1) Dag KICKS Anc for raising this.
1.5) Please see subsequent posts such as Aragil's, and my next one on page 2, for recognition and clarification of a gross inaccuracy presented in this post.
2) I have been called upon to take part in an interesting thread that is in mid ressurection, and I hope to put a couple more bullets in it to help lay it to rest. Btw, thanks for thinking of me, Anc, Mike, and
Beorn. I didn't do then what I'm doing now because the discussion was too chaotic with drastically varying ideas and I didn't know where to start.
3) As is typical of me, I'm just going to correct most of you on what you've said and then tell you how it is! So get coffee and reading glasses cuz this will be long, detailed. Mabye confusing and hard to believe also.
4) Beleg, I myself can't say now at age 28 what I would think about mortality after another thousand years. Also, Elladan and Elrohir didn't have to decide until over 3,000 years had past, not 1,000, because their birth date was T.A. 130.
5)SSgrif, Yes
Legolas was immortal. The book said this many times, especially if you consider it having been said indirectly every single time he was reffered to as an
elf!
Elves are immortal, so he is also. Here I'm afraid I must chastise you for your inadequate studies.
6)
Eonwe, I disagree. I don't believe any of us have a clue what J.R.R.T. WOULD have said or ACTUALLY meant. All we do is speculate, which is swell as long as we remember that when the facts aren't present, it's all opinion. Also, thousands of elves didn't depart when
Elrond did. Nor did
Celeborn leave when
Galadriel left (note family). Does that mean that any of them tend more towards
men as you say?
7) Stale, I'll quote you - "...Probably if they chose to stay behind when Elrond left (as they did) they were forced to stay forever.". Please see #6 - thousands left after Elrond, including some that weren't even elves. Also, Elladan and Elrohir may already have made their choice at the time the book takes place, so we don't hear of Elrond's concern for the loss or keeping of his sons. Also, here's a BIG one: It is implied clearly in the book that
Bilbo and
Frodo got to go accross the sea because they "Bore the burden of
the ring". It is suggested that
Sam may have gone also.
8) At this time, please reffer to number 3 and get more coffee because this stuff in #9 even confuses me, and I'm writing it. The Tolkien-Geekometer is rising quickly.
9) Camille - our previous debate on this debacle included A LOT of disagreement about what fraction of elf Elrond and his children were.
*pause* *Gets drink of water and some skoal.
I said they were more elf than man (which means something by OUR technical rules of genetics and geneology, not necessarily thiers), and therefore would respond to the paths in the way of an elf, not a man. But I was careful to say that as usual, that was an opinion and therefore not worth much.
O.K. Get ready for this: I can't lay it out here like a chart as it should be, but it should work. Here, in parenthesis HE means Half-Elf, E is Elf, H is Human, F is female - others are males.
Beren(H) +
Luthien(E,F) = Dior(HE),
Earendil(HE).
Dior(HE) + Nimloth(E,F) = Elwing(3/4E,F).
Earendil(HE) + Elwing(3/4E,F) = Elrond(62.5%E)
Elrond(62.5%E) +
Celebrian(E,F) = Eladan,Elrohir(both 81.25%E)
Case closed.
Tolkien, and the people of M.E. called Elrond "
Half-Elven". He is not. I think they (All the partial elves) are all called the "
Peredhil" (
Sindarin for Half-Elven) because they can go either way - become a mortal as man, or immortal as elf.
In this way, I do not view them as more elf than man, or more man than elf. They are half-elven.
That means Halfway between mortality and immortality. And says nothing about geneology, or what path they can walk down without being afraid.
In the first 3 lines of my little geneology breakdown, do you see something that looks awefully NOT right?
Yep, you guessed it, Earendil married AND had children with his own immediate NIECE. So we should really appreciate how irrelevant OUR understandings of how this stuff works is. In Tolkien's world, that sort of inbreeding was apparently not only acceptable, but since the products of such unions were some of the greatest heros and leaders in history, they didn't result in the mutations and stupidity typical of that in our world.
Just because the 2nd and 3rd sections of the LoTR were published within 2 years of the first, doesn't mean he was cranking jibbersh out like a Stephen King. He was writing those very sections for more than a decade before publishing. I do not believe he made such pathetic errors that the issue with the paths was a mistake, or the inbreeding for that matter. I believe he literally put hours upon hours into the few sentences that say much of anything about it at all. I believe the series of
books chronicaling the mere writing of the LoTR is 10 (or 12?) volumes. Now that should tell us all that "what you see is what you get". Tolkien told us very carefully exactly what he wanted us to know, and I think that he meant nothing more or less than what he said. Anything else is opinion.
Get ready for the biggest one of all!:
"All three of his children chose mortality." Pg. 407, "The Complete Guide to
Middle Earth", by Robert Foster. Where did he get this info? Beats me, he doesn't say, but I've never found inaccuracies in the book yet.
And That's That.
~Dag
