The author and his intentions
"The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd." - J.R.R. Tolkien (1)
"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit."(2)
When Oxford Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien wrote this onto a blank page of one of the exams he was correcting on a summer's day in 1928, he did not know that this very sentence would be translated into 25 languages, that he had just started a book that would - along with its sequel - gain cult status all over the world and win him awards he had never even dreamed of or that the mentioned sequel would be turned into a bombastic cinema trilogy almost a hundred years later, then assumed to be the most popular book ever written.(3) In fact, he did not even know how he had made up the word “hobbit”!
However, the story of "burglar" Bilbo Baggins developed as Tolkien told - and later read - it to his children and to his friends who finally convinced him to send the manuscript to a publisher. And after having been examined and loved by the publisher's ten-year-old son, Bilbo - equipped with walking stick and pipe weed - made his way into the public and was welcomed with open arms.
When asked by the publisher to write a sequel to 'The Hobbit', Tolkien started an epos nothing written afterwards could ever be compaired to (although there was no lack of attempts): trying to give an own mythology to his beloved England, he ended up giving a new story of creation and prehistory to the entire world taking place in a setting whose society and geography begin to develop towards the present state even in the course of the story. All the aspects of his life were turned into what has been called "the bible of the alternative nation" (4) - from his childhood fear of spiders to his love for his wife Edith, from his studies of Welsh and Finnish (the languges that provided the basic components for Tolikien's elven languages, Quenya and Sindarin) to his experiences of industrialization and the two World Wars. On the one hand, the cycle formed by 'The Silamrillion', 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord Of The Rings' is the successful effort to digest reality and escape it at the same time. On the other hand, legends from all over Europe, such as the Atlantis saga (ref. the Downfall Of Númenór (5)), Greek and Norse epics have found their way into the "book of the century" (6). Some efforts of interpretation even go as far as to see Sauron and his orcs directly as an equivalent for the German Nazi regime (an assertion strengthened by the phonetic system of the Black Speech, the only one to contain typical German sounds like ‘sch’ or the ‘r’ spoken with the uvala) or Gandalf's 'death' and return to Middle-Earth as a correspondence to the Ressurection of Christ.
Whether Tolkien intended this direct connection to real historic events when setting his epos in an “imaginary historical frame” (7) cannot clearly be said today. But what he certainly intended (and achieved) was to create a refuge from war and poverty and the spreading of a message: The smallest hands can turn the wheel of time.
A small land called the Shire, full of meadows and flowers and filled with the laughter of its not even dwarf-sized and furry-footed inhabitants called Hobbits. A rather unimportant part of a world called Middle-Earth (8). A world that lies far beyond our reality. A world full of Elves and Dwarves, of fair maidens and brave warriors, of mighty kings and glorious deeds - this is where the story begins, because a the shadow of a big threat lies over this beautiful world now. For the Ruling Ring of Power - be it by coincidence or by fate - has been recognized by the Grey Wizard Gandalf (or Mithrandir, as the elves call him) in an heirloom given to the young hobbit Frodo Baggins by his uncle Bilbo. This Ring was forged by the Dark Lord Sauron, master of the evil and sombre land of Mordor, together with 19 other Rings of which three were given to the Kings of Elves, seven to the Lords of Dwarves and nine to Mortal Men. But what they did not know was that they had been betrayed, because all those Rings were ruled by the One Ring so that their bearers would, affected by their power, slowly fade to wraiths and become Sauron's slaves.
The only way to destroy this One Ring is to throw is into the fire of Mount Doom, Amon Amarth, in the land of Mordor, the fire in which it was forged. And destroyed it must be, for if Sauron gets it back, his power will be big enough to enslave all Free Folks and finally rule the world. But time is getting short as the Nazgûl, the Nine Men turned into Ringwraiths, Sauron's mightiest servants, are already driving their black horses towards the Shire!
It is an almost impossible task, a road darkened by dangers and losses, that Frodo has to face. But still he has got a lot of friends by his side: the Hobbits Sam, Merry and Pippin, Gandalf, a Ranger called Strider by some who turns out to be Aragorn, son of Arathon and heir of Isildur, rightful King of Gondor, at a later point of the story, the Elf Legolas and the Dwarf Gimli, the warrior Boromir from Gondor and many others without whom this story might have been quite short. And not all of his ways are dark, as they lead him to Rivendell, the home of Elrond Half-elven and his fair daughter Arwen and through the elven-land of Lothlórien with its golden Mallorn trees gleaming in the sun and fair Elven maids singing hymns to Elbereth Gilthoniel* with their clear voices.
And by Elbereth he seems to be favoured, for whenever all hope to fulfill his task is gone, he finds help where he had least expected it...
It is a story of love and of hate, of loyalty and of treason, of big joy and of deep grief. You don't seem to be reading the book but to witness the story happening in front of your eyes.
With 'The Lord Of The Rings' and 'The Silmarillion', Tolkien has created a whole world with its own maps, laws, truths, mysteries and mythology which is described in such a realistic way that you think you could just walk out your door and find yourself in the Shire, just having walked out of Bagend, or somewhere in Lothlórien...
...And who knows? For it's a dangerous business going out of your door, as old Bilbo used to say. You step into the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to...
Many people think that with his ‘Lord Of The Rings’ movie trilogy, Peter Jackson brought the cult about the book back to life. In fact, he only brought it back to the public: Although to most people, "The Lord Of The Rings" used to be nothing more than a title they had somehow heard before, there was always a group of people to whom Tolkien's masterpiece was more than just a book. It was something that had an effect on their lives, something to refer to and to identify with. From themes of children's holiday camps held by the church to pseydonyms of Norwegian Black Metal singers, Middle-Earth was always present, but it seemed to be a place for minorities.
Everything changed when the first movie came out: The "true" Tolkien fans suddenly had to cope with people wearing Lord Of The Rings T-shirts, drinking out of Lord Of The Rings coffee mugs, playing Lord Of The Rings computer and board games and reading the new translation of ‘The Lord Of The Rings’ in the underground on their way to work, teenage girls giggling about Aragorn and Legolas, people calling Arwen Aragorn's girlfriend, Galadriel a witch and Eowyn "that blonde one in that land with the horses", people trying to force everything into their modern scheme of things and turning Middle-Earth upside down.
Talking about the One Ring became kind of strange with everybody wearing copies of it on their fingers, a phenomenon which lead to the question about a plural: two One Rings? Soon, answering questions about forgotten names and misunderstood film scenes became a new item of the agenda for every Tolkien reader.
In the end, these days one can really be astonished (and grateful) to find somebody who has not read the book and is not planning to read it. The Lord Of The Rings was not meant to be read by so many people. It is a fairytale, written for children and for dreamers.
And there are a lot of people who set sail for Middle-Earth and never got there, who were held back by "all those strange names" and confused by "all those different people". And yes, it is true that Middle-Earth gives home to quite a lot of peoples and individuals, so everybody can find his or her reflection in the gigantic mirror of this fairytale. Unlike most fairytales, however, not many of those characters fit into the ancient scheme of good or evil.
1 The Silmarillion, Foreword (From a letter by J.R.R Tolkien), p. xii
2 The Hobbit, p. 1
3 As the only book which sold more copies than ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is the Bible, which most certainly was not read by everybody who bought it, while some copies of ‘The lord Of The rings’ were probably read by more than one person, it is assumed than no other book has been read as often.
4 Tolkiens Welt, p. 50
5 I use the words 'dwarvish' and 'elvish' resp. 'elven-' instead of 'dwarfish' and 'elfish' resp. 'elfin-', sticking to the expressions and ways of spelling Tolkien uses in his work. Moreover, I use capitals wherever Tolkien uses them (Hobbits, Men, the Ruling Ring, Black Riders, the Sword that was broken, the Downfall of Númenor etc.).
6 TLOTR, description on the backside
7 Tolkien – Eine illustrierte Enzyklopädie, p.7
8 Words written in grey contain a hyperlink to the place in the glossary where they are explained. The glossary will open in a new window.
