Корни персонажей Д.Р.Р.Толкиена
Gymnasium №2
The roots of some Tolkien’s characters.
Tolkien’s view on some events from the Bible
and archaic history.
Name: Yanov Andrey
Teacher: Mordasova L.M.
Voronezh 2004
CONTENTS
I. Introduction 3
II. Body
1. J.R.R.Tolkien: A biographical sketch
a) Tolkien’s birth 4
b) Tolkien’s childhood in South Africa 4
c) Tolkien's childhood in England 4
d) Tolkien's childhood fears 4
e) Tolkien's education at home 5
f) Tolkien's childhood books 5
g) Tolkien in elementary school 6
h) Tolkien learns some philology 6
i) Tolkien's mother dies 6
j) Tolkien in high school 7
k) Tolkien in Oxford 7
l) Tolkien after World War II 9
m) Tolkien now 10
2. The roots of some Tolkien characters 11
3. Tolkiens view on some events from
The Bible and archaic history 15
III. Conclusion 19
IV. List of used literature 20
V. Appendix 21
Introduction
I have many hobbies and one of them is reading. I like to read. Books
liberalize us, and it is just very interesting. My favorite kinds of
literature are fantasy, science fiction, myths and historical books. But
when I saw the film “The Lord Of The Rings” for the first time, I liked it
very much. I realized that there was something unusual in it that attracted
me. One day someone told me, that this film is a screen version of the
book, written by Tolkien. Then I decided to read the book. And when I read
its last page, I realized, that the world, that was described there is very
close to me. That is how my keening of Tolkien’s works started. I’ve read
the whole “The Lord Of The Rings”, “The Silmarillion”, “The Hobbit Or There
And Back Again”, some Tolkien’s poems, such as “Namarie” (which means
“farewell” in the “Quenya Lambe” (The Elvish Language)), “Oh, queen beyond
the western sees…” and other works. Besides I’ve read “The Biography Of
J.R.R.Tolkien”, written by H. Carpenter and many works of different famous
critics devoted to Tolkien. While reading such literature, I understand and
realize very interesting ideas of Tolkien, his philosophy, and it is very
interesting to know, what things influenced the creation of his characters
and his own world that he developed in “The Silmarillion”. And in my work
I’m trying to show you just some of those things.
J.R.R.Tolkien: A biographical sketch
Tolkien's birth
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born to Mabel Suffield and Arthur Tolkien in
South Africa on January 3, 1892.
On February 17,1894, Mabel gave birth to Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien,
J.R.R's only brother.
When Ronald (J.R.R)'s health worsened in 1895, the Tolkiens (except for
Arthur, who had to stay in order to wrap up business) left to Southampton.
On February 15, 1896, Arthur Tolkien, in South Africa, died due to a severe
hemorrhage.
Tolkien's childhood in South Africa
". . . many months later, when Ronald was beginning to walk, he stumbled on
a tarantula. It bit him, and he ran in terror across the garden until the
nurse snatched him up and sucked out the poison . . . Nevertheless, in his
stories he writes more than once of monstrous spiders with venomous bites"
(Carpenter 14)
"During the first year of the boy's life Arthur Tolkien made a small grove
of cypresses, firs and cedars. Perhaps this had something to do with the
deep love of trees that wood that would develop in Ronald" (Carpenter 14)
Tolkien's childhood in England
Since his father (the sole source of money) was dead, J.R.R. and his family
went to live with the Suffields (his maternal grandparents).
In the summer of 1896, the Tolkiens moved out of Birmingham to the hamlet
of Sarehole (located in the English countryside).
Tolkien's childhood fears
"An old farmer who once chased Ronald for picking mushrooms was given the
nickname 'The Black Ogre' by the boys . . . they began to pick up something
of the local vocabulary, adopting dialect words into their own speech:
'chawl' for a cheek of pork, 'miskin' for dustbin, 'pickelet' for crumpet,
and 'gamgee' for cotton wool. (Carpenter 21)
Tolkien's education at home
"Mabel soon began to educate her sons, and they could have had no better
teacher - nor she an apter pupil than Ronald, who could read by the time he
was four and had soon learnt to write proficiently." (Carpenter 21).
". . . his favorite lessons were those that concerned languages. Early in
his Sarehole days, his mother introduced him to the rudiments of Latin, and
this delighted him. He was just as interested in the sounds of the words as
their meanings, and she began to realize that he had a special aptitude for
language. (Carpenter 22).
"His mother taught him a great deal of botany, and he responded to this and
soon became very knowledgeable. But again he was more interested in the
shape and feel of a plant than in its botanical details. This was
especially true of trees. And though he liked drawing trees he liked most
of all to be with trees. He would climb them, lean against them, even talk
to them." (Carpenter 22)
Tolkien's childhood books
"He was amused by Alice in Wonderland, though he had no desire to have
adventures like Alice. He did not enjoy Treasure Island, nor the stories of
Hans Anderson, nor The Pied Piper. But he liked Red Indian stories and
longed to shoot with a bow and arrow. He was even more pleased by the
'Curdie' books of George Macdonald, which were set in a remote kingdom
where misshapen and malevolent goblins lurked beneath the mountains. The
Arthurian legends also excited him. But most of all he found delight in the
Fairy Books of Andrew Lang, especially the Red Fairy Book, for tucked away
in its closing pages was the best story he had ever read. This was the tale
of Sigurd who slew the dragon Fafnir: a strange and powerful tale set in
the nameless North." (Carpenter 22)
Tolkien's first experience with grammer
"'I desired dragons with a profound desire,', he said long afterwards. . .
. When he was about seven he began to compose his own story about a dragon.
'I remember nothing about it except a philological fact,' he recalled. 'My
mother said nothing about the dragon, but pointed out that one could not
say 'a green great dragon', but had to say 'a great green dragon'. I
wondered why, and still do. The fact that I remember this is possibly
significant, as I do not think I ever tried to write a story again for many
years, and was taken up with language.'" (Carpenter 24)
Tolkien in elementary school
In September of 1900, J.R.R. Tolkien entered into King Edward's School.
In order to prevent Ronald from walking several miles between the
countryside home and school, the Tolkiens moved from Sarehole to
Birmingham.
Due to school conflicts, Ronald Tolkien was transferred to King Phillip's
Academy for a short period.
Tolkien learns some philology
". . . he especially remembered 'the bitter disappointment and disgust from
schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of 'Great
Birnam Wood to high Dunisiane hill'; 'I longed to devise a setting by which
the trees might really march to war" (Carpenter 28)
"By inclination, his form-master Brewerton was a medievalist . . . if a boy
employed the term 'manure' Brewerton would roar out: 'Manure? Call it muck!
Say it three times! Muck, muck muck!'. He encouraged his students to read
Chaucer, and he recited the Canterbury Tales to them in the original Middle
English. To Ronald Tolkien's ears, this was a revelation, and he determined
to learn more about the history of the language." (Carpenter 28)
Tolkien's mother dies
"The New Year [1904] did not begin well. Ronald and Hilary were confined to
bed with measles followed by whooping-cough, and in Hilary's case by
pneumonia. The addition strain of nursing them proved too much for their
mother, and as she feard it proved 'impossible to go on'. By April 1904 she
was in hospital, and her condition was diagnosed as diabetes." (Carpenter
29)
"At the beginning of November 1904, she sank into a diabetic coma, and six
days later, on November 14, she died." (Carpenter 30)
". . . Perhaps his mother's death also had a cementing effect on his study
of languages. It was she, after all, who had been his first teacher and who
had encouraged him to take an interest in words. Now that she was gone he
would pursue that path relentlessly. And certainly the loss of his mother
had a profound effect on his personality. It made him into a pessimist . .
. Nothing was safe. Nothing would last. No battle would be won for ever."
(Carpenter 31)
Related to philosophy of THE LORD OF THE RINGS: Middle-Earth is never, ever
free from evil. The Simillirion states that Middle-Earth is destroyed and
all live in Valinor (quasi Middle-Earth) after the death of Morgroth (by
Turin, son of Thor).
Tolkien lives with his mother's aunt-in-law (in urban Edgbaston) along with
his brother Hillary.
"His feelings towards the rural landscape, already sharp from the earlier
severance that had taken him from Sarehole, now become emotionally charged
with personal bereavement. This love for the memory of the countryside of
