Thread: Ori's writing
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Old 09-19-2014, 01:49 AM   #13
shadowfax
Animated Skeleton
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Switzerland
Posts: 40
shadowfax has just left Hobbiton.
Just my two cents worth on this.

In The Hobbit, we discover that the moon runes and other runic writings on the map are formed of runic characters but the language is ... Modern English.

Tolkien later attempted to explain this by claiming he was translating from the Red Book of the Westmarch, and that somehow the map had got translated as well (although otherwise it is still a completely authentic document).

In other words, when he was working on The Hobbit, Tolkien wasn't too concerned about authenticity. Initially he wasn't even aware that this children's story was set in the same world as his high mythological Silmarillion.

Maybe Ori's book was added in a similar vein. It is a remarkable coincidence, is it not, that such a book should accidentally open to the page that explains what's going on rather than some description of what we had for dinner and what a pain my rheumatism is. Maybe the fellowship didn't find out out what had happened until afterwards (Gimli took the book with him, remember, but it is never mentioned again, is that not strange?), so the book was added as a narrative crutch so the reader would know what they were fighting about.
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