The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien is, by many accounts, the best fantasy novel ever written. It has defined the genre for decades and is the inspiration for many subsequent greats. And despite a few unexpected content warnings, it’s a book I’ll be re-reading many times to come.

In this review, I’ll give my thoughts from my recent first reading. Strap yourself in, ‘cause it’s going to be a long one.

Plot

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell by chance into the hands of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.

From Sauron’s fastness in the Dark Tower of Mordor, his power spread far and wide. Sauron gathered all the Great Rings to him, but always he searched for the One Ring that would complete his dominion.

When Bilbo reached his eleventy-first birthday he disappeared, bequeathing to his young cousin Frodo the Ruling Ring and a perilous quest: to journey across Middle-earth, deep into the shadow of the Dark Lord, and destroy the Ring by casting it into the Cracks of Doom.

The Lord of the Rings tells of the great quest undertaken by Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring: Gandalf the Wizard; the hobbits Merry, Pippin, and Sam; Gimli the Dwarf; Legolas the Elf; Boromir of Gondor; and a tall, mysterious stranger called Strider.

This story is packed with memorable scenes. Practically every chapter is a piece of artwork unto itself, from the opening birthday party to the massive clashes of armies. The author’s poetic prose and deep world then take those scenes and makes them ten times better. Anything I can say will be entirely inadequate to describe them.

Characters

It would take much too long to discuss every character, so I’ll summarize: They’re pretty awesome. Rather than creating morally gray, conflicted characters, almost everyone is wholly evil or wholly good. This leads to characters that are better described as cool than realistic, sympathetic, or relatable.

Many readers dislike the black-and-white nature of the cast. However, this is consistent with Tolkien’s purpose. The Lord of the Rings wasn’t really written as a novel. It was written as a mythology, in the vein of Homer’s Odyssey and Beowulf. The characters aren’t meant to be realistic—they’re larger than life, the stuff of legend. And in that way, they completely succeed.

A scattered few characters do struggle somewhere in the middle. Gollum, a corrupted hobbit, is trapped between his lust for the Ring and common sense. The other hobbits are generally pious but still feel the pull of fear and many times consider turning back from their mission. A couple of humans fight with longings for power or love that draw them away from good.

The friendships Tolkien crafted are masterful. There are likely and unlikely relationships forged and tested through the fire of battle, coming out of the end even stronger than before.

My only real dislike of the book was how it sometimes ignored the characters. When many members of the cast got together, it would typically focus on just one character, and set aside the point-of-view character.

Theme & Content Warnings

While The Lord of the Rings doesn’t have a key message, per se, one can draw many truths out of it. Some say the story is about how to handle temptation. Another writer mentioned the theme being “Blessed are the meek.” I saw a call to courage in my reading, from the battle at Helm’s Deep to the Scouring of the Shire, inspiring me to stand up for right, even against impossible foes.

The book is so soaked in truth that, no matter where you look, you find a lesson to be learned. Tolkien’s Christian worldview (despite his Catholic beliefs) fills every corner. It’s purposely not an allegory. Tolkien, both in the book and in interviews, expresses his distaste for allegories. But it is highly symbolic, and many things said about Aragorn or Sauron could just as easily apply to Jesus or Satan. Take this verse of a poem, for example:

Sing and be glad, all ye children of the West,

for your King shall come again,

And he shall dwell among you

All the days of your life.

And consider this quote from Frodo, speaking of the orcs:

“The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own.”

You also see a land that’s weary, constantly oppressed by darkness, longing for the day when all things will be made right. It echoes our own world, groaning under sin as it looks forward to the end of all things. And when the king returns and the Fourth Age begins, it resembles the peace and joy we expect when our world is remade.

For years, one main excuse kept me from reading this book. I had started reading The Fellowship of the Ring once but stopped after thinking, “Wait, Gandalf is a wizard. Isn’t that a bad thing?”

However, a Tolkien fan explained the nature of the magic, and now after actually reading the book, my doubts have proved unfounded. In reality, Gandalf (and the other magical beings in the book) actually use very little magic. Much of the wizard’s power is in his wisdom and leadership. He’s much more likened to Moses than Harry Potter.

Additionally, his use of magic is far from witchcraft. You can dive into the lore and discover that the Middle-earth representation of God gave him his power, but this is obvious enough just by reading the story. He doesn’t fight enemies through the correct pronunciation of a spell; instead, he wields divine authority, commanding even his enemies through the Creator’s power.

The content warnings are few, but not none. The bad guys use mild profanity once or twice—which was a surprise to me. And to show the depravity of the orcs, some scenes get rather violent. During one battle, they launch the heads of some human soldiers into the walls of a city. The book says how some were mangled beyond identification, but some city defenders recognized the heads of their friends. It’s a rather unsettling depiction.

The orcs kill each other often, getting into bloody skirmishes over the smallest disagreements. A handful of times the protagonists are around these skirmishes and witness orcs being dismembered, decapitated, and otherwise cut to ribbons. The book isn’t descriptive, but again, it does purposely paint a repulsive picture. Here’s one example:

The courtyard lay in deep shadow, but he could see that the pavement was strewn with bodies. Right at his feet were two orc-archers with knives sticking in their backs. Beyond lay many more shapes; some singly as they had been hewn down or shot; others in pairs, still grappling one another, dead in the very throes of stabbing, throttling, biting. The stones were slippery with dark blood.

Beyond that, you’ll also encounter the violence and fighting typical of any fantasy book. But these moments of death and destruction are relatively few, considering just how long The Lord of the Rings is. The truth, goodness, and beauty outshine the darkness.

Overall

In conclusion, here are several favorite quotes from the book:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

“The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call then. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to just have landed in them, usually—their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they have lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t.”

Sam did not wait to wonder what was to be done, or whether he was brave, or loyal, or filled with rage. He sprang forward with a yell, and seized his master’s sword in his left hand. Then he charged.

Far above the Ephel Duath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear a cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

The Lord of the Rings lives up to its reputation spectacularly. The violence and light language—not to mention the extreme length—may turn some away, and that’s completely up to your discretion. But if you decide to read it, its characters and events will forever stay with you. It’s the kind of book that makes all others pale in comparison to its sheer scope and breadth.