happy elves

[Arwen Melian]

Why are the elves in The Hobbit depicted differently than those in The Lord of the Rings?For example they sing happier songs and are just plain...happy. Another thing is that Elrond is said to be an elf friend in The Hobbit. I thought those were people who were not elves but were friends with them.The elves dont seem as wise and ..well..not as sad;I mean thay did see many years.

[Orald]

It's those Mirkwood Elves, they are so dumb and silly compared to other elves, I think it a combination of inferior genes and not ever having someone to look up to until the Second Age.


The best answer to this question however is who wrote the books. The Hobbit and LotR were written by Bilbo and Frodo, respectively. Bilbo didn't know any elves very well before his journey and he was with Dwarves, so Bilbo could have been biased in his writings. Frodo however was much more aware of elves and his view of them is apparent in his part of the story. Also at the time of LotR the elves knew their time was limited in Middle-Earth, and in the Hobbit they thought they still had some time.

As for Elrond being an Elf-friend, he is only a half-elf.

[Arwen Melian]

I know that about Elrond but they should say something about that in the Hobbit.By the way thanks.Even though Ive read lotr several times..sigh.

[Arwen Imladris]

It's those Mirkwood Elves, they are so dumb and silly compared to other elves

Wasn't Legolas a Mirkwood Elf? Do you think that he is dumb and silly?

Another point is that times were different when Bilbo was travelling, pretty much everyone thought that the ring was gone for good.

[Manwe Sulimo]

There's a thread about this a couple of pages back, I think.

But the main reason is that The Hobbit was written as a children's book, just as The Lord of the Rings was an epic tale of a war. That's what the difference is.

[Arwen Melian]

THANK YOU. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

[HerenIstarion]

Off topic post warning: <marquee> [img]smilies/redface.gif[/img]ff topic post coming [img]smilies/redface.gif[/img]ff topic post coming [img]smilies/redface.gif[/img]ff topic post coming</marquee>

Hi Durelen, long time no see, how do you fare? [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

[ November 13, 2002: Message edited by: HerenIstarion ]

[Legolas]

I know that about Elrond but they should say something about that in the Hobbit.By the way thanks.Even though Ive read lotr several times..sigh.

Another point is that times were different when Bilbo was travelling, pretty much everyone thought that the ring was gone for good.

Tolkien couldn't have said something about it in The Hobbit. He had not yet written Lord of the Rings; subsequently he had no idea of Elrond's participation in the matters, nor did he know the One Ring was powerful at the time. Just a ring that made one invisible. Also, most of the people of Middle-earth had no idea about the One Ring - that it existed, that Sauron forged it, or that it was evil.

[Frodo Baggins]

Yeah but.....

Elrond is NOT an elf-friend. He is a Peredhil, a Halfelven. Actually he more than half elven. He is 9/16 elf, 3/8 human, and 1/16 maiar.

Just to clarify that...

[Aiwendil]

I don't think the attitudes of the Elves in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are contradictory. Why can they not be happy at some times and melancholy at others? For instance, they might be melancholy when an evil Maia is on the brink of conquering the continent, and happy when he's not.

As for Elrond being an Elf-friend:

I have friends that are humans. I'm a human-friend. I'm also a human.

[Legolas]

Indeed. You don't act the same at a store being held-up as you would a carnival.

Also, Elrond was not an elf. He was half-elven. He shared the fate of the elven race, but himself was not considered an elf.

[Frodo Baggins]

Excuse me....

Elrond is 9/16 elven, He is MORE than half elf. He is certainly considered an elf.

[Aiwendil]

Elrond is 9/16 elven, He is MORE than half elf.

Yes, in terms of blood, he is 1/16 more than half Elven. The meaning above is that he is one of the Half-elven, the Peredhil. One need not be exactly 1/2 Elven by blood for this; indeed, if he were but 1/16 human, he would nonetheless be Half-elf. He is only truly Elven in the sense that his choice was to be an Elf.

[ November 14, 2002: Message edited by: Aiwendil ]

[Oliphaunt]

He had the choice, he chose to be an elf, therefore, he is an elf.

[Arwen Melian]

[img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] Thank you very much.If any one comes about any more information regarding this topic,please post it.
-Arwen Melian

[Legolas]

Also, Elrond was not an elf. He was half-elven. He shared the fate of the elven race, but himself was not considered an elf.

Oliphaunt: Once again...Elrond was not given the choice - Man or elf? He was given the choice of which fate he'd suffer. Mortality or immortality. Tolkien is explicit in his letters about the half-elven not being elves.

[InklingElf]

Once again...Elrond was not given the choice - Man or elf? He was given the choice of which fate he'd suffer. Mortality or immortality. Tolkien is explicit in his letters about the half-elven not being elves.

...would you remember the letters?-i'm very curious about them...and the fate he'd suffer...::thinking::

[Durelin]

Well, at that point in time, Sauron was only a whisper and no one knew where the ring was and stuff. In LOTR the elves had to get serious because they now had a huge problem on their hands - a "silly" hobbit had the ring and Sauron was gaining power again.

[Atariel]

It doesn't really matter to me whether or not Elrond was an elf. He was beautiful (although perhaps Hugo Weaving isn't the stereotype...), he had beautiful children with a beautiful wife, and he lived in an ABSOLUTELY beautiful house. and, of course, he wore the most gorgeous clothes. But, anyway, all i know is that the elves are all beautiful. except perhaps feanor, who was too angry to be beautiful. By the way, i have pointy ears, and they are real, not latex, gelatin or plastic surgery.

[Arwen Melian]

Okay, well I have a theory of my own(that I conjured up with your help and opinions.)Maybe Tolkien created LOTR differently from The Hobbit because he wanted people to grow with the story ( even though he had no idea he would be making a sequel at the time he made The Hobbit.)He must have realized this when developing LOTR: The Hobbit was meant for children,
and children grow up. Therefore, Tolkien realized that since the reader is not a child any more, he /she would be more likely to read an adult novel. So it all comes down to this: Tolkien portrayed elves in a different way ( in The Hobbit) because it was a children's story. However, he changed the elves in LOTR because the readers were mostly adults. We can actually relate ourselves to the elves (the change of them from the Hobbit to LOTR) because we were all once very young and naive; happy and uncaring about the troubles of the world. Then, we became older (we grew with Tolkien's elves,)
becoming wiser and more open too the world (you see the elves changed when he made the Silmirillion and LOTR ,I guess he never pictured them as becoming more than happy tall fairy people; turning into angelic potentally dangerous immortals)Any opinions?

[Legolas]

Simple as this: The elves got more serious because the end of the world seemed rapidly approaching.

[Atariel]

I think that the elves in the Hobbit were happy and all sing-song because the only trouble was the fact that the dwarves (whom they didn't like anyway) had lost all their gold to a dragon (whom they hated even more than the dwarves), but in the Lord of the Rings, there is a posibility that they will all die, and there is a certainty that both Lothlorien and Rivendell will diminish.

[Aranel]

I suppose I will only be repeating the opinion of others,but I have to put my two cents in. *l*
I agree that things seem very different in The Hobbit.I have thought about the difference between the elves in that book and in LotR.It doesn't make sense to me that they had grown melancholy over the fact that time was nearing an end,because it was less than a hundred years between Bilbo's visit and Frodo's.That's nothing to an elf.And though it's a good argument about Tolkien not knowing what the Ring was when he wrote The Hobbit,he must have,because He had begun work on The Silmarillion decades before he wrote The Hobbit,and laid out the basic thought for the Ring then.

So here's my theory,ignoring reality and looking at it from the view point of Middle-earth.

First of all,as the Shadow deepend,it would have been very troublesome to the elves,more so than to other cultures before the effects could be seen.Because of their sensitivity to evil and nature,they would have marked the change.It may not have been so strong in Bilbo's time.Golum had the Ring and no one had heard of it since he found it and took off with it to the mountains.Though I imagine Elrond knew something was stirring in the time of Bilbo's first journey to Imladris,the Ring was still unfound.

I imagine that the musings of a very amateur lover of Middle-earth may not interest anyone,I had a darn lot of fun writing this post. [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]

[Lyra Greenleaf]

I'm sure the 'happy elf' thing is just cos the Hobbit is a childrens book and lotr isn't. Its been said before and i dont mind saying it again!

about the half-elven thing, this quote is from appendix a of rotk:

"the sons of earendil were elros and elrond, the peredhil or half-elven. In them alone the line of the heroic chieftans of the Edain of the First Age was preserved and after the fall of Gil-Galad the lineage of the High-Elven Kings was also in Middle Earth only represented by their descendants.
At the end of the First Age the Valar gave to the half-elven an irrevocable choice to which kindred they would belong. Elrond chose to be of Elven-kind, and became a master of wisdom. "

To me this sounds like he really did actually become elven, but if there is something that says different please tell me!

[The Saucepan Man]

I'm sure the 'happy elf' thing is just cos the Hobbit is a childrens book and lotr isn't. Its been said before and i dont mind saying it again!

I agree totally. The Hobbit was initially conceived as a children's story. At that time, it had little or no connection with JRRT's earlier writings on the Silmarillion. So, the characters are presented in a way that is appealing to the young reader.

In LotR, which establishes the connection between the events of the Silmarillion and those of The Hobbit, the Elves are of necessity required to be portrayed in a different, more serious, way - to bridge the gap between those in the Silmarillion and those of The Hobbit.

What intrigues me is that the portrayal of Hobbits and Dwarves changes little between The Hobbit and LotR. Hobbits, for example, start out as the perfect source for a "hero" of a children's tale, and become the perfect device for depicting the role of the "little man" in the struggle to defeat Sauron.

[doug*platypus]

Outside Middle-Earth answer:

The Hobbit was written a good twenty years earlier, and while key plot points did not change, things such as the nature of the elves and of the Necromancer did.


Inside Middle-Earth answer:

They were taking the p*ss out of the Dwarves.

(not pass)
Ai! Ai! A censorbot is come!

[ January 24, 2003: Message edited by: doug*platypus ]

[Guinevere]

Well, I think there are two sides to the elves. They're not always melancholy, or lofty. Remember how Sam described Galadriel(to Faramir):

"Proud and far-off as a snow-mountain, and as merry as any lass I ever saw with daisies in her hair in springtime."