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The Lord of the Rings: A Classic
I was very young when I was first introduced to The Hobbit. I could not have been older than seven when I was swept completely into the journey with Bilbo and the dwarves on their way to reclaim treasure from the dragon. When the story was over, I wanted the magic to continue, so I sought out my father’s copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, which was much more difficult to understand. (Tolkien loved him some semicolons, and I was a second grader.)
The truth was, I wasn’t quite ready for Frodo’s epic adventure then, so I had to put it aside for a while, disappointed by my first introduction to Tolkien’s next generation. I thought Bilbo’s nephew, Sam, Pippin, and Merry were a bit boring. It took them too long to do anything. I did not get beyond them stealing mushrooms, as if that was even noteworthy. Already cynical, I snapped the cover shut and quietly returned that tale to the bookcase to collect dust again in my parents’ home.
Fortunately, very soon after this, I had a birthday. I unwrapped a boxed collection of books about a place called Narnia. (I still have that same, now battered box in my office today, the spines of the well-loved novels contained within, cracked and fading from a girl’s constant rereading.)
Upon adult reflection, that proved to be the exact right time for me to meet Lucy, Susan, Peter, and Edmund. I could understand Aslan before I understood Aslan. I think now that C.S. Lewis kept me enthralled with fantasy and, in this way, he would serve as a kind of bridge that would take me back to his fellow Inkling.
Time rolled by, as it inevitably does, and there was a summer evening on which I went with my mother to the library with no particular agenda apart from having something to do. Wanting to escape from the mundane of an endless August, I somehow found Smith of Wooten Major, which I read sitting cross-legged on the commercial orange carpet in the middle of the fiction aisle as grownups walked around me as if I were an island. (If you’ve not heard of it, this is a wonderful Tolkien tale about magical cakes and the Land of Faery that lingered with me long after I forgot the title.)
By then I was a mature 10 or 11, and my hunger for Middle Earth began to rumble again.
Something must have changed about how I read stories because the next thing I knew, I had blown the dust off The Fellowship’s cover and consumed The Lord of the Rings in full. The complex sentences that had once meandered aimlessly like the feet of homeless rangers now rang with the music of elves, the rhythm of poetry.
Looking back at my own intellectual development, I suppose that was the exact right time for me to meet Strider in Bree. I could understand the clash between evil and good that is illustrated by Mordor and the West long before I understood the nature of evil and good. I felt I had entered a realm that helped me see my own world in a different way while entertaining me as much as The Hobbit had once done. That is something only a masterpiece can accomplish.
Of course, I understand Tolkien is not everyone’s cup of tea. His style is that of a man who reveled in classic works. He takes his time on paper, though I find this builds suspense if one is patient enough to let the action unfold. To be enveloped by his story … to start to like his semicolons.
For some reason, I felt inspired to pick up Tolkien’s magnum opus a couple nights ago and have started reading again from the beginning, and I feel thus far as if I’m spending time with a very old, very good friend.
Additionally, I know I will get something new from the story this time around because I have changed, as we tend to do, since the last time I read it. I am already annoying my husband by keeping the reading lamp on late.
I know I am not alone in my own taste in literature as Tolkien’s works are loved by many. Still, I wonder what other books have meant as much to others as The Lord of the Rings does to me. What works do you reread with joy? Why?
Published in Literature
It’s a better name than Kingslayer, I suppose.
Here’s a question…
The characters in the novel obviously looked one way in my mind and quite another in the Jackson movies. Thinking about how the actors and characters matched up, were there any that seemed miscast?
He is nothing like my Strider, but I totally get Viggo Mortensen in that role.
On the other hand, while she did a fine job, I suppose, Miranda Otto as Eowyn was a harder sell for me….
It’s not her fault; she was just… not even close to the Eowyn I dreamed up on my own.
Indeed. I feel like I have the meaning of life now, @misthiocracy. :)
How could there even be any others?
Well, ok. There’s the Bible.
I saw the movies first, unfortunately.
Even when it came to Tom Bombadil, I had Sylvester McCoy in my head.
Right???
I could not get through Jackson’s unceremonious slaughter of The Hobbit, but that’s a good choice for that character was ever played…. Radagast is Bombadilish in some ways, though I think he’s (Bombadil’s) much cheerier, and much, much more powerful.
In translation, or in the original? And if in translation, whose?
Bombadil is way more powerful than Radagast–but only in his own narrow domain.
Yes. Of course. I re-read what I wrote, and I meant to say Radagast is Bombadilish in some ways, though I think Bombadil is much cheerier, and much, much more powerful.
My mind goes faster than my fingers sometimes, or my fingers don’t type what’s in my mind?
Modern writing emphasizes short, punchy sentences and eschews run-ons. I think that that leads to short, punchy thoughts. Here, let me quote for you the first three sentences of the Declaration of Independence:
Never mind the capitalizations and odd comma placements, try getting that sentence length past an editor these days.
It’s Ernest Hemingway’s fault.
I think they did a good job casting. The nature of some of the characters changed in the films, which I didn’t care for.
Expound, please.
Argh. But I’m so tired.
Okay. I’ll say it’s always bothered me how Faramir was treated. Is that a good start?
Amen.
Having read the OP thus far, I recall; I was an early twelve when I first picked up The Hobbit, and found it to be a tough slog…I simply could not get through it, and I set it aside. However, something magical happened over the next year; when I returned to it, I could not read it fast enough. I took to Tolkien’s Middle Earth like it was my second home, ravenously devouring The Hobbit and then The Lord of the Rings throughout the whole summer vacation before my Freshman year of high school. As soon as I finished “The Grey Havens,” I would double back and re-start with “A Long-expected Party.” Whatever else I read that summer, I was also reading LOTR in parallel.
To this day, the magic of the Summer of 1978 remains fresh for me every time I re-read these well-beloved passages.
When you clicked, you clicked.
I totally get making Middle Earth a second home. I drove my mother crazy because I kept creeping behind her in the kitchen, trying to figure out how to move as quiet as an elf.
Faramir is the main one. What they did to him is beyond forgiving.
Treebeard.
That is, simply, just lovely.
You’re welcome.
As a ranger, I feel compelled to say that rangers are never aimless.
So, here’s a question: I couldn’t read LOTR. Just couldn’t. I loved, loved The Sword of Shannara as a kid. Basically the same type of quest and characters. I’ll grant that Terry Brooks did some serious cribbing from Tolkien. No argument. But I loved one and had…limitless apathy for the other? Why?
What exactly did you dislike about Treebeard? I kinda enjoyed their rendition of the ents. I mean, I just couldn’t see how they’d possibly create those guys in a movie, and wa la. But that may be beside the point.
They made him stupid, that’s all.
Too many to name, but a first cut:
You have a wonderful sense of humor @bossmongo! You’re also a terrific sport to still like my thread when I know you’re not a Tolkien guy. :)
I can’t say I read Terry Brooks, but here is one thought. Did you connect more with just the syntax? Maybe that’s a crazy thought, but Brooks was an American, right? Tolkien was a Brit. Maybe that impacted their different styles?
I don’t know.
As I am immersed once again in the Shire, you might try a shorter work by Tolkien to see if there’s a connection at all or if the style really is simply never going to be for you. (My mother swears liver is delicious, and it makes me nauseous!)
I mean… I don’t think you are too young to “get” the novel as I was when I first tackled it, but you DO like fantasy.
Did you like C. S. Lewis? Speaking of swords, did you read The Once and Future King by T. H. White?
Maybe we could meet on some of that ground and say our literary tastes overlap at least a little bit??? :)
All great choices. The commentary on Islam wasn’t obvious to young me, but the idea that God deals with us all as individuals, ie Aslan’s raking his paw across the girl’s back in A Horse and his Boy, was a source of pondering for some time. I mean, the idea that it was just between the lion and the girl was… memorable.
I read the Shannara books as a kid and loved them. Went back to them as an adult and couldn’t finish the first one. I just felt like it so ripped off Tolkein but without the depth. I said “I should just read Tolkien.”
What? No mentions of Mickey Spillane? What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on?
I will say, @bossmongo, that I have no memory of the the story line being set in the future. And being set around where I live.