Arwen / Aniron

Felix Oscar <tree01 DeleteThis @inreach.com> wrote:

 > In the Enya song she says "Aniron" which means Evenstar/Arwen. Did
 > Tolkien use the word Aniron?

It does not mean Arwen. In Salo's neo-sindarin, it is supposed to mean
"love".

Aníra- "to desire" is attested in the King's letter (Sauron Defeated
pages 129-131). David Salo used this word when he had to translate
"love" which - as far as I'm aware - doesn't exist in Sindarin. However,
it might as well mean "desire a cup of tea"...

(I'm not learned in Sindarin or any other elvish tongues... Please
correct me if that's wrong)

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Quoth tree01 DeleteThis @inreach.com (Felix Oscar) in article
<22986a60.0409280854.2d13de29 DeleteThis @posting.google.com>:
 > Is the stuff in the film with Arwen like the book?

Very little of what you see of Arwen in the first movie matches the
book. You don't really see her much in the second movie (the one
scene that springs to mind is a dream-sequence, which certainly wasn't
in the book... nor was its context, for that matter). As for the
third movie, every scene with her after the destruction of the Ring is
pretty close (including her mourning Aragorn's eventual death), but
the stuff before that differs greatly from the book (both her actual
scenes and Elrond's comments about her).

In short, Arwen's character and role were changed about as much as
anyone's in going from the book to the film.

 > The first scene with Arwen, when she causes the river to rise up, in
 > the book is a different elf.

Elrond, in fact. Or potentially just the river itself, but I think
most people agree that Elrond was behind it (with Gandalf's help).

Glorfindel (the "different elf") wasn't involved with the river
rising, just with driving the remaining Ringwraiths into it once the
flood came.

 > I thought the Arwen stuff slowed down the film but it had nice music.

Including Arwen a bit more prominently in the movies was probably a
reasonable choice, though I might have been happier if fewer changes
had been made in doing so. (Yes, I realize that there's rather a lot
of tension between those two statements.)

 > In the Enya song she says "Aniron" which means Evenstar/Arwen. Did
 > Tolkien use the word Aniron?

I don't believe so. David Salo presumably constructed it from
something, but I don't know enough about the languages to say what his
inspiration was.
    Steuard Jensen<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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On Tue, 28 Sep 2004 22:33:02 GMT, sbjensen RemoveThis @midway.uchicago.edu
(Steuard Jensen) wrote:

  >> The first scene with Arwen, when she causes the river to rise up, in
  >> the book is a different elf.
 >
 >Elrond, in fact. Or potentially just the river itself, but I think
 >most people agree that Elrond was behind it (with Gandalf's help).

Gandalf stated it quite clearly. It was Elrond who caused the River
to flood across the ford. Gandalf added his own touch - the crest of
the waves on the river resemebled horses. All the waters in Rivendell
were under Elrond's control.

 >Glorfindel (the "different elf") wasn't involved with the river
 >rising, just with driving the remaining Ringwraiths into it once the
 >flood came.

Gandalf also spoke to that. Glorifindel knew Elrond would send the
flood if the Nazgul tried to cross the ford. No evil was going to
enter the Valley on Elrond's watch; not if he could help it.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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tree01.RemoveThis@inreach.com (Felix Oscar) wrote in message news:<22986a60.0409280854.2d13de29.RemoveThis@posting.google.com>...
 > Is the stuff in the film with Arwen like the book?
 > The first scene with Arwen, when she causes the river to rise up, in
 > the book is a different elf.
 > I thought the Arwen stuff slowed down the film but it had nice music.
 >
 > In the Enya song she says "Aniron" which means Evenstar/Arwen. Did
 > Tolkien use the word Aniron?

Arwen is very discreet in the book. The film is intended for teenagers' imagination.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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"Felix Oscar" <tree01 RemoveThis @inreach.com> wrote in rec.arts.books.tolkien:
 >Is the stuff in the film with Arwen like the book?

No. Arwen's character is at the center of most of the biggest
differences between the movie and the book.

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"Steuard Jensen" <sbjensen.RemoveThis@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:yEl6d.27$x5.1166@news.uchicago.edu...

[snipped]

 > Very little of what you see of Arwen in the first movie matches the
 > book. You don't really see her much in the second movie (the one
 > scene that springs to mind is a dream-sequence, which certainly wasn't
 > in the book... nor was its context, for that matter). As for the
 > third movie, every scene with her after the destruction of the Ring is
 > pretty close (including her mourning Aragorn's eventual death), but
 > the stuff before that differs greatly from the book (both her actual
 > scenes and Elrond's comments about her).
 >
 > In short, Arwen's character and role were changed about as much as
 > anyone's in going from the book to the film.

Agreed. But to be fair though, Jackson did draw partially on the Arwen stuff
in the Appendix (I think he used this argument himself to try to justify his
changes).<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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Quoth "Hellekin" <hellekin_III.TakeThisOut@hotmail.com> in article
<cjgusq$ek3$1@hercules.btinternet.com>:
 > "Steuard Jensen" <sbjensen.TakeThisOut@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
  > > In short, Arwen's character and role were changed about as much as
  > > anyone's in going from the book to the film.

 > Agreed. But to be fair though, Jackson did draw partially on the
 > Arwen stuff in the Appendix (I think he used this argument himself
 > to try to justify his changes).

Oh, certainly so, and I never said that Jackson's changes to her role
entirely a bad thing. But her character did come across very
differently than in the book, and I've got to say that her role in the
films actually left me a bit confused. I felt like she played at
least three different characters: the bold maiden who rides Frodo to
safety and defies the Nazgul, the remote lover who inspires Aragorn
from afar, and the damsel in distress whose, er, life force has
somehow become linked to the Ring in a way that is never remotely
explained. And the thing is, the movies don't seem to bridge
between those "different characters" very smoothly.

Still, I enjoyed the movies, and the only part where I felt like
Arwen's character detracted from them for me was Elrond's report to
Aragorn of that mysterious Ring-induced illness... so she wasn't even
on screen at the time. (Interesting thought: in the movie, was
Aragorn's willingness to sacrifice thousands of lives in a futile
assault on the Black Gate really meant for the good of the world, or
was it out of a more selfish desire for Arwen in particular to live?)

    Steuard Jensen<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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"Steuard Jensen" <sbjensen.RemoveThis@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:Q%U6d.5$45.540@news.uchicago.edu...

[snipped]

 > Still, I enjoyed the movies, and the only part where I felt like
 > Arwen's character detracted from them for me was Elrond's report to
 > Aragorn of that mysterious Ring-induced illness... so she wasn't even
 > on screen at the time. (Interesting thought: in the movie, was
 > Aragorn's willingness to sacrifice thousands of lives in a futile
 > assault on the Black Gate really meant for the good of the world, or
 > was it out of a more selfish desire for Arwen in particular to live?)

Yes - I think this is perhaps the most odd of all the changes. Jackson could
justify many of his alterations as being driven by "cinematic" adaptation
while still remaining faithful to the broad themes of the books (yes broad
is a key word here!)

But it seems to me that the ring-illness really causes seismic tremors to
several of these themes. For example, I see the Third Age partly in the
context of the 'Rise of Man' as it were - and the Fourth Age as mankind
establishing itself and laying the foundations of the world as we know it.
But I suspect Tolkien's perspective may have been less this "Rise of Man"
and more the "Waning of the Elves". Jackson's 'ring-illness' change, in my
mind, plays with this really broad theme and shifts the emphasis in a way
that isn't so obvious in the book at least in terms of characterisation.

You are right to point out that changes to Arwen are inevitably changes to
Aragorn. It is almost akin re-inventing the character of the Fool in King
Lear. In the case of the Fool, Lear himself would be transformed by any
changes to his "mirror entity".

It is interesting in the context of LOTR that many characters have very
important pairings and playing around with one member of those pairs really
has a big impact on the other. Yes Jackson drops Bombadil - so long as he
drops Goldberry. He drops Beregond and Gan Buri Gan but it would be surely
impossible (to use an extreme example) for him to have dropped Merry without
Pippin (or Frodo without Sam). Actually - come to think of it this pairings
game is quite fun...<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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Hellekin <hellekin_III.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

 > It is interesting in the context of LOTR that many characters have
 > very important pairings and playing around with one member of those
 > pairs really has a big impact on the other. Yes Jackson drops
 > Bombadil - so long as he drops Goldberry. He drops Beregond and Gan
 > Buri Gan but it would be surely impossible (to use an extreme
 > example) for him to have dropped Merry without Pippin (or Frodo
 > without Sam). Actually - come to think of it this pairings game is
 > quite fun...

Yes. Legolas/Gimli is another example.

But I think it goes further than that. Tolkien's work is so
interconnected that slight changes affect nearly the whole book. I admit
that removing Bombadil is probably the easiest change to make, but
removing the Scouring of the Shire does change the feel of the story.

Getting back to the changes to Arwen, and the consequent changes to
Aragorn, this has knock-on effects that require changes to Denethor and
Theoden (otherwise Aragorn looks silly), and possibly also to Faramir
(again, Aragorn has to be the noblest).

Once you start picking at the weave of the story, it is hard to stop it
all unravelling, especially such a tightly-woven story as LotR.
(Un)luckily Jackson was able to plug the gaps with special effects.

Christopher

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On 28 Sep 2004 09:54:48 -0700, tree01 DeleteThis @inreach.com (Felix Oscar) wrote:

 >Is the stuff in the film with Arwen like the book?

*sigh*

And to think that before the movies existed, people only asked stupid
questions like "Is Frodo gay?" and "Was Tolkien a racist?" If nothing
else, Peter Jackson has at least given us a new variety of questions
that we can mock and ridicule.

Morgoth's Curse<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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sbjensen RemoveThis @midway.uchicago.edu (Steuard Jensen) wrote in message news:

 > (Interesting thought: in the movie, was
 > Aragorn's willingness to sacrifice thousands of lives in a futile
 > assault on the Black Gate really meant for the good of the world, or
 > was it out of a more selfish desire for Arwen in particular to live?)

An interesting question indeed. One that I'd venture is more clearly
answered by the movies than the books. In the movies, Aragorn has
dumped Arwen, so saving their relationship can't be his motive. One
could argue that Elrond's news that Arwen is dying is his sole impetus
for taking up Anduril and "becoming what he was born to be." But by
then he's already declared to Boromir that he plans to go to Minas
Tirith and save their people -- he seems already committed to
defeating Sauron and claiming the throne before he receives news of
Arwen's illness.

In the book it's more ambiguous. It's clear that at the outset at
least, Aragorn's primary motivation for claiming the throne of Gondor
is to satisfy Elrond's decree that no mortal less than the the King of
the re-united realms of Arnor and Gondor will marry his daughter. But
of course Aragorn's hope is tied up with the saving of the West and
all that is good, so it's hard to describe his willingness to
sacrifice lives at the Black Gate as entirely selfish.

sbjensen RemoveThis @midway.uchicago.edu (Steuard Jensen) wrote in message news:

 > (Interesting thought: in the movie, was
 > Aragorn's willingness to sacrifice thousands of lives in a futile
 > assault on the Black Gate really meant for the good of the world, or
 > was it out of a more selfish desire for Arwen in particular to live?)<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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Christopher Kreuzer <spamgard.RemoveThis@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
: Once you start picking at the weave of the story, it is hard to stop it
: all unravelling, especially such a tightly-woven story as LotR.
: (Un)luckily Jackson was able to plug the gaps with special effects.

Tightly woven? Given that Aragorn was all set to marry Eowyn and Arwen
did not really exist until the last minute in terms of the writing
of the book I do not think LotR is really all that tightly woven.
"Strider" starts out as a hobbit, and much of what he says and does
remains the same despite the fact that the character was totally altered.
The history of the writing of the book shows that fundamental changes
in the story and characters could be introduced without changing
much of the existing story.

Stephen
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stephen DeleteThis @nomail.com <stephen DeleteThis @nomail.com> wrote:
> Christopher Kreuzer <spamgard DeleteThis @blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>> Once you start picking at the weave of the story, it is hard to stop
>> it all unravelling, especially such a tightly-woven story as LotR.
>> (Un)luckily Jackson was able to plug the gaps with special effects.
>
> Tightly woven? Given that Aragorn was all set to marry Eowyn
> and Arwen did not really exist until the last minute in terms of the
> writing of the book I do not think LotR is really all that tightly
> woven. "Strider" starts out as a hobbit, and much of what he says
> and does remains the same despite the fact that the character was
> totally altered. The history of the writing of the book shows that
> fundamental changes in the story and characters could be introduced
> without changing much of the existing story.

Hmm. I am sure something deep and meaningful is being touched upon here,
revealing something about JRRT's writing style and its flexibility or
otherwise, but I can't quite put my finger on it just now. I definitely
want to think about this some more...

Christopher

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