The Life Expectancy of Hobbits

[JesusA (imported)]

Do you know your Dwarves from your Hobbits? Your Elves from Men? Any idea on how the characters from JRR Tolkien's works break down by race or gender? Emil Johansson (http://lotrproject.com/about.php) of the Lord of the Rings Project (LOTR Project) (http://lotrproject.com/statistics/), which aims to place every character in the fictional universe in a family tree, has gathered a database of 923 characters from the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and the posthumously published works including Silmarillion to look at indicators such as population, age distribution and life expectancy. On his web site are several charts that show a breakdown by race and gender and the decline of the longevity of Men.

http://lotrproject.com/statistics/

[bobover3 (imported)]

It's obvious Tolkien had many more male than female characters, but this doesn't apply to the races as a whole. Dwarves had few females for reasons Tolkien described in an appendix, but there's no reason given to suppose the other races didn't have equal numbers of male and female. The chart also omits orcs and trolls, about whose reproduction we can only speculate. One character does comment somewhere that "the orcs have been breeding in the hills." We also know that Saruman cross-bred orcs and men to create his Uruk-Hai, so we might suppose orcs capable of human-like reproduction. (Tolkien's horror at this miscegenation dates him as an Imperial Brit.)

[moi621 (imported)]

Three Rings for the Elven Kings under the sky

Seven for the Dwarf Lords in the Halls of Stone.

Nine for Mortal men, doomed to die

One for the Dark Lord, on his Dark Throne

In the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie.

I guess mortality is relative because the age of man came and the

time of the Elves has passed.

Moi the Immortal

While I Exist, So Does My Universe.

Beware those who dwell in my Universe

[Paolo]

I think that's a population of 1.

[butterflyjack (imported)]

Hehe Paolo...Nice avatar, by the way...Did you carve it? Jackie

[Riverwind (imported)]

Has anybody noticed the number of women in J R R Tolkiens works have about the same amount of females as the Bible. Maybe he wront that too.

River

[moi621 (imported)]

It depends on the race and their life spans.

The more immortal, the less need for procreation, fewer female to male births. Like China today, sort of.

Mankind being most mortal requires the half and half sex ratio. Dwarfs, somewhat fewer females.

Also, as I remember Orcs are Elves who have been twisted into another form.

I WILL NOT forgive Peter Jackson for dropping the chapter, "The Scouring of the Shire".

And the point that the great war reached and forever changed the furthest area, home. The Shire.

Moi

[bobover3 (imported)]

I've heard that Jackson's new film of The Hobbit will have as many as 3 parts. Can anyone confirm?

That's way too much for a relatively short book, even one packed with characters and adventures. I hope he doesn't add his own material to "improve" Tolkien.

[moi621 (imported)]

Confirmed.

He is making it into three parts and is making up some new characters.

One not yet revealed part for Stephan Colbert and Evangeline Lilly will be a wood elf.

Moi

:realpisse about the absence of "The Scouring of the Shire".

[humanbean (imported)]

i wouldn't take this survey's results too seriously. he was only counting "on-screen" characters, & i don't think Tolkien really wanted(or found it impractical) to give women equal billing as heroes and/or villians. if Tolkien were still around to be asked, i think he would probably say that the gender distribution was 50/50 across the board. And it's not just Tolkien doing this; in the D&D groups i've played in, male characters outnumber female by about 5 to 1. this does seem to vary with race though. 4 or 5 to 1 was what i was seeing for humans. roughly the same for gnomes & halflings. 2 or 3 to 1 for elves. 10 or 20 to 1 for dwaves & half-orcs.