J. R. R. Tolkien's best-known novels, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , both have the structure of quests, with a hero setting out, facing dangers, achieving a goal, and returning home. Where The Hobbit is a children's story with the simple goal of treasure, The Lord of the Rings is a more complex narrative with multiple quests. Its main quest, to destroy the One Ring, has been described as a reversed quest – starting with a much-desired treasure, and getting rid of it. That quest, too, is balanced against a moral quest, to scour the Shire and return it to its original state.
Tolkien superimposed multiple meanings on the basic quest, for example embedding a hidden Christian message in the story, and marking the protagonists Frodo and Aragorn out as heroes by giving them magic swords in the epic tradition of Sigurd and Arthur.
J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was an English Roman Catholic writer, poet, philologist, and academic, best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , both set in Middle-earth. [1]
A quest is a difficult journey with a specific goal. It serves as a plot device in mythology and fiction, and is often symbolic or allegorical. The quest, in the form of the hero's journey, plays a central role in what Joseph Campbell called the monomyth: the hero sets forth from the world of common day into a land of adventures, tests, and magical rewards. In a conventional heroic romance quest, the knight-errant in shining armour overcomes obstacles to win the heart of a beautiful princess. [2] [3] [4]
The Hobbit and its sequel The Lord of the Rings can both, the scholar of literature Paul Kocher writes, be viewed as quest narratives, with parallel structures: the stories begin at Bag End, the home of Bilbo Baggins; Bilbo hosts a party; the Wizard Gandalf sends the protagonist on a quest eastward; the wise Half-Elf Elrond offers a haven and advice; the adventurers escape dangerous creatures underground (Goblin Town/Moria); they meet another group of Elves (Mirkwood/Lothlórien); they traverse a desolate region (Desolation of Smaug/the Dead Marshes); they are received by a small settlement of men (Esgaroth/Ithilien); they fight in a massive battle (The Battle of Five Armies/Battle of Pelennor Fields); their journey climaxes within an infamous mountain peak (Lonely Mountain/Mount Doom); a descendant of kings is restored to his ancestral throne (Bard/Aragorn); and the questing party returns home to find it in a deteriorated condition (having possessions auctioned off/the Scouring of the Shire). [5]
Event | The Hobbit | The Lord of the Rings |
---|---|---|
Start | From Bag End, the home of Bilbo Baggins | |
Sendoff | Bilbo hosts a party | |
Mentor | The Wizard Gandalf sends the protagonist on eastwards quest | |
Helper | The wise Half-elf Elrond offers a haven and advice | |
Underground perils | Escape from Goblin Town | Escape from Orcs, Trolls, Balrog in Moria |
Elves | Meet Elves of Mirkwood | Meet Elves of Lothlórien |
Desolate region | Cross the desolation of Smaug | Cross the Dead Marshes |
Helpers | Received by Men of Esgaroth | Received by Faramir's men in Ithilien |
Climactic battle | The Battle of Five Armies | The Battle of the Pelennor Fields |
Mountain goal | Lonely Mountain | Mount Doom |
Restoration of King | Bard returns to ancestral throne in Esgaroth | Aragorn returns to ancestral throne in Gondor |
Returning home | Bilbo's possessions are being auctioned off | Shire has been despoiled, requires scouring |
Randel Helms, a scholar of literature including Tolkien, comments that the two novels have the same story and the same theme, "a quest on which a most unheroic hobbit achieves heroic stature". Further, Helms writes, both have the "there and back again" quest romance format, and both quests have a timescale of one year (spring to spring, and autumn to autumn, respectively). [6] He comments that while the two novels are thus structurally similar, "the natures of the two quests and the reasons for beginning them are strikingly different," Bilbo's being "at first little more than a lark with venal motives" whereas Frodo's quest "goes with the pain of a sad but noble decision". [7]
Event | The Hobbit | The Lord of the Rings |
---|---|---|
Start | From Bag End in the Shire | |
End of 1st phase | Trip down River Running, nearing Erebor | Trip down River Anduin, nearing Mordor |
Approaching the goal | Cross the dragon's withered hearth | Cross the evil polluted plain of Gorgoroth |
Achieving the quest | Enter hole in side of the Lonely Mountain | Enter hole in side of Mount Doom |
Success marked by | Arrival of Great Eagles | |
Returning home | Have to stop auction of Bag End | Have to scour the Shire of Sharkey's evil |
The Silmarillion is not a quest novel, but it contains quests of its own. Lúthien and Beren, royal Elf and Man, are sent on a quest by Lúthien's father Thingol who is opposed to her marrying a mortal Man. He sets a seemingly impossible task as the bride price: Beren has to bring him one of the Silmarils from the Dark Lord Morgoth's Iron Crown. [9] [10]
The scholar of humanities Brian Rosebury writes that The Lord of the Rings combines a slow, descriptive series of scenes or tableaux illustrating Middle-earth with a unifying plotline in the shape of the quest to destroy the One Ring. The Ring needs to be destroyed to save Middle-earth itself from destruction or domination by Sauron. The work builds up Middle-earth as a place that readers come to love, shows that it is under dire threat, and – with the destruction of the Ring – provides the "eucatastrophe" for a happy ending. The work is thus, Rosebury asserts, very tightly constructed, the expansive descriptions and the Ring-based plot fitting together exactly. [11]
Tolkien scholars and critics have noted that the penultimate chapter of The Lord of the Rings, "The Scouring of the Shire", with its separate quest to save the Shire, implies some kind of formal structure for the whole work. The critic Bernhard Hirsch accepts Tolkien's statement in the foreword to the Fellowship of the Ring that the formal structure of The Lord of the Rings, namely a journey outward for the main quest and a journey home for the Shire quest, was "foreseen from the outset". [12] Another critic, Nicholas Birns, notes approvingly David Waito's argument that the chapter is as important morally as the Fellowship's main quest to destroy the One Ring, "but applies [the morals] to daily life". [13] [14] Birns argues that the chapter has an important formal role in the overall composition of The Lord of the Rings, as Tolkien had stated. [13] Kocher writes that Frodo, having thrown aside his weapons and armour on Mount Doom, chooses to fight "only on the moral plane" in the Shire. [15]
The Tolkien scholar Richard C. West writes that the story of The Lord of the Rings is basically simple: the hobbit Frodo Baggins's quest is to take the Dark Lord Sauron's Ring to Mount Doom and destroy it. He calls the quest "primary", along with the war against Sauron. [16] The critic David M. Miller agrees that the quest is the "most important narrative device" in the book, but adds that it is reversed from the conventional structure: the hero is not seeking a treasure, but is hoping to destroy one. He notes that from Sauron's point of view, the tale is indeed a quest, and his evil Black Riders replace the traditional "errant knights seeking the holy of holies", while the Fellowship keeping the Ring from him cannot use it: thus there are multiple reversals. [17] Other authors such as Jared Lobdell and Lori M. Campbell agree that it is a "reverse quest" or "inverted quest"; Campbell wrote that "the mission is to destroy rather than to find something, what [Michael N.] Stanton calls an 'inverted quest' in which 'Evil struggles to gain power; Good to relinquish it'". [18] [19] [20] The Tolkien critic Tom Shippey concurs that it is "an anti-quest", a story of renunciation. He writes that Tolkien had lived through two world wars, the "routine bombardment" of civilians, the use of famine for political gain, concentration camps and genocide, and the development and use of chemical and nuclear weapons. Shippey states that the book raises the question of whether, if the ability of humans to produce that kind of evil could somehow be destroyed, even at the cost of sacrificing something, this would be worth doing. [21]
Character | Quest | Outcome |
---|---|---|
Traditional Knight-errant | Obtain the Holy Grail | Success, spiritual purity |
Frodo Baggins | Destroy the One Ring | Ring is destroyed, but not by Frodo; Frodo returns broken |
Sauron and his nine Black Riders | Obtain the One Ring | Failure, they are destroyed, along with the Ring |
Mason Harris, in Mythlore , contrasts Frodo's "renunciatory" quest with Bilbo's. In his view, The Hobbit represents Tolkien's ideal journey as Bilbo's "curiosity overcomes his Hobbitish fear of the unknown, while Frodo wishes that he had never seen the Ring, but also, because of the Ring's influence, would like to keep it, and thus both dreads his journey and is reluctant to fulfill its object." [22]
Shippey remarks that The Lord of the Rings contains meanings of different kinds beneath the immediate quest story. Thus, Tolkien, a Christian, makes the newly-assembled Fellowship set out on its quest from Rivendell on 25 December, the date of Christmas. He similarly has the Fellowship destroy the Ring and cause the fall of the enemy, Sauron, on 25 March, the date in Anglo-Saxon tradition for the Crucifixion. Tolkien thus embedded a subtle reference to the life of Christ in the narrative, one that Shippey notes almost no readers actually observe. [23]
The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger writes that both Frodo and Aragorn receive their renewed magic swords in Rivendell, marking them out as heroes in the epic tradition of Sigurd and Arthur, at the start of their quest. [24]
Rivendell is a valley in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth, representing both a homely place of sanctuary and a magical Elvish otherworld. It is an important location in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, being the place where the quest to destroy the One Ring began.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fiction, Man and Men denote humans, whether male or female, in contrast to Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, and other humanoid races. Men are described as the second or younger people, created after the Elves, and differing from them in being mortal. Along with Ents and Dwarves, these are the "free peoples" of Middle-earth, differing from the enslaved peoples such as Orcs.
The Return of the King is the third and final volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, following The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. It was published in 1955. The story begins in the kingdom of Gondor, which is soon to be attacked by the Dark Lord Sauron.
"The Scouring of the Shire" is the penultimate chapter of J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy The Lord of the Rings. The Fellowship hobbits, Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin, return home to the Shire to find that it is under the brutal control of ruffians and their leader "Sharkey", revealed to be the Wizard Saruman. The ruffians have despoiled the Shire, cutting down trees and destroying old houses, as well as replacing the old mill with a larger one full of machinery which pollutes the air and the water. The hobbits rouse the Shire to rebellion, lead their fellow-hobbits to victory in the Battle of Bywater, and end Saruman's rule.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's epic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings, the Battle of the Morannon or the Battle of the Black Gate, is the final confrontation in the War of the Ring. Gondor and its allies send a small army ostensibly to challenge Sauron at the entrance to his land of Mordor; he supposes that they have with them the One Ring and mean to use it to defeat him. In fact, the Ring is being carried by the hobbits Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee into Mordor to destroy it in Mount Doom, and the army is moving to distract Sauron from them. Before the battle, a nameless leader, the "Mouth of Sauron", taunts the leaders of the army with the personal effects of Frodo and Sam. Battle is joined, but just as it seems the army of Gondor will be overwhelmed, the Ring is destroyed, and the forces of Sauron lose heart. Mount Doom erupts, and Sauron's tower, Barad-dûr, collapses, along with the Black Gate. The army of Gondor returns home victorious, the War of the Ring won.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the real-world history and notable fictional elements of J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy universe. It covers materials created by Tolkien; the works on his unpublished manuscripts, by his son Christopher Tolkien; and films, games and other media created by other people.
Scholars and critics have identified many themes of The Lord of the Rings, a major fantasy novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, including a reversed quest, the struggle of good and evil, death and immortality, fate and free will, the danger of power, and various aspects of Christianity such as the presence of three Christ figures, for prophet, priest, and king, as well as elements like hope and redemptive suffering. There is also a strong thread throughout the work of language, its sound, and its relationship to peoples and places, along with moralisation from descriptions of landscape. Out of these, Tolkien stated that the central theme is death and immortality.
"The Council of Elrond" is the second chapter of Book 2 of J. R. R. Tolkien's bestselling fantasy work, The Lord of the Rings, which was published in 1954–1955. It is the longest chapter in that book at some 15,000 words, and critical for explaining the power and threat of the One Ring, for introducing the final members of the Fellowship of the Ring, and for defining the planned quest to destroy it. Contrary to the maxim "Show, don't tell", the chapter consists mainly of people talking; the action is, as in an earlier chapter "The Shadow of the Past", narrated, largely by the Wizard Gandalf, in flashback. The chapter parallels the far simpler Beorn chapter in The Hobbit, which similarly presents a culture-clash of modern with ancient. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey calls the chapter "a largely unappreciated tour de force". The Episcopal priest Fleming Rutledge writes that the chapter brings the hidden narrative of Christianity in The Lord of the Rings close to the surface.
Saruman, also called Saruman the White, is a fictional character of J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. He is leader of the Istari, wizards sent to Middle-earth in human form by the godlike Valar to challenge Sauron, the main antagonist of the novel, but eventually he desires Sauron's power for himself and tries to take over Middle-earth by force from his base at Isengard. His schemes feature prominently in the second volume, The Two Towers; he appears briefly at the end of the third volume, The Return of the King. His earlier history is summarised in the posthumously published The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.
Peregrin Took, commonly known simply as Pippin, is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. He is closely tied with his friend and cousin, Merry Brandybuck, and the two are together during most of the story. Pippin and Merry are introduced as a pair of young hobbits of the Shire who become ensnared in their friend Frodo Baggins's quest to destroy the One Ring. Pippin joins the Fellowship of the Ring. He and Merry become separated from the rest of the group at the breaking of the Fellowship and spend much of The Two Towers with their own story line. Impetuous and curious, Pippin enlists as a soldier in the army of Gondor and fights in the Battle of the Morannon. With the other hobbits, he returns home, helps to lead the Scouring of the Shire, and becomes Thain or hereditary leader of the land.
Aragorn is a fictional character and a protagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Aragorn was a Ranger of the North, first introduced with the name Strider and later revealed to be the heir of Isildur, an ancient King of Arnor and Gondor. Aragorn was a confidant of the wizard Gandalf, and played a part in the quest to destroy the One Ring and defeat the Dark Lord Sauron. As a young man, Aragorn fell in love with the immortal elf Arwen, as told in The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen. Arwen's father, Elrond Half-elven, forbade them to marry unless Aragorn became King of both Arnor and Gondor.
Elrond Half-elven is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. Both of his parents, Eärendil and Elwing, were half-elven, having both Men and Elves as ancestors. He is the bearer of the elven-ring Vilya, the Ring of Air, and master of Rivendell, where he has lived for thousands of years through the Second and Third Ages of Middle-earth. He was the Elf-king Gil-galad's herald at the end of the Second Age, saw Gil-galad and king Elendil fight the dark lord Sauron for the One Ring, and Elendil's son Isildur take it rather than destroy it.
Frodo Baggins is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's writings, and one of the protagonists in The Lord of the Rings. Frodo is a hobbit of the Shire who inherits the One Ring from his cousin Bilbo Baggins, described familiarly as "uncle", and undertakes the quest to destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom in Mordor. He is mentioned in Tolkien's posthumously published works, The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.
The One Ring, also called the Ruling Ring and Isildur's Bane, is a central plot element in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954–55). It first appeared in the earlier story The Hobbit (1937) as a magic ring that grants the wearer invisibility. Tolkien changed it into a malevolent Ring of Power and re-wrote parts of The Hobbit to fit in with the expanded narrative. The Lord of the Rings describes the hobbit Frodo Baggins's quest to destroy the Ring.
The Fellowship of the Ring is the first of three volumes of the epic novel The Lord of the Rings by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It is followed by The Two Towers and The Return of the King. The action takes place in the fictional universe of Middle-earth. The book was first published on 29 July 1954 in the United Kingdom.
"The Shadow of the Past" is the second chapter of J. R. R. Tolkien's bestselling fantasy work, The Lord of the Rings, which was published in 1954–1955. Tolkien called it "the crucial chapter"; the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey labelled it "the vital chapter". This is because it represents both the moment that Tolkien devised the central plot of the book, and the point in the story where the protagonist, Frodo Baggins, and the reader realise that there will be a quest to destroy the Ring. A sketch of it was among the first parts of the book to be written, early in 1938; later that year, it was one of three chapters of the book that he drafted. In 1944, he returned to the chapter, adding descriptions of Gollum, the Ring, and the hunt for Gollum.
A Tolkien Compass, a 1975 collection of essays edited by Jared Lobdell, was one of the first books of Tolkien scholarship to be published; it was written without sight of The Silmarillion, posthumously published in 1977. Some of the essays have remained at the centre of such scholarship. Most were written by academics for fan-organised conferences. The collection was also the first place where Tolkien's own "Guide to the names in The Lord of the Rings" became widely available.
J. R. R. Tolkien's presentation of heroism in The Lord of the Rings is based on medieval tradition, but modifies it, as there is no single hero but a combination of heroes with contrasting attributes. Aragorn is the man born to be a hero, of a line of kings; he emerges from the wilds and is uniformly bold and restrained. Frodo is an unheroic, home-loving Hobbit who has heroism thrust upon him when he learns that the ring he has inherited from his cousin Bilbo is the One Ring that would enable the Dark Lord Sauron to dominate the whole of Middle-earth. His servant Sam sets out to take care of his beloved master, and rises through the privations of the quest to destroy the Ring to become heroic.
Scholars including psychoanalysts have commented that J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth stories of both Bilbo Baggins, protagonist of The Hobbit, and Frodo Baggins, protagonist of The Lord of the Rings, constitute psychological journeys. Bilbo returns from his journey to help recover the Dwarves' treasure from Smaug the dragon's lair in the Lonely Mountain changed, but wiser and more experienced. Frodo returns from his journey to destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom scarred by multiple weapons, and is unable to settle back into the normal life of his home, the Shire.
Scholars have described the narrative structure of The Lord of the Rings, a high fantasy work by J. R. R. Tolkien published in 1954–55, in a variety of ways, including as a balanced pair of outer and inner quests, a linear sequence of scenes or tableaux, a fractal arrangement of separate episodes, a Gothic cathedral-like edifice of many different elements, multiple cycles or spirals, or an elaborate medieval-style interlacing of intersecting threads of story. Also present is an elaborate symmetry between pairs of characters.