The elves on Lord of the Rings

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I don't know if I'm just being weird...but whenever I watch The Lord of the Rings I see the elves and I think that if I could be part of a world like that I would be one of the elves. I think they're aspie-like. They are described as being quiet, gentle beings. But as the movie shows can be the best fighters when put to the test. I like their bows and arrows because I doubt I'd ever be able to learn to fight with a sword, but have always found archery to be very interesting (I'm hoping to take lessons some day just for the heck of it). Has anyone else ever thought of the elves as possessing aspie-like qualities?

Yes. I always thought their interactions with the other beings to be kind of awkward and not really understanding the social structure.

Yea a perfect example would be when Legalos is in the bar playing a drinking game against Gimli he didn't understand a bit of it, made me chuckle a bit lol

Movie elves seem a bit aspie-like in not understanding humans very well. In the books (Silmarillion) , however, elves have a very long and rich culture and are pretty NT (whatever that means for an elf) within it. Two particular elves behaving badly may have had more aspie traits--Feanor and Eol. Feanor was a misunderstood genius and visionary, but fatally single-minded on some issues. Eol was a supreme craftsman, a recluse, and had problems with the opposite sex.

Have to agree about archery, though. I took it up because of LotR and it is a favorite relaxation for me.

I used to want to think of myself that way. To be that serene was a wonderful fantasy given that I am not, at all, serene. (Although I guess apparently give the outward appearance of it at times.)

I identify a bit more with Ents though in reality.

The Ents are cool. If I had my way, I'd be an Ent. I think I identify a little much with Sam.

Sam is very cool. Tolkien said he was the only main hobbit character to remain typically hobbitish throughout the entire book, and as such he viewed him as the main character (if there has to be one).

No, just culture clash.

Tom was a little "off" and ego-centric (which isn't a bad thing). Apart from his Elven wife, he kept to himself and his domain, and remained detached from the rest of the world.

I like Tom.

I relate to Sam because Sam was not the brightest or the bravest, but he was given a job and he took it seriously. Sam held it together because he had to. For his friend.

I always read the elves as being too internally political for my comfort level. They seemed to have so many rules. They appeared outwardly serene, but ultimately quite full of hidden strife and conflict.

The Ents are the ones who knew what to do. The Elves fled. And Sam just muddled through.

This is just my intepretation, and I've only read the book once and seen the movie twice, as opposed to several who have probably read it thirty times and seen the movie 50.

What I relate to about the Ents is that they were not originally linguistic creatures but were "given language" by another species. And they view things in such rich detail that each name for something is not a single word or even a few words, but an entire story about everything pertaining to whatever they are talking about. When speaking to other creatures, they have to carefully choose words the other creatures understand, by using a few words that only barely touch on the richly textured story they are aware of, because most creatures are too quick-moving and "hasty" to even listen to days or longer of Entish talk, let alone understand it.

I also identify a little bit with one small aspect of Tom Bombadil, which is that he is competent and powerful in his own territory but does not leave the small bit of land he lives on. In my areas of competence, I am extremely competent, but try to get me to do something "simple" from outside those areas, and I can't do it, so I have developed the strategy and habit of (mostly, when I can help it) sticking to my areas of competence. (Although this can give a false impression to people who assume I am competent in all other of the areas they expect.) But I don't have his personality or anything.

But mostly, it is Ents I really identify with. Because while I do not remember a long verbal story about everything around me, I do seem to get a lot more information out of my surroundings than usual (that is one component of overload for me, is sheer volume of less-filtered sensory data). And while I can be oblivious to the standard meanings most people give to things around them, I am deeply and in detail aware of other aspects of what they are like, how they interact with each other, how they interact with me, and so forth, just the basic pattern of things. And when I use words to describe them, I feel like I am choosing small elements of that much broader understanding, translating them into language, and force-fitting the language to conform to something approximating how other people will understand it.

Here's the relevant quotes from Tolkien, I've bolded the parts I'm referring to.

And then a few paragraphs of other things, and he comes back to that word:



The main difference (if it is a difference) being, that in the original way I conceive things before translating, there's no standard symbolic-language of its own back there, so to me it wouldn't be "the thing we are on, where I stand and look out on fine mornings, and think about the Sun, and the grass beyond the wood, and the horses, and the clouds, and the unfolding of the world," (which is only the short version in either Entish or the way I'd see things) it'd be the feeling and pattern of all that without the words tacked on, and it'd be very likely that the way I viewed such a thing in my mind would have different conceptual boundaries than English does (instead of being confined to only the thing that in English is seen as a "hill"), so it's not even a direct translation.

That all is why when I write, if I do not watch myself I put in huge amounts of concrete detail, which may seem repetitive and long-winded to someone who doesn't realize that for me, there is far more subtle difference and variation between the different supposedly-repeated parts, than other people seem to see in them. And also that to me, all those concrete details form integral parts of the pattern I am trying to get across overall. (It's not that I can't see the "big picture", it's that I see the "big picture" with all the details intact, rather than glossing over them as somehow irrelevant or incompatible with an overall pattern. I very much perceive the overarching patterns but see the details that form them as an indispensable part of them.)

So basically I relate to Ents in that my perception of the world is extremely high-resolution, and if I were to translate directly the way I think rather than using a huge amount of English glosses, it would take at least as long as Entish.

And this is one aspect of being autistic, that I relate better to autistic people who perceive this way, than to autistic people who seem to have latched onto language or some form of symbols (whether "picture thinking" or anything else) more heavily. Our own actual ability to use the language of people around us varies from terrible to excellent (or of course both in one person in different contexts), but that underlying pattern of perception is similar among people I relate to the most easily.

In the best cases that also helps us communicate things to each other that we can't to other people as easily. And to quote Jim Sinclair, when that actually happens for us (when among most people, and even among many autistic people, we're not on the same page as them perceptually), it's "like a starburst in a night sky" (which is how he described what happens when certain autistic people meet each other and experience a shared understanding far greater than what they normally get in other interactions). I feel very lucky to have finally met even a small number of people who share this trait with me, because it is so much less exhausting work to communicate with them (and language/symbol even at my best wears me out a good deal, even when I seem rather long-winded), and because I've gone through most of my life being considered weird or annoying (at best) for these exact traits.

I love this, anbuend! I remember once telling someone that I experience nature in high-resolution! I was struck by a description of an elf enjoying a tree by understanding what treeishness was. I like to think my understanding of a tree goes beyond "that thing over there that we tie a rope and a tire to". I often think that a mind-meld with folks would be the only way to really share what I am thinking. I wonder if someone could really handle another person's thoughts at that level.

In so far as there is much more about the Elves than the Ents in Lord of the Rings and the mythology of Middle Earth, it is easier for me to relate to them. But I love the rich complexity of Entish. Here is an essay about Entish: http://www.uib.no/people/hnohf/entish.htm .

From that essay:

I always was pretending I was an elf when I watched the movies as a child. Mostly for me it was their special connection with horses. I loved how they seemed to be speaking to their horses, Aragorn had this ability as well. I often feel I can speak to horses without actually saying anything and I feel a very close connection with them.

Last edited by horsegurl4190 on 25 Jul 2012, 7:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't feel that way about the elves, but then, I was fan of the books long before the movies came out and formed my impressions there. I identified most with Gollum, Grima and Aragorn, and, to a certain extent, with the hobbits.
Gollum because of his lack of self-control (which is very sad) and his addictive behavior, sensitivity to light and touch (it burns! It freezes!) and long solitude.
Grima as an abused outcast who ended up behaving more evilly than he wished to.
Aragorn for his isolation and the fact that his good deeds during that time went unrecognized/were punished. Misleading outward appearance.
The hobbits for their love of comfort, routine, peace, and the simple pleasures in life.

Now that I list them like that it might seem a bit odd that one person would identify with all four, but I did. If it seems immature, well, I read LoTR and the Silm for the first time at age 8.

If anything, I associated the elves with the cool kids. They are the elite, although some are more than others.

I've been an archery geek for 20+ years now.
I really connected to the elves, as a kid reading the books, because of how they made their equipment. They had sacred trees, depending on the particular group, from which they made bows and their arrow making was of superior quality.

Being into traditional archery, I have developed a technical and tactile appreciation for certain bows, woods, and arrows made of certain materials.

I was taken aback by the dirty and rough hewn equipment of the Uruks in the film, but really like the equipment that Legolas used, simply for the textures and lines.

The books talk about how playful the elves are when they come to Rivendell, They sing songs and dance, but are easily frightened and run off when Frodo tries to communicate with them in the Mirkwoods.

Maybe a composite of elvish culture could be something to which I would relate. I'm an avid hunter. I like archery. I live to be outdoors.

But, it is, after all, a fantasy. And life is so much better than a fantastic story.