"In Tolkien’s LOTR, Do All Non-Humans Have Pointy Ears?" Topic

Aside from Men, who else on Middle Earth has rounded ears? Or are they the only ones?

Dan

Since orcs are tortured elves, they have them.
Never looked at dwarves. Hobbits have them. An interesting observation.

Starz is playing Fellowship of the Ring tonight, and looking at the meeting with Elrond at Rivendell got me wondering.

So far it looks like the ears of Dwarves are hidden behind lots of hair. And helmets. And probably even more hair. And beards.

Dan

Dwarves have rounded ears. link

Can't tell what ears cave trolls have, they look so tiny in the film.

The again, I'm not sure if that was ever specified anywhere by Tolkien.

Dan

Tolkien wrote much on the histories and natures of the various races which populated his world, but not much in way of actual physical descriptions. I think much of it is left to the individual readers imagination.

I think Tolkien described Legolas as having dark colored hair; yet just about every image of Legolas that I have seen shows him with blonde hair. Jackson's movie, the cartoon movie, and various drawings all show him with blonde hair.

Many years ago when I was painting LOTR figures, I would reference Tolkien's books to see how he described uniforms and such. What I found was that there was very little detail. I think that one of the great things about Tolkien is that he writes just enough and the readers imagination fills in the rest.

Does Tolkien actually define any race as having pointy ears?
If so, please quote directly.

Since everyone knows that Targaryens are elves, why don't any of them have pointy ears?

In the Jackson LOTR Fellowship film, all the Lothlorien elves look like they have blonde hair, while those in Rivendell seem to be dark brunettes.

Dan

Stay off the halfling's weed guys, it won't do you any good!

I asked about Tolkien. Not Jackson. See your title.

If I recall rightly, pointed ears are not mentioned in the books.
I think ears however feature in various old fairy story illustrations, so it hasn't just come out of nowhere [or Vulcan!]
It's become an easy visual cue for not-human.

Elves' ears are described as leaf-like in shape by Tolkien somewhere in the books. So presumably pointy, but who knows, Maple leaf ears perhaps?

Tolkien never bothered to explain many physical characteristics in the books

There are some mentions in the addenda and notes that seem to refer to hobbit and elf ears as pointed and leaf-shaped, but they way it's worded is similar to the Balrog wings problem.

Also fun to mention is that in the early fan representations of Bilbo and hobbits they were often depicted as rodent-like furry creatures straight out of the Wind and the Willows, much to Tolkien's exasperation.

Tolkien had discussed elsewhere the idea that elves basically looked just like human, just archtypically "more elegant and beautiful"

Targaryens aren't Elves, they are Melniboneans.

Granted, Meliboneans are mostly just amoral, dragon riding Elves, so okay. 😀

I recall that Hobbits were described as being mistaken for young humans. No reference I can recall to any non-human traits except for the propensity for being barefoot and hairy.

Here's Tolkien's own sketch of Bilbo Baggins.
link
Admittedly, Tolkien was not enthusiastic about his own drawing abilities.

One of the few things I remember, and it's from one of the books published by Christopher, is that elves are smaller than humans. There's a story where one of the elf lords is told to make a suit of human sized armor and leave it somewhere. It's found by one of the human heroes, (Hurin?). Can't remember how it's worded about it being larger than what they're used to creating.