Character by Character?

[Hookbill the Goomba]

I hope the concept of closed analysis has not become too tedious for my fellow Downers, but I thought this might be a novel idea.
Having discussed the Book Chapter by Chapter and the Films Scene by scene, I had a rather interesting idea. (If I'm honest, I miss read the title of Chapter by Chapter once and began to think on it).
How would people react to discussions on specific characters? My idea was that it would be based very much on the existing system we have for the two previous topics mentioned, only focused on the characters themselves. To begin with, I would suggest we start with the members of the Fellowship, then perhaps move on to other characters such as Bilbo, Elrond, Galadriel, Feanor and others that people may find interesting.

Any thoughts?

[Elladan and Elrohir]

Might be interesting, but which characters? LOTR? Hobbit? Silmarillion? Will one thread be devoted to every single character who appears anywhere in the quote-unquote Legendarium? And the conflicts over whether The Silmarillion (or The Hobbit for that matter) belongs to the quote-unquote Legendarium, will that affect what gets included in or excluded from the discussions?

I would certainly not be opposed to the development of such a forum if the above issues were resolved to the satisfaction of the Barrow-Downers. Not trying to shoot you down, I just wanted to raise these points as they will inevitably come up at some point.

[Hookbill the Goomba]

As I said, my suggestion would be to start with the Fellowship.

In alphabetical order, so not to be bias

- Aragorn
- Boromir
- Frodo
- Gandalf
- Gimli
- Legolas
- Merry
- Pippin
- Sam

Then we could move on to others such as;

- Bilbo
- Elrond
- Galadriel
- Faramir
- Gollum / Smeagol
- Théoden
- Eomer

We could go on forever. But I propose that after completing the Fellowship we should take a vote on who to look at next. Or something like that.

Moreover, I'd suggest one thread to a character, like the Chapter by Chapter forum.

[Farael]

Well, I would most definetly love to discuss all the characters that I have found so far in Tolkien's writings, as they are for the most part very well developed and there is much to say about them. I would suggest that whoever decides to organize the discussion chooses a book to start with and some characters from that book and we take it from there.

To me the best way to start it would be to begin with Lord Of The Rings and then maybe the Hobbit and Silmarillion (in that order) so that those of us that have not read Unfinished Tales and other, less known perhaps, writings can join the discussion. LoTR is probably the best known and the one I'd say we have more to work with. Hobbit is rather short but I think we can have some interesting discussions, specially Hobbit Gandalf vs. LoTR Gandalf. Then Sil, which is long and full of names so I would much rather start on it once the other two books have been discussed. After that, I do not know because I haven't read anything else right now.

But that's just me, any other ideas for starting the discussion would work just as well. The thing is, who will take on him/herself the daunting task of choosing which characters from which story to analyze? worst part is that he/she is bound to be criticized over the choices sooner or later!


Edit: Cross posted with Hobkil (I'm sorry if I just butchered your name) I guess we sort of had the same idea.

[Himilsillion]

Not trying to sound like a Middle-Earth racist but, could you divide up the characters by race. (Elves, Dwarves, Men, Hobbits, Valar, and Miair ect.) Then you could further divide them up by book or I think dividing the races up by region would work better.(Elves of Lorien, Beleriand, Valinor ect. Men of Rohan, Gondor, Nemenor ect.) Then you could divide them up by book. This makes sense to me but might be very confusing to others. If it does I apologize.

[Farael]

Originally Posted by Himilsillion

Not trying to sound like a Middle-Earth racist but, could you divide up the characters by race. (Elves, Dwarves, Men, Hobbits, Valar, and Miair ect.) Then you could further divide them up by book or I think dividing the races up by region would work better.(Elves of Lorien, Beleriand, Valinor ect. Men of Rohan, Gondor, Nemenor ect.) Then you could divide them up by book. This makes sense to me but might be very confusing to others. If it does I apologize.

It's not a bad idea, but the thing is, there are probably MANY elves that are mentioned somewhere but they are not really important and well developed. And so, unless you opened threads for every character in every group at the same time, we might spend time discussing Legolas' third cousin who is mentioned once in the battle of the five armies before we even get to Frodo!! And same with humans, probably also hobbits and dwarves.

Just my point of view at least, I think that (while a little arbitrary) starting the analysis going through specific books and working our way from portatonists to other important characters will work better than making an 'enciclopedia' of characters (which would look great and would be very useful for finding information, but it would make discussion of the characters a little complicated)

Perhaps after all the characters have been discussed, someone could organize as you proposed.

[Boromir88]

A fine idea Hookbill and I think if we are to have a "Character Analysis" to be organized we would have to group people up.

As you say the first grouping could be the Fellowship. Then perhaps we could move to Rohan Characters, Feanor and his brothers, Dragons...etc wherever you want to go whatever you want to do. But, to make sure that we have an organized, focused analysis there should be some system of grouping.

And as Farael says I think dividing them into their races, though is groupings, it would just be too large, as there's sooo many elves and men, and hobbits...etc. The "groups" I think would work much better if they were more specified to a small amount of people (like say 9 as in the Fellowship), then other groupings could be the Elrond and his children, Feanor and his brothers...etc.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Thank you for bringing up this interesting suggestion, Hookbill. If you are thinking of something along the line and scope of the Chapter-by-Chapter and Sequence-by-Sequence discussions, with a chapter for each major character, perhaps even a sub-forum such as the other two, then the project needs to be approved by The Barrow-Wight and a moderator needs to be in charge. You are welcome to continue collecting ideas, but please understand that it may take some time for a decision to be made by the administration team.