Returning to the Tree of Tolkien’s Art: Re-Reading The Lord of the Rings Trilogy at (almost) 50

Every few years, I try to read one, if not all three books of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, which is the only multi-book series I feel compelled to re-read (I never make it past the third book of Dune, for example). Thanks to Peter Jackson’s films, Tolkien’s work can easily seem oversaturated in our cultural life and its importance overrated. Before re-reading the first book, I often think to myself that this time I’ll see through the façade to the true sham of the work. That the magic will have faded, the illusion revealed as little more than a play of light and shadow, or perhaps, my own nostalgia for all things Tolkien in my childhood.

But no. Within a chapter or two I’m dazzled anew by his amazing ability to set a scene, to create living, breathing characters and set them in a landscape that is completely unique, yet strangely familiar. “Familiar” because so many people have borrowed and outright ripped it off over the years. Indeed, is there a fantasy novel or AD&D campaign that doesn’t owe something to Tolkien, whether from the Inn of the Prancing Pony (where adventurers hole up to meet strange contacts and enjoy some ale) or the dread lair of Shelob herself, full of Lovecraftian horrors from another world? And yes, while Lovecraft’s work might have predated Tolkien’s, I feel that more people read Tolkien and imbibed their eldritch horrors from him rather than the reverse (since the Lovecraft revival didn’t really occur until the 80’s, and even then, was probably inspired by Tolkien’s popularity).

Admittedly, there are some inescapable ‘sins’ in Tolkien’s work, which might horrify the uninitiated. He seems to enjoy the sheer act of writing, and if his narrator was a person (and indeed, he does somewhat resemble the character of Bilbo), we might call him loquacious. He’s not one for quick snapshots of a scene or a character; we get the color of the fading sun on the hills, the names of those hills, the people who once traveled over those hills, those people’s ancestors, and so forth.

It’s only overwhelming if you expect a story to be all plot or all character: surely writing has a middle path, that of history, where a story exists in its unique space and time, and the characters are part of a culture that exerts its own push and pull on the story. Too often, fantasy stories for all their world building feel rootless; they exist in a never-never land of vague references and associations, where the year, the weather, and the local cuisine is strangely unaccounted for. Not so with Tolkien, who is both storyteller and guidebook, as good as a Lonely Planet guidebook of Middle Earth.

Another one of his ‘sins’ might his tendency to write on three distinct levels, which is often mistaken for sloppiness or lack of ability. Yet Tolkien’s use of these levels is too consistent to be an accident, and ultimately, completely satisfying if taken on its own terms. Here are the three levels as I see them, though there are probably a few more tucked away in its pages:

· The ‘novel’ level: the story of our true protagonists, the Hobbits, as they navigate through their adventures and tell the stories in the manner of a modern novel, complete with anachronistic (that is, contemporary) dialogue.

· The ‘romance’ level: the story of the heroes of old and their adventures and derring-do in a world that is much closer to Beowulf and The Song of Roland than anything written today. Characters like Aragorn, Eomer, Eowyn, Galadriel, etc. belong to this world, and speak like it, too. Curiously, Legolas and Gimli actually flit between this world and the ‘novel’ one, since their banter seems more Hobbit-like, and less in keeping with the romance setting (and yet, they are both fluent in this speech and can fade into it when necessary).

· The ‘myth’ level: the story as a grand myth on the order of his other great work of lore, The Simarillion. Often, the narrator will depart to explore history and legend, or divert into scenes that really don’t belong in either of the two previous levels, yet enrich our understanding of them. The oft-maligned chapters of Tom Bombadil and his wife, Goldberry, belong to this level, as do the passages with Treebeard and the Ents, as well as them many songs and poems scattered through the books.

The joy of reading The Lord of the Rings is appreciating how each level alters our perception of the whole, and seeing how a seemingly random decision or accident in one chapter actually follows an ancient design and has incredible purpose. It’s also fun to see how the heroism of Samwise, for example, is ultimately just as glorious as that of Aragorn, though they embark upon different quests and fight different battles. I understand that many people would prefer to read one book written on one level and with one set of characters, but this simply isn’t that book. And to me, each level humanizes and complicates the other, though ultimately, it’s the first level — that of the Hobbits — that makes the entire series stand or fall.

Clearly, Tolkien takes profound pleasure in writing about the hobbits. As much as he adores language and lore, they are only a means to an end, that end being the creation of a believable backdrop for the Hobbits to emerge on the stage as heroes. Without the story of the Ring, or the history of the elves, or even Aragorn’s circuitous path to kingship, we might laugh at or dismiss the Hobbits as comic relief (which they occasionally are). But we quickly understand that they are the work’s true scholars: they are writers and translators, the guides and poets. We experience the work through them, learning alongside them as they learn the importance of every rock and tree in Middle Earth, their stories as well as their fate. Otherwise, the story would just be a cosmic hodge-podge of good vs. evil in a fantastic realm (sort of the way The Simarillion is: it’s fascinating, but it lacks a proper guide taking us by the hand and showing us why it all matters, and how it speaks to our heart).

In Roger Sale’s essay, “Tolkien and Frodo Baggins,” he writes on this very quality of Tolkien’s art:

“Probably everyone who enjoys reading Tolkien has asked at least himself why it is that the hobbits work so well for their author. He fumbles with them and fails, too; but everyone knows that without them the trilogy would not stand a chance…they are the one rein he is really interested in drawing on his endless inventiveness…he does seem to realize that he needs the hobbits always present to do their learning as the reader does his learning…The external world is far too real and far too glorious for Tolkien to tie himself only to what someone saw or felt, but he also knows that all he cares most for — the Ring, the war, the lore of Middle Earth — needs characters like the hobbits to explore and learn of their dimensions and worth.”

The Hobbits also underline the key theme of the entire work: the value of friendship and the bonds of common fellowship. The world we encounter at the end of the Third Age of Middle Earth is a particularly dark one. Old friendships have failed, old treaties and oaths lie broken. History and songs have faded into the realm of confusion and myth. The various races of Middle Earth (besides the Elves, of course) have largely forgotten a time when they assisted one another for the common good, and have let the petty lust for power and nationalism cloud their better judgment. Even the great, wise creatures of the world, such as the Ents, are indifferent to the suffering of others, for as Treebeard tells Pippin and Merry, “I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side.”

It’s easy to forget that, unlike what we see in Jackson’s film, the various races of Middle Earth come to Rivendell not to consult about the Ring or even to form a last-ditch Fellowship. Other than Gandalf and the Hobbits, all have come for completely different, and largely selfish, motives. Indeed, Boromir has broken his people’s taboo on consorting with Elves simply to learn the meaning of a mysterious dream-vision that was plaguing his brother, Faramir. He wants nothing to do with a Fellowship, and feels that if anyone should confront the power of the Ring, it should be him — and Gondor.

This is nowhere more apparently (and allegorical) than in Book Two, Chapter 4 of The Fellowship of the Ring, where the Fellowship is trying in vain to open the ancient doors leading to the Mines of Moria. The door is locked with a spell with only one key, a single word which was once common knowledge among those who befriended the dwarves. Now, alas, it is long-forgotten, and not even Gandalf can penetrate the mystery, much to the surprise and despair of his followers. Only when he hears the wolves approaching from a distance and the disturbing ripples in the pool does it finally occur to him:

“The opening word was inscribed on the archway all the time! The translation should have been: Say “Friend” and enter. I had only to speak the Elvish word for friend and the doors opened. Quite simple. Too simple for a learned lore-master in these suspicious days. Those were happier times.”

The doors open and in they go — but the passage is more important than a plot device. The words are written in the Elvish script, back in the days when elves and dwarves were fast friends and supported one another. Those days are now long gone, the ancient friendship lost. Now, no dwarves can enter the mines since they don’t speak the Elvish tongue, and even though who do (such as Gandalf) can no longer remember the words and gifts they once shared together. In short, as their friendship is broken, so, too, are their spells and power. The door becomes a mere block of stone, carved with a senseless riddle that even Golllum would have trouble solving.

Gandalf assumes that “if you are a friend, speak the password, and the doors will open,” and yet, the riddle is not even a riddle: it offers a far-more guileless explanation. It is the mere word ‘friend’ (or mellon in the old tongue) that opens the door, since in the old days, there was no need for complicated spells or riddles. In short, a friend would know.

This becomes the greatest themes in the first book of The Lord of the Rings, and an all-important watch-word throughout the subsequent books. The Fellowship itself teeters on the understanding of friendship amongst people and races who no longer like or trust one another: Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, and Men. If they cannot bury their ancient enmities long enough to complete their quest, the entire world will fall. And against a power as diabolical as Sauron, what chance to any of the peoples of Middle Earth have except to rely in friendship, which helps without hope of reward, and sacrifices for love, rather than power?

Throughout the book, those who would be powerful and win the war are very cavalier about friendship, and often dismiss it as so many cobwebs clinging to an ancestral sword. Chief among these is Saruman, the greatest wizard of Middle Earth, and its “most learned lore-master” (as Gandalf remarks above). Saruman has a devious plan to side with Sauron only long enough to see him weakened through endless wars in Middle Earth, at which point he, himself, will seize power with his mighty Orcs and take the Ring. As he explains to Gandalf, his sole ally in this nefarious scheme:

“We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish. There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means.”

Saurman is more than happy to sacrifice their friends and allies to Sauron’s cause, so long as it doesn’t hinder their cause, which he calls “Knowledge, Rule, Order,” but which can ultimately be summarized as ‘power.’ Friendship requires sacrifice, compromise, and humility, none of which has a place in all Saruman’s books of lore. Indeed, he has “striven in vain” to become as powerful as he would, since he has to kowtow to the Elves and their ancient order (and when he later meets Galadriel in the final book, he spits venom at her, claiming he hates her above all creatures in Middle Earth).

Fittingly, Saurman has no real friendship for any of his friends, the fellow wizards Radagast and Gandalf. When Gandalf mentions Radagast, he can only scoff, “Radagast the Bird-Tamer! Radagast the Simple! Radagast the Fool!” Even Gandalf is just a pawn in his scheme, an ally to be used and betrayed in his time. And that time comes all-too-soon, when Gandalf refuses to bow to his greater wisdom, and dares to rely on the friendship of the Elves and the Hobbits. In one of the more humorous scenes of the book, Saruman boasts of his great power and wisdom by proclaiming, “I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!”, to which Gandalf replies, “ I liked white better.”

It is fitting, then, when his armies are destroyed by the Ents and his tower besieged, he is left with a single ally: Grima Wormtongue, himself a traitor to his friends, and even now, a grudging servant who is also biding his time and “keeping his thoughts in his heart.” By the end of the book, Saruman has been reduced to “Sharkey,” the would-be crime boss of the Shire, who is cruelly dispatched by his lackey after trying to knife Frodo in the back.

Equally fascinating, in a book opposed to power for power’s sake and the danger of an all-consuming Ring, is its hero, Frodo Baggins. While one could argue that Frodo is merely one hero among many, he is still the Ring-Bearer, the one whose task it is to take the Ring and destroy it. For that reason alone, he remains our most important character and the one that many of our heroes — Gandalf, Aragon, and Sam among them — consider the work’s greatest champion. In most fantasy novels (and indeed, this is the case in The Hobbit), a timid, ignorant fellow begins a quest of self-knowledge that turns him into a wily trickster and a hero of legend. He learns to fight, to kill, and to be callous about necessary loss of life.

Not so Frodo, who never becomes a fighter or a killer. Though he wields Sting and is willing to defend himself if necessary, he never kills anyone with it (unlike Bilbo), and initially sees no reason to carry weapons at all! Of course, this is the general sense of all the Hobbits, who went they first stumble on the weapon-horde of the Wight of the Barrow Downs, wonder “if they would be of any use. Fighting had not before occurred to any of them as one of the adventures in which their flight would land them.” Yet one by one, they all become fierce fighters and knights of Rohan and Gondor. All except Frodo.

Toward the very end of the book, in Chapter II of Book Six, Frodo and Sam have to make their way across Orc armies and hovering Ring-Wraiths to the door of Mount Doom. Yet Frodo knows it’s too late to become a fighter now, and his heroism will be based on nothing more than being worthy of bearing the Ring. As he tells Sam, “Sting I give to you. I have got an orc-blade, but I do not think it will be my part to strike any blow again.” Throughout the books, Frodo is stabbed, assaulted, abducted, starved, beaten, whipped, and tormented by the power of the Ring. He suffers, yet does not make others suffer in return. Even Gollum, whom he initially despises, he spares and makes his loyal companion, until the wily creature inevitably betrays him.

In short, by the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo has accepted his fate as a man (or Hobbit) divorced from the world. He knows the quest will kill him, and he wants to bear this sacrifice as humbly, and as privately, as possible. Therefore, he takes few into his confidence, kills none, and merely waits for the inevitable end of his mission or the world, whichever comes first. He never makes a selfish decision or action in the book, until the very end, when standing before the fires of Mount Doom, he turns to Sam and says,

“I have come…But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!”

The tragic power of this reversal hits the reader like a thunderclap, even though we’ve seen flashes of his mind being corrupted by the Ring throughout. Of course, their chilling meaning is all-too-clear: that not even the meekest, most noble savior of the world can resist the temptation of power. Its very nature is like Sauron itself, to make and mock, to take creation and distort it into a twisted shape, so that the original can no longer be remembered or discerned by others.

Perhaps the greatest irony of the book is that Gollum proves our unwilling savior, another creature bent out of shape by the Ring, yet not without hope of redemption. Indeed, though he has been following Frodo since the very beginning of the book, he, too, is Frodo’s companion, and ties of friendship (however confused) bind the two to the end. At times he truly does desire Frodo’s approval, and throughout a large chunk of The Two Towers, he is as loyal and fawning a servant as Sam (indeed, both call him Master!). If anything, his final betrayal is based as much on his lust for the Ring as his own sense of hurt when Frodo seemingly turned him over to Faramir and his band of scouts.

Before this act, Gollum had succumbed to the power of companionship after so many years of loneliness and isolation. He temporarily believed in Frodo, too. While the Ring would have corrupted this friendship in time, or at least once Gollum caught wind of his plans, their mutual understanding almost saved Gollum, and probably kept Frodo going on the long road to Mordor (since Frodo had to believe that Ring-Bearers could be saved, even after so many years of corruption). So even at the bitter end, when Gollum bites Frodo’s finger off to snatch the Ring, Gollum’s refusal to abandon him is what proves his salvation…and perhaps his tumble into the lava was a subconscious act of self-sacrifice?

What I love most about re-reading the book is encountering all the scenes and characters that never made it into the movie, usually for issues of length and redundancy. One of the most glaring omissions in my mind occurs in the final chapters of The Return of the King, when the Hobbits return to the Shire to find it invaded by “Sharkey” (Saruman) and his goons. I can understand the omission in a film: after three movies of conflict and adventure, another fight in the shire, but this time only among hobbits and men, might seem like a confusing anticlimax. Yet I find it one of the most fascinating moments in the book, and an important conclusion to the work as a whole, and the work as a myth.

For despite Tolkien’s apparent distaste for allegory, this work is allegorical on many levels, as he knew himself. He simply feared the work being reduced to a single, simplistic reading, such as Sauron = Hitler, the Shire = England, Mordor = Germany, etc. These exist in flashes, but they’re not the key that unlocks the door. In a larger sense, the book is about the very nature of quests themselves: the hero’s journey is about self-discovery and defeating one’s inner demons, to be sure; but it doesn’t mean that you return home to glory and a happy ending. In most cases, the adventure changes the very nature of home, a concept Frodo keenly understands. You can go home again, but to return it to see home with new eyes, and the home you’ve carried with you, the one that sustained you in the depths of Mordor and beyond, is no longer a world you can return to. Or at least, not without effort.

The Shire has been transformed in their absence: trees are burned down, foul-smelling mills erected spewing smoke and dust, and an elaborate system of “Shirriffs” has been instituted to work the will of the Boss, which is chiefly stealing from Hobbits and imprisoning any loudmouths. As Tolkien writes,

“Even Sam’s vision in [Galadriel’s] Mirror had not prepared him for what they saw. The Old Grange on the west side has been knocked down, and its place taken by rows of tarred sheds. All the chestnuts were gone. The banks and hedgerows were broken…[Sam] pointed to where the [Party Tree] had stood under which Bilbo had made his Farewell Speech. It was lying lopped and dead in the field. As if this was the last straw Sam burst into tears.”

Clearly the felling of the Party Tree mirrors the dead White Tree of Gondor, both of them now reflective of a lost, golden age which only exists in the hearts and minds of the people. Rather than the happy — and rather empty — homecoming detailed in the film, here the Hobbits realize that to save a world you have to abandon it, or at least your claim to it. It can be rebuilt and re-established, of course, but that will be a different world, a different Shire. This was the cost of undertaking the quest and destroying the Ring: the quest will change you, and you can no longer sink back into the sober depths of Hobbiton and resume your former life. Merry and Pippin will always be fighters now, men of the larger world; even Sam, who does settle down to domestic bliss in the Shire, is keenly aware of what’s missing for the rest of his life. The pain of losing Frodo, and having other hobbits forget him entirely, is almost more than he can bear.

Getting one last battle in the book (unlike the film) seems entirely fitting, since the Hobbits are no longer the ‘little people’ ducking under the radar of the heroes and villains of Middle Earth. This is now their fight and their world, and they are the heroes whose exploits will live on in legend and song. After all, these are not the same gentle Hobbits who less than a year ago left the Shire for an uncertain reception in the Wilds. They are practiced warriors and seasoned adventurers; Pippin has saved a prince and slain a giant; Merry has served a king, ridden with a shield-maiden, and assisted in slaying the Witch King himself. Sam has fought one of the greatest creatures of Middle Earth, Shelob, and lived to tell the tale (and possibly dealt her a mortal wound). And Frodo, well, he’s endured the torment and temptation of the Ring itself, and was the first person in history to willingly part with it (even if he did fail at the very last second). When they march back into the Shire to be confronted by the threats of the Shirriffs, who threaten to arrest them, and the Big Men, who threaten to beat them, we can only laugh. As do the Hobbits themselves: “To the discomfiture of the Shirriffs Frodo and his companions all roared with laughter.”

While it’s absurd to think a band of ruffians can end their career after so many Orcs, Trolls, and Ring-Wraiths failed to do the job, the prospect before them is no laughing matter. They will have to rouse the entire Shire in its defense, since even four heroes cannot take on a hundred or more armed men alone. A great battle must ensue, and lives will be lost, some of them Hobbits. Frodo is horrified by the very notion of war in the Shire, and exclaims, “Fight?…Well, I suppose it may come to that. But remember, there is to be no slaying of hobbits, not even if they have gone over to the other side…No hobbit has ever killed another on purpose in the Shire, and it is not to begin now. And nobody is to be killed at all, if it can be helped.”

Of course, it could not be helped, and a bloody battle ensues, with men and hobbits being lost on both sides. Once the battle has ended, “Nearly seventh of the ruffians lay dead on the field, and a dozen were prisoners. Nineteen hobbits were killed, and some thirty were wounded.” However, true to form, Frodo “had been in the battle, but he had not drawn sword, and his chief part had been to prevent the hobbits in their wrath at their losses, from slaying those of their enemies who threw down their weapons.” Frodo’s greatest tragedy is not the wound he receives on Weathertop, or even the long, harsh months of bearing the Ring; it’s the terrible fate of the Shire, which has not only been ransacked, but has forever lost its innocence.

The Battle of Bywater is now one of many such battles dotting the War of the Rings, and makes the Shire irrecoverably part of the outside world. It is no longer an Eden or Avalon buried far away from the world of man. Man has now entered the garden, and the Hobbits have been baptized in their blood. Merry and Pippin are also larger now (after having drank the Ent-draughts from Treebeard), which is symbolic of their own evolution from Halflings to warriors of legend. This is another reason why Frodo can never truly return home, and why the Shire slowly turns his back on him, leaving the Ring-Bearer to become more and more reclusive, until he is virtually forgotten among the Shire.

Yet Frodo never becomes bitter and embodies the true spirit of fellowship towards his enemies, even that greatest of villains, Saruman. Though the latter’s plan to overtake the Shire is foiled, he still takes great delight having “already done much that you will find it hard to mend or undo in your lives. And it will be pleasant to think of that and set it against my injuries.” While the hobbits want to take their bloody revenge then and there, Frodo stops them, offering him forgiveness and exile instead. Typically, Saruman mistakes this kindness for cruelty, seeing only cynicism in a mind incapable of harboring it: “You have grown, Halfling…You are wise, and cruel. You have robbed my revenge of sweetness, and now I must go hence in bitterness, in debt to your mercy. I hate it and you!”

It’s true that Frodo has gained wisdom and insight, but not for cruelty, and certainly not for punishment. Frodo simply understands that to erase the shadow of Sauron requires a new way of thinking, and not a mindless reversion to pain and revenge. He wishes to cast power away from him like the Ring, which excludes standing in judgment as the vanquished grovel on their knees for mercy. Saurman’s inability to understand this shows how far he has fallen, lower even than Gollum, and certainly lower than Wormtongue, whose murder of Sharkey can at least be construed as a misguided kindness.

Sadly, the most tragic change in Frodo is his inability to ever return to life in the Shire. He remains haunted by his possession of the Ring, and for years later, he continues to paw at a white gem hanging around his neck, a grim proxy of the Ring. Like Bilbo, another Hobbit who can no longer exist in the Shire, he takes to recording the story of their adventures so future generations can understand what the Shire was, and how it was lost (and found anew). Not surprisingly, Frodo has effectively become one of the Elves, an autumnal being who lives in art; too ideal to exist in this world, and one who the common Hobbits quickly stop believing in, much to Sam’s confusion. But as Frodo tells him before setting off to the Grey Havens, “I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger; some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.” By giving up the Shire, it can exist evergreen in the pages of his book, just as his quest, soon forgotten, becomes a new myth to revitalize the Shire.

In a strange way this echoes the fate of writers themselves, who must give up large portions their life to make up the worlds and words of their story. Tolkien, too, was a Ring-Bearer for this world, preserving not only the Hobbits’ tales for humanity, but also so many near-forgotten works of scholarship which he translated from forgotten tongues (Beowulf, Sir Gawain, Sir Orfeo, etc.). Whenever I read The Lord of the Rings as a whole, I feel that I’m reading more than an invented history of a make-believe world in three long volumes. It feels much more like reading a translation of stories that have been painstakingly restored and pieced together like a fragmented mosaic found in a million pieces in a forgotten ruin. You can see here and there that liberties have been taken, that some of the lacunae have been filled with guesses and the closest modern equivalents; and yet, it all reads like one consistent, sweeping narrative, so that all the disparaging criticism of Tolkien I’ve had to digest — his bad poetry, his ham-fisted dialogue, his lack of women, accusations of racism, etc. — fall away like so many leaves in autumn. What remains is the tree, standing stoutly against the coming winter, each branch bearing the weight of several generations of readers, with room for still more in the years to come. When I finish the final pages of The Return of the King, I know I’ll be climbing this tree again, in every season, and in every age of my life.