Good News from the Shire?
BY KARDELEN KALA (TRIN/PREP)
kala@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
It was the summer of second grade. I remember being in Foça, where my parents used to rent a summer house every year, bored out of my mind. It was probably around 40 degrees, which does not feel nice at all, especially under direct sunlight at noon. Most of my friends didn't mind; they seemed immune to the heat. They were interested only in playing outside. I remember thinking that they were going to kill themselves of sunstroke and that was their business! I preferred to stay inside at least until four o'clock. But, as I said, I was also bored out of my mind. All cartoons had already been watched, all games played, all jokes told. Then my father appeared with something that would change it all, forever and ever. It was called The Hobbit.
Thus began my long love affair with the world JRR Tolkien created. Middle Earth engulfed me in only a couple of hours. At first, as I was seven years old, The Hobbit seemed long and hard to understand. There seemed to be no end to the descriptive passages. The story seemed long-winded and slow-going. But, as many people definitely agree (the book has never been out of print since World War II), it's almost impossible not to enjoy The Hobbit, with our reluctant little adventurer Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, the all powerful wizard (he is in fact the equivalent of a demigod in Tolkien's mythology) with a sense of humor as well as a quick temper, and of course the thirteen dwarves (this is how Tolkien spells the plural of the word "dwarf" throughout all his works), who, ever complaining, create more problems for themselves than they solve.
As the years passed, I did seek other works of fantastic literature, among them the famous Lord of the Rings by the same author, as well as his book of legends, The Silmarillion. I also studied various world mythologies at length, learned to spot and analyze references, similarities, and influences. But The Hobbit has never lost its special place in my heart. I was enraged to find out, as they were adapting the Lord of the Rings for the big screen, that The Hobbit was going to be excluded. How could something so essential to the whole story, something so good, be ignored like that? To me, it demonstrated a lack of understanding and respect towards a creation which only makes sense in its entirety. And as far as I am concerned, I was proved to be right by the finished work itself. (Believe me when I say that I wish I had been completely mistaken.) However, despite this experience, I felt cautiously optimistic upon hearing that there was going to be a film adaption of The Hobbit. It's going to be in two parts, which sounds promising, unless it is nothing but a scheme to bring in more money at the box office. In any case, it sounds like a suitable piece of news for JRR Tolkien's 118th birthday on 3 January. I hope everything that makes the story a success, all that is great about it, can remain intact in the finished product. I hope that the heart and soul of The Hobbit is not sacrificed for mundane Hollywood concerns. After all, who would want to watch dear ol' Bilbo from Bag's End get himself out of the frying pan into the fire (repeatedly) except people who truly love him?