by Carrie Schutrick

Created on: June 14, 2010

The story of The Lord of the Rings is simple, and these days (thanks to the Peter Jackson film adaptations) most everyone knows it: when a young hobbit called Frodo Baggins inherits a magic ring from his uncle, he thinks it's just a trinket.  It can make its wearer invisible, which is terribly useful.  But the ring is also the repository of a vast and evil power that must be destroyed, before its maker can regain it and use it to literally take over the world.  Frodo and a few companions set out on a long journey to the one place the Ring can be destroyed.  In the end they succeed, but at a great cost.

If you're thinking that every third fantasy paperback has a plot like that, you're right-because LotR started that trend.

The author, J.R.R. Tolkien, was a philologist, not an author, and sometimes it shows.  The book is extremely slow to get started; the first four chapters or so have been described as "Eighty pages of how much hobbits love to eat."  Tolkien never gives a short summary of anything if several long sentences can be crammed in instead.  The language varies from stately and archaic to colloquial and loose, sometimes within a few paragraphs, and the mood whiplash can be significant.  Plus, if you're not the type who reads poetry for fun you're likely to occasionally get bored with the long quotes from songs and poems that the characters recite with fair frequency.  Still, there's nothing like Tolkien's language for evoking a mood; you may not be able to picture precisely what a character looks like, but you'll have a darn good idea of what they'd be like to talk to.

There are some problems with The Lord of the Rings, especially since times have changed since it was written.  For one thing, you can count on the fingers of one hand the female characters with speaking parts, and one of them is a stereotypical gossiping old woman who's got about five lines total.  There's also racism, only thinly veiled-the evil orcs are described in terms that fit the early twentieth century's idea of the "Asian hordes", and anyone who isn't pale is likely to be evil or at least morally ambiguous.  These aren't things that can be ignored, especially when introducing the book to a child, but they can be springboards for conversation and discussion.

Despite its drawbacks, however, LotR is worth the read.  Aside from its entertainment value-and it has a great deal, for many readers-it's a cultural icon; a lot of other fantasy art and literature will make a great deal more sense if you've got Rings under your belt.  And for all its flaws, it's a great work of art.

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