what she means: the words “christmas tree” are used in the hobbit, and since we know that bilbo is the author of the hobbit, hobbits must have christmas which means there must be a middle earth jesus. but hobbits seem to be the only ones who have the concept of christmas which means it was probably a hobbit jesus. but frodo says in return of the king that no hobbit has ever intentionally harmed another hobbit so who crucified hobbit jesus?? were there other hobbit incarnations of religious figures?? was there hobbit moses?? did jrr tolkien even think about this at all??
listen…… all i wanted was to make a funny post….. that’s literally all i wanted
Breaking news of the day! Most characters who die in the Quenta Silmarillion die violently! I expect zero people who have read The Silmarillion to be surprised by that.
In other news, if you’re a Silmarillion character, simply knowing Túrin Turambar at some point in his relatively brief existence is just about as deadly as getting involved in the centuries-long pursuit of the Silmarils.
This is all in good fun, folks, because I can’t be the only person who likes crunching Silmarillion death stats on a Friday. But if you want the dull details on how I determined what went where, it’s below the jump.
I am not surprised by the fact that most characters in the Silm don’t die natural deaths (duh, the majority of characters don’t even need to snuff it, being immortal), but I AM surprised that the majority of deaths is actually unrelated to either Túrin or the Silmarils.
For that counterintuitive piece of information alone, it was worth crunching the numbers!
Also, wow, Túrin is nearly as deadly as all the Feanorians combined…way to go!
I do wonder what happened to Finrod’s ten companions though – shouldn’t they technically figure under “animal attack”? And wouldn’t Lúthien’s deaths count twice (once potentially Silmaril-related since she dies mourning Beren’s first death, and once unrelated when she dies of old age)?
(I hope this isn’t already too serious, I’m really just curious)
You certainly could count the companions of Finrod, which would definitely inflate that category. I only counted named characters, so Edrahil is on there but none of the others. You could certainly count Lúthien twice, although I didn’t just because her circumstance is so atypical as far as the usual eschatology of the Elves. She “died” but also returned to life without being reembodied through the usual process; did she actually, therefore, fully die? (The narrator, speaking of her choice, says she did: “Then she would become mortal, and subject to a second death, even as he …” [Silm, “B&L”]. But I’m also not sure he’s qualified to make that judgment!) So you’re welcome to include her! 🙂 It was just a little too much of a gray area for me.
I do find this post hilarious. I crunch data all the time, largely about Tolkien fandom but about The Silmarillion too. I had collected a dataset about death scenes in The Silmarillion as part of my historical bias research, and the data wasn’t terribly useful, but I hated to see it go to waste, so I literally pottered around one afternoon doing this because I wanted something low-key and relaxing to do, and playing with data is to me like gardening to a normal person. It’s the most half-assed and not fully thought out data I’ve ever posted! And I think it’s my second most popular post here ever. Oh Tumblr! 😀
Yesterday I saw the Silm fandom get referenced to in another post (completely irrelevant to the fandom), and I realized that we’re never addressed by anyone as the Tolkien fandom, not even by ourselves. And then I realized that it’s with good reason:
You wouldn’t know who the heck you’re talking about.
Ah, the days of my youth, when I was a callow LotR Book fan. Indeed I have slipped and slid and now I’m the Sil fan your parents warned you about.
I’m grateful for LOTR movies, because of them I discover the books. I’m also glad that I read The Silmarillion because it became my favorite book ever and there’s no turning back, it’s almost like my bible!
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