Tolkein and JKR compared

[Simon Branford]

No: HPFGUIDX 1295

"I'm coming at the question both as a raving Potterhead and the sort of old
Middle Earth hand who can't imagine how anyone with a taste for good books
could need more than three days to finish LOTR."

I can see this applying to the end of the series but I found the start too
slow. As I got further into the novel I read more and more at a time. I
guess it was not the best of novels to pick to read while revising!

"I happen to love Tolkein's language--it's relaxed, almost avuncular, yet
has the controlled and polished tone only a Cambridge Lit. professor can
get"

But he was educated in a far better place (Exeter and Merton colleges,
Oxford University)!

"I might add that though you chuckle with JRRT, you ROTL with JRK"

Who is JRK? (So now I am just being pedantic!)

"As far as protagonists go, I find both heroes very compelling. They're
exciting & charismatic, yet ordinary, too. But I find Bilbo more so. He's
more complex:"

This could be that Bilbo is fairly old but Harry is just a kid. Children are
usually less complex.

"With each step Frodo takes towards the chasm, the beauty and glory and
wealth and magic of Middle Earth are a little closer to their death. And
yet, that death is their only hope. That's a plot that hits you in the gut,
inspires you--makes you a better man."

This is what makes LOTR such an amazing book. The whole quest that is set
out on is one that will destroy many things but is done to preserve some
things. For Harry would the same thing be for the wizard world to be
discovered but Voldemort to die.

Someone mentioned about the similarities between Boromir and Ron. Asking if
Ron could betray Harry in the same way Boromir does to Frodo. This is an
interesting idea. This betrayal would put them, and others, at risk but then
Ron would try and do something to redeem himself and then die. Another nail
in Ron's coffin and one more for the H/H shippers, even if most people use
this to mean Harry/Hermione and not the infinitely more probable
Harry/Hedwig.

Simon