Re-reading The Lord of the Rings: chapter by chapter

[The Big Peat]

For what it's worth, I just flat up love the Silmarillion in its own right. Other than the Gods of Pegana and Tanith Lee's Flat Earth, I just don't think anything stacks up to it in terms of created mythology. Not always an easy read mind - but the content is great.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Agreed - Lord Peter Wimsey and Bunter springs to mind.

Or Ted and Ralph!

 

[Luiglin]

Or Ted and Ralph!

I don't know much about that, Sir.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

There's a problem with the drainage in the lower field, sir.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Well, I've finished it - but I'm afraid there was no magic in the reading for me. I suspect this is something a younger reader might find - and return to with later readings - especially if they don't know too much of the story.

For my part, all too often the only sections that felt new were those cut from the films as unnecessary, and so never really satisfied.

Some further observations:

1. The section with Faramir meeting Frodo dragged - it seemed more like a 32-page recounting of the story to date, than an actual story development itself.

2. Imrahil - the most underrated character ever! He personally saves Faramir against a Ringwraith, he later does the same for Eowyn, and is not only given control of the army at the Battle of Pelennor Fields, but also of Gondor during that time! I'm surprised I've found so little information or discussion about him, as he seemed a pivotal character.

3. The Rohirrim hunt and kill men in the hills, and murder anyone looking at their sacred pools in the wilderness - yet these are the good guys?!

4. I'm really surprised Denethor didn't reveal Frodo's mission when using the Palantir. Before this, we were told Saruman used one to communicate with Sauron, and yet Denethor simply seemed to get automated images to his questions. It felt like inconsistent handwavium.

5. The Orcs killing each other over Frodo's mithril shirt seemed both convenient, and somehow Tarantino.

6. The Scouring of the Shire felt very out of place - somehow childish by comparison of what came before, yet also morally debatable: rounding up ruffians and then killing them?!

7. Before reading it, I might have suggested that LOTR was a book about language, but really that seemed to play only a minor part in the prose. Instead, it was more about walking places, describing - then naming them. Arguably it's as much a narrative about a map with further information provided.

 

[Overread]

Don't forget when the orcs were fighting over the Mithril shirt the Ring was also having an influence as well and likely helped spark the majority of the fight. We see through Gollum that whilst the Ring has great power, its influence isn't perfectly guided and can backfire on itself very easily.

As for the scouring of the Shire I felt that it brought the world home to the Hobbits. Having just seen all these mighty armies and people go to war we see that Hobbits are too capable of it, when pressed. Even though the scale is very different it makes the Shire feel like its part of the world, rather than a paradise that sits almost untouched from the rest of the worlds influence.

 

[The Big Peat]

I think the most fascinating part of this for me now is that Brian's (probably) reading the series through very different filters to me. And, while part of it might be the fact I read it as a kid and he hasn't, I honestly think most of it is that he's looking for different thing and rating it by different parameters to me. I'm not sure I can argue with him based on tight plot and logically consistent magic systems - but for me, the power and resonance of its themes simply frees it from any such worries. I want to shout "You're wrong" like a sulky wee child - but, well, it's not by Brian's measuring stick.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Indeed, I'm aware of the danger of causing offence with such a classic and cherished book - I really tried not to. It's just never resonated with me, perhaps because I've never really felt a sense of discovery with it.

Even still, I really want to re-watch the Peter Jackson films of LOTR now, and hope my children will sit through it with me. Maybe they will get something more from the story.

 

[HareBrain]

I've always loved Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising since I first read it at age 11, and still loved it when I reread it a year ago. But if I came to it for the first time as an adult (and a writer), my main thought would probably be, "The main character makes no decisions at all!"

I think once a book works its way into your life, especially early on, it's very hard for it to work its way out, no matter what faults become apparent. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has read LOTR for the first time recently, as an adult, and found themselves captivated by it.

By the way, does anyone remember Pauline Baynes's map that was available as a poster?

 

[The Big Peat]

Indeed, I'm aware of the danger of causing offence with such a classic and cherished book - I really tried not to. It's just never resonated with me, perhaps because I've never really felt a sense of discovery with it.

Even still, I really want to re-watch the Peter Jackson films of LOTR now, and hope my children will sit through it with me. Maybe they will get something more from the story.

The fault in any such offence would firmly lay with the respondent and not you - not unless you'd gone really overboard


Looking at Wiki, one of the big thing about the palantir was that they were created to serve their rightful owners, and those were (by the time of the books) the Dunedain. Which is why Aragorn could actually wrest control of his from Sauron, and why Denethor fared better with his than with Saruman - I'm not sure if all this is in the book though. I'd always assumed the big difference was in Saruman and Denethor. Saruman was easier to bend than to break - to convert rather than to destroy - and vice versa. Trying to get information from Denethor would have tipped Sauron's hand and he might have stopped using it, so better to simply show him the images of despair to drive him to the brink.

 

[Toby Frost]

It's just never resonated with me, perhaps because I've never really felt a sense of discovery with it.

My suspicion is that to really get the most out of LOTR, as with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you either have to read it at a certain age or at a certain time. I have no real grudge against either, but I don't dig them the way some people do.

To go back to an earlier comment of Brian's: comparing Orwell's prose, say, and Tolkien's is interesting, because both were trying to do very different stylistic things (I think Orwell would have disliked LOTR, although he might have enjoyed the pastoral bits). Personally, I think Tolkien has two prose styles: the homely style that he uses for the hobbits, especially in Fellowship, and the "high" style that he uses for the "epic" characters ("But lo!" etc). Both are fine but neither blows me away.

For me, there aren't any moments in LOTR where I think "Yes, it is/would be exactly like that", which for me is one of the tests of really good prose, that the author has communicated his idea perfectly to the reader. I can remember chunks of description from my favourite books, but for me that sense of exact and memorable depiction isn't there with LOTR.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I think all readers of LOTR have to beware dealing with the past - and by that I mean the 1940s and Anglo-Saxon times - by the standards of the present. I don't think you Brian have specifically done that, but I seem to sense it in your critique. You do make several excellent plot points, especially the Mordor tower one which even as a teenager struck me as a bit convenient.

I think you hit the nail on the head with your "map" comment. Tolkien was a lover of landscape and of natural life. That love shines through most, if not all of his work.

In the end, as with all good books - it's a fantastic story for all its faults.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Personally, I think Tolkien has two prose styles: the homely style that he uses for the hobbits, especially in Fellowship, and the "high" style that he uses for the "epic" characters ("But lo!" etc). Both are fine but neither blows me away.

For me the "homely" style is extraordinarily attractive, and I think that's because of my own love of nature/countryside.
There have been quite a few occasions where I've "re-read" LOTR - but only that first volume.

 

[Overread]

Reading is in itself one of the most personal things we do and I think even potentially more so than watching films, even though both aspire to do the same function of telling a story. Reading is a very personal, very one to one experience which also relies not just on the book before the reader but the reader itself.

A readers experiences through life, their age, their background, their history all come to the fore in how they interpret the words on the page in a book. As such its very possible for a single book to be loved by some and hated by others and for some to just not get what makes it any good.
Of course there are basic mechanics of writing and there are clear means to writing something that has popular appeal and also ways to write something badly.



One thing I'd also say for Lord of the Rings is that because its been so influential in so much of modern fantasy, a reader coming to it late in life; after being exposed to so much derivative and inspired work; might well find the original less of an amazing thing. Whereas someone who experiences the book, often when younger, or early on into their reading (fantasy) interest, might well see it for more the landmark it is and see its ideas as fresher.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

One thing I'd also say for Lord of the Rings is that because its been so influential in so much of modern fantasy, a reader coming to it late in life; after being exposed to so much derivative and inspired work; might well find the original less of an amazing thing. Whereas someone who experiences the book, often when younger, or early on into their reading (fantasy) interest, might well see it for more the landmark it is and see its ideas as fresher.

I agree. My first time reading the book was in 1966 or thereabouts and it came as a revelation. I had never seen anything remotely like it before, and I think it would be impossible to experience what I experienced then if I had come to the story later after reading numerous novels of high fantasy already.

 

[Toby Frost]

One thing I'd also say for Lord of the Rings is that because its been so influential in so much of modern fantasy, a reader coming to it late in life; after being exposed to so much derivative and inspired work; might well find the original less of an amazing thing.

I agree. I'd go further and say that no genre has ever been so influenced (and sometimes squashed) by a single work. I read an interesting review of Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock that stressed that it was neither influenced by nor reacting to Tolkien, which was implied to be a rarity. I think that Titus Groan is a superb book, but I suspect that I read it at the right age (17).

LOTR works by its own rules, which do mean accepting an old-fashioned world view that doesn't mesh with a modern, "progressive" one or even the views of Tolkien's own time. Part of this comes from the Arthurian (and probably older) idea that the king and the land are tied together, and the aim is to replace a bad king with a good king, and not with representative democracy. I think a reader has to buy into LOTR's world-view and, by and large, it is not a particularly pernicious one. It's probably because the majority of the book is so acceptable that Sam's servile interludes and the Cockney orcs (I suspect they're meant to sound like generic thugs, in truth) seem so grating. I think it is a mistake to critique books based on the cutting edge of modern thought (not that anyone's doing it here).

 

[BAYLOR]

I'm slowly making my way through The Worm Ouroboros and that makes Tolkien look like Abercrombie on speed; but the Narnia books are a lot easier reading altogether. The King in Yellow feels fairly like for prose - likewise Dunsany. But both maybe a little lighter?

I guess I'd go a bit of both.

Might I suggest William Morris novel The Well at the End of The World ?

 

[Pyan]

By the way, does anyone remember Pauline Baynes's map that was available as a poster?

Yes - I've still got it somewhere, rolled up with the Map Of Narnia that she also did...

 

[Hugh]

I've always loved Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising since I first read it at age 11, and still loved it when I reread it a year ago. But if I came to it for the first time as an adult (and a writer), my main thought would probably be, "The main character makes no decisions at all!"

I read it for the first time in my forties. Really liked it. Guess it would have been even better aged 11.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Nice work @Brian G Turner

I think your points are fair - Frodo's rescue via Sam and two warring bands of orcs always irritated me. I know now that Tolkien was a pantser, so it feels he kinda painted himself into a corner with that. I think it feels a bit cheap after quite an excellent passage going up the stairs and then fighting Shelob.

Also I couldn't, even as an 11 year old, understand why Faramir seemed immune to the ring but Boromir succumbed. I suppose he was with the fellowship much longer, so it had much more time to turn him? The film certainly turns this one around.

When I did re-read it in my thirties the odd thing was that I really enjoyed most the 'world-building' chapters. Gandalf sitting down in the kitchen discussing the ring's past and the council of Elrond. Perhaps I'd enjoy the Silmarillion? The travelogue element of the book left me even colder than before! And therefore I'd argue that rather than a narrative about a map, it's a narrative set in a very deep and satisfying mythology.

If you are sitting down and watching the movies I'd heartedly recommend the extended versions. True, that that's 12 hours in total (I think they add an extra 4 hours on the cinema versions, from memory) But I can't watch the normal versions now, there are so many cuts that seem ridiculous!