The Lord of the Rings
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| Author: | J.R.R. Tolkien |
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The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by the British academic J.R.R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier fantasy book, The Hobbit, but developed into a much larger story. It was written in stages between 1937 and 1949, with much of it being created during World War II. It was originally published in three volumes in 1954 and 1955 — somewhat to Tolkien's annoyance, since he had intended it to be a single volume. It has since been reprinted numerous times and translated into at least 38 languages, becoming one of the most popular works in 20th-century literature.
The Lord of the Rings is set in the fictional realm of Middle-earth. The story concerns humanoid peoples known as Hobbits, Elves, Men, Dwarves, Wizards, and Orcs and centres on the Ring of Power made by the Dark Lord Sauron. Starting from quiet beginnings in the Shire, the story ranges across Middle-earth and follows the courses of the War of the Ring. The main story is followed by six appendices that provide a wealth of historical and linguistic background material, as well as an index of characters, place names, and terms of note.
Along with Tolkien's other writings, The Lord of the Rings has been subjected to extensive analysis of its literary themes and origins. Although a major work in itself, the story is merely the last movement of a mythology that Tolkien had worked on since 1917. Influences on this earlier work, and on the story of The Lord of the Rings, include philology, mythology, industrialization, and religion, as well as earlier fantasy works and Tolkien's experiences in World War I. The Lord of the Rings in its turn is considered to have had a great effect on modern fantasy, and the impact of Tolkien's works is such that the use of the words "Tolkienian" and "Tolkienesque" have been recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary.
The immense and enduring popularity of The Lord of the Rings has led to numerous references in popular culture, the founding of many societies by fans of Tolkien's works, and a large number of books about Tolkien and his works being published. The Lord of the Rings has inspired (and continues to inspire) short stories, video games, artworks and musical works. Adaptations of The Lord of the Rings have been made for radio, theatre, and film. The 2001 – 2003 release of the widely acclaimed Lord of the Rings film trilogy prompted a new surge of interest in The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's other works.
[edit] Synopsis
The Lord of the Rings was first published in three volumes - The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King - each of which is divided into two 'books', making six books in total, successively numbered by Roman numerals. There is also a Foreword and a Prologue in The Fellowship of the Ring and six Appendices at the end of The Return of the King. The Prologue includes information on the nature and customs of Hobbits, and a brief synopsis of The Hobbit in which the Ring played a seemingly minor role.
Book I in The Fellowship of the Ring begins with Bilbo's hundred-and-eleventh birthday party, about 60 years after the end of The Hobbit, and his subsequent disappearance using his magic ring. Leaving to journey once more, he left many of his belongings, including the ring, to his cousin and adoptive heir, Frodo Baggins.
After seventeen years of investigating, their old friend Gandalf the Grey revealed that the ring was in fact the One Ring, the instrument of Sauron's power, for which the Dark Lord had been searching for most of the Third Age, and which corrupted others with desire for it and the power it held.
Sauron sent the Ringwraiths, in the guise of riders in black, to the Shire, Bilbo and Frodo's native land, in search of the Ring. Frodo escaped, with the help of his loyal gardener Samwise "Sam" Gamgee and three close friends, Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck, Peregrin "Pippin" Took, and Fredegar "Fatty" Bolger. While Fatty acted as a decoy for the Ringwraiths, Frodo and the others set off to take the Ring to the Elven haven of Rivendell. They were aided by the enigmatic Tom Bombadil, and by a man called "Strider", who was later revealed to be Aragorn, the heir to the kingships of Gondor and Arnor, two great realms founded by the Númenórean exiles. Aragorn led the hobbits to Rivendell on Gandalf's request. However, Frodo was gravely wounded by the leader of the Ringwraiths at the hill of Weathertop. With the help of his companions and the Elf-lord Glorfindel, Frodo managed to enter Rivendell's borders by crossing the Ford of the river Bruinen. The Ringwraiths, in close pursuit, were swept away by an enchantment of the river when they entered its waters. The book ends with Frodo losing consciousness.
Book II in The Fellowship of the Ring reveals that Frodo managed to recover under the care of the Half-elven lord Elrond, master of Rivendell. Frodo meets Bilbo, now living in retirement, and sees Elrond's daughter Arwen, Aragorn's betrothed. Later, much of the story's exposition is given during a high council, attended by representatives of the major races of Middle-earth (Elves, Dwarves, and Men) and presided over by Elrond. Gandalf told them of the emerging threat of Saruman, the leader of the Order of Wizards, who wanted the Ring for himself. In order to fulfil an ancient prophecy about the return of the King of Gondor and Arnor, Aragorn was going to war against Sauron, armed with the royal sword Narsil, which had cut the Ring from Sauron's finger. After pondering several options, the Council decided that the only course of action that could save Middle-earth was to destroy the Ring by taking it to Mordor and casting it into Mount Doom, where it was forged. Frodo volunteered for the task, and a "Fellowship of the Ring" was formed to aid him — this consisted of Frodo, his three Hobbit companions, Gandalf, Aragorn, Boromir of Gondor, Gimli the Dwarf, and Legolas the Elf. Since Narsil was broken, Aragorn had it reforged and called it Andúril.
The company journeyed through plains and over mountains, and ultimately to the Mines of Moria, where they were followed by the wretched creature Gollum, whom Bilbo had met years before (as detailed in The Hobbit). Gollum was once "of hobbit-kind" but the Ring had corrupted him while he had possessed it, and Gollum desperately sought to regain his "Precious". When they were almost through the mines the party was attacked by Orcs. Gandalf battled a Balrog, an ancient demon creature, and fell into a deep chasm, apparently to his death. Escaping from Moria the Fellowship, now led by Aragorn, took refuge in the Elvish wood of Lothlórien, the realm of the Lady Galadriel.
After the Fellowship travelled along the great River Anduin, Frodo decided to continue the trek to Mordor on his own, largely due to the Ring's growing influence on Boromir; however, the faithful Sam insisted on going with him. At the end of the book, the Fellowship are attacked by orcs and during the confusion, Sam and Frodo make their escape. Unknown to them, Boromir is killed and Merry and Pippin are kidnapped by the orcs because their commander, the traitor Saruman, has commanded them to capture the hobbits and bring them to him alive, knowing that one of the hobbits has the Ring.
The second volume, The Two Towers, deals with two parallel storylines in each of its books. Book III details the exploits of the remaining members of the Fellowship who aid the country of Rohan in its war against Saruman. At the beginning of the book, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli went off in pursuit of Merry and Pippin's captors. The three met Gandalf, who had returned as "Gandalf the White". He had defeated the Balrog at the cost of his life, but had been sent back to Middle-earth, with enhanced powers, to aid the forces of good. Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli helped defeat Saruman's armies at the Battle of the Hornburg. Meanwhile Merry and Pippin, freed from captivity, helped the tree-like Ents and Huorns to attack Saruman at his stronghold of Isengard. The two groups were reunited in the aftermath of battle, and after Saruman refused to repent of his folly, Gandalf cast him from the Order of Wizards.
Book IV tells of Frodo and Sam's exploits on the way to Mount Doom. They managed to capture and "tame" Gollum, who showed them a way to enter Mordor secretly (as opposed to the Black Gate), albeit through the dreaded valley of Minas Morgul. At the end of the volume, Gollum betrayed Frodo to the great spider Shelob, and though he survived he was captured by orcs. Meanwhile, Sauron launched an all-out military assault upon Middle-earth, with the Witch-king (leader of the Ringwraiths) leading a fell host (Large army) from Minas Morgul into battle against Gondor, in the War of the Ring.
The further adventures of Gandalf, Aragorn and company are related in the first book of the third volume, The Return of the King. As told in Book V, the Fellowship assisted in the final battles against the armies of Sauron, including the siege of the tower-city of Minas Tirith in Gondor and the climactic life-or-death battle before the Black Gate of Mordor, where the alliance of Gondor and Rohan fought desperately against Sauron's armies in order to distract him from the Ring, and hoped to gain time for Frodo to destroy it.
In Book VI, Sam rescued Frodo from captivity. After much struggle, they finally reached Mount Doom itself, tailed by Gollum. However, the temptation of the Ring proved too great for Frodo, and he claimed it for himself, but Gollum struggled with him for it and managed to bite the Ring off Frodo's finger. Crazed with triumph, Gollum slipped into the fires of the mountain, and the Ring was destroyed.
Thus, Sauron was banished from the world and his realm ended. Aragorn was crowned king and married Arwen, the daughter of Elrond. However, all was not over, for Saruman had managed to escape his captivity and enslave the Shire. Although he was overthrown by the Hobbits and the four heroes helped to restore order and beautify the land again, it was not the same Shire that they left. At the end, Frodo remained wounded in body and spirit and, accompanied by Bilbo, sailed west over the Sea to the Undying Lands, where he could find peace.
The Appendices contain much material concerning the timeline of the story, and information on the peoples and the languages of Middle-earth. Notably, Arwen, physically absent for much of the book, is dealt with in full here; her backstory and future with Aragorn are related.
According to Tolkien's timeline, the events depicted in the story occurred between Bilbo's announcement of his T.A. September 22, 3001 birthday party, and Sam's re-arrival to Bag End on T.A. October 6, 3021. Most of the events portrayed in the story occur in 3018 and 3019, with Frodo heading out from Bag End on T.A. September 23 3018, and the destruction of the Ring six months later on T.A. March 25 3019.
[edit] Writing
The Lord of the Rings was started as a sequel to The Hobbit, a fantasy story published in 1937 that Tolkien had originally written for and read to his children. The popularity of The Hobbit led to demands from his publishers for more stories about hobbits and goblins, and so that same year, at the age of 45, Tolkien began writing the story that would become The Lord of the Rings. The story would not be finished until 12 years later, in 1949, and it would not be fully published until 1955, by which time Tolkien was 63 years old.
Tolkien did not originally intend to write a sequel to The Hobbit, and instead wrote several other children's tales, such as Roverandom. As his main work, Tolkien began to outline the history of Arda, telling tales of the Silmarils, and many other stories of how the races and situations that we read about in the Lord of the Rings came to be. Tolkien died before he could complete and put together this work, today known as The Silmarillion, but his son Christopher Tolkien edited his father's work, filled in gaps, and published it in 1977. Some Tolkien biographers regard The Silmarillion as the true "work of his heart", as it provides the historical and linguistic context for the more popular work and for his constructed languages, and occupied the greater part of Tolkien's time. As a result The Lord of the Rings ended up as the last movement of Tolkien's legendarium and in his own opinion "much larger, and I hope also in proportion the best, of the entire cycle."
Persuaded by his publishers, he started 'a new Hobbit' in December 1937. After several false starts, the story of the One Ring soon emerged, and the book mutated from being a sequel to The Hobbit, to being, in theme, more a sequel to the unpublished Silmarillion. The idea of the first chapter ("A Long-Expected Party") arrived fully-formed, although the reasons behind Bilbo's disappearance, the significance of the Ring, and the title The Lord of the Rings did not arrive until the spring of 1938. Originally, he planned to write another story in which Bilbo had used up all his treasure and was looking for another adventure to gain more; however, he remembered the ring and its powers and decided to write about it instead. He began with Bilbo as the main character but decided that the story was too serious to use the fun-loving hobbit and so Tolkien looked to use a member of Bilbo's family. He thought about using Bilbo's son, but this generated some difficult questions, such as the whereabouts of his wife and whether he would let his son go into danger. Thus he looked for an alternate character to carry the ring. In Greek legend, it was a hero's nephew that gained the item of power, and so the hobbit Frodo came into existence. (Though technically Tolkien made Frodo Bilbo's cousin, because of age differences, the two were to consider each other nephew and uncle).
Writing was slow due to Tolkien's perfectionism, and was frequently interrupted by his obligations as an examiner, and other academic duties. The first sentence of The Hobbit was in fact written on a blank page which a student had left on an exam paper which Tolkien was marking — In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. He seems to have abandoned The Lord of the Rings during most of 1943 and only re-started it in April 1944. This effort was written as a serial for Christopher Tolkien and C. S. Lewis — the former would be sent copies of chapters as they were written while he was serving in South Africa in the Royal Air Force. He made another push in 1946, and showed a copy of the manuscript to his publishers in 1947. The story was effectively finished the next year, but Tolkien did not finish revising earlier parts of the work until 1949.
A dispute with his publishers, Allen & Unwin, led to the book being offered to Collins in 1950. He intended The Silmarillion (itself largely unrevised at this point) to be published along with The Lord of the Rings, but A&U were unwilling to do this. After his contact at Collins, Milton Waldman, expressed the belief that The Lord of the Rings itself "urgently needed cutting", he eventually demanded that they publish the book in 1952. They did not do so, and so Tolkien wrote to Allen and Unwin, saying I would gladly consider the publication of any part of the stuff.
