JRR Tolkien's the Hobbit

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Marta Straková J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit: Issues in Adaptation Bachelor’s Thesis Supervisor: Jeff Smith, M.A., Ph.D. 2017 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography ........................................................................... Marta Straková Table of contents 1 The Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 2 2 The Problem of Fidelity in Adaptation ................................................................................................. 4 3 J.R.R. Tolkien; Life, work and The Hobbit .......................................................................................... 8 4 Sir Peter Robert Jackson ..................................................................................................................... 12 5 Characters ........................................................................................................................................... 14 5.1 Azog the Defiler .......................................................................................................................... 14 5.2 Thorin Oakenshield ..................................................................................................................... 17 5.3 Mr Bilbo Baggins ........................................................................................................................ 18 5.3.1 The Ring .............................................................................................................................. 22 5.4 Legolas ........................................................................................................................................ 23 5.5 Gollum ........................................................................................................................................ 24 5.6 The Dwarves ............................................................................................................................... 25 5.7 Female Characters ....................................................................................................................... 27 5.7.1 Tauriel ................................................................................................................................. 28 5.7.2 Galadriel .............................................................................................................................. 29 6 The Battle ............................................................................................................................................ 30 7 The Laws of Physics ........................................................................................................................... 32 7.1 The Goblin Cave – The Unexpected Journey ............................................................................. 33 7.2 The River of Molten Gold in The Desolation of Smaug ............................................................. 35 7.3 Legolas and the Gravitational Acceleration ................................................................................ 35 8 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 37 9 Works cited ......................................................................................................................................... 39 1 The Introduction This bachelor’s thesis presents a comparative analysis of the book The Hobbit, or There and Back Again written by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, which was first published in 1937 (although this thesis will be mainly concerned with the second edition from the year 1951), and it’s film trilogy adaptation released by Peter Jackson between years 2012 and 2014. At first, the thesis deals with the phenomenon of adaptation itself, specifically with the importance of fidelity towards the original work, and then it will provide particular examples of breaking this fidelity in the adaptation. The thesis will try to prove the importance of fidelity of the adaptation towards the book in the case of such an intricate storyline as is the one of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, which takes place in a very complex world. This world is called the Middle-Earth and it has its own origin, history, languages and peoples. The two stories are (in the context of the land and history of the Middle-Earth) originally linked only by the Ring, the wizard Gandalf, kinship between Gimli (the dwarf who is a part of the Fellowship of the Ring) and one of the dwarves in the Thorin’s company, and the relationship between Bilbo Baggins and Frodo Baggins. In the context of the Jackson’s film adaptation there is a number of additional links created. This thesis will deal with those primarily and it will try to come up with the solution of the question, whether it is beneficial for the story, or not. Those links mainly represent the additional characters. It will be argued that in most cases the artificially created links between the two stories are rather more disturbing than beneficial for both the story of The Hobbit and also, although to a lesser extent, for the story of The Lord of the Rings. 2 This thesis deals partly with the characters that appear in both versions of the story and comparison of their versions, partly with the characters that were invented for the movies, and also with some of the aspects of Tolkien’s world that are changed in those movies. In the end of each chapter or sub-chapter there will be also an alternative for each phenomenon described. However, the majority of problems and infidelities of the film could have been solved by shortening the runtime by half. For obvious reasons, the knowledge of all the previously mentioned novels and films is required from a reader of this thesis. 2 The Problem of Fidelity in Adaptation Although the history of adaptation is as long as the cinematographic history itself, the academic debate about that particular phenomenon has not been born earlier than in the middle of twentieth century. Mireya Aragay writes in her excellent publication Books in Motion: “The conjunction of the factors delineated above resulted in a binary, hierarchical view of the relationship between literature and film, where the literary work was conceived of as the valued original and while the film adaptation was merely a copy, and where the fidelity emerged as the central category of adaptation studies. The discourse of fidelity has exercised a firm, persistent grip within the field of adaptation studies.” (12) Although this view is not very common in the film studies nowadays, and despite the fact that the two media are radically different, with the novel being linguistic and descriptive and the film primarily visual, the importance of fidelity towards the original source is not an altogether forgotten or neglected criterion. Neither is it a useless one. By the act of taking a book and trying to translate it into a film the filmmaker shows either his love for the story of the book, in which case he should intend to change as little as possible about it, or he admits that he has no idea of his own and seeks help in literature. In such a case it is generally felt that the filmmaker owes to the author of the original story to be faithful to the book. As Brian McFarlane writes in his essay: "First, it shouldn't be necessary after several decades of serious research into the processes and challenges of adaptations to insist that "fidelity" to the original text (however distinguished) is a wholly inappropriate and unhelpful criterion for either understanding or judgement"(15). In the case of The Hobbit this concept of fidelity to the text is definitely neither inappropriate nor unhelpful, which is the point of view from which will this thesis approach the story in question. The reason for that is the greater context in which the original story is embedded; The Hobbit is 4 not an altogether finished story. The author of the book, J.R.R. Tolkien, wrote also The Silmarillion, which precedes the story of The Hobbit, and also the epic trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, in which the story continues. He invented whole new world with its races, languages and history, and therefore the individual stories must be viewed in a broader context. It is possible to find examples of good adaptation both among faithful and unfaithful ones in the history of cinematography. But general quality of the adaptation is not the primarily discussed topic of this thesis, for it is more interested in fidelity towards the original story, as was already mentioned. The amount of emphasis on the fidelity of the adaptation should be judged on the basis of several criteria. First of them should definitely be the extensiveness of the original story, not only the part that is being transferred into a movie; the filmmakers should take into consideration prequels and sequels of the book they intend to turn into a movie. This includes for example not omitting important characters who may play some significant role in the future of the story, or not using characters who are either not mentioned at all in the original story, or who are dead (see the chapter Azog the Defiler). It is also not very wise to use characters who first appear in the sequel

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