Instead, the movie closes in limp bucolic mood; Sam, the staunchest figure in the saga, goes home to a bosomy hobbitess, as he does in the novel, but Jackson, the man who can marshal warriors by the thousand, finds it hard to catch the rusticity — brisk, unsentimental, cider-sharp — of the original.
He becomes a staunch, appealing figure — a male nurturer who calls to mind Oates's moving portrait of her first husband, Raymond Smith, in her memoir, "A Widow's Story".
In the Costa Mesa production, Gordon Carmadelle embodies this staunch, unbending figure with force and fortitude, battling the onrushing tide with grit and gusto in a memorable performance.
As a promoted war hero nearing the end of his career, Stewart cuts a trim, staunch, but older figure.
Chris Williamson, 61, the MP for Derby North, is a staunch left-wing party figure who has been described as one of the Labour leader's most loyal backers.
Once an establishment figure and a staunch ally of Mr Khamenei, he has since been politically ostracised.
It does seem, though, that the weight of the human suffering inflicted by Israel is becoming too much to bear, compelling some high-profile journalists to prod Democratic Party figures on their staunch pro-Netanyahu views.
Yet it was Labour figures who were most staunch in the defence of the status quo – just to score points against us.
But the vice president is hardly viewed as a neutral figure here, having been a staunch supporter of military interventions in the 1990s to help the Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo.
The case has generated fury at the bishop, a staunch theological conservative who was already a polarizing figure in his diocese.
