Monday, March 24, 2008
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Rating: 5 out of 5
3 Volumes:
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
The Return of the King
To the serious reader, it's hard to imagine what popular adventure fiction would be like without the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien and his masterpiece. For one, it created a demand of books in the Fantasy genre influencing a great number of authors that would come after, and along with C.S. Lewis and Ursula K. Le Guin would cement the fantasy genre into modern mainstream literature. Tolkien's epic style would define modern heroic fantasy fiction for the next 50 years.
And, as many followers of fantasy are also into Science Fiction, both genres influencing one another, it wasn't long before elements of Tolkien's stories could be found in the works of Sci-Fi authors and filmmakers. One can only look at Star Wars and see the similarities between the characters.
The book also strongly made its mark in the role-playing game industry which achieved poplularity since the 1970's in what is now called the pencil-and-paper version and has now evolved into the computer-gaming world of the 90's and the virtual cyberworlds since 2000. From them, one can say that Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings has played a major part the formation of late 20th century and early 21st century popular world culture.
Basically look at fantasy adventure stories of today and it may, to a lesser or greater degree, be described as "Tolkienesque" - basically a group of adventurers going on a quest to save the world from the armies of an Evil Dark Lord. Furthermore, one would be hard-pressed to find any fantasy story before the turn of the century that's a standalone book. Most are trilogies. At least! Some even stretch their stories to 4, 5, 6 even 10 books even though it was initially promised as a trilogy to cash out on the success of their initial books. (The funny thing is that Tolkien meant this to be one book, but his publishers decided to release them in three parts due to the high cost of paper at the time.)
Why is it so popular? It practically became the second-most read book of the 20th century after the Bible. Plus, the success of the Peter Jackson films has reintroduced the books to the public and has propelled its popularity to new heights. This, in spite of the fact that even die-hard Tolkien fans regard the books as not an easy read, as Tolkien approached his writing in a linguistic point-of-view and disregarded most of the rules of literary writing.
Tolkien introduces the reader to a world never seen before at the time of its publication - Middle-Earth. A magical world of hobbits, wizards, rangers, elves and dwarves. Of giant spiders, goblins, orcs, trolls, wraiths, giant eagles, talking and walking trees and other magical creatures. In it, a young Hobbit (and to anyone who still doesn't know what this little creatures are, what hole have you been hiding in for the past 50 years?) named Frodo Baggins inherits a ring from his guardian Bilbo Baggins. To Frodo's horror, he learns that the said ring is the actual long-lost Ring of Power which belongs to the Dark Lord Sauron, who now is looking for it in order to launch his next assault on the world of Men. (For the story on how Bilbo actually got the ring, see Tolkien's other great book, The Hobbit.) With help of the Gandalf the Wizard, three other Hobbits, Sam, Merry and Pippin, the Ranger Aragorn, and later the elf Legolas, the dwarf Gimli, and Boromir of the Kingdom of Gondor, Frodo begins a journey that will lead him towards the fires of Mt. Doom, the only place where the Ring can be destroyed. Along the way, he will be aided or hindered by different wonderful creatures that inhabit Middle-Earth such as Wraiths, Trolls, Orcs, Ents, Eagles, Wargs, Mearas and much, much more. And through Frodo's journey, one gets to learn of Middle-Earth, a world painstakingly created by Tolkien complete with its very own detailed history, culture, geography, language, and literature.
If the plot is a wee bit familiar, it's because this is THE plot. This is the plot from which most other heroic fantasy story's plots come from. It was as if for 50 years, fantasy authors thought that (1) anything other than Tolkien's plotline would be inferior, and (2) they loved the story so much, that they want to repeat it over and over again while putting little personal touches to differentiate it and make it their own (like put some dark shadowy terrifying creatures like Wraiths but calling them by another name.)
Yet, this is a book whose story is timeless as it talks about themes that touch everyone's soul. It talks about despair and hoplessness, and finding hope where there is none. It talks about courage, not as fearlessness, but as confronting your darkest fears and terrors, and accepting the consequences of your actions and decisions even if it means the very worst. It talks about the nature of evil and how it influences us all. It talks about the dangers of modernization and its effect on the environment. (As early as his time, Tolkien did see the coming dangers of the modern world and the price it obtains from nature.) And most of all, it talks about undying friendship and loyalty even, and especially, on the face of death. It asks one question of us all: "If you were to discover a thing so powerful that it can do almost anything, would you use it for the betterment of mankind or would you destroy it to keep it from falling into the wrong hands, and that includes yourself?"
So maybe, it's not really a fantasy story after all, but a story that needs a fantasy setting to say all the things it needs to say. And that is why, like all great works, it is a story that transcends it genre, and is a classic.
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