It’s in the under-read The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s complex sequence of Middle-earth myths and legends, that he fully explores the litany of misbegotten oaths, pride-blinded decisions, betrayals, murders, rapes, and invasions that led to the downfall and destruction of the old world. The towering city of Minas Tirith is crumbling and half-empty. The once mighty elf realms, even Lothlorien, are reduced to dying shadows of what they were. The characters cross a landscape littered with the ruins and remnants, such as the remains of Amon Sul and the titanic Argonath, of a nearly forgotten past. It rises in The Lord of the Rings from a mournful undercurrent to a major theme. Even in the The Hobbit, a book aimed more at children than adults, it pervades the story, one that depicts the actions of pitiably small individuals against a world that, outside the green confines of Bilbo’s Shire, is dangerous and long bereft of the comforts and protections of civilization and order. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings - and missing from Peter Jackson’s misdirected films - is the almost suffocating atmosphere of great melancholy over a lost, better world lost due to pride and jealousy. One of the most significant elements of J.R.R. …since you are my son and the days are grim, I will not speak softly: you may die on that road.
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