4 Questions Tolkien Never Answered ...

did tolkien's elves really have pointed ears or is that just a movie thing what happened to radagast after the events of the lord of the rings and who was legolas mother hi everyone this is robert welcome to in deep geek on this channel we cover the best in fantasy and science fiction books and tv shows the lord of the rings a song of ice and fire the witcher and so on if you like the sound of that there's a subscribe button in the bottom right of your screen tolkien's legendarium is famously deep and complex but there are some surprising things that tolkien never actually clarified some of them have been debated by tolkien scholars for decades now first did tolkien's elves actually have pointed ears this may sound like a stupid question because in popular culture elves definitely have pointed ears and in all the film adaptations of the hobbit and the lord of the rings they do too and the talking society similarly is quite categorical yes they say elves have pointed ears so why the debate because the fact remains that in all the various descriptions of elves that we have in the legendarium tolkien never mentioned their ears he describes their height their hair their eyes their voices but never a mention of their ears and there are some occasions when humans are described as looking like elf lords aragorn for example and there are times when you think tolkien probably should mention the ears if it really was a defining characteristic for example in the unfinished tales and again in morgoth's ring when tolkien explicitly talks about how hard it is to tell elf and human children apart in their early years the evidence that tolkien's elves did have pointed ears actually only comes from a couple of rather obscure sources first there's a letter he wrote to the howton mifflin company who were in charge of drawings for the american edition of the hobbit in order to help them he provides a description of bilbo a hobbit obviously rather than an elf thus a round jovial face is only slightly pointed and elvish hair short and curling brown the implication here is that in tolkien's mind elvish ears were pointed in some way the problem of course is that this isn't a direct description of elves ears and the word elvish without capitalization and in inverted commas to someone who evidently didn't know much about tolkien's world and so wouldn't know what tolkien's elves looked like was almost certainly a colloquial use of the word the concept of an elvish appearance predates tolkien by centuries he clearly relied on it in a description of hobbits to someone unfamiliar with his work but that doesn't mean his elves had pointed ears secondly there's an even more obscure reference in his etymology of elvish words in which he defines the element lass l-a-s as meaning leaf hence legolas meaning greenleaf and noted that the quendian ears were more pointed and leaf-shaped than human and that lass can also mean ears or hearing implying a linguistic link between the shape of leaves and hearing again nitpickers could point out that tolkien never published this he wrote it before he wrote the lord of the rings that christopher tolkien couldn't quite make out all of the words in his father's handwriting here and so on but the elven link between leaves and ears or hearing is definitely established so did tolkien's elves have pointed ears in my view probably but we can't be a hundred percent sure because tolkien never described elves ears in his published materials and they probably weren't very pointy to allow for the frequent cases of uncertainty over whether particular characters are elves or humans instead tolkien seems to rely on readers to have an understanding of what elvish looks meant from fairy tales and the like although some rely on his silence to argue that elves didn't have pointed ears i think it's more likely that he assumed people would imagine pointed ears and so didn't feel the need to say so in any event pictures of his elves almost always with pointed ears were definitely in circulation before tolkien died and he never sought to contradict any of them he was it would appear okay with us imagining his elves with pointed ears even if he never explicitly said that they did have them second what happened to radagast as one of the astari radagast was one of the more powerful characters in middle earth less powerful than sarah mann and gandalf in his order to be sure but important nonetheless which makes the fact that he seemingly just disappeared after the main events of the lord of the rings or even during them even more intriguing radagast was one of the five maya sent to assist the peoples of middle earth against sauron the five seemed to take different approaches to this task radagast we're told in the unfinished tales became enamored of the many beasts and birds that dwelt in middle-earth and forsook elves and men and spent his days among the wild creatures he may have abandoned elves and men but not entirely his fellow wizards it would seem when everyone thought sarah man was one of the good guys radagast helped him hunt for the one ring in the gladden fields near his home in ross gobel and it was he who unwittingly got gandalf captured by sarah mann passing on sarah mann summons to all thank to gandalf of course it was also he who unwittingly rescued gandalf as well sending gwy here there with tidings for him all of which was probably a bit embarrassing for radagast sarah mann had been disdainful of him all along not even wanting to go to middle-earth with him in the first place sarah mann had played him knowing that gandalf would trust radagast radegast did what gandalf asked gathered information about the movements of the enemy and asked why here to go and tell gandalf and sarah mann about it and then he disappeared elrond sent scouts out to scour the land and some went to radagast's old home in uroskobel only to find that he wasn't there and that's the last we hear of him he isn't mentioned at all in all of the rest of the lord of the rings and tolkien never said or wrote down what happened to him the only clue we have is tolkien's assertion that of all the astari only one gandalf remained faithful to their original task and certainly radagast did not return to the west with gandalf so although we're not told explicitly it seems that radagast perhaps being burned by sarah man's betrayal abandoned his task there's no hint that he turns to evil or anything like that he just fell in love with the wildlife of middle earth and decided to stay he was no traveller politician or fighter so the actual war against sauron or mission with the ring probably wasn't for him anyway in short he probably just found himself a nice little spot in nature and hunkered down he was never mentioned again because he didn't want to be involved he didn't want anyone to find him ever who or what was tom bombadil this is one of the enduring mysteries of tolkien's legendarium he didn't appear in the movies but tom bombadil is an unforgettable character in the books he's impossibly ancient ridiculously powerful and yet silly singing stupid songs all the time wearing outlandish clothes and doing cheap magic tricks with the one ring as if it were nothing to him perhaps it was nothing to him he saves frodo and his friends a couple of times gives them a rest and good advice then largely disappears from the narrative there's a brief discussion at the council of elrond as to whether he should have been given the ring for its protection before this is dismissed because tom would probably just throw it away or forget where he put it it would mean nothing to him so who was tom bombadil well i've done a full video on it if you want a full answer from me but it's fair to say that j.r.r tolkien never gave us a full answer himself instead he openly admits that tom bombadil is an enigma he represents something that i feel important said tolkien though i would not be prepared to analyze the feeling precisely i would not however have left him in if he did not have some kind of function tom bombadil is not plot important tolkien could have left him out completely as peter jackson did without the central plot being disrupted but he is world important he represents something about the nature of middle earth the environment that tolkien clearly was passionate about tolkien disliked allegory with a vengeance but recognized that it was inevitable that an author's worldview would leak into the stories they wrote and tolkien loved the rural life the connection between humans and the world we live in tom bombadil in some way that tolkien couldn't quite define represented that and the need to just enjoy life rather than always be striving to achieve something but as tolkien couldn't bring himself to cast that feeling categorically into neatly analyzed words perhaps we shouldn't either this is one of those things that tolkien didn't answer deliberately he wanted tom bombadil to be an enigma so that's how he should remain finally who was legolas mother this may sound like quite a niche nerdy question to ask but given how detailed tolkien was about the family trees of the ancient elves and the silmarillion it's quite an oversight we know his father thranduil who played quite a role in the hobbit it was he who was the elven king in northern merkwood who captured the dwarves on routes to arable and from whose prison bilbo rescued them in the barrels down the river this obviously adds an extra layer to gimli and legolas relationship legolas's dad had imprisoned gimli's dad for trespassing when they were really just starving to death but anyway thranduil gets two mentions in the silmarillion and a few more in the lord of the rings he appears to have been on the forefront of the cinderin elves push eastwards millennia ago as we read in the appendices to the lord of the rings connected to the second age many of the syndar passed eastward and established realms in the forests far away the chief of these were thranduil in the north of greenwood the great and keleborn in the south of the forest we know kellerbourne's wife of course that's galadriel and the two of them eventually moved even further south to lothlorien but thranduil seems to have stayed in northern merkwood and at some point he seems to have got a mate and had a son legolas the hobbit movies come up with a bit of history here that legolas mother had died at gundam bad in ages past that she had loved him more than life itself more than hinting at an unspoken tragic backstory but tolkien never gets into any of that in truth the only thing tolkien does sort of hint at is around the exact type of elf she was thranduil legolas's father was a cinderin elf like kellerborn but ruled over the sylvan elves the wood elves of northern merkwood intriguingly legolas when talking to gandalf self-identifies as a sylvan elf a wood elf perhaps as prince of the realm he is just identifying with his people rather than his father's race but i personally tend to think that it means that he was himself half sylvan the fact that thranduil's wife was not mentioned when discussing his move to murkwood suggests that perhaps he wasn't married then and the fact that thranduil then didn't move on suggests that perhaps he had found a reason to stay he found a wife and his son legolas is there for both sindar and sylvan one of the nobility and one of the everyday elves of merkwood which seems about right for legolas if you'd like to see more lord of the rings videos like this please click on the link on the left of your screen or if you'd like to support this channel or get access to some content i produce exclusively for my patrons please click on the link on the right of your screen that's all for this time thanks for watching and i'll see you again soon you

Channel: In Deep Geek

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Keywords: in deep geek, deep geek, tolkien, lord of the rings, the lord of the rings, middle earth, did elves have pointy ears, who is tom bombadil, who was legolas mother, what happened to radagast, what happened to radagast the brown, radagast, tom bombadil, elves, legolas, thraduil

Id: aframLq7Q5w

Length: 13min 20sec (800 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 20 2021