Deaths in Tolkien and Rowling was Re: Do we need any more death cases?

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 89879

Eustace__Scrubb wrote:
> 
> Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings contain bloody battles
> resulting in the deaths of major characters <snip>

Neri:
Sorry I missed your post, but you may find that my answers to Hitomi, 
Carol and Pippin (#89866) also answer some of your thought.

Eustace__Scrubb :
I'd have to
> say that Theoden is at least as important a character in the book as
> he has been in the Peter Jackson films.  

Neri again:
Measuring the importance of a character is somewhat subjective. But I 
think you agree that the importance of Boromir and Theoden in LOTR is 
more-or-less similar to the importance of Sirius and Cedric in HP, 
which is my point: if JKR kills any more important characters, she 
will be exceeding the butcher's bill of LOTR (at least with regard to 
main-characters-killed-in-action-on the-side-of-Good)


<snip some interesting remarks about the differences between LOTR and 
HP>

> And just as an OT aside, what would Tolkien have thought if there 
had
> been "groups" of readers ca. 1954-55 rabidly discussing the merits 
of
> killing off various characters between the publications of the 3
> volumes of LOTR?  I bet there would have been threads titled
> "Gandalf--gone for good?," "Was Boromir's death necessary?" "Time
> Travel:  Sam-is-Gandalf" and "Is Frodo the real Ringbearer?"   The
> world of writing, publishing and reading has certainly changed a lot
> in 50 years.

Neri:
Thanks! This one made my day. I could not stop laughing for 20 
minutes at least. But after that it also made me think: even the 
great Tolkien was not above JKR-style devious tricks. Getting away 
with the resurrection of Gandalf without undermining his credibility 
was a major achievement. And getting Frodo and Sam alive out of Mount 
Doom on top of that, it only worked because he used the eagles from 
Bilbo's story. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, it is easy to 
finish off your characters. Much more difficult to make everybody 
sure they are dead, and then get them out alive without it being 
completely deus-ex-machina. And I'm not sure JKR is a writer of 
Tolkien's caliber, but she definitely has her bag of tricks.

Neri