But I think Tolkien had an excellent point in choosing it, for all proper journeys and adventures must surely lead us Home, whether that is the place wherefrom we set out or a destination we go in search of. It is the whole point of life, finding this place, this Home, and it is the reason such tales are the very definition of Story: someone setting out in search of something they lack or to thwart some evil that threatens everything they love. Is that not the story of your own life, whether successful or not? You leave Home (or home) to go and establish your own or find it for the first time or perhaps to prepare yourself to continue what you will inherit from another. It's what we are all looking for and hoping to find, strangely thinking popularity, money, or power will somehow give it us. But as the old Proverb says, 'better a meal of vegetables where love is than feasting with strife.' Just look at celebrity culture, they are some of the least happy people on the planet; why then would we want to emulate them?
I've finally slogged through the 'Hobbit' movies again and that seems to be the whole point of the tale, at least once you weed out the 2-3 hours of pointless orc thrashing that does little to nothing to advance the plot and try and forget the expulsion of the Necromancer which while certainly an interesting story, had little to do with this one, and also the epic battle of Five Armies, which really should not have been all that epic! If you can weed out all the extra clutter, there are several scenes to wrench the heart strings and remind us of what is truly important. There's the scene with the greed obsessed Thorin confronting Bilbo, thinking he has the arcenstone (which he does) but finds him fiddling with an acorn instead and they talk for a moment of gardens and trees and the comforts of home. Then you have the several scenes in which Bard is valiantly defending his children and people, seeing what no one else can: the gold and dragon mean nothing in the end, only the people that are hurt or helped; you really do pity Alfrid as he runs off in woman's garb clutching his beloved gold to his chest. And then there is the whole idea of the dwarves setting off to reclaim their wasted homeland, which gets lost somewhere in the middle third of the second movie. I won't even get into the whole elf subplot, that really gets strange and is quite beyond my comprehension!
The heart is there, if you can find it, and it could have been a lovely movie all about finding home and what's important in life...but it wasn't, we'll have to leave that to the next generation, Sam and Frodo do a good job so therein I'll be content. What about you? Is your story an action packed, meaningless mess? Do you need to choose, like Thorin, what is truly important? What can you do to take a step closer to finding Home, be it There or Back Again?
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