Lord of the Rings, again

[bookzombie]

 While travelling backwards and forwards to a training course a couple of weeks ago I was listening to the BBC Radio Lord of the Rings adaptation again. I still love it to little bits, but each time I listen to it I notice new things. A few things:

1. I wonder if the three CD-set version is edited beyond tidying up episode ends and adding the (superfluous) beginning and end of book narratives? There are a couple of lines of dialogue that I'm sure are in the original version that are missing. Must compare with the tape versions...

2. For the first time I found myself thinking 'What the hell has Gandalf been doing for 17 years?' I know we have slow travel times but given he already new that the ring had to be one of the rings of power then did it really take 17 years research to reach the obvious conclusions? Maybe he's a slow reader or something...

3. Denethor makes a speech I hadn't really registered before about the fact that just because Aragorn is the descendant of the earlier kings of Gondor, why should that mean he automatically take over from the stewards who have actually been doing the job for the last however many hundreds of years. And you know what? He's right.

4. This ties in with another thought, about automatic belief in authority figures. I know there's more to it in the book, but everyone is very quick to take Gandalf's word for it at the Council of Elrond that the ring Frodo carries is the One Ring. Even Boromir disputes the use, not the identification.

Comments

[watervole.livejournal.com]

As far as I recall (and it's been a while), Aragorn doesn't automatically assume he can take over. He served in the army of Gondor in the past without revealing who he was, and after the War of the Ring, he refused to enter the city unless invited to do so.

Had Boromir lived, it is quite possible that Aragorn might not have become king.

your points 2 and 4 are linked. They belive him because he has 17 years of research to show them...

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Also, Boromir was told in a dream that if he went to Imladris he would learn that Isildur's Bane had returned. So to disbelieve that the ring was the Ring, especially after those long presentations by Bilbo, Gandalf, and others making the case, he would have had to dismiss the ring, and then wonder when the subject of Isildur's Bane would come up. Instead, he put two (his dream) and two (the briefings he'd just listened to) together, and made four.

And of course his dream is itself part of the evidence, that would convince others at the Council that this was the real deal.