View Single Post
Old 01-17-2008, 07:55 AM   #14
William Cloud Hicklin
Loremaster of Annúminas
 
William Cloud Hicklin's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 2,330
William Cloud Hicklin is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.William Cloud Hicklin is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.William Cloud Hicklin is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Quote:
But Tolkien kept changing his mind on many things. That's why he wrote 'the New Shadow' which featured a new Dark Lord rising just 100 years after LOTR
But that's not so. What there is of The New Shadow implies a neo-Sauronian cult arising, but there's no suggestion at all of an actual Dark Lord. Tolkien said of it that it would have been just a "thriller:' "not worth doing." In fact I believe it's in the same letter that he observed that Sauron was the last Incarnation of evil.

The New Shadow, consistent with what T said elsewhere about the Age of Men, is about Men's easy satiety with good and peace and comfort, all on their own without a Diabolus live and present.

_______________

*Everything* created and sustained by the power of the Rings was ended when the One went into the fire. Barad-dur collapsed because its Ring-made foundations crumbled. The Ringwraiths' existence is not some special and irreversible status bestowed by their Rings: it is merely an extreme case of the unnatural longevity experienced by Bilbo and Gollum. Just as Bilbo rapidly resumed his proper physical age when the Ring was destroyed, so did the Nazgul (their natural age of course being several thousand years, meaning very very dead). As Gollum said, "When the Precious goes, we'll die, yes, die into dusst."

____________________

I don't think some nice pacifistic Faramir-like Numenorean would have been suckered by one of the Nine. Like the One, their temptation was the offer of Power: those who aren't interested aren't buying.
__________________
The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.
William Cloud Hicklin is offline   Reply With Quote