Yes, I found that quite ironic. Maybe we are skewing the definitions, but that did always strike me as fate playing a trick on poor Frodo. He didn't expect it to turn out that way (at least, not that I can remember...) and tried to get back to normal. But it wasn't to be.

Thanks for the compliments on the avatar, Willie and Aratlithiel. Yes, I loved the old Daffy one, but I had it for four months, so I decided to get something different for difference sake. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] Kinda goes with my crazy new nick, too. [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

It seems mildly ironic that Merry, rather than Frodo, got the "good" sword out of the barrow. Poor Frodo's barrow-sword broke into pieces when he defied the Witch King at the Ford of Bruinen. Must have been one of those "Monday" swords.

[img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

Another very clever instance of irony occurred to me in reading another thread.

Recall that the eruptions of Orodruin were connected to Sauron's power, and that for most of the Third Age, it was dormant, until Sauron reoccupied Mordor some 60 years before the LOTR time frame.

Say, for the sake of argument, that immediately upon Bilbo finding the Ring, Gandalf had recognized what it was, and resolved then and there to destroy it immediately. Well, it wouldn't have been possible, and not just due to the problem of whether anyone could possess the will to destroy it, the intervention of Fate, etc...

Sauron wasn't yet back in Mordor, he returned when the White Council moved against Dol Guldor at the same time as Bilbo and the Dwarves were at the Lonely Mountain. Mt. Doom was still dormant, so if the Ring had been thrown into the Cracks of Doom at that moment it just would have ended up lying on a bed of solidified lava!

It was only because Sauron felt the need to impress/scare everybody (or to impress himself?) by firing up the ol' volcano that the opportunity to destroy the Ring existed at all. [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

Any other rabid fans of Ed Byrne should be reeling with laughter by now. "A thousand spoons when all you need is a fork." LOL!



Purple "Completely off-topic as ever" Monkey



Btw, the dagger was ironic. Though rather obscure.

How about this for irony - The two Hobbits that were swallowed and near to eaten by a tree (Old Man Willow), ended up being the very ones who befriended Treebeard in dangerous Fangorn.

Pippin and Merry, you have my sword... [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

LOL indeed Purple Monkey. I had Ed Byrne's routine very much in mind when I sought to define irony many posts above. Although, I think he is a bit unfair on poor Alanis. She does include some examples of irony in her lyrics. But a thousand spoons when all you need is a fork is just bad planning. [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

And I am beginning to think that this thread should be renamed examples of coincidence in LotR. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

[ February 17, 2003: Message edited by: The Saucepan Man ]

Irony in a nutshell is the opposite of the expected or intended result.

Coincidence is the accidental occurence of related or identical ideas, events, etc. at the same time.

Of course we all have dictionaries, apparently we just interpret them differently - That, I should say is quite the opposite of a dictionaries purpose. Now isn't THAT ironic??

Then irony in a nutshell is not irony. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

**sigh** why saucepan? Do you need to be the arbiter of all things ironic?

Irony- An event or result that is the opposite of what is expected. (Webster's New World, def. #2)

Irony in a nutshell - The opposite of the expected or intended result. (Me)

And, by the way, Turin marrying his sister isn't ironic. The fact that she set out to find him and then didn't know it was him when she finally did, is ironic (in a nutshell).

love,
Tar

That was a heavy sigh, Tar. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

But seriously, as I said in my first post, I'm no expert. I just feel that irony is an over-used concept and one which, in its true sense, is very difficult to define. So I did a little resarch and came up with the musings set out in that post. And that is all they are - musings representing my opinion based upon a little bit of (quite possibly misguided) research.

Incidentally, the point was made in some of the sources I reviewed that dictionary definitions of irony are notoriously variable and quite often innacurate.

*dusting off topic*
Forgive me, because I don't know if this is 'irony', 'coincidence' or something entirely different...
I always have found it interesting that when Pippin went to Gondor, all thought Rohan warriors would have halflings riding with them. But soon that rumor was put to rest. However, it DID happen when Merry rode with Dernhelm (Eowyn), even after he was explicitly ordered not to come from King Theoden.
*May the butchering begin...* [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]