The Hobbit for me has always been a children's book. To me the lighthearted feeling of it all and the narrator have been delightful. There are those for which the opposite is the case. My recently turning more treeish friend,
Lauri, didn't like TH specifically for its tone, and her mother before her felt the same way. I never had a problem with the tone.
My opinion on the tone at the beginning of
Lord of the Rings has been this: the hobbits are in their homeland, the place that has always been full of life, joy, parties, and fun. There is no reason to precede that with a gloomy or foreboding tone. FotR opens with Bilbo and Frodo throwing the most magnificent party this generation of hobbits has known, where fun is to be had by all. After Bilbo sets off (again) and Frodo follows, he does not see the danger he is facing, partly because he is still in the Shire, and he wouldn't think that darkness could follow him all the way there. The Shire was home, and bad things aren't supposed to happen at home, especially in a company of friends. What I see is the light tone being slowly overshadowed by warnings by Gandalf and Gildor, and the first appearance of the Nazgul.
Over time the story obviously gets darker.
Juicy-Sweet put it nicely above with:
Quote:
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What is interesting is that [Tolkien] KEPT the light tone in the early chapters, and sort of gradually made it darker and darker in the chapters leading up to Frodo getting stabbed by the Nazgul. I had fun rereading the book and trying to pinpoint exactly where the mood changes - but I couldn't, he made it so gradual.
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There have always been stories about magical places. Some have weathered the test of time very well. I find it interesting in particular stories like Cinderella and Snow White being altered from the originals into a
more lighthearted tone for audiences, making them more alike to TH. LotR, if it were still to be purely a Hobbit sequel, might just make it today, though not with such a following as it does now. When you change the tone, you change the book.
I wound be very curious to read
The Son of the Hobbit and the Daleks, though.
