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Hi, I'm RoryS89. I live in Florida. I enjoy movies, video games, books, the internet, hanging out with friends, Youth Group, listening to Christian rock (yeah!) etc. I believe 100% in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, nothing can change my mind about that. He died to forgive us of all the wrong things we always do, and he rose again, and I'm proud to say it. As a matter of fact, I believe in enjoying life and having fun in all situations, even when it's hard to, because Jesus gives us perfect joy and wants us to be happy and to live good lives and do right. But He forgives us even if we mess up, so that's why He's awesome. So check out a Bible sometime and read up on that, or ask someone from a local Church. Trust me, it's worth hearing.

Frequently edited pages:

Some pages I have created:

Edits: 2164 and counting, Images Uploaded: 19, Pages Edited: 395

I no longer needed this, I just like keeping it around because it's funny remembering when I had to do this:

A copy of my paper I need for tomorrow:

Rory Smith
Period 8 Lions and Emperors
November 29, 2006

J.R.R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892 in the Orange Free State, which is now known as South Africa. He had one brother, who was two years younger than he was.

One of Tolkien’s first experiences in his life was when he was bitten by a spider before he had even turned three years old. As with other events in his life, this incident would be mirrored in the stories he wrote later in life. Dr. Thorton S. Quimby took care of him during that time, and it is said that Dr. Quimby was an inspiration for certain characters of his, such as Gandalf the Grey. His father and mother decided that it would be better for the health of Tolkien and his brother if they moved back to England, where Tolkien’s parents had originally moved from. Before Tolkien’s father, Arthur Reuel Tolkien, was able to join his family in England, he died in South Africa of rheumatic fever.

Tolkien’s mother took them to her parent’s house, and they moved around for a while around that time. Tolkien enjoyed exploring all of the valleys and hills around the places he lived, which also showed up later on in his books. His aunt’s farm was even named Bag End, which would also become the name of the home of Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings. During this time, his mother taught them about botany, lessons in the English language, and more. Tolkien was able to read and write by age four.

Although she was raised as a Baptist, Tolkien’s mother, Mabel, became a Roman Catholic just four years before her death in 1904. She had died because of diabetes, and Tolkien was only twelve at the time. Tolkien said she was a “martyr for her faith”, and she was a very strong part of Tolkien’s own Catholic beliefs. After his mother’s death, Tolkien was raised by Father Francis Xavier Morgan of a Catholic Church. He lived near many tall and dark towers, as well as a museum containing medieval artwork, which further influenced his future works.

When he was sixteen, Tolkien fell in love with a girl named Edith Mary Bratt, but she was only thirteen. Father Francis told Tolkien not to have contact with her until he was twenty-one, and he obeyed the Father’s wishes. When he was nineteen, he took a hiking journey with eleven others through mountains in Switzerland. He enjoyed it so much that he not only used his experience for Bilbo Baggins’ journey through the Misty Mountains in The Hobbit, but he said even fifty years later that he regretted leaving at the end of the vacation.

Having kept his promise, Tolkien did not have contact with Edith until he was twenty-one, and actually was engaged to her the very months he turned twenty-one. Tolkien graduated from Oxford with a degree in English two years later, and then joined the Army to fight in World War I. His drew from these experiences heavily when he did his writing, and used what he saw in his books. He unfortunately saw some of his best friends killed during the war. Scenes like these are mirrored in places in Middle-Earth, such as the Dead Marshes in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Tolkien became ill, and had to do work for the Army near his home. He reached the rank of lieutenant. Before his return home in 1917, Tolkien and Edith got married on March 22, 1916. During this time, when Tolkien was at home with trench fever, he began working on two tales taking place in the land of Middle-Earth, and they were called The Silmarillion and The Book of Lost Tales.

Tolkien went back to Oxford in 1925, and became a professor there at age thirty-three. During this time, Tolkien continued his work on The Silmarillion, which some consider to be the “Bible of Middle-Earth”, as it tells of the creation of the creatures and places in Tolkien’s fictional land of Middle-Earth. From this point on, almost every piece of Tolkien’s works took place in Middle-Earth. Unfortunately, Tolkien never completed his first work before his death, leaving it up to his son. Christopher. to put his father’s notes together about fifty years later. Tolkien did however, create the Elvish language during the 1920s. He and Edith had three sons by the mid 1920s. His first two sons were named John and Michael. The birth of his third son, Christopher, in 1924, was also the birth of a future Middle-Earth author. His wife Edith gave birth to their fourth and final child, a daughter named Priscilla, in 1929.

Tolkien wrote many children’s stories in the 1930s, until he wrote his first complete novel, and one of the most popular fantasy stories of all time. The Hobbit, which was published in 1937, told the story of a small Hobbit named Bilbo Baggins. He was forty-five then. He had begun the story when he was a professor at Pembroke College in the 1920s, starting simply with the first line, “In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit.” He had done this while filling out school certificate papers. After he first rote it in the 1930s, he gave it to a Reverend Mother while she was sick with the flu. The ten year-old son of a publisher named Unwin saw the manuscript, and read it. He loved it so much, that after his father paid him to write a review, the publishing house of Allen & Unwin published the book.

They decided that The Silmarillion and The Hobbit would belong in the same universe together, and after The Hobbit achieved success, the publisher asked for a sequel. Tolkien decided to do it after seeing the love children had for The Hobbit. From the years 1938 to 1948, Tolkien wrote a trilogy of books titled The Lord of the Rings, which are easily his most famous works. The trilogy was a direct sequel to The Hobbit, in which Bilbo’s nephew Frodo must take his uncle’s ring on a dangerous journey to Mount Doom. It was decided that the book would be split in three pieces before it was published. From the years 1954 to 1955, the books were published for the first time. Tolkien and his publishers easily agreed on the title of the first book, which turned out to be The Fellowship of the Ring. The title referred to the group of nine travelers who were to bring the evil One Ring to Mount Doom and destroy it. For the second book, an early title was The Treason of Isengard. Tolkien decided that the best title to describe the events of this book was The Two Towers, which referred to the union of Mordor and Isengard as they attacked the free peoples of Middle-Earth. Tolkien and his publisher had many differences when naming the third book, however. From the beginning, Tolkien insisted the book be called The War of the Ring, but the publishers dismissed the title. They continued to suggest the title of The Return of the King, which Tolkien strongly disliked. He felt that the title gave away the ending of the book, which was that Aragorn returned to his native land of Gondor to become King at last. In the end, Tolkien accepted the title, and the publishers got to keep the title they wanted. Tolkien became rich and famous within fifteen years of the release of the books, the latter of which he became somewhat tired of after a few years. Due to the intensity of the fan attention he was receiving, he had to remove his phone number from the public directory, and he and his wife had to move to the coast. On the situation of his popularity, Tolkien said, “Even the nose of a very modest idol (younger than Chu-Bu and not much older than Sheemish) cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense!”

Tolkien’s books have a majority of detail that is taken directly from the author’s own personal experiences in life. The spider bite he received when he was an infant showed up in The Two Towers, when Frodo is stung and nearly killed by a giant spider at the end of the book. The many towers he lived near as a child inspired part of the story for that same book, and the medieval paintings he viewed in his young age influenced many of his books. The many beauties of nature he viewed over the years of his life went into the descriptions of such fictional places of his as The Shire, Rivendell, and Lothlorien.

His books have sold numerous copies over the years, and a live-action film trilogy for The Lord of the Rings made a total of almost three billion dollars worldwide, with about a third of that being made in the United States alone.

The first attempt at making a film version of Tolkien’s trilogy was in 1958, when a script was given to Tolkien that he criticized harshly. He said that if there were ever a film version of his books, he wanted the care and meaning of his books put into the films, resulting in the films not being made for almost thirty years after his death.

Tolkien was a devout Christian throughout his entire life, and was even able to convert a fellow writer and close friend of his, C.S. Lewis, to Christianity. Lewis had been an atheist, but Tolkien talked to him many times about the Word of God. One night after a talk, C.S. Lewis took a bike ride. It has been said that C.S. started that bike ride as an atheist, and ended it as a Christian. Tolkien’s Christian beliefs also were evident in his books. J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “The Writer of the Story is not one of us.” He, of course, was referring to God, whose story is reflected in Tolkien’s works. The heroes of The Lord of the Rings are brave, as anyone who has God with them would be, and Tolkien was a very strong believer in his faith.

Tolkien also had strong views about subjects such as war and racism. He found it horrible how the African-American people in his birth country were treated, and was also against the anti-Semitism of the Nazis. After losing some of his friends in World War I, Tolkien was very much against war. He disliked anyone going to war, even the Allies. He compared those who waged wars to the Orcs of his books.

J.R.R. Tolkien died in 1973 at age eighty-one, and he was buried together with his wife Edith. His book The Silmarillion was completed after his death by his son, Christopher, in 1977, as well as many of his other uncompleted works. Counting those works finished by his son, Tolkien wrote around fifteen tales of Middle-Earth, giving more background to his own fictional land than most authors will ever do. Tolkien told his tales through epic books, poems, and short stories. His son John is now a Reverend, and his son Christopher and grandson Simon are both writers in his footsteps.

J.R.R. Tolkien is known as one of the great men of Britain and of South Africa in history. His works are still loved today, and they have not all been released yet. In 2007, a new tale of Middle-Earth will be released, started by Tolkien in 1918, and finished by his son Christopher in recent years. The book is titled The Children of Hurin. It tells of a First Age hero in Middle-Earth named Hurin, who is cursed by the Dark Lord Morgoth, and how the curse affects his children. It is to take place in an area that is drowned by the time of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Thanks to Christopher Tolkien, who is now eighty-two years old, the legends of J.R.R. Tolkien have been able to live on for decades after his death, and will easily continue to do so.

J.R.R. Tolkien is buried in Wolvercote Cemetery at Oxford.

I have much respect for J.R.R. Tolkien. He is easily my favorite author, and his amazing devotion to Christianity, and the stories of characters like Frodo reaching their goals through impossible odds, gives inspiration to many people across the world who have become fans of Middle-Earth.

Works Cited

The majority of the information came from: "J. R. R. Tolkien." Wikipedia (UNDERLINE). 2001-2006. 29 Nov 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien>.

Other information from:

Overstreet, Jeffrey. "The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King." Christianity Today (UNDERLINE). 17 Dec. 2003. 9 Oct. 2005 <http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/reviews/lordoftherings3.html>.

Arthur, Sarah. Walking with Frodo (UNDERLINE). 1st ed. Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2003.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (UNDERLINE). 3rd ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1954.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (UNDERLINE). 3rd ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1954.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (UNDERLINE). 3rd ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1955.

Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Hobbit (UNDERLINE). 3rd. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1937.

Relient K discography test for the Relient K discopgraphy section:

Discography

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Main article: Relient K discography
Album cover Album information

Rory Smith D.H. Lawrence’s “The Rocking Horse Winner” is an interesting story. The boy in the story, Paul, seems to be as normal as his siblings at first, hearing the voices they hear. As the story goes on, he seems to take it to another level, and seems mad. The conflict of the story would be that the family seems to be short on money, which causes the boy to want to find luck as well as hearing the house talk of money. The rising action would be that the boy wants to reach luck, so he rides his rocking horse endlessly until he does. The climax is that the boy seems to have found his luck, and in doing so, wins enough money to give to his mother. The falling action is that the boy literally begins to ride his horse to death, and even money got the better of him. The conclusion is that the mother’s money problems are over, but even though she could not have seen it coming, it cost her Paul in the end of it all. Paul does behave like his siblings, but only near the beginning of the story. All of the children felt like they were above everyone else in town. All of them also liked to endlessly play with their unlimited presents. Paul is different because of the actions he takes, particularly with the rocking horse. Whether or not the other children hear the voices, which may have just been a metaphor for the rest of them, they still do not take it to the level that Paul does. Maybe it is even a metaphor for Paul, though he does not realize this before the end of his life. I think that Paul is perhaps twelve or thirteen when he dies. His age would be significant because he is well past the age where a boy would play with a rocking horse, especially because he even believes it helps him find luck. The rocking horse itself may represent many ideas. One is greed, as the rocking horse originates from the wealth that the parents do not have and yet want to show off. Another is the fact that the boy is living for material possessions mostly. He rides his rocking horse that is among his many expensive gifts, he rides it to find luck (which is basically nothing more than something his mother mentioned when she was upset), and his final goal is money (even though it costs him his life). The rocking horse shows that greed and money are never the answer. The characters keep the secrets about their lives and their money, and all of it is because they think it is the best idea to do so. Salmon Rushdie’s story “The Prophet’s Hair” is also an interesting one. The way everyone reacts about the hair of Mohammed is not unexpected, though it is offensive I would say. Considering that the hair is nothing more than a hair, and that it causes so much trouble, is a sign of how unnecessary the treatment of something like this as a relic is. I suppose it is okay in the imaginary story here, because it is able to show what the idolizing of an object can do. Rushdie does mix worlds very well. Characters in the story refer to if they consider something religious or not, or whether they themselves are religious. The religious aspect is one that is kind of assumed by many people. People think that religion is all rules, and holds people down, and more. In this case, maybe so. Perhaps this man’s sudden impulse to force Islam on his family is the misconception of religion. While I cannot say I know everything Muslims believe and must obey, I know from my own Christian faith that many people hear of religion and shrug it off, saying it is not from them. In the case of Christianity, it is more of a relationship than religion, and it is not the way many see it. It is not a list of rules. So perhaps this man takes his idea of religion too far, because it does cause the death of himself and his children. His obsession with the hair is one problem, but his strict rules about everything that drive his children to do what they did is another. In the same way, the honest and dishonest clash because he is supposedly the honest, rule-following father, when it is his children who try to make the right move and get the hair away from them. The basic meaning behind the story seems to be that while the father attempted to do good by forcing laws on his wife and children, he himself was not always a good man, and his attempt to possibly make everything better was his downfall. 

For Derek Mount:

Derek Mount (also known as Chap Stique) is the guitarist for to Christian rock band Family Force 5. Mount joined brothers Solomon, Jacob, and Joshua Olds and friend Nathan Currin as an additional guitarist on Family Force 5's first album, Business Up Front/Party In The Back, but became a full-time member after one of the band's guitarists Brad Allen (also known as 20 Cent) left after recording the album.

Derek Mount is an honor graduate of the University of Georgia. He is now married to his long time girlfriend, Sarah Beasley.

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