Thursday, May 23, 2024

The Lord Of The Rings!


The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien is the renowned and beloved fantasy of the 20th Century, a carefully constructed epic filled with elegiac romance, sprawling imaginary vistas, and pert memorable characterizations. I've read it a few times over the course of my lifetime, but I might have to say this most recent venture to Middle-Earth might be the best yet. I read the saga in a single volume edition given to me by a good friend decades ago. It's a robust version, known in the circles as the "Red Edition".  Let me discuss the book though as it is most commonly presented, a trilogy of connected novels. 

(Jack Gaughan did all three of the covers for the Unauthorized Ace Editions)

The Fellowship of the Ring is the first installment and is comprised of "Two Books". The first introduces our Hobbit heroes Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Peregrin Took, and Meriadoc Brandybuck, as well reintroducing the enigmatic Gandalf. This saga was begun when Tolkien was not yet committed to an epic and so this early part of the story feels the most like The Hobbit. A group of doughty little people are on a mission and encounter an array of threats as they wend their way through the often-bewildering and sometimes dangerous countryside. As the story develops the seriousness of the mission becomes ever more evident as our heroes are pursed by Black Riders, strange magical creatures in service to Sauron, the Lord of Mordor. They are assisted at different times by the likes of the peculiar Tom Bombadil and later the mysterious man called Strider. Later a "fellowship" of Hobbits, Men, Elves, and Dwarves join forces to help destroy the one thing Sauron craves more than anything, the One Ring which will give him absolute power over Middle Earth. 


In The Two Towers, the "fellowship" of the previous novel has fallen apart and our Hobbit heroes Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee must work by themselves to find an entry into the deadly land of Mordor and take the One Ring to Mount Doom where they can destroy it once and for all. They get the help of Gollum, a strange, debased creature who once had the ring in his keeping before it came to Bilbo. The rest of our cast are likewise searching for one another. The other two Hobbits, Merry and Pippin fall into the hands of Orcs and later meet up with the enigmatic Treebeard, an Ent, one of the oldest races on Middle-Earth. Strider, Legolas, and Gimli search for these two but find an old ally returned from the grave. We meet the Riders of Rohan, a great warrior people and we go with them to Helm's Deep where they and some of our cast fight a great battle against an army of Orcs sent by Saruman, a great and powerful figure who also vies for the One Ring. 


The Return of the King wraps up this grand epic. Our two Hobbit heroes continue their quest to Mount Doom and give the reader a grim tour through a dark and depraved territory. Strider is revealed to be the next king of Gondor and that makes our villain Sauron quite upset who then sends his vast army to besiege the venerable city. The scale of the conflict has been steadily growing throughout the saga and reaches its climax here with a terrible war that even if won will mean little if the One Ring survives to find its way back into the clutches of the necromancer Sauron. The many characters who have been introduced in the novels get their moments to shine and the story winds down to its conclusion. After all the hubbub our Hobbit heroes find that their home the Shire has need of heroes as well as enemies have used the war to plunder. The Hobbits, having been tempered by adventure, danger and war, must fight again for their homes.  

(Barbara Remington)

It is much different reading the novel as Tolkien intended, as a single book. The trilogy we know is a result of the limitations of publishing which balked at issuing a book so massive and opted instead in the early 50's to bring out the saga in three mostly annual volumes, each given a memorable title of its own. I've always preferred The Fellowship of the Ring, but this reading with the focus on a different structure has given me new admiration for The Two Towers and The Return of the King.

(The Brothers Hildebrandt)

If each is seen as a single volume, there is almost inherently an expectation of a rise and fall within the narrative structure. That exists in abundance in the first part, the part of the story which introduces the majority of the characters and the milieu. Those characters follow a story arc which sees them become aware and finally resolved, transformed from bystanders into legitimate heroes. The depth of detail used to build this world, one so very similar to our own, intended to become our own after the passage of many millennia is stunning. Tolkien took a lifetime to create an environment fit for his created languages, and then he chose to tell a grand sweeping tale of heroism and sacrifice in that environment. 

(Frank Frazetta)

That said, neither of the other latter volumes really has a fair chance to recreate the arc seen so wonderfully in the first book, and for the most part don't. But seeing the story as one complete yarn, the latter stages of the epic come more fully into focus and build on the charming and sometimes quaint beginning with robust full-blooded heroic adventure on an every-increasing scale. This sweep works when the story is understood as a single narrative and not three individual ones. This unintended bias ingrained in my own understanding of the tale by its marketing, has limited to some small extent my appreciation of the latter stages. Until now.


Despite the clever marketing by Ballantine Books and others, when I'm thinking of The Red Book of the Westmarch in the future, it will always be one narrative and not three.  

Now it's time to tackle The Silmarillion.   

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7 comments:

  1. Silmarillion? Boring as hell as it's not really a story. I enjoyed LOTR when I first read it back in 1981, but while re-reading it around 30 years ago, I realised how repetitive some parts are. Personally, I'd say it needs some heavy editing. I much prefer The Hobbit.

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    1. The Silmarillion is a slog. But that said, it was more for him than for us. The style of the Lord of the Rings is leisurely for sure. It might be interesting to see what a modern editor might do to the work to prepare it for the marketplace. I don't want the original to go away by any means. We got a glimpse perhaps of that when Peter Jackson made his movies. Maybe actual novelizations of those screenplays would be interesting as if this classic needed help getting fans.

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  2. Like Kid I much prefer The Hobbit and it's a lot shorter too. I tried reading LOTR when the first movie was released but I couldn't get into it I'm afraid. Have you heard of the British rock band Marillion? They were quite big in the '80s and I assume they took their name from The Silmarillion.

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    1. Oddly I had never heard of them, but when I looked them up they for certain took their name from The Silmarillion, which was published the same year the band was formed. I'll have to check out their music to satisfy my curiosity.

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  3. Marillion's biggest hit was called "Kayleigh" which reached #2 in the UK singles chart in 1985.

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  4. I reviewed each book in the trilogy early last year in separate blogposts, and found that RETURN OF THE KING seemed the weakest. I understand that on some level Tolkien wanted to rail against the ingloriousness of war, particularly in light of his own experiences during the Battle of the Somme. Still, there was maybe a little too much of that, with both Merry and Pippin having separate "military service" experiences. To be sure, Merry's experience culminates in his service to Eowyn, one of the third book's most memorable sequences.

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    1. I'll scout those reviews up. Thanks for the heads up. For sure, the scene with Eowyn and the Witch King is one of the great moments in the story.

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