Author | J. R. R. Tolkien |
---|---|
Language | English |
Series | The Lord of the Rings |
Genre | Fantasy |
Set in | Middle-earth |
Publisher | George Allen & Unwin |
Publication date | 29 July 1954 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Pages | 423 (first edition) |
OCLC | 12228601 |
823.914 | |
LC Class | PR6039.032 L67 1954, vol.1 |
Followed by | The Two Towers |
The Fellowship of the Ring is the first of three volumes of the epic novel [1] 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 first edition was published on 29 July 1954 in the United Kingdom, and consists of a foreword in which the author discusses the writing of The Lord of the Rings, a prologue titled "Concerning Hobbits, and other matters", and the main narrative divided into two "books".
Scholars and critics have remarked upon the narrative structure of the first part of the volume, which involves comfortable stays at five "Homely Houses", [lower-alpha 1] alternating with episodes of danger. Different reasons for the structure have been proposed, including deliberate construction of a cosy world, laboriously groping for a story, or Tolkien's work habits, which involved continual rewriting. The second chapter of each book, "The Shadow of the Past" and "The Council of Elrond", stand out from the rest and have attracted scholarly discussion. They consist not of a narrative of action centred on the Hobbits, but of exceptionally long flashback narrated by the wise old wizard Gandalf. Tolkien called "The Shadow of the Past" the "crucial chapter" as it changes the tone of the book, and lets both the protagonist Frodo and the reader know that there will be a quest to destroy the One Ring. "The Council of Elrond" has been called a tour de force , presenting a culture-clash of the modern with the ancient.
The volume was in the main praised by reviewers and authors including contemporaries of Tolkien W. H. Auden and Naomi Mitchison on its publication, though the critic Edmund Wilson attacked it in a 1956 review entitled "Oo, Those Awful Orcs!".
Tolkien envisioned The Lord of the Rings as a single-volume work divided into six sections he called "books", along with extensive appendices. The original publisher decided to split the work into three parts. Before this, Tolkien had hoped to publish the novel in one volume, possibly combined with The Silmarillion . [lower-alpha 2] However, he had proposed titles for the six books that make up the novel. Of the two books that comprise what became The Fellowship of the Ring the first was to be called The First Journey or The Ring Sets Out. The name of the second was The Journey of the Nine Companions or The Ring Goes South. The titles The Ring Sets Out and The Ring Goes South were used in the Millennium edition. [4]
The volume contains a prologue for readers who have not read The Hobbit , and background information to set the stage for the novel. The body of the volume consists of Book One: "The Ring Sets Out", and Book Two: "The Ring Goes South".
The prologue explains that the work is "largely concerned with hobbits", telling of their origins in a migration from the east, their habits such as smoking "pipe-weed", and how their homeland the Shire is organised. It explains how the narrative follows on from The Hobbit , [lower-alpha 3] in which the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins finds the One Ring, which had been in the possession of Gollum.
Bilbo celebrates his eleventy-first (111th) birthday and leaves the Shire suddenly, passing the Ring to Frodo Baggins, his cousin [lower-alpha 4] and heir. Neither Hobbit is aware of the Ring's origin, but Gandalf (a wizard) suspects it is a Ring of Power. Seventeen years later, in "The Shadow of the Past", Gandalf confirms to Frodo that the Ring is the powerfully seductive Ruling Ring lost by the Dark Lord Sauron long ago and counsels Frodo to take it away from the Shire. Gandalf leaves, promising to return by Frodo's birthday and accompany Frodo on his journey, but fails to do so.
Frodo sets out on foot, offering a cover story of moving to a little house in the village of Crickhollow, accompanied by his gardener Sam Gamgee and Frodo's cousin Pippin Took. They are pursued by mysterious Black Riders, but meet a passing group of Elves led by Gildor Inglorion, whose singing to Elbereth wards off the Riders. The Hobbits spend the night with them, then take an evasive shortcut the next day, and arrive at the farm of Farmer Maggot, who takes them to Bucklebury Ferry, where they meet their friend Merry Brandybuck. When they reach the house at Crickhollow, Merry and Pippin reveal they know about the Ring and insist on travelling with Frodo and Sam.
They decide to try to shake off the Black Riders by cutting through the Old Forest. Merry and Pippin are trapped by Old Man Willow, an ancient tree-spirit who controls much of the forest, but are rescued by Tom Bombadil. Leaving the refuge of Tom's house, they get lost in a fog and are caught by a barrow-wight in a barrow on the downs, but Frodo, awakening from the barrow-wight's spell, calls Tom Bombadil, who frees them and equips them with ancient swords from the barrow-wight's hoard.
The Hobbits reach the village of Bree, where they encounter a Ranger named Strider. The innkeeper gives Frodo a letter from Gandalf written three months before which identifies Strider as a friend. Knowing the riders will attempt to seize the party, Strider guides the Hobbits through the wilderness toward the Elven sanctuary of Rivendell. On the way, the group stops at Weathertop, a hill. While there, they are again attacked, though by only five of the nine Black Riders. Their leader wounds Frodo with a cursed blade. After fighting them off, Strider treats Frodo with the herb athelas, and is joined by the Elf Glorfindel, who has been searching for the party. Glorfindel rides with Frodo, now deathly ill, toward Rivendell. The Black Riders pursue Frodo, but when they enter the Ford of Bruinen, they are swept away by flood waters summoned by Elrond.
Frodo recovers in Rivendell under Elrond's care. Gandalf informs Frodo that the Black Riders are the Nazgûl, Men from ancient times enslaved by Rings of Power to serve Sauron. The Council of Elrond discusses the history of Sauron and the Ring. Strider is revealed to be Aragorn, the heir of Isildur. Isildur had cut the One Ring from Sauron's hand in the battle ending the Second Age, but refused to destroy it, claiming it for himself. The Ring had been lost when Isildur was killed, finally ending up in Bilbo's possession after his meeting with Gollum, described in The Hobbit. Gandalf reports that the chief wizard, Saruman, has betrayed them and is now working to become a power in his own right. Gandalf was captured by him, but escaped, explaining why he had failed to return to meet Frodo as he had promised.
The Council decides that the Ring must be destroyed, but that can be done only by sending it to the fire of Mount Doom in Mordor where it was forged. Frodo takes this task upon himself. Elrond, with the advice of Gandalf, chooses companions for him. The Fellowship of the Ring consists of nine walkers who set out on the quest to destroy the One Ring, in opposition to the nine Black Riders: Frodo Baggins, Sam Gamgee, Merry Brandybuck and Pippin Took; Gandalf; the Men Aragorn and Boromir, son of the Steward of Gondor; the Elf Legolas; and the Dwarf Gimli. The Fellowship thus represents the Free Peoples of the West – Elves, Dwarves, Men, and Hobbits, assisted by a Wizard.
After a failed attempt to cross the Misty Mountains over the Redhorn Pass, the Fellowship take the perilous path through the Mines of Moria. They learn that Balin, one of the Dwarves who accompanied Bilbo in The Hobbit, and his colony of Dwarves were killed by Orcs. After surviving an attack, they are pursued by Orcs and a Balrog, an ancient fire demon from a prior Age. Gandalf confronts the Balrog, and both of them fall into the abyss of Moria. The others escape and find refuge in the timeless Elven forest of Lothlórien, where they are counselled by the Lady Galadriel. Before they leave, Galadriel tests their loyalty, and gives them individual, magical gifts to help them on their quest. She allows Frodo and Sam to look into her fountain, the Mirror of Galadriel, to see unexplained visions of the past and the present, and possibly unreal glimpses of the future. She refuses to take the Ring Frodo offers her, knowing that it would master her.
Galadriel's husband Celeborn gives the Fellowship boats, elven cloaks, and waybread (Lembas), and they travel down the River Anduin to the hill of Amon Hen. There, Boromir tries to take the Ring from Frodo, but immediately regrets it after Frodo puts on the Ring and disappears. Frodo chooses to go alone to Mordor, but Sam, guessing what he intends, intercepts him as he tries to take a boat across the river, and goes with him.
The volume contains three types of narrative structure, not found in the rest of the novel, that have attracted the notice of Tolkien scholars and critics. Firstly, the Hobbit protagonists, having set out on their adventures, repeatedly return to "Homely Houses", comfortable and safe places where they recuperate. [5] [6] [7] Secondly, Frodo many times confers and eats with an advisor (not necessarily in a "Homely House"), then makes a clumsy journey in the face of a danger, then encounters unexpected help. [8] Thirdly, the volume switches between action into two exceptionally long chapters of flashback narrative, both critically important for the novel as a whole. [5] [6] [7]
In 1982, the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey noticed the alternation at the start of The Lord of the Rings between moments of dangerous adventure and of recuperation. He proposed four explanations of how Tolkien might naturally have created this sort of material. Shippey suggested firstly that the text gives the impression not of a moment of inspiration followed by a period of careful invention, but of a lengthy period of laborious invention, in search of some kind of inspiration. Tolkien would write and invent characters, places, and events. He would then naturally run into the complications that inevitably arise when different story-elements collide. These then led at last to an inspiration. [9]
Shippey comments that the work gave the impression that Tolkien, despite "much reworking", had been "initially groping for a story and keeping himself going with a sort of travelogue". [5] In search of material, Tolkien indulged in "a sort of self-plagiarism", [9] repurposing and expanding his own earlier inventions from, for instance, the poem "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" which he had written in 1934. This gave him the characters Tom Bombadil, Old Man Willow, and the Barrow-wight. [9] Tolkien's professional knowledge of philology, too, came to his aid, with careful concern for places and placenames, starting in the rather English Shire and then moving outside it. Finally, Tolkien allowed himself a measure of whimsical fun, describing the delicious meals the Hobbit protagonists were able to enjoy when each adventure was over, singing cheerful songs in the form of poems embedded in the text, taking hot baths in Crickhollow, and most pleasurably, constructing humorous dialogue. Shippey comments that "Tolkien found it too easy, and too amusing, just to let the Hobbits chatter on." Both Tolkien's friend C.S. Lewis and his publisher Rayner Unwin had to tell him to cut back the Hobbit-talk. [5]
In 2001, in the London Review of Books , Jenny Turner wrote that The Lord of the Rings was suitable for "vulnerable people. You can feel secure inside [it], no matter what is going on in the nasty world outside. The merest weakling can be the master of this cosy little universe. Even a silly furry little hobbit can see his dreams come true." [11] She cited Shippey's observation ("The hobbits ... have to be dug out ... of no fewer than five 'Homely Houses'" [10] ) that the quest repeats itself, the chase in the Shire ending with dinner at Farmer Maggot's, the trouble with Old Man Willow ending with hot baths and comfort at Tom Bombadil's, and again safety after adventures in Bree and Rivendell. [11] Turner commented that reading the book is to "find oneself gently rocked between bleakness and luxury, the sublime and the cosy. Scary, safe again. Scary, safe again. Scary, safe again." [11]
Critic | Proposed explanation | Implied writing method |
---|---|---|
Jenny Turner | Deliberate storytelling for "vulnerable people" | "Scary, safe again. Scary, safe again." [11] |
Tom Shippey | Laborious inventions in search of inspiration | Invent characters, places, events. Run into complications: rewrite continually; find inspiration at last. |
Use any materials you wrote earlier | Expand old poems, develop characters mentioned in them (Old Man Willow, Tom Bombadil, the Barrow-wight). | |
Concern for places and placenames | Develop placenames in the Shire and then elsewhere (e.g. Bree) using philology. | |
Whimsical fun | Describe meals in detail; have the characters sing songs, included in the text; let the hobbits "chatter on" and play exuberantly. |
In A Tolkien Compass , the scholar of literature David M. Miller describes The Lord of the Rings, like The Hobbit before it, as a "there and back again" tale "with various digressive adventures upon the way". [8] In his view, the setting is thus the road, and the novel is to an extent picaresque, with the crucial distinction that the components are nearly always essential to the plot. The protagonist, Bilbo and then Frodo, experiences one adventure after another, "perhaps learning and maturing as he goes, but encountering each experience essentially afresh." [8] Miller identifies nine such "cycles" in The Fellowship of the Ring. [8]
Each "conference" involves food, so the cycles are of feast and famine. Each danger "is total", since defeat at any point would end the quest. The unexpected helper in each cycle is the advisor in the next cycle. Miller notes that the cycles involving Old Man Willow and the Barrow-wight are anomalous, as the stages do not get the Ring any closer to Rivendell, nor are the hostile characters at all concerned with the Ring. Instead, the "Old Forest, Old Man Willow, Tom as Eldest" (his emphasis) stand outside time, "left over from the First Age"; and like the quest, "time spurts and lags with discernible rhythm". [8]
Shippey describes Miller's analysis as giving "a sense of cycles and spirals" [12] rather than a feeling of linear progression. Shippey suggests that these structures might have been "created in part by Tolkien's work habits, rewriting continually", in many small stages like waves of an incoming tide, "each one rolling a little further up the beach." [12]
Scholars have remarked that unlike the rest of The Lord of the Rings (which has an elaborately interlaced structure), all of The Fellowship of the Ring is told as a single thread with Frodo as the protagonist, with the exception of the two long flashback chapters, "The Shadow of the Past" and "The Council of Elrond". Those two chapters combine summaries of the history of the Ring, and quoted dialogue. [6] Further, they are similar in having a character – Gandalf or Elrond – recapitulate the past so as to explain the present situation. [7]
Book | Single narrative thread with Frodo as protagonist | Flashback narrated by Gandalf or Elrond | Importance |
---|---|---|---|
The Ring Sets Out | "A Long-expected Party" | ||
"The Shadow of the Past" | "the crucial chapter" (Tolkien); [13] "the vital chapter" (Shippey); defines the work's central plot; Frodo and the reader realise there will be a quest to destroy the Ring [14] | ||
10 more chapters | |||
The Ring Goes South | "Many Meetings" | ||
"The Council of Elrond" | Exceptionally long at 15,000 words; explains danger of the Ring; introduces the Fellowship members; defines the quest (rest of novel) [15] | ||
8 more chapters |
The poet W. H. Auden wrote a positive review in The New York Times , praising the excitement and saying "Tolkien's invention is unflagging, and, on the primitive level of wanting to know what happens next, The Fellowship of the Ring is at least as good as The Thirty-Nine Steps ." [16] However, he said that the light humour in the beginning was "not Tolkien's forte". [17] The scholar Loren Eiseley wrote in the New York Herald Tribune that Tolkien's was "a major creative act", constructing a "great tapestry ... rich with all manner of invention and of symbols, of the peculiar ethnology of a created world". [18] This transcended the "primary or Baconian world" and would "outlive the artist". [18] The literary critic Edmund Wilson however wrote an unflattering review entitled "Oo, Those Awful Orcs!", calling Tolkien's work "juvenile trash", and saying "Dr. Tolkien has little skill at narrative and no instinct for literary form." [19]
The novelist H. A. Blair, writing in the Church Quarterly Review , stated that the work told "poetic truth", appealing to "unconscious archetypes", and that it was a pre-Christian but religious book, with Christian "echoes and emphasis". [20] [21] The Catholic reviewer Christopher Derrick wrote in The Tablet that the book was openly mythical, being a heroic romance. In his view, Tolkien displayed "amazing fertility in creating his world and almost succeeds in devising an elevated diction". [22] Tolkien's friend and fellow-Inkling C. S. Lewis wrote in Time and Tide that the book created a new world of romance and "myth without allegorical pointing", with a powerful sense of history. [23]
The science fiction writer L. Sprague de Camp, in Science Fiction Quarterly , called it "a big, leisurely, colorful, poetical, sorrowful, adventuresome romance", and characterised a Hobbit as "a cross between an English white-collar worker and a rabbit." [24] The novelist Naomi Mitchison praised the work in The New Statesman and Nation , stating that "above all it is a story magnificently told, with every kind of colour and movement and greatness." [25] The Scottish poet Edwin Muir wrote in The Observer that "however one may look at it The Fellowship of the Ring is an extraordinary book", [26] but that although Tolkien "describes a tremendous conflict between good and evil ... his good people are consistently good, his evil figures immovably evil". [26] He commented that if Tolkien had had the "sensibility or the style to express the particular degree of humanity which we find in Spenser and Ariosto and Malory", and his imagination "equal to his invention", "this book might have been a masterpiece". [26]
Tolkien called the second chapter, "The Shadow of the Past", "the crucial chapter" of the entire novel; [13] the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey labelled it "the vital chapter". [14] 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. [27] [28] A sketch of it was among the first parts of the book to be written, early in 1938; [13] later that year, it was one of three chapters of the book that he drafted. [29] In 1944, he returned to the chapter, adding descriptions of Gollum, the Ring, and the hunt for Gollum. [29] The chapter changes the book's tone from the first chapter's light-hearted Hobbit partying, and introduces major themes of the book. These include a sense of the depth of time behind unfolding events, [30] the power of the Ring, [31] and the inter-related questions of providence, free will, and predestination. [32] [27]
"The Council of Elrond", the second chapter of Book 2, is the longest chapter in that book at some 15,000 words, and critical for explaining the power and threat of the 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 "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 the modern (mediated by the Hobbit) with the ancient (the heroic Beorn). Shippey calls the chapter "a largely unappreciated tour de force ". [15] 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. [33]
The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel by the English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book The Hobbit, but eventually developed into a much larger work. Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold.
Gandalf is a protagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He is a wizard, one of the Istari order, and the leader of the Company of the Ring. Tolkien took the name "Gandalf" from the Old Norse "Catalogue of Dwarves" (Dvergatal) in the Völuspá.
Bilbo Baggins is the title character and protagonist of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 novel The Hobbit, a supporting character in The Lord of the Rings, and the fictional narrator of many of Tolkien's Middle-earth writings. The Hobbit is selected by the wizard Gandalf to help Thorin and his party of Dwarves reclaim their ancestral home and treasure, which has been seized by the dragon Smaug. Bilbo sets out in The Hobbit timid and comfort-loving and, through his adventures, grows to become a useful and resourceful member of the quest.
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.
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 Company 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.
Gollum is a monster with a distinctive style of speech in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-earth. He was introduced in the 1937 fantasy novel The Hobbit, and became important in its sequel, The Lord of the Rings. Gollum was a Stoor Hobbit of the River-folk who lived near the Gladden Fields. In The Lord of the Rings, it is stated that he was originally known as Sméagol, corrupted by the One Ring, and later named Gollum after his habit of making "a horrible swallowing noise in his throat".
Aragorn is a fictional character and a protagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Aragorn is 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 is a confidant of the wizard Gandalf and plays a part in the quest to destroy the One Ring and defeat the Dark Lord Sauron. As a young man, Aragorn falls in love with the immortal elf Arwen, as told in "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen". Arwen's father, Elrond Half-elven, forbids them to marry unless Aragorn becomes 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 and save Middle-earth.
Hobitit is a nine-part Finnish live action fantasy television miniseries directed by Timo Torikka, originally broadcast in 1993 on Yle TV1.
"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.
The theme of addiction to power in The Lord of the Rings is central, as the Ring, made by the Dark Lord Sauron to enable him to take over the whole of Middle-earth, progressively corrupts the mind of its owner to use the Ring for evil.
Khraniteli is a Soviet television play miniseries based on J. R. R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring. It was broadcast once in 1991 by Leningrad Television and then thought lost before being rediscovered in 2021. It includes scenes of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry that were omitted from the 1978 film and Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
Scholars, including psychoanalysts, have commented that J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth stories about 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.
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.
J. R. R. Tolkien repeatedly uses dreams and visions in his Middle-earth writings to create literary effects, allowing the narrative to transition between everyday reality and awareness of other kinds of existence. He follows the conventions of the dream vision in early medieval literature, and the tradition of English visionary writing of Edmund Spenser and John Milton.