, though the order of presentation has often been shuffled. But there are actually few scenes in the films that are presented substantially as Tolkien described them. Compression and economy have had their effects everywhere. Most of the dialogue is new, too. We notice the direct quotations when they come, and quote them in Facebook memes. But they\u2019re actually relatively rare. Most of the dialogue is new \u2013 streamlined paraphrases of Tolkien\u2019s general sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every fan of the movies should read the books at least once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, they won\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking at the story through the eyes of a Viking buff,<\/strong> one thing struck me in my recent reading. When Denethor commands that Faramir be carried into the kings\u2019 tombs, the entrance is described like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turning westward they came at length to a door in the rearward wall of the sixth circle. Fen Hollen it was called, for it was kept ever shut save at times of funeral, and only the Lord of the City might use that way, or those who bore the token of the tombs and tended the houses of the dead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In other words, bodies were not carried in through the main entrance, but through a separate, smaller, door. I\u2019m probably reaching, but this reminded me of a Norse custom known from the sagas. We\u2019re told that when someone died in a house, the corpse was not carried out through the main door. Instead a hole was broken into a side wall, and the corpse carried out that way. Then the hole would be repaired. The idea was that if the dead person were to \u201cwalk again,\u201d they would try to get back in the way they left, and be unable to find that door. This would protect the residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two things are different, in that one involves carrying corpses in, and the other involved carrying them out. Still, I thought it might have been in the back of the Professor\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blogging my way through The Lord of the Rings. I\u2019m on The Return of the King now. Reading impressions: I was struck, as most readers will forever be now, I suppose, by the differences between the movies and the books. I know this, and yet it always sort of surprises me. The impression I always … Continue reading Reader’s report: ‘The Return of the King’: Concerning tombs<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[1345,2945,3015],"class_list":["post-14634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reading","tag-j-r-r-tolkien","tag-the-lord-of-the-rings","tag-the-return-of-the-king"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14635,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14634\/revisions\/14635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}