Lord of the Rings
16 minutes • August 15, 2023 • Thoughts
When I wiped the dust off my childhood copy of The Hobbit for the first time in almost twenty years, I was excited and a little bit nervous to see what J.R.R. Tolkien’s books had in store for me. Despite my love for fantasy, I have no memories of ever reading The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, or The Silmarillion. I had watched the movies, but my only experiences with the books were when I was 11, having my dad read to me as I fell asleep (even The Silmarillion when he was really trying to get me to sleep). Now that I was older and had more experience, I wondered how my perspective on these books would hold up.
Comments online with phrases such as “bedrock of modern Western fantasy” and “must-read” bubbled to the surface of my mind as I held the book in my hands. Expectations, nostalgia, and my thoughts of the movies all mixed together had pushed me away from reading The Hobbit. The Hobbit stared at me expectantly from the top of my book pile. “Fine, fine! I’ll do it,” I said to myself.
I say all this to warn you of the mindset and expectations I had entering written Middle Earth and how that biases my opinion. No one can truly give an unbiased opinion, but I also want to show you how I am biased so you can draw your own conclusions relative to your own.
For me, both The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring do a great job of making The Shire warm, enticing, and just, in general, fun. It was a nice change of pace for me, as I’ve been reading and watching a lot of modern media that revels in grit, something I enjoy most of the time but something that I needed a break from when I started The Hobbit.
Tolkien revels in a meticulous, anthropological telling of what Hobbits are, from talking about their general culture and their broader place in the world, discussing their known histories through time, to smaller details about their proclivities such as their obsessions with family lines. While he does describe some of the world before talking about Hobbits, Tolkien generally uses The Shire as the foundation in which he builds the rest of Middle Earth, and through this construction receives vast praise for his world-building technique (something much envied and replicated since).
From the Shire, and the wild starts to both Bilbo and Frodo’s adventures, we shift away from the invested anthropological description into consistent descriptions of the world around the Hobbits and their journeys through them. From the beginning of the journey, time only ever skips when the Hobbits travel through an environment already described. If there is something happening narratively or if the environment changes, we are there to hear about the change. While at times he borders on too much description, for the most part, Tolkien manages to keep the narrative engaging while trying to stick with the characters as much as possible, bringing an authentic journey-esque experience to the reading itself.
I want to mention here that although I found it tolerable at its lowest points, I think others with less reading resilience would find that a lot of the world-building Tolkien engages in through a significant portion of the two journeys would have difficulty keeping focus on what’s happening (or, in other words, it was boring). The thing that motivated me to keep paying close attention was why these Hobbits were traveling, and how the low points would weave into the tapestry of the experience.
I found myself not liking the writing itself. It wasn’t “bad,” but I found relative to other writers, Tolkien largely uses his words like planks to construct what he needs to have constructed for his story to work, and when he does call upon emotion, the way he invokes it I would say is stylistically deprecated. People will point to his detailed descriptions of the scenery as “breathtaking” or interactions between Sam and Frodo as some of the best depictions of brotherhood or friendship you can find from a book. I appreciated these things, but personally it was harder to really feel these moments because of the way Tolkien drags out scenes. Maybe it was because my expectations were set at a certain level because of the movies, but for whatever reason for me personally, the words of the book didn’t do a great job of stirring up my emotions.
I will say, though, there was one piece of prose that I got super excited for as I was reading it. It happened in Return of the King, when the Witch King enters Gondor in an attempt to engage Gandalf in combat, judging that he could win an all-in versus the wizard.
In rode the Lord of the Nazgul, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face.
All save one. There waiting, silent and still in the space before the Gate, sat Gandalf upon Shadowfax: Shadowfax who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the terror, unmoving, steadfast as a graven image in Rath Dinen.
“You cannot enter here,” said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. “Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!”
The Black Rider flung back his hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter.
“Old fool!” he said. “Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!” And with that he lifted high his sword and flames ran down the blade.
Gandalf did not move. And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed… And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns.
I live, live, live for this description of the Witch King. The dialogue is a little stilted by modern standards (Die now and curse in vain!), but the description of what’s happening still easily holds up today as amazing. There is no actual fighting, we never truly get to see the power of Gandalf measured against the Witch King, but the electricity of the moment is enough to sustain me.
A small amount of these types of descriptions are scattered throughout the other books, such as the Nazgul confronting Aragorn and the Hobbits at Weathertop or the Nazgul trying to enter Rivendell, but these lacked the same intensity of the one-on-one with Gandalf for me, and specifically the almost modern description of the Witch King’s form paired with the massive buildup and importance of the meeting. If there’s one thing I will always remember from the books, it will be this interaction.
Another thing that I think hurt my interest in the book was the way morality was depicted as strongly black or white in most of the people and factions throughout Middle Earth. Dragons: bad. Orcs: bad. Hobbits: good. Dunedain: good. Haradrim: bad. Sauron: bad. To me, one of the most compelling parts of the narrative happens in the fight over Gondor in The Return of the King. Not the physical battle which takes place outside of Gondor which holds equal importance for the fate of Middle Earth, but rather the moral and spiritual battle for the heart of Man taking place inside the city while the physical battle rages. It is so interesting because the victor of the battle will control the fate of mankind at large. In a sense, what sets man apart from the other factions of Middle Earth is its ability to choose its own fate. While other factions are black and white, man alone controls its own destiny. But this is also, in a strange way, another black-and-white view of humanity.
Before we dive deeper into this, we have to touch on Faramir and Frodo meeting at Ithilien. When the two meet, they are respectful but unwilling to fully trust the other side. Frodo is triply wary of telling Faramir about his mission because:
- He shouldn’t tell anyone outside the Fellowship about the Ring.
- These are men of Gondor, who wish to end the war through any means, including wielding the Ring against Sauron.
- Faramir admits to being the brother of Boromir, who was corrupted simply by his proximity to the Ring.
On the other hand, Faramir equally distrusts Frodo. Two halflings (a race he didn’t even know existed) appear outside on the orc-infested roads on the slopes of Ephel Duath, the natural wall of Mordor, with a secret mission, and that Faramir should let them go if they are an ally against Sauron. Okay, for sure, dawg. Hope you don’t mind this blindfold on your way back to Gondor.
Despite the mutual mistrust, Frodo and Faramir end up forming a fast bond on the basis of their moral character. Through most of the story, we don’t have many chances to see what Frodo is like outside of partying in the Shire or working against the power of the Ring. It’s during this meeting that I think we see the true morality that Tolkien wishes to advocate for in his work. Frodo willfully surrenders himself and Sam into the authority of Faramir and maintains a polite demeanor through all of Faramir’s questioning, even though Faramir means to bring them further from their mission in Mordor and closer to Gondor, where things could go badly, quickly.
Faramir shows equal politeness and honor when handling Frodo and Sam. Ordered to slay all who enter the lands he patrols without the leave of Gondor, Faramir makes a point to hear Frodo out as he “does not slay man or beast needlessly, and not gladly even when it is needed. Neither do I talk in vain.”
In response to this, Frodo thinks to himself:
He had hardly saved the Ring from the proud grasp of Boromir, and how he would fare now among so many men, warlike and strong, he did not know. Yet he felt in his heart that Faramir, though he was much like his brother in looks, was a man less self-regarding, both sterner and wiser.
Through Frodo’s perception of Faramir and the interactions between the two, we see that Faramir is not only trying to do what is best for his people and Gondor but what he sees as morally right. This is evident when he turns away the Ring despite essentially having it in his grasp, which he makes a point to Frodo that he take. Yet, in the end, he goes against the wishes of Boromir and his father Denethor, even though bringing the Ring to Gondor would be a way to elevate himself over his brother in the eyes of his father. He not only resists the powerful temptations of glory and acceptance but also the corrupting power of the Ring itself, a nearly superhuman feat so close to Mordor.
In essence, Tolkien in this moment makes Faramir “the ideal man.” Very similar to Frankenstein and other romantic imaginings of man through the 1800s to 1900s, Faramir and Frodo, as well as others throughout the story like Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, and Eowyn, all embody an almost mythical level of “white” morality, and clearly nothing less would be capable of standing against the corrupting “black” of Sauron.
On the other hand, when Denethor sees the doom of Gondor through the corrupted visions of the palantír while listening to the morale-crushing screams of the Witch King and the Nazgûl on their wyverns above the city, the Steward of Gondor essentially surrenders humanity to Sauron by choosing to kill himself. Not only does he abandon his role in leading humans against Sauron, but he also orders his men to burn Faramir, who rode out against his better judgment at the will of his father and lies incapacitated, yet still not dead. This will take away even a potential leader from Gondor, truly sealing the fate of Middle-earth. It is this culmination of subtle manipulation by Sauron which takes place concurrently with the war outside of the walls. Both events will truly decide the fate of mankind, whether they will slip back into darkness or be the light that Middle-earth needs. It is this interior battle, the battle for the soul of mankind, which Sauron fights secretly through manipulation and through his agents. And if not for Pippin, Gandalf would not even know of this all-important fight.
Gandalf laments retreating from the war in the moment because he knows that he is the only person capable of matching the Witch King of Angmar, Sauron’s most powerful agent, who will single-handedly decide the fate of the battle if he is not stopped. It is only through the intervention of Merry and Éowyn, two people discredited by everyone as too weak to even fight beside the men of Gondor as equals, that the Witch King is defeated. This showcases another one of the more important themes in Lord of the Rings, the triumph of the weak and small over the strong and power-hungry. While others like Saruman are hitching their future on powerful forces like Sauron, Gandalf makes his bet on the hobbits of the Shire, entrusting them to carry one of the most powerful items in Middle-earth to the doorstep of his greatest enemy and the person who wants it most.
While I think the David versus Goliath trope is an important one to shaping a morally good person, I also think that the moral simplicity required to draw out these themes merits some form of reflection and discussion from modern audiences. Is it okay to train people to see their enemies as evil at the ontological level?
Two big problems I see in society today are: not being able to humanize/understand people with ideas opposing our own and defining how we see ourselves by our external enemies. These two things have been a problem for a long time, but I think that stories that paint morality as black and white train us from an early age to reduce complex moral issues to simpler, emotionally digestible perceptions of those same issues.
Things like Faramir disobeying orders to kill anyone found near Ephel Dúath is him holding true to “white” moral principles. Similarly, Frodo sparing Gollum despite Sam’s repeated pleas is Frodo holding true to “white” moral principles. In both these cases, although it might appear like the wrong thing to do to others, these characters’ steadfast ability to hold themselves to what they think is right ultimately has them make some of the most important decisions in the narrative, affecting the entire fate of Middle-earth in a positive manner.
In the case of Frodo, I think that most people would’ve killed Gollum at some point on their own trek to Mount Doom. At the very least, I think most people would not spare Gollum’s life after meeting him at the foot of Mount Doom, the first time seeing him after he led them straight through Shelob’s lair. Frodo cannot bring himself to do it, however, as he sees Gollum suffering under the weight of the Ring as he is. He cannot bring harm to the pitiful creature, despite that same creature nearly killing both him and Sam multiple times. And it turns out that sparing Gollum ultimately saves Frodo from being reduced to a creature like Gollum, as the corrupting nature of the Ring, its ultimate self-defense mechanism, drives Gollum into making one final attempt at stealing the Ring. An attempt that succeeds but also ends with him falling into the molten lavas of Mount Doom.
By designing the narrative in this way, Tolkien essentially says that there are some cases where self-defense is not right, that holding to moral principles like “Murder is wrong” and having mercy beyond reason and self-preservation is who we should strive to be as good humans. These intentional choices in designing the narrative, paired with making Sauron the ultimate “evil” villain by designing him as an entity so powerful that he essentially becomes an evil god of Middle-earth, and so beyond reason that the only thing to be done is to oppose him through committing your military 100% to stopping him, makes me think one of a couple of things. Either:
- The historical designing of villains as entities beyond reason and only stopped through violence antiquates the morality of the story
- The story is purposefully designed this way for children to build moral understanding and how to act in situations where moral nuance isn’t needed. Not every story has to have nuance; sometimes there are just entities that cannot be reasoned with and can only be stopped with violence
- My interpretation is bad, or my opinion can be further refined
I think the stories being for children is the explanation that makes the most sense to me currently, especially The Hobbit. However, for those that would defend Tolkien’s works as a good story for children, I would ask if you think framing enemies as beyond reason as Tolkien does is a good way to frame the world for people who are going to inherit the world. The alternative doesn’t have to be an ultra-morally ambiguous read for children, but could bringing just a small amount of moral nuance to a story help develop critical thinking while introducing situations that will be more akin to their real-life experiences? Maybe also I’m overcooking this, and stories like Tolkien’s would work with a broad spectrum of other stories to ground people’s morality.
I’m sure with the ubiquity of Lord of the Rings, I will have further discussions with people in the future on this topic, which will help me suss out my feelings on the structure of the story itself.
Overall, even though I do have my questions about Tolkien’s moral framing, I think the story is thorough, well told, and does a good job of developing and showing interactions between a multitude of high-integrity characters. It wasn’t the easiest read, and it may not have lived up to the hype for me personally, but Tolkien’s stories are worth the praise they receive, and I’m honestly so glad they exist just for the art that they inspired (movies/paintings/drawings).